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Performing Adivasiyat through Sarhul Festival in Jharkhand

Subodh Kunwer

This article arises from my academic research, ‘Moving the Centre: Performing Sarhul and Becoming Adivasi in Contemporary Jharkhand’ completed at Jawaharlal Nehru University in July 2015. The paper examines Sarhul festival celebration as a cultural performance in the contemporary Adivasi (indigenous) discourse in Jharkhand, India. The article discusses the mobilization of memory, rights and discourse through ritual performances. It explains how enactment of a ritual brings back the history, memory and imagination of indigenous struggles in the context of Jharkhand region. The Sarhul performance shows that the issue of indigeneity is a current issue demanding certain cultural and political claims.