The Semantic War on Sovereignty: How the Erasure of 'Adivasi' Undermines Indigenous Rights in India and Bangladesh

Introduction: A Cancellation That Speaks Volumes

In a move that shocked many but surprised observers of Indian politics, the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in West Bengal issued a terse notice on August 5, 2024, cancelling all state-sponsored events for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9. This stood in stark contrast to the previous year’s four-day celebrations. The government offered no reason. This administrative decision, however, is far from isolated. It represents the sharp end of a decades-long, ideologically driven campaign to reconfigure the identity of India’s tribal populations. Simultaneously, across the border in Bangladesh, tribal groups faced their own government’s steadfast refusal to recognize them as ‘adivasi’ or Indigenous Peoples. This synchronicity across borders reveals a profound geopolitical and ideological anxiety about the power inherent in a single word: adivasi.

The Facts: A Battle of Terminology and Calendar

The core fact is a dispute over nomenclature. The term “adivasi,” from Sanskrit roots meaning “original inhabitant,” is preferred by tribal organizations and carries connotations of prior settlement, historical continuity, and collective rights akin to global terms like “indigenous.” Conversely, the Hindu nationalist ecosystem, led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP, promotes terms like “vanvasi” (forest dweller) or “janajati” (tribe). They argue that “adivasi” implies other Indians are outsiders, disrupting their narrative of a continuous, unified Hindu civilization since time immemorial.

This semantic battle is institutionalized in the calendar. Since 2021, the Indian government has formally marked November 15 as “Janjatiya Gaurav Divas” (Tribal Pride Day), which now receives extensive state patronage. Notably, since 2022, neither President Droupadi Murmu (herself from a tribal community) nor Prime Minister Narendra Modi has issued a message on the UN’s August 9 date. The BJP’s ideological partners have even blamed “external forces and Christian missionaries” for using Indigenous People’s Day to divide society.

In Bangladesh, the stance is even more rigid. Successive governments have formally instructed officials against using “adivasi,” employing “upajati” (sub-tribe) or “Khudra Nrigoshthi” (minor ethnic races) instead. The government abstained from the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), citing definitional ambiguities and fears that recognition could fuel claims for autonomy or special territorial rights in the sensitive border regions with India and Myanmar.

The Historical and Ideological Context: Fabricating Civilizational Unity

To understand the vehemence against “adivasi,” one must delve into the ideological bedrock of the ruling dispensation in India. The RSS and BJP’s worldview is predicated on the concept of a primordial Hindu Rashtra (nation) where all communities are woven into a single civilizational fabric. Acknowledging “adivasis” as “original inhabitants” creates a catastrophic crack in this narrative. It introduces the idea of prior, distinct societies that existed before and possibly outside the Vedic Aryan fold that Hindutva venerates. As RSS leader Ram Madhav stated, the Sangh believes “we all are original inhabitants of this continent.”

This is not history; it is mythology weaponized for political control. The claim of Aryan indigeneity is, as the article notes, scientifically unproven but essential for Hindu nationalist pride in “Vedic Aryan supremacy over world cultures.” Accepting the adivasi claim undermines this supremacist pillar. Therefore, through organizations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (founded 1952) and the Janjati Suraksha Manch, the Sangh Parivar works to semantically and socially integrate tribes as “vanvasi”—defined by habitat (forest) rather than historical primacy—or “janajati,” a categorical term that can be subsumed within the Hindu caste (varna-jati) hierarchy, as critics in Nepal point out.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s messages celebrating adivasis as “original owners” of the land are thus a direct ideological challenge. Mayukh Biswas of the CPI-M correctly identifies the West Bengal cancellation as an “assault on identity” stemming from this BJP project. This is a domestic front in the broader civilizational clash, where the Westphalian model of minority rights (like UNDRIP) is rejected in favor of a majoritarian civilizational assimilation.

Analysis: Neo-Colonialism in a Civilizational Garb

This is where our principles demand a fierce and unflinching critique. What the BJP-RSS combine is executing is a form of internal colonialism, dressed in the sacred robes of civilizational revival. It is a neo-colonial project where the dominant ethnic-religious group uses state machinery to systematically erase the historical identity of autochthonous peoples to consolidate control over land, resources, and narrative.

The cancellation of the UN day is not administrative lethargy; it is a symbolic purge. It signals that the state’s calendar, its memory, and its honors will be dictated by a nationalist ideology, not by global norms of human rights that acknowledge historical wrongs. Celebrating ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Divas’ instead reframes tribal pride as a gift bestowed by the current nationalist state, divorcing it from any international discourse of inherent rights and self-determination.

The Bangladeshi state’s parallel resistance, while rooted in a Bengali majoritarian nationalism rather than Hindu nationalism, serves a similar function: protecting the nation-state from sub-national claims. Their fear of “legal avenues for claims regarding autonomy” betrays a securitized view of its own citizens, viewing indigenous identity not as a right but as a threat to territorial integrity, ironically in a country born from a right to self-determination.

This coordinated aversion to “adivasi” across borders exposes a dirty secret of post-colonial states in the Global South: many have inherited and perfected the colonial tools of divide, categorize, and rule. They fear the emancipatory potential of UNDRIP because it empowers communities against the centralized state, a model the West itself often violates but which remains a potent tool for the oppressed.

The Stakes: Identity, Resources, and the Future

Rahul Gandhi’s warning is prophetic: “what now appears to be a war on identity can also transform into one on their traditional and historical ownership of natural resources.” This is the crux. The term ‘adivasi’ or ‘indigenous’ is not just cultural; it is juridical. It builds a bridge to concepts of ancestral domain, free prior and informed consent, and resource rights. By denying the term, the state strategically disarms communities in the coming battles over forests, minerals, and land—battles already raging across India.

For the global south, and particularly for civilizational states like India, this poses a critical dilemma. The path of Hindutva offers a cohesive but brutally assimilative model, stripping diversity to build a monolithic power capable of standing up to Western hegemony. The alternative is a truly decolonized, pluralistic model that draws strength from its layered histories, where the adivasi as original inhabitant is not a threat but a foundational pillar of the nation’s antiquity and ecological wisdom. The former mimics the very imperial homogenization it claims to oppose; the latter offers a genuine, moral alternative.

Conclusion: Standing with the First Peoples

The protest processions by indigenous groups in West Bengal and Bangladesh on August 9 are more than rallies; they are acts of defiant self-identification in the face of erasure. Supporting them is not anti-national; it is the essence of anti-imperialism, for it challenges a new, homegrown imperialism of the mind and map. The global south’s fight against Western hypocrisy on international law cannot be won by mirroring that hypocrisy at home.

We must champion the right of peoples to name themselves. We must condemn the cynical cancellation of a day of global solidarity. And we must see the semantic war on ‘adivasi’ for what it is: a pre-emptive strike against the historical and resource sovereignty of India’s and Bangladesh’s first peoples. Their struggle is our struggle—for a world where multiple histories can coexist, where power is shared, and where the original inhabitants of a land are not forced to beg for recognition from those who arrived later. The soul of Bharat and the spirit of Bengal’s liberation depend on remembering who was here first.