Indigenous Voices 9 5

A Case Study of Jharkhand

Abstract

The article primarily reiterates resistance as assertion of identity, exploring it through the rubric of aesthetic creation. An attempt has been made to comprehend resistance as existential condition of human life, as a constant struggle to loosen the grips of domination and subjectification. his further treads the path to recreate the self through alternative ways which exemplify resistance. his essay is divided into five sections. he first section is an introduction to the subject, leading to the second section which endeavours to take into account the web of state power relations that serve as modes of domination. The third section tries to locate the site of resistance, i.e. the Potka block in Jharkhand from a spatial and temporal perspective. he fourth section attempts to see the exemplification of resistance against those practices of domination as discussed in the second section. Here resistance manifests through social and cultural enactments under aesthetic creation which has been used as a resource to practice/exercise resistance. Subsequent to these arguments, the conclusion, which is the last section, argues that in this exploration of alternative ways of resistance and its politics, what also needs to be taken into account is dissenting voices within the alternatives. Hence the crux therefore is that such acts of resistance try to recuperate those imaginations, which have been subsumed/conquered by the dominating perspective, however this process of resistance is a continuous one, as alternatives contain seeds of further alternatives.