[Extract …] The pioneering work of writers such as Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger, and Benedict Anderson in Europe, and Leroy Vail in Africa has served to challenge the a-historical and primordial assumptions underlying nationalist and ethnic ideologies. In the words of Leroy Vail: 'If ethnic consciousness was a product of historical experience, then its creation and elaboration would be a proper subject of enquiry for historians'.1 One can perhaps make a similar argument for the concept of indigeneity. Crispin Bates has recently argued that there is nothing indigenous about the adivasis of India, and that the tribes may be seen as 'an invention rather than as victims of modernity'. He goes on to note that claims that they are the 'original inhabitants' are used by the adivasis to legitimise demands for the redress of present day economic and political inequalities.2 Despite claims of a past golden age, their identity is of recent origin and rather than being the 'original inhabitants' they are the 'recently dispossessed'. This may or may not be true, depending on different case studies; for instance, the Chakmas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) were by no means the first people to enter the region, but were recent immigrants, following the Arkanese and Tripurans. Yet today Chakma identity is firmly linked to the hill tracts where they have sought to develop an 'indigenous' model of state, society and culture.3

However, while there has been a great deal written on identities as constructed through class, race and gender ideologies, there has been little written on the ways in which identities of ethnic groups, minorities and tribal peoples have been constructed around images of the land and the changing meanings of the landscape. Most studies of the landscape in the colonial context have concentrated on the arable parts of the landscape, while the non-arable areas have been often ignored. The growing domain of environmental history has recently attempted to document the forest and non-forest parts of the environment, and its relationship with 'indigenous peoples' in the colonial context. However, there is a need to understand the links between images of the landscape, the construction of identities, and cultural resistance, especially in South Asia. In particular, scholars will need to discuss the complexities of the relationship between the spiritual memory of remembered landscapes and modern politics. This study explores the important contemporary issues of environmental degradation, and ethnic and regional dissidence through an analysis of the ways in which identities have been constructed around images of the land and the forest in Chotanagpur.

• 1. Leroy Vail, The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, 1989), p.xi.
• 2. For example, most recently in the context of the UN Year of Indigenous Peoples with the formation of the Indian Council of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ICITP) in 1987, and its affiliation to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, the Jharkhand issue found a legitimate forum through the ICITP in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples. While the Jharkhand leaders loudly claimed 'indigenous' status for the groups they represented, the Indian mission to the UN sought to deny the existence of 'indigenous' peoples in India. This was despite the fact that India was one of the first signatories of the ILO convention of 1957, which had given recognition to the existence of indigenous and tribal people within its population. See Ram Dayal Munda, 'Autonomy Movements in Tribal India with Particular Reference to the Jharkhand Movement', unpublished paper, pp.12-13.
• 3. William Van Schendel, 'Invention of Jummas: State Formation and Ethnicity in South Eastern Bangladesh' in R.H. Barnes, Andrew Grey and Benedict Kingsbury (eds), Indigenous Peoples of Asia (Michigan, 1995), pp.98-112.