HISTORIOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE: REVISITING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ADIVASI FREEDOM FIGHTERS

Abstract

This article undertakes a critical reassessment of how Adivasi freedom fighters have been represented in Indian historiography from the colonial period to the present. It argues that their absence from mainstream accounts is not accidental but structurally produced. The article traces the construction of indigenous resistance as criminal disturbance in colonial records, its selective symbolic incorporation by nationalist historiography, and its partial recovery in subaltern studies scholarship. Two extended case studies are examined: the Santhal Hul of 1855-56 and the Munda Ulgulan of 1899-1900. These case studies demonstrate that major Adivasi uprisings embodied sophisticated political theories of sovereignty, land rights, and ecological governance. The article also addresses the historiographical problem of Northeast India's frontier movements and the postcolonial continuity of resistance under development regimes. It concludes with a call for a fundamental methodological shift. Adivasi actors must be recognised not as peripheral heroes but as foundational architects of India's anti-colonial political imagination.