Zindagi Research Grant

Project Mukti, with its Knowledge Partner, The Third Eye, brings to you the first edition of the Zindagi Research Grant on the theme of ‘Reworlding Ecologies: Experiences, Knowledges and Practices from Indigenous Communities’. This grant is rooted in the belief that the stories we tell have the power to transform the world. With a dual aim of providing a platform to members of marginalised communities, especially those belonging to the Indigenous Tribal groups, to tell their stories - unbiased and unafraid, and to break away from the savarna dominated media, the Zindagi Research Grant looks forward to support unpublished writers, researchers, and storytellers who are eager to explore the field of indigenous knowledge systems and alternative conservation practices as a potent response to contemporary ecological crisis. 

Concept Note

‘Reworlding Ecologies: Experiences, Knowledges and Practices from Indigenous Communities’

With global calamities like megadroughts, catastrophic rainfall, wildfires, and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, we are living in a time of ruptures where it is important for us to rethink how we approach ecology and our relationship with it. While conventional notions of development have been Eurocentric and industrialist so far, a discourse articulating indigeneity can bring potential reforms around environmental justice. Many Indigenous* People have had an unbroken and close relationship with nature which is antithetical to practices of unsustainable exploitation (Jakes, 2024) and any discourse on environmental justice is incomplete without the incorporation of Adivasi and Indigenous Knowledge systems. These alternative perspectives depict a critique of the anthropocentric worldview and argue for a holistic understanding of life.

According to IWGIA (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), India has 705 ethnic groups (recognised as “Scheduled Tribes” by the Government of India). While they are spread all across India, they are majorly concentrated in the central belt of India and the Northeastern region of the country. These communities are referred to as Adivasis in central India and tribals in the Northeastern states of India. A majority of these communities believe in animism. Concepts emerging from these knowledge systems, like “new animism”, are alternative decolonial approaches that decentre the dehumanising colonial outlook. It considers the actions of the non-human realm “as intentional and purposive, recognizing their participation in kinship systems and social structures” (Prakash, 2024).

Notions like animism are central to the functioning of Indigenous Knowledge systems, which are transmitted through generations. The term ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ refers to a cobweb-like structure borrowing from various local epistemologies which is culturally transmitted across generations, often orally or through practical demonstrations. Living examples of these repositories are best reflected in the paddy cum fish cultivation of the Apatani tribe in the Ziro Valley of the Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, the sacred groves of Meghalaya revered by the indigenous Khasi tribe, the “utera” farming system of the Gond, Pradhan, and Baiga communities of Madhya Pradesh and many more. These unique sustainable farming and conservation practices, along with the community’s traditional ecological knowledge, play an invaluable role in addressing contemporary ecological crises. 

However, their lived experiences grapple with the issue of “displacement, citizenship, customary laws and on the issues of cultural appropriations by resurgent Hinduism—where the aim is to reinforce Brahmanical ideology” (Brahma, 2024). The Brahminic appropriation entails a reinterpreting of Adivasi myths and practices to serve its project of Hindu-nationalism. Hence, Prakash Brahma writes that decolonisation for the indigenous population in India has a dual aim, which is, decolonisation from both the colonial legacy and Brahmanical beliefs.

There is also an ongoing conflict between corporate or state-led development and the rights of Indigenous communities with respect to their land, identity, and self-determined futures. This can be understood through the Niyamgiri struggle against Vedanta’s encroachment, the Kalinganagar resistance to land acquisition by TATA, and the most recent eviction of the Van Gujjars from the forests of Uttarakhand. Each one of these examples stands as a testament to Adivasi and indigenous groups’ struggle for their rights. It must be understood that their fight is not just for economic benefit but also for cultural representation and identity.

In his book, Caste and Nature, Mukhul Sharma argues for a distinct category of “Dalit eco-experiences” where counter-hegemonic negotiations involve articulating a unique “environmental imagination”, with representation of a conservation from below.  While Sharma wrote in the context of Dalits in particular, the same approach can also be applied to other marginalised groups, including the Adivasi or the indigenous groups of India, who suffer the brunt of the ecological crisis.

Therefore, we need to recognise and address the ecological injustices marginalised groups have faced, whether it is in the form of external forces like corporate globalisation, which commodifies nature, displaces people, erodes cultural and biological diversity or Brahminic appropriation in order to foster an inclusive environment justice and to resist systemic exclusion. A confluential approach that brings modernity/development in harmony with the knowledge systems of indigenous people can ensure a continuation of a sustainable relationship between society and ecology.  

Indigenous and Adivasi communities have often been seen as "recipients of knowledge" rather than as "producers of knowledge" but their long standing indigenous  knowledge systems, often rooted in an intrinsic relationship with nature bears a testament to their active role as producers of knowledge, which however, in the face of modernity, either get dismissed or appropriated by eurocentric or brahmanic lens. Thus,  research, writing and storytelling from an emic perspective, that is, by the indigenous people for indigenous people, become an important tool to produce knowledge that Brahmanism has denied these communities for thousands of years. 

Hence, inspired by the call to "Educate, Agitate, Organize," the Zindagi Research Grant aims to archive and explore possibilities for an alternative ecological future. The proposals for the first edition of Zindagi Research Grant may explore, but are not limited to, the themes given below:

  1. Decolonising ecology and understanding the climate crisis with an alternate lens

  2. Traditional sustainable cum conservation practices by indigenous communities

  3. Gender, ecology and indigeneity

  4. Indigenous land rights and environmental reforms

  5. Community-led innovation related to conservation

  6. Displacement of Indigenous people

  7. Archiving the lived experiences of Indigenous groups

* In the context of this grant, the word “Indigenous” includes Adivasi communities of Central India and other regions of India, including the tribal groups from North-Eastern India, who have distinct cultural, ecological, and spiritual relationships with land and nature. It also encompasses communities practicing ancestral knowledge systems rooted in oral traditions, local cosmologies, and alternative frameworks of sustainability. The term is inclusive of a range of marginalised knowledge systems that have been historically erased or appropriated by colonial and Brahmanical narratives.

References:

Ghosh, A. (2025, 14 January). Time of Monsters, Time of Possibilities: Reflections on an Interstitial Era. In iicdelhi.in [Talks, Webcasts]. Dr. C.D. Deshmukh Memorial Lecture 2025, Delhi, India. https://iicdelhi.in/programmes/dr-cd-deshmukh-memorial-lecture-2025 

Menon, N. (2024). Secularism as misdirection. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478059448 

Chakma, T., & Martemjen, Dr. (2023, March 29). The Indigenous World 2023: India. iwgia.org. https://iwgia.org/en/india/5117-iw-2023-india.html

Prakash, B. (2024). Power, Performance, and the Limits of Contemporary Animism as a (De)colonial Perspective for Indian Caste Society. CASTE / a Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 5(3), 342–357. https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v5i3.1764 

Priyadarshini, P., & Abhilash, P. C. (2019). Promoting tribal communities and indigenous knowledge as potential solutions for the sustainable development of India. Environmental Development, 32, 100459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2019.100459 

Zagade, Y. (2023, March 20). Why should Dalit-Bahujans and Adivasis do research? Round Table India. http://www.roundtableindia.co.in/why-should-dalit-bahujans-and-adivasis-do-research-doing-research-and-self-reflexivity/ 

Samal, J. S. (2025). Mining-induced displacement and tribal resistance: The case of Odisha, India. Energy Research & Social Science, 121, 103950. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.103950 

Senanayake, S. G. J. N. (2006). Indigenous knowledge as a key to sustainable development. Journal of Agricultural Sciences – Sri Lanka, 2(1), 87–94. https://doi.org/10.4038/jas.v2i1.8117 

Sharma, M. (2017). Caste and nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics. Oxford University Press, USA.

Jakes, V. (2024). The role of traditional knowledge in sustainable development. International Journal of Humanity and Social Sciences, 3(2), 40–55. https://doi.org/10.47941/ijhss.2079