Staging the Law: Pathalgadi Movement as a Decolonial Practice

Abstract

The Munda adivasi community has fought for autonomy over their ancestral land since British colonization. When the Jharkhand state government proposed amending the Chotanagpur Tenancy (CNT) Act, a colonial law, to facilitate mining, the Mundas responded with the Pathalgadi movement, reasserting autonomy over their ancestral lands. They erected pathals (stone slabs) inscribed with abridged articles from the Indian Constitution that provided protection and autonomy for adivasi communities in scheduled areas. Erecting stone slabs is an ancient customary practice called pathalgadi, integral to the Munda adivasi tradition. The community practices it for burying the deceased, remembering ancestors, and memorializing events. I analyze the movement as a decolonial practice wherein, through the pathals, the Mundas assert belonging by drawing on both from the modern legal framework as well as their customary epistemology. I locate the pathals as performative archives that animate Mundas’ historical and spiritual legitimacy over their lands and function distinctly from the modern colonial archival logic.

As a decolonial practice from the Global South, the Pathalgadi movement presents a complex terrain where decolonization is not rooted in a rejection of colonial mechanisms but rather in appropriating and sacralizing colonial governance structures and the postcolonial constitutional framework through performative means— by employing the pathals as performative archives.