The Indian subdistrict of Shahabad, located in the dwindling
forests of the southeastern tip of Rajasthan, is an area of extreme
poverty. Beset by droughts and food shortages in recent years, it
is the home of the Sahariyas, former bonded laborers, officially
classified as Rajasthan's only "primitive tribe." From afar, we
might consider this the bleakest of the bleak, but in "Poverty and
the Quest for Life," Bhrigupati Singh asks us to reconsider just
what quality of life means. He shows how the Sahariyas conceive of
aspiration, advancement, and vitality in both material and
spiritual terms, and how such bridging can engender new
possibilities of life.
Singh organizes his study around two themes: power and ethics,
through which he explores a complex terrain of material and
spiritual forces. Authority remains contested, whether in divine or
human forms; the state is both despised and desired; high and low
castes negotiate new ways of living together, in conflict but also
cooperation; new gods move across rival social groups; animals and
plants leave their tracks on human subjectivity and religiosity;
and the potential for vitality persists even as natural resources
steadily disappear. Studying this milieu, Singh offers new ways of
thinking beyond the religion-secularism and nature-culture
dichotomies, juxtaposing questions about quality of life with
political theologies of sovereignty, neighborliness, and ethics, in
the process painting a rich portrait of perseverance and fragility
in contemporary rural India.
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