







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 5 (1): 245-248 January 2022 

BOOK REVIEW 

Nature And Indigeneity: Towards An Environmental 
History of Adivasi Society  

Dipsita Dhar 

Nirmal Kumar Mahato, Sorrow Songs of Woods: Adivasi Nature Relationships in 
the Anthropocene in Manbhum, Primus Books: New Delhi, 2020, ISBN 
13: 9789390022472 

Nirmal Kumar Mahato’s Sorrow 
Songs of Woods is a richly textured 
ethnographic and historical 
account of the Adivasi or 
indigenous people of Manbhum. 
Territorially speaking, Manbhum 
was a single district in British 
India, but it currently sprawls 
across the states of Bihar and 
West Bengal. Essentially, Mahato 
provides an environmental history 
of the Adivasi people by setting 
up a dialogue of sorts between the 
official archive and a range of 
indigenous sources, including 
myths, oral accounts, and lived 
experiences. The author is keen to 
emphasize that his study is a 
critique of the outsider, upper-
caste, and elitist gaze, by stating 
that he is no stranger to 

Manbhum and that he speaks for his community. Sorrow Songs of Woods, 

 
 PhD candidate, Centre for Studies in Regional Planning and Development, Jawaharlal 
Nehru University, dipsita.dhar@gmail.com.  

Copyright © Dhar 2022. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.598  

mailto:dipsita.dhar@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.598


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [246] 

 

hence, seeks to directly challenge former writings that characterize Adivasi 
people as being economically inferior, underdeveloped, culturally simple, 
and sometimes even criminal. However, the monograph is careful not to 
take on a patronizing tone nor romanticize the social and ecological worlds 
that shape Adivasi people.  

The first chapter deals with the development of the Adivasi sense of place. 
While the book provides ample descriptions of the natural features of 
Manbhum through the frames of geology, geomorphology, and climate, 
Mahato is keen to avoid the charge of environmental determinism. Instead, 
he describes the indigenous worldview as being based on a careful weaving 
of physical settings such as forests and climate and a range of livelihood and 
subsistence activities. That is, according to Mahato, the Adivasi people 
construct a type of social nature rather than passively adapting to their 
environmental endowments. Mahato also describes how the Adivasi people 
organized themselves into a distinct political community within densely 
forested tracts in the pre-colonial period. Notably, the community featured 
a complex network of chieftainships, with a pre-eminent raja, whose capital 
was located at Patkum, linked to 17 semi-autonomous chiefs. During the 
Mughal dispensation (1526–1764) in the region, there was very little actual 
control exercised over the forests and the Adivasis. However, the arrival of 
British colonialism in the late eighteenth century dramatically altered the 
situation for the worse, as they sought to settle the forests as zones for 
cultivation and instituted an oppressive and severe land tax. Consequently, 
between 1769 and 1833, the Adivasis organized five major revolts, 
compelling the British administration to reorganize Manbhum under the 
South Western Frontier Agency (SWFA) in the hope of regulating the 
“wild, imperfectly civilized” Adivasi people (p. 29).  

The second chapter explores the internal, occupation-based social hierarchy 
within Adivasi communities. Two predominant divisions, in particular, are 
identified: the first being the Kherias and Birhors, who are forest dwellers 
who practise shifting cultivation and who were previously hunters–
gatherers. The second are the Santhals, Mundas, Oraons, Bhumijs, Koras, 
and Kurmis. Interestingly, these groups practise a form of endogamy or 
prohibition of marriage with inferior Adivasi communities (p. 35). For 
Mahato, these discriminatory belief systems raise several questions; 
primarily, he speculates whether this form of casteism was drawn from 
surrounding Hindu societies or was it brought on by occupational and 
productional relations. 

The author contends that from the fourth century CE onwards, various 
Hindu beliefs and rituals began to find social traction in Manbhum. The 
chieftains, in particular, began identifying themselves as Rajputs or 



[247] Dipsita Dhar 

 

Kshatriyas and often engaged in matrimonial ties only within their ranks, 
actively seeking to distance themselves from the rest of the community. 
These rajas even went on to ensure the settlement of Brahmins on their 
lands to draw upon their ritual legitimacy. On the other hand, despite 
adopting several non-tribal beliefs and values, the Adivasi people retained 
notions about sacred geographies. From the selection of village site to the 
maintenance of sacred groves and water bodies, indigenous knowledge 
systems were rooted in philosophies strongly centred on conservation.  

There were other levels of differences as well. The Adivasi people had 
distinct aesthetics with regard to floor painting, scrolls, murals, and tattoos. 
They also established their own medicinal practice named horopathy or 
medico-ethnobotany, which relied on the available flora to manage diseases. 

The third chapter discusses the varied social and economic impacts of 
British colonial rule. It primarily examines how company rule completely 
transformed the indigenous economy. Economic organization centering on 
collective endowment and communitarian ideas of production and 
consumption were replaced with private ownership. Consequentially, 
Adivasi people who had previously inhabited roles on a spectrum ranging 
from hunter–gatherers to subsistence cultivators were now forced to 
become settled agriculturalists and even attempt commercial farming.  

The succeeding chapter provides a more comprehensive account of the 
social and ecological transformation brought on by the British. Feudal 
practices such as debt bondage were normalized; increased cultivation led to 
a rapid change in the soil cycle, causing a nutrient imbalance in the region 
resulting in less productivity, and, eventually, famine; the exploitation of 
water bodies reduced irrigational possibilities through natural percolation; 
and extreme deforestation led to the rapid drying up and silting of ponds. 
The impact of deforestation, however, was not limited to desertification, 
drought, and temperature rise alone. According to Mahato, there was a 
striking reduction in indigenous knowledge handed down generations as 
well. The lush forests are significant sources of biodiversity that enable a 
vast range of community-based medicinal practices that are at risk of being 
permanently lost. 

The last chapter deals with political mobilization in the Manbhum region, 
beginning in the late eighteenth century to the present day. The early 
nineteenth century saw rebellions around land, liquor, and, consequently, 
forest rights. The rural reconstruction project proposed by Gandhiji gave 
Adivasis a chance to remobilize during the freedom movement. Gandhi’s 
advocacy for a self-reliant, self-controlled village society, where power is 
decentralized, was an ideal imagining of Adivsasi “community life”.  The 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [248] 

 

promise of dignity through autonomy energized mass participation by these 
communities. While they participated in the Non-cooperation Movement 
with great rigor, their voices were not given due importance by the upper-
caste Hindu leaders in Congress. The dislocation of the Adivasi landscape 
(p. 178) led to economic, social, and political marginalization, which was 
followed by the establishing of a hegemony in the region by the upper 
castes of Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha. The cultural silencing of the Adivasi 
middle classes, who desperately wanted to integrate into the “national” 
imagination, created pathways for further Sanskritisation. However, the 
Mahatos eventually “de-scheduled” themselves after the Mahato Kurmi 
Mahasabha Movement (1983), and the Santhals organized a Saphor or a 
Revitalization Movement to assert their indigenous culture.  

This is an exceptional monograph that traces a series of socio-ecological 
and political shifts in Manbhum. While many previous writings see forests 
as only a resource, Mahato emphasizes that for the Adivasi, it is their home. 
The only critical remark, however, is that there could have been more 
discussion on the notion of the Anthropocene. Nonetheless, Sorrow Songs of 
Woods should definitely be considered a valuable addition to the growing 
literature on the conversation surrounding Adivasi people in India.  


