Impact and Knowledge exchange for #theotherfromwithin project

How we plan to integrate existing reaserch networks and reach out to institutions and people with significant contribution to anthropology in India.

The main users and stakeholders in this research, include policy organisations (including a government departments), museums, institutes and archives and community organisations based in India.

In the course of formulating this project the team had made contact with a range of policy related organisations concerned with, or working alongside Adivasi and low caste communities. These include, principally, the Ministry of Social Justice, India. Furthermore, we are working in collaboration with a number of community organisations that are campaigning for the promotion of Adivasi and DNT rights, and have established partnership with one organisations in particular:  Budhan Theatre, which is a street-theatre and activist organisation based in Ahmedabad, (India) and one of the leading groups in the promotion of participatory arts among DNT communities. Budhan Theatre is potentially important to introduce policy initiatives relating to affirmative action.

Following the third theme in the project around anthropological networks and informants, we are in the process of structuring co-produced outputs that will act as exhibits and source material for the archival aspects of the project with our key community partners - Budhan Theatre.  The benefits will include the development of research-film and research gathering experience, the development of archival material of use to the organisation, and the preparation of community histories.   Activist organisations who work on caste such as the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA), have agreed to be formal partners on the project. This organisation has lobbied the UK government for the passage and implementation of anti-caste discrimination legislation.  The ACDA shares the project’s interest ‘in the outputs of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe organisations in India today, in terms of their aims and objectives and how successful they have been in approaching the Government of India’. Our partners at the ACDA have also asked us to provide detailed background material on the definitions of low caste organisations and we aim to forge connections between community organisations in India and CasteWatch UK via the project.

Moreover, this project plans to create and disseminate research in collaboration with Museums, institutes and archives through processes of digitization and co-curation. Our technical advisor Kevin Greenbank helped us to establish a relationship with the main archive and repository of South Asia related material in Cambridge - the Centre for South Asian Studies.  The main benefits the project can provide to archives will be the cataloguing of existing material into a coherent form, and the hosting of new digitised materials. This will enhance, in particular, the existing international coverage of DNT and other Adivasi cultural material online.  Budhan Theatre will receive assistance in the preparation and organisation of their exhibited and archival materials, and we will bring forms of anthropological context to their museums and archives.

We also have a partnership with Sahapedia India, which is an open online resource for the arts, cultures and heritage of India, and has agreed to form a platform for the sharing of the Budhan community archive and other Adivasi/anthropological materials that we shall research, throughout the course of this project. Part of the digitization process has commenced in December 2019.You’ll be posting loads of engaging content, so be sure to keep your blog organized with Categories that also allow visitors to explore more of what interests them.