The landscape is not nature. It is not land. It is an imprint of the lifeworld. In his recent work, Asoka Kumar Sen defines Adivasi landscape as jal, jungle, jameen, which is a ‘constitutive element in forging the Adivasihood’. Similarly, in this chapter, I show that the Adivasi lifeworld is a constellation of lived experiences and knowledge. It is a ‘field and flow of living worlds’. Therefore, the landscape also captures the lifeworld of the community—one that is forged through the everyday use of memory. Drawing on previous works on material memory, I aim to delineate a new perspective about the relationship between the landscape and memory. I focus on two nodal points to show functions of memory. In the first section, I investigate the historical importance of stone slabs within the Adivasi community. In the second section, I show how stone slabs are mobilized in the resistance movement, the Pathalgadi. Historically, pathalgadi is a custom prevalent amongst Adivasis to ‘mark a happy, sad, or significant occasion’ by erecting a slab. However, this has taken a political turn and transformed into a massive resistance movement in Jharkhand—a point that is tied to broader implications concerning Birsa Munda and his memory.

Using a variety of sources encompassing reports, visuals and archives, I contextualize the Pathalgadi movement within a broader and more urgent ecological and political standpoint of this region. The descriptions of historical memory are then dovetailed with the contemporary articulation of the movement. I argue that Adivasis mobilize the law, using excerpts from the Constitution of India to assert their rights by drawing on their worldview as it is entangled with landscape—one that is fraught with memory. In other words, I offer an insight into the role of an emergent framework: memory as politics.

Traces of Memory: The Burial Practice of Sasandiri in Chota Nagpur