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The Aboriginal Alibi: Governing Dispossession in Colonial Bombay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2018

Sheetal Chhabria
Sheetal Chhabria*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
*
schhabri@conncoll.edu
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Abstract

This article analyzes representations of the Koli as aboriginal in colonial Bombay, and explores the ends to which various actors have narrated Koli aboriginality. It examines the relationship between the historical deployment of the concept of aboriginality and its mediating role in the power of capital and state-making practices in one colonial urban context. The article shows how the Koli, as Bombay's “aboriginals,” gained concessions that served as an alibi for the market-based dispossession of the remainder of the city's population, and also as a pretext for claim-making by peoples with competing collective identities who used the tale of Koli identity and history as a narrative resource to argue for their own nativity. The Koli case helps us understand the co-emergence of the powers of caste and capital in Bombay, and compels us to revisit important, broader questions about relationships between aboriginal or indigenous peoples, capitalism, colonialism, liberalism, and governance.

Keywords

aboriginalindigenouscapitalismcolonialismcolonial cityliberalismBombayMumbaiKolikoliwadas
Type
Edges of Sovereignty
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 1096 - 1126
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2018 

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