Using the arts to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 among India's indigenous and nomadic communities
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leicester
Department Name: Museum Studies
Abstract
The proposed research aims to document, create awareness, and ease the short and long-term impact of Covid-19 among India's most precarious indigenous nomadic communities through multiple arts activities; and by researching and communicating community appropriate responses to the pandemic. To do so, it brings together researchers, development practitioners, policy makers, artists and activists. The project builds on a pilot GCRF grant at the University of Leicester, which is successfully trialling a community arts podcast to document and spread information about Covid-19 in indigenous languages and art forms.
India counts one of the largest indigenous populations in the world also known as adivasis, a term of self-reference that literally means original inhabitant. More than 80 million people are officially classified as Scheduled Tribes (STs) and around 110 million people as DeNotified Tribes (DNTs) - communities that were 'notified' as born criminals during British colonial rule under the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. India's ST and DNT groups are among the most precarious populations in the subcontinent working as manual labourers, agricultural and construction workers, performers, sex workers and street entertainers at the margins of India's informal economy. Their economic poverty is further compounded by the stigma associated with their identity. For DNT groups in particular, the brand of criminality continues to drive their interaction with the state and negatively affects their ability to access basic state provisions from schools to, to food and health services (Renke et al. 2008; Devy 2006).
The project has been co-designed in partnership with Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Budhan Theatre and the Adivasi Museum of Voice - a research NGO, a grassroots theatre group and a community museum with a track record of working for the rights of India's indigenous and nomadic groups by linking art and rights-based campaigns. A team of twelve indigenous artists, curators and researchers will undertake an extensive project of documentation of the specific lockdown and post-lockdown experiences of DNT and ST communities in the western India region (also the worst affected by the pandemic), through mobile digital technology; and produce a series of community arts podcasts in local indigenous languages aimed at addressing the health, socio-cultural and politico-economic dimensions of the pandemic. Podcasts will be disseminated through community social media networks and through an exhibition at the Adivasi Museum of Voice. They will also be accessible with English subtitles for international audiences through a dedicated project website.
The project will develop transferrable methodologies for socially engaged arts practices in the context of the pandemic. This includes translating theatre forms through socially distant and virtual platforms; and further reconceptualising the role of community museums as key agents that can assist societies in times of crisis. The research undertaken as part of the project will also inform a policy intervention and report in collaboration with development consultant Dr. Khanna aimed at strengthening indigenous rights and social accountability mechanisms, and at devising public health interventions based on communities' needs. The policy intervention will focus on the relationship between precarious citizenship, mobility and rights, challenging the sedentarist bias in approaches to welfare and human rights. This is especially crucial in the context of the two intersecting urgencies posed by Covid-19 and India's new citizenship bill, which threatens to make many indigenous groups (especially mobile STs and DNTs) stateless. As Covid-19 exposes and deepens existing inequalities, this project will contribute to alleviating the effects of the pandemic on highly vulnerable populations by employing the arts and culture as mechanisms for community building and resilience.
India counts one of the largest indigenous populations in the world also known as adivasis, a term of self-reference that literally means original inhabitant. More than 80 million people are officially classified as Scheduled Tribes (STs) and around 110 million people as DeNotified Tribes (DNTs) - communities that were 'notified' as born criminals during British colonial rule under the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. India's ST and DNT groups are among the most precarious populations in the subcontinent working as manual labourers, agricultural and construction workers, performers, sex workers and street entertainers at the margins of India's informal economy. Their economic poverty is further compounded by the stigma associated with their identity. For DNT groups in particular, the brand of criminality continues to drive their interaction with the state and negatively affects their ability to access basic state provisions from schools to, to food and health services (Renke et al. 2008; Devy 2006).
The project has been co-designed in partnership with Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Budhan Theatre and the Adivasi Museum of Voice - a research NGO, a grassroots theatre group and a community museum with a track record of working for the rights of India's indigenous and nomadic groups by linking art and rights-based campaigns. A team of twelve indigenous artists, curators and researchers will undertake an extensive project of documentation of the specific lockdown and post-lockdown experiences of DNT and ST communities in the western India region (also the worst affected by the pandemic), through mobile digital technology; and produce a series of community arts podcasts in local indigenous languages aimed at addressing the health, socio-cultural and politico-economic dimensions of the pandemic. Podcasts will be disseminated through community social media networks and through an exhibition at the Adivasi Museum of Voice. They will also be accessible with English subtitles for international audiences through a dedicated project website.
The project will develop transferrable methodologies for socially engaged arts practices in the context of the pandemic. This includes translating theatre forms through socially distant and virtual platforms; and further reconceptualising the role of community museums as key agents that can assist societies in times of crisis. The research undertaken as part of the project will also inform a policy intervention and report in collaboration with development consultant Dr. Khanna aimed at strengthening indigenous rights and social accountability mechanisms, and at devising public health interventions based on communities' needs. The policy intervention will focus on the relationship between precarious citizenship, mobility and rights, challenging the sedentarist bias in approaches to welfare and human rights. This is especially crucial in the context of the two intersecting urgencies posed by Covid-19 and India's new citizenship bill, which threatens to make many indigenous groups (especially mobile STs and DNTs) stateless. As Covid-19 exposes and deepens existing inequalities, this project will contribute to alleviating the effects of the pandemic on highly vulnerable populations by employing the arts and culture as mechanisms for community building and resilience.
People |
ORCID iD |
Alice Tilche (Principal Investigator) |
Title | Art and Artist |
Description | Episode 1, Adivasi Academy Podcast The video focuses on the changing lives and livelihoods of adivasi artists in Chhota Udaipur district, Gujarat, India during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/adivasi-academy-podcast/art-and-artists |
Title | Art, Artists and Corona |
Description | This is episode 5, season 2, from the Budhan-Podcast series. The video documents the struggles of the Nath community of traditional acrobats and performers during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueqqACWlfPg&list=PLHSKl3y9NZ721-UvkW_PB0Wp-RJMY-KxB&index=1 |
Title | Bahurupi |
Description | This is episode 1, season 2, of the Budhan-Podcast series. The film documents the struggle of the Bahurupi community of itinerant performers during the Covid-19 pandemic in India. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | Document and raise awareness about the impact of Covid-19 among India's most marginalised communities. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXnifO3t59c&list=PLHSKl3y9NZ721-UvkW_PB0Wp-RJMY-KxB&index=5 |
Title | Budhan-Podcast: telling our Covid stories |
Description | A courageous and talented group of artists from India's so-called 'criminal tribes' stepped out during the COVID-19 pandemic to document the stories of their communities, which have remained invisible from national and international reporting. They produce d a series of video-podcasts in indigenous languages spreading information about health and rights, documenting their experiences, and providing entertainment through songs, dance and theatre in a time of crisis. This film will take you through the histories and arts of people living at the perilous margins of Indian society, and explore how they are dealing with the impact of the pandemic |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. It also documents the emergence of new forms of art and expression among these communities. |
URL | https://vimeo.com/610846428/cf8f8e71bc |
Title | Corona Made Us Beggars |
Description | This is episode 2, season 2, of the Budhan-Podcast series. The video documents the struggles of the Dabgar DNT community during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ4RmC8kNuA&list=PLHSKl3y9NZ721-UvkW_PB0Wp-RJMY-KxB&index=4 |
Title | Corona won't affect us |
Description | This is episode 7, season 2, of Budhan-Podcast. The episode documents the struggles of the Pardi DNT community during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpv_XyiHdbs |
Title | Corona, Snakes and Vaccines |
Description | This is episode 4, season 2, of the Budhan-Podcast series. This video focuses on the struggles of the Madari snake-charming community during the Covid-19 pandemic. It also discusses issues of vaccine hesitancy. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IynLXOz18vA&list=PLHSKl3y9NZ721-UvkW_PB0Wp-RJMY-KxB&index=2 |
Title | Education |
Description | Episode 5, Adivasi Academy Podcast The video focuses on the challenges around education among adivasi communities of Chhota Udaipur district (Gujarat, India) and surrounding areas during the pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness around the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/adivasi-academy-podcast/education |
Title | Farming and Agriculture |
Description | This is episode 4 of the Adivasi Academy podcast. The video documents the changes in farming and agriculture in Chhota Udaipur district, Gujarat, India during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness around the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/adivasi-academy-podcast/farming-and-agriculture |
Title | Health |
Description | Episode 3, Adivasi Academy Podcast The video focuses on access and approaches to health among the adivasi communities of Chhota Udaipur district, Gujarat, India during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/adivasi-academy-podcast/health |
Title | Migration |
Description | Episode 2, Adivasi Academy Podcast. The video focuses on the experiences of migration / migrant workers in Chhota Udaipur (Gujarat, India) and surrounding adivasi areas during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/adivasi-academy-podcast/migration |
Title | The treat us like animals |
Description | This is episode 9, season 2, of Budhan-Theatre podcast. The video documents the struggles of the Sindhi-Dafer community during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toyZuFo6718&t=460s |
Title | We are scared |
Description | This is Episode 3, season 2, of the Budhan-Podcast series. The video documents the struggles of the Rajboi DNT community during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpq9Qb5pfos&list=PLHSKl3y9NZ721-UvkW_PB0Wp-RJMY-KxB&index=3 |
Title | We belong here |
Description | This is episode 6, season 2, from the Budhan-Podcast series. The episode focuses on the struggles of the Bawri community during the Covid-19 pandemic. It features performances from the Bunyad National Peace Group. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWyHg52HjtU |
Title | We wanted to go back |
Description | This is episode 8, season 2, of the Budhan Podcast series. The video documents the struggles of migrant workers during the pandemic through interviews, and through a play by the Machan Natya Manch group. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Impact | The video has helped document and raise awareness of the struggles of some of India's most marginalised communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrUZ1syEaRc&t=25s |
Title | What was to pass, remained. A brief history of Adivasi and Denotified Tribes through Covid years. |
Description | Exhibition at the Conflictorium-Museum of Conflict, Ahmedabad We have just been through one of the most dramatic events of recent human history. How do we remember it? How do we remember that which we have not seen? The suffering which has been erased? How do we mourn those losses that have not been acknowledged? In India over 80 million people are classified as Scheduled Tribe and around 110 million people as De-Notified Tribes - communities that were 'notified' as born criminals by the colonial Criminal Tribes Act. These are amongst the most precarious populations in the subcontinent, working as manual, agricultural and construction workers, performers, sex workers and street entertainers at the margins of India's informal economy. Their poverty is compounded by stigma associated with their identities and, for DNT groups in particular, by the brand of criminality. The devastating pandemic in India brought specific challenges to its most vulnerable populations. During the first wave, DNT and Adivasi communities suffered from disastrous effects of an unannounced lockdown when, with four hours' notice, millions of precarious people were left to fend for themselves. During the second wave, with a shortfall of oxygen, vaccines, medicines and wood to burn the dead, the virus was left to spread to rural areas and urban slums, where people died without diagnosis or care. Yet the suffering of India's poor has been rapidly obliterated from public memory. Most reporting focussed on national centres with little known about the margins, other than images that people themselves produced and circulated through social media. This exhibition, and the project it originates from, engage with these representations, creating the possibility for a shared memory. The exhibition is from a community-led arts project that documented the pandemic experiences of DNT and Adivasi communities. A partnership between Budhan Theatre and Bhasha Research and Publication Centre; and anthropologists Alice Tilche and akshay khanna, it was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, the British Academy and the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. We invite you to engage with the artists in the space, with images, sounds and stories being shared, and, if you would like, to share some of your own. |
Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Impact | Capturing |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/exhibitions |
Description | The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated precarity, marginality and exclusion among ST and DNT communities. On the one hand the pandemic has implied the near erasure of livelihoods, and on the other it has exacerbated the exclusion from the structures and mechanisms through which humanitarian support is provided. This has meant that these already poor communities have now been pushed into extreme poverty. The pandemic has also had specific impacts on the creative economies of adivasi and DNT groups. A key finding of our research has been a shift for many communities (especially DNTs) from livelihoods based on artistry to beggary. In India, many DNT communities are traditional performers who inherit their craft. Groups like Budhan Theatre, who have worked to remove the stigma of criminality surrounding DNT populations, often refer to these groups as 'born artists' rather than 'born criminals'. However, their art, which is often linked to communities' itinerant lifestyles, has also resulted in the criminalisation of their identities and the denial of citizenship entitlements. During the pandemic, restrictions on movement and on public gatherings further contributed to the criminalisation of these communities' art and itinerant lifestyle. Women especially bore the brunt of this transformation. Seen to be less subject to police violence, and with a greater emotional appeal to the public, they have sustained families through begging, thereby exposing themselves to violence as well as the virus. As an activity that is in itself criminalised under Indian law, begging has intensified violence against these communities, while contributing to a process of de-skilling and abandoning of their rich performing traditions. The video-podcast production part of the original AHRC project has demonstrated the importance of documenting indigenous creative heritage that is being further threatened by the pandemic, while using it as a tool for spreading information. The project also demonstrated the importance and potential of translating traditional creative practices into the digital - both in terms of emerging creative practices and of enabling their economic sustainability. In fact, the translation of theatre and traditional performance into digital forms is not merely about recording performances on camera. This process of translation involves profound transformations of the art forms themselves and of the sense of self and community of the artists, as well as a re-imagination of the community's public sphere. The research also revealed the impact of the original project on prospects for social mobility for the artists involved, and on their horizons of economic and cultural practice. |
Exploitation Route | This funding has resulted in a follow on project focussed on strengthening indigenous creative economies in a digital age. The funding can be put to use in terms of policy interventions that take into account DNT livelihood needs; but also policy interventions focussed on the valorisation of their cultural practices and 'industries'. A broader understanding of the role of informal economies in India's cultural industries would be key in this second respect. |
Sectors | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/ |
Description | The findings are being currently used to develop a policy report on DNT's rights and access to health during the pandemic. The research has had an impact on prospects for social mobility for the artists involved, and on their horizons of economic and cultural practice. The artists have become skilled filmmakers whose films are being already considered in national-level competitions. They have become themselves trainers, currently working to train a new generation of practitioners from marginalised communities. |
Sector | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
Impact Types | Cultural,Economic |
Description | British Academy Small Grant |
Amount | £9,850 (GBP) |
Funding ID | SRG21\210622 |
Organisation | University of Leicester |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2022 |
End | 01/2023 |
Description | Impact Accelerator Award |
Amount | £7,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | University of Leicester |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 02/2021 |
End | 02/2022 |
Description | Indigenous film Ecologies in India |
Amount | £311,002 (GBP) |
Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 02/2023 |
End | 07/2025 |
Description | Supporting Indigenous Creative Economies in a Digital Age |
Amount | £134,969 (GBP) |
Funding ID | AH/W006766/1 |
Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2021 |
End | 01/2023 |
Title | Budhan Podcast Website |
Description | A website featuring project content and monthly video podcast on the impact and experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic among India's indigenous and nomadic communities |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The website has helped give visibility to the expressions as well as struggles of India's indigenous and nomadic communities during the Covid-19 pandemic |
URL | https://www.budhanpodcast.com/ |