Field Notebooks
These notebooks contain ethnographic and historical data collected during my field work among the Hos and Mundaris in two neighbouring villages in the Porahat area, West Singhbhum in 1998-99, as part of my PhD research project.
- Notebooks 1 and 2 include qualitative data collected through participant/direct observation methods, as well as semi-structured interviews and open-ended conversations.
- Notebook 3 include historical data collected through oral histories and archival research in the Chaibasa District Record Room, Singhbhum district, Jharkhand.
- Notebook 4 provides an English translation/transcription of the audio recording 🔊 (listen upto 00:28) of an interview with a key informant about the birth of the jungle andolan and ritual and political implications when founding new forest villages. It also includes songs sung during the Birsa Munda Birthday Festival held in November 1999.
- Notebook 5 contains an interview held on December 1998 with the head of the village where I was staying about the “Jungle Andolan” that took place in the seventies in Porahat and other forest areas of Jharkhand, and that he had witnessed first-hand. The interview was recorded 🔊 (listen from 00:28) and the notebook includes its Hindi transcript and English translation.
- Notebook 6 include the English translation of a number of interviews and speeches recorded 🔊 (listen) during a festival (see pictures) held by the local Birsaite sect on May 1999:
– Interview with the local pujari of the Shiuli dharom – a local Hindu-Buddhist sect 🔊 (listen);
– Interview with Birsa Munda, a local political leader of the Jharkhand movement as well as member of the Birsaite sect 🔊 (listen)
– Songs and speeches by Birsaite leaders about key features/ideologies of the sect and, critically, about millennial expectations with the coming of year 2000 (🔊 listen).
If these notebooks generate some interest, I will cross-reference their content with my PhD thesis for easier fruition by future researchers.
NOTE: Names and other identifiers have been hidden to protect the privacy of the informants. For the same reason, when a download is requested, we will have to verify the intended use of the document (non-commercial research only) before allowing their download. Once downloads are allowed, we will share the unedited documents, so that the actual names of the villages will be available to the researchers.
Notebook 1 & 2
These notebooks includes more than 300 hand-written pages of ethnographic and qualitative data collected on a daily basis through open-ended conversations and organized by household/events and by date from November 1998 to November 99 (before I contracted malaria and decided to conclude my fieldwork). At the end of each day, I noted down key facts, insights and possible interpretations. Thus, the notebook includes both “raw data” as well as emerging hypotheses and preliminary analyses.
Notebook 3
Transcripts of documents consulted in the Chaibasa District Record Room, compiled by British land settlement officers (1903-4) regarding land systems, land disputes, relations between Adivasis, rajahs and Rautias, “village notes” (some of which include interviews and genealogies), and other topics. These documents are related specifically to the two villages where I conducted fieldwork in the Porahat area of Singhbhum, but also a few neighbouring ones.
Notebook 4
English transcription of an interview about rituals related to the clearing of the forest to start new villages; about the start of the local Jungle Andolan in 1978; about land settlement and “forest villages” issues; about Marang bongas; and other topics. The original recorded interview can be listened here 
(Listen up to 00:28).
Notebook 5
This notebook includes a transcript in Hindi and English translation of an interview 🔊 (listen from 00:28) with the head of the village where I was staying. It’s about the causes and consequences of the “Jungle Andolan” that emerged in the seventies in the area under study and that he witnessed first-hand.
Notebook 6
This notebook includes the English translation of a number of interviews and speeches recorded 🔊 (listen) during a festival (see pictures) held by the local Birsaite sect on May 1999:
- Interview with the local pujari of the Shiuli dharom – a local Hindu-Buddhist sect 🔊 (listen);
- Interview with Birsa Munda, a local political leader of the Jharkhand movement as well as member of the Birsaite sect 🔊 (listen)
- Songs and speeches by Birsaite leaders about key features/ideologies of the sect and, critically, about millennial expectations with the coming of year 2000 (🔊 listen).