Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The final chapter concludes by explaining why expressive partisanship underpins the significance that Adivasis (and the coalition of marginalized groups with which they work) attach to political representatives from their co-ethnic backgrounds. Referring to the recent appointment of India’s first Indigenous woman president, Droupadi Murmu, the chapter explains that while people who identity as Adivasi know there are structural limits to what co-ethnic political leaders can do in higher rungs of government, they feel that the presence of such a leader asserts positive group standing and lends them social capital to deal with their everyday struggles. This leads into a discussion of what citizenship means for Indigenous subalterns embedded in unequal justification relations. The chapter unpacks relationality as the premise of alternative Indigenous citizenship beyond land sovereignty, showing how relations between different marginalized communities, across different scales of government, and between national and transnational civil society are the substance of the politics of recognition.