Voicing the Marginal: Studying Ethnicity, Nativism and Indigenous culture of the Rajbangshi Community through a post-colonial lens

The Koch Rajbanshis are one of the largest plain indigenous tribes of India originally from the ancient Kamrupa - Kamata kingdom. Although they had a glorious past, but like many other tribes of India  Rajbangshis also have been facing identity  problem for a long time due to lack of proper knowledge of their history, external threats, partitions, multi-divisions; colonial interference, elitism, conservative demeanor, geographical alienation, negligence of the governments, multi-names etc. The proliferation of Rajbangshi literature, their movements in Rajbangshi language in Bengal has immense significance as it has become one of the most abiding assertions of the recent historio-cultural awareness of the community. At present they have been striving for protecting their identity through different associations and organizations. This paper is an enticement to critically engage in the discussion of indigenous awareness and the implication for academic decolonization. The major issue raised is that of the challenges of pursuing such consciousness in the mainstream domain or academy. This paper will draw attention to some of the gradations, denials and contestations in affirming the place of indigenous knowledge in the academia. I engage this indigenous knowledge of the Rajbangshis with a deep concern about the historical and continuing marginalizing of subordinate voices in the conventional processes of knowledge production in dominant Bengali contexts. Furthermore, as a Rajbangshi scholar in the mainstream domain I see the mission of ‘decolonization’ as breaking with the ways in which the (Rajbangshi) indigenous human condition is defined and shaped by dominant Bengali cultures, and asserting an understanding of the indigenous social reality informed by local experiences and practices. Transporting indigenous perception into the mainstream academia, an institution of power and influence in this increasingly interconnected world is ever more critical in this ‘information era.’ My learning objective in Indigenous acquaintance is to widen a critical epistemology to account for the production and validation of critical knowledge for decolonization purposes. My investment in the ‘indigenous knowledge’ venture is to rupture normalized categories of what constitutes valid/invalid knowledge, and simultaneously to recognize that all knowledges are contested in terms of boundaries and spaces. My study also looks at how despite marginalization of the Rajbangshi language and their community identity as a whole their language and traditions did not die. The goal of this paper is to also engage in a socio-political study of Rajbangshi self-assertion against this marginalization and how despite  this subjugation, there has been a rich history of Rajbangshi literature. The primary aim is to bring their unconscious content into consciousness by preserving their indigenous socio-cultural identity and eventually representing them at par with the mainstream.