Dissertation Proposal Announcement Ph.D. in Education Program: Asha Devi “Adivasi Youth Activism in Assam: Navigating Political Shifts in Indigeneity and Neo-Hindutva”

India’s northeast region has become an experimental laboratory for the government of India in the recent years, which has paved its path by deploying strategies different from those before. Amid the rise of Hindu nationalism in the country, new promises of development have also opened doors for youth aspirations from the communities of the northeast, which historically were placed in the periphery and had limited space in the mainstream politics and development of the country. In the state of Assam in India’s northeast, the adivasi (also known as tea tribe) youth are contradictorily resisting and embracing the rise of Hindu nationalism and the encroachment of neoliberalism into the economic and political life of adivasi communities. Adivasi youth resist exclusionary state policies that pose a threat to their Indigenous identity, religion, and culture. However, some youth from the same community is also selectively co-opting the Hindu nationalist movement in the pursuit of neoliberal aspirations and making themselves visible socio-politically to enact structure changes and reforms for adivasi communities. My ethnographic project examines the political mobilization of adivasi youth through student-led organizations and Hindu nationalist organizations amid the rise of Hindu nationalism in Assam. I ask how adivasi youth navigate the Hindutva movement and adivasi politics to assert their Indigenous identity that is rooted in their land, language, religion, and culture, and how do these two different forms of political activism shape youths’ imagination about their futurity, the adivasi community, and India’s future? This study shifts focus to non-formal educational spaces where adivasi youth in Assam, through youth-led organizations such as All Assam Tea Tribes Student Association and All Assam Tea Tribes Women Association, and Hindu nationalist movements, negotiate and affirm cultural identity, nationhood, and citizenship, capturing moments of meaning-making, conflict, and critique. Moreover, this research contributes to political education literature by positioning adivasi youth activism and community organizing in India as educational spaces for marginalized youth challenging the traditional learning spaces to express and sustain their culture and identity—often absent in formal education.