Framing politics photographic representations of the post millennium land struggles of Kerala

Abstract

The term Adivasi used in Kerala is the Scheduled Tribes of India. The roots of biased representation of them lies within their stereotyped representations as illiterate, lethargic, and violent tribal in visual media starting from colonial period. The idea of private property is deep rooted in society considering it as normal and customary is one of the main reasons why issues of displacement and landlessness of tribal and marginalized communities are never understood. Hence their demand for land and land struggles too are viewed in this context where it is always seen as land grabbing, demands of what one does not deserve, and also as greed. They being excluded in the land reform acts and other such policies further alienates them from governmental projects. The result of encroachments on their territory and displacing them of their rights forced them to organize protest movements. The struggle for land rights by the marginalised communities, that had taken off in the last decades of the 20th century, can be considered as the most important struggle in Kerala. The study analyze eyewitness images, photographs published in newspapers, other periodicals, and new media breaking the stereotypical representations by converting it, into a document of proof, by focusing largely on three major movements, the Kudilketti Samaram, the Muthanga Samaram and the Nilppusamaram. It also interrogates how media represents them, understand deployment of various strategies to create popular imagination, study its patterns and controversy that arise from it and to look how they negotiates and subverts these with the aid of new media using audio visual technology in their cultural and political movements, transforming the form and content of mainstream news and producing content which mass media can no longer ignore. newline newline newline