Annotations pointing to some of these connections are provided, especially when titles are uninformative, argument, data or provenance notable, or when serendipity has demanded. Writing often has a social life, entertaining relations with other texts, with other authors, and with a readership. The reader is however also encouraged to treat the references as artefacts of power – each entry playing some role in the way we have come to know what we know about Gujarat today.

In these respects, the book is a comprehensive introduction to modern traditions of scholarship on Gujarat. The titles considered spread across the disciplinary boundaries of history, political and development studies, literature and the liberal arts, sociology, cultural and social anthropology. Detailed bibliographical references are provided for books, chapters, periodical literature, dissertations, project-reports, other materials published since 1800 anonymous works and select government publications, such as gazetteers and census reports, are also included. It draws together well-known sources, as well as rare and under-exploited research material. This book consolidates scholarship on Gujarat in English and other European languages, notably, Dutch, German, French, Italian and Portuguese. Against this backdrop, the article ex-amines ongoing attempts among the Zo to redefine and rethink ‘tribe’ identities to tran-scend their ‘locational dialectal identities’.

While such enlisting helps expedite the integration of ‘tribes’ into the Indian state–nation building projects, it also unleashes contentious politics that prevent the emergence of larger frameworks of unity and solidarity across ‘tribes’. Although enlisting tribes among the Zo fits the state’s ‘classificatory’ and ‘serial-isation’ grid, it also highlights the ‘narcissism of minor differences’ among them. At the same time, these practices also reveal the unsettled nature and fuzziness of ‘tribe’ identities as clans, dialects, and languages overlap and cross-cut each other.

This article examines how the state’s practice of recognising ‘tribes’ legitimises fixed and legible ‘locational dialectal identities’ among the ‘Zo’ in India’s north-east and successfully transforms them into receivers of the state’s largesse. 'The encounter between the state and disparate tribal groups in India’s north-east or elsewhere not only affirms the state’s monopoly of material and symbolic power but also opens up a complex and shifting discursive space.

Ashok ke phool nibandh