Adivasi and the Atom: Exploring the transculturality of uranium mining in India

Pathak, Kumar Sundaram; Huria, Sonali

doi:10.5194/sand-2026-1

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https://doi.org/10.5194/sand-2026-1

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02 Feb 2026

| 02 Feb 2026

Status: this preprint is currently under review for the journal SaND.

Adivasi and the Atom: Exploring the transculturality of uranium mining in India

Kumar Sundaram Pathak and Sonali Huria

Abstract. Boundaries of the mundane and the exceptional, sacred and profane, and natural and cultural, become blurred in Jadugoda, a small mining town in eastern India inhabited by indigenous Adivasi communities and their non-human kin. The radioactive waste and contamination that have configured life and its meanings around the country’s oldest uranium mines, and the multi-scalar violences and ruptures unleashed in the process, offer the narrative fabric for ruminations by the Adivasi woman writer, Mahua Maji. Through an eco-critical engagement with Maji’s semi-fictional novel, Marang Goda Neelkanth Hua (lit. Marang Goda turns blue-throated) we explore the forms of nuclearity that emerge along the variously entangled institutional, material, and socio-cultural lives of uranium extraction. In this paper, we triangulate the scholarly conversations around the nuclear mundane, the eco-critical affordances of Maji’s novel, and secondary empirical studies. In doing so, we deploy transculturality as a post-colonial, indigenous, and eco-critical conceptual device, in conjunction with the emerging post-human frameworks in the Nuclear Humanities that attend to multi-scalar entanglements, hybrid existences of naturecultures, and situated negotiations of nuclearity.

Received: 09 Jan 2026 – Discussion started: 02 Feb 2026

Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

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Kumar Sundaram Pathak and Sonali Huria

Status: final response (author comments only)

RC1:
'Comment on sand-2026-1', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Mar 2026
A creative and promising approach to how politics and governance, in general, can be approached and analysed. There is also an emphasis on indigenous story-telling and newness which is a productive approach, as well as the inversion of the conventional logic of agent and affected through an attention to embodied processes and everydayness.

The abstract and paper would benefit from really honing into the conceptual themes that motivate the authors. For instance, “110: In thinking of how newness is configured in the everyday life of Jadugoda, our endeavour finds resonance ….” If the concept of “newness” per se is one of the main analytical threads, it should be brought into the picture much earlier. Same with “temporality”.

Use of the passive voice, multiple levels of nesting and lengthy sentences take away clarity where it is needed.

For instance, in the abstract, “The radioactive waste and contamination that have configured life and its meanings around the country’s oldest uranium mines, and the multi-scalar violences and ruptures unleashed in the process, offer the narrative fabric for ruminations by the Adivasi woman writer, Mahua Maji.” A suggested rewrite: Around the country’s oldest uranium mines, radioactive waste and contamination have configured life and its meanings. The Adivasi woman writer, Mahua Maji uses the multi-scalar violences and ruptures unleashed in the process as narrative fabric for ruminations.” Even if the authors prefer lengthy sentences, a simple ‘and’ inbetween would do the trick.
Revised: Around the country’s oldest uranium mines, radioactive waste and contamination have configured life and its meanings, and the Adivasi woman writer, Mahua Maji uses the multi-scalar violences and ruptures unleashed in the process as narrative fabric for ruminations.
310: peasant time (replace peasant with a more suitable word)

130: Repeated use of “In this regard” in two subsequent sentences in this paragraph.

It may be worth mentioning that in Indian tribal museums such as Madhya Pradesh, Adivasi cosmologies are subsumed under depictions of Shiva. That is, what you present as resonance and distinction between Marang Goda and Shiva has a counterpart which is the more nationalistic narrative of subsuming local deities within 'pan-Hindu' deities. Paragraphs 160 and 165 could be more carefully parsed in this regard.

Unclear what this following sentence means.

200: In recent years, such reflexive considerations have increasingly rendered modern novels as inherently restricting cultural apparatus.
The use of Adivasi rather than tribal is appreciated. But what does it mean when the term is used as a catch-all referring to Adivasis in the area in general, a choice that seems apparent when the term is qualified in this para. as Ho? Are there different Adivasis groups in the area who are being merged inadvertently by referring to them as a collective in the article, in general?

255: Ho Adivasi women,
255: In the real world, similar uncanny beliefs persist among Adivasi communities living around Jadugoda. (which communities?)
275: a physical and metaphorical tandem … (mixed categories being used here)
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/sand-2026-1-RC1
RC2: 'Comment on sand-2026-1', Armin Chiocchetti, 11 Apr 2026

See pdf.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/sand-2026-1-RC2
RC3:
'Comment on sand-2026-1', Anonymous Referee #3, 28 Apr 2026
This is a well-written and incredibly interesting article which engages with a semi-fictional novel to explore uranium mining in India. I found the focus on the nuclear mundane and everydayness particularly compelling. Moreover, I think that the article is quite innovative in the way it approaches the novel and empirical findings.
My comments & questions for article:
Are the authors folding together heterogenous communities under the banner of Adivasi?

On culture: the authors argue in line with the ontological turn (not different perspectives on the same world but different worlds altogether); however, they seem to uncritically reproduce notions of what modern and nonmodern forms of subjectivities are. I think the article would be on stronger ground if it rigorously reflects on and engages with critiques of the ontological turn (for example, the one put forward by David Bond and Lucas Bessire in ‘Ontological anthropology and the deferral of critique’).

The treatment of ‘neoliberalism’: the article adopts quite a simplistic view of neoliberalism—which also appears in the article without a thorough analysis of capitalist development in South Asia. What this does is attribute aspects of capitalist economies to neoliberalism. I think this discussion ends up weakening the argument of that section which is that the novel discusses precarity and uncertainty . But, to make an argument about neoliberalism, the authors would have to situate their analysis of the novel in a political economic analysis of nuclearity rather than the angle they choose now. I would suggest to stay focused on how the novel approaches themes such as uncertainty and precarity.

The article would also be stronger if the authors justify why they chose this novel in particular. What is it about this novel (among others) that makes it an interesting and unique artifact to explore nuclearity with?

Bessire, Lucas, and David Bond. "Ontological anthropology and the deferral of critique." American Ethnologist 41, no. 3 (2014): 440-456.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/sand-2026-1-RC3

Kumar Sundaram Pathak and Sonali Huria

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Short summary

In Maji’s novel, readers encounter the many enchanted worlds of uranium mining in central India. Here, the Indian state and Adivasi communities classify and understand nuclear materials, processes and institutions as exceptional or mundane in distinctive ways. We argue that in these encounters, choices are shaped by the spiritual and material continuities of Adivasi life and political and cultural forces of mainstream India arising from extractive economies, modernity & postcolonial conditions.


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