Connor Hayes speaks with Prof. Felix Padel, research associate in the Centre for World Environment History at the University of Sussex, about the connections between Wales, Kurdistan, and the Adivasis of India, focusing on issues of ecological destruction, culture and music, education, and the struggle for self-determination. There will soon be another follow-up discussion with Prof. Felix Padel exploring the issues raised here in greater depth, focusing in particular on self-determination and education.

Prof. Felix Padel is currently a research associate in the Centre for World Environment History at the University of Sussex. He was previously a professor of rural management at the Indian Institute of Health Management Research and has lectured and taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, as well as other institutions in India and elsewhere. He is the author of a number of books, including Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape, and Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection.

Connor Hayes is an activist, researcher, and a student of philosophy. He was a member of the 2019 International Peace Delegation to Imrali.

For more resources on the topics discussed in the interview, please see the following:

George Forrest, The Emergence of Greek Democracy, 1966

J.P.S. Uberoi, The Other Mind of Europe: Goethe as a Scientist, 1985

Felix Padel, Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape, 1995/2010

_____, and Samarendra Das, Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel, 2010/2020

____, Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni, Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection, 2013

Malvika Gupta and Felix Padel, ‘Confronting a pedagogy of assimilation: the evolution of large-scale schools for tribal children in India’, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO), vol.X no.2, May 2018.

____, ‘Confronting a pedagogy of assimilation: the evolution of large-scale schools for tribal children in India’, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO), vol.X no.2, pp.22-47, pp.22-47, available at https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/files/jaso10120182247pdf

Krishna Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 2014 [Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2004-2010]

Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Blood on My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters, 2015 [one of many books documenting false encounters in tribal areas of India]

ILO Convention no.169, affirming the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination, 1989

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007

This interview is sponsored by the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign and the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (http://www.campacc.org.uk/).