Abhay Xaxa


Abhay Flavian Xaxa was an Indian Adivasi rights activist, poet, and social anthropologist. He was known for his efforts to advocate for indigenous identity, land rights, and social justice. He was a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University. After graduating in social anthropology from the University of Sussex, he focused on empowering adivasi youth through education and activism. His poem I Am Not Your Data become known for his Adivasi resistance against marginalisation. He died at the age of 37 due to a heart attack.

Early life and education

Abhay Xaxa was born in Chitkawine village, located in the Jashpur district of Madhya Pradesh. He belonged to the Kurukh tribe. Abhay completed a Commerce degree in Kunkuri, studied law at a college in Jabalpur. He earned a master's in Social Anthropology from the University of Sussex through a Ford Foundation fellowship in 2007, and later obtained an MPhil and a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, with his doctoral research focusing on Adivasi land rights in Jharkhand.

Career

His early professional career included work in Hindi journalism, but he soon shifted focus to research and activism due to the marginalisation of Adivasi issues in mainstream media. He was a national convener of the National Campaign on Adivasi Rights and also served as a program coordinator with National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights from 2012 to 2019 and coconvener of the Tribal Intellectual Collective.
In 2015, Abhay Xaxa led a protest against the Land Acquisition Bill, where a group of Adivasi men publicly discarding the copies of the bill through a bold public act. This non-violent protest aim to highlight land rights violations and corporate land grabs affecting Adivasi communities in Jharkhand.
He died on 14 March 2020 due to heart attack.

Literary work

As a writer, he wrote a poem I Am Not Your Data. Apart from this he co-authored some books.Being Adivasi: Existence, Entitlements, Exclusion