The social life of categories: Affirmative action and trajectories of the indigenous Bengt G. Karlsson Abstract: In this article I examine the ways in which the term “indigenous peo- ples” is reworked in a specific South Asian context. I focus on the new, hybrid cat- egory of “indigenous tribe” in the Indian state of Meghalaya. I argue that we can think of the indigenous tribe category as a strategic conflation of two different regimes of rights or political assertions. The first relates to the existing nation- state framework for affirmative action as expressed in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status, while the second relates to the emerging global framework for asserting the rights of indigenous peoples. While the benefits of asserting the status of indige- nous tribes is obvious, for example, preventing other, nonindigenous tribes from owning land in the state, the long-term gains seems more doubtful. Both affirma- tive action programs and indigenous peoples frameworks are motivated by a moral imperative to redress historical injustices and contemporary social inequal- ities. To evoke them for other ends might eventually backfire. The larger point I seek to make, however, is that political categories tend to take on a life of their own, escaping their intended purposes and hence applied by people in novel and surprising ways. Keywords: affirmative action, India, indigenous peoples, politics of identity, scheduled tribes, state classification, vernacular categories Once created, the concept of adivasi has taken on a life of its own. —Amita Baviskar, “The Politics of Being ‘Indigenous’ Words in motion surprise us. —Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “Adat/Indigenous” “The Koch community is an indigenous tribe of Meghalaya—you belong to Meghalaya and Meghalaya belongs to you.” With these words, the then chief minister of Meghalaya, D. D. La- pang, greeted the Koch delegates gathered at an annual conference held in the Garo Hills in Jan- uary 2010. 1 Recognition as “indigenous tribe” was indeed what the Meghalaya Koch Associa- Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 65 (2013): 33–41 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2013.650104