There was a rupture in the reciprocal relationship between state and Adivasi society, existing in the pre-colonial sedentary polities like the Rajputs, Mughals and Marathas, since the colonial ‘pacification’ of the Central Provinces. This gap particularly disrupted the normal flow of communication between the predeceasing polities and the Bhil society. This essay argues that because global capitalism upset pre-existing conditions necessary for mutual pacification, which caused Adivasi identity to become alienated, colonial penetration was more widespread than that of its predecessors. The criminalization of rebels from a state-structural standpoint and nativist admiration of them as ‘social bandits’ coexisted throughout this phase, which saw a collapse in the narrative autonomy of the Bhil identity as well as agency to oppose and negotiate the parameters of existence; a typical otherization of Adivasi self. The Bhil Adivasis would eventually be co-opted into the nationalist organisational politics in the first half of the twentieth century under Congress. Alongside, characters like Tantia Bhil repeatedly resurfaced in imperial, nationalist, and later post-colonial narratives and imaginations. This chapter shows that Tantia Bhil-related legends were repeatedly reshaped, retold, and reinvented, primarily to fit and ultimately to be appropriated.