They comprise a substantial minority population of India and Bangladesh, making up 8.6% of India's population and 1.1% of Bangladesh's,[7] or 104.2million people in India, according to the 2011 census, and 2 million people in Bangladesh according to the 2010 estimate.[8][9][10][11]
Tribals of East, Central, West and South India use the politically assertive term Adivasi, while Tribals of North East India use 'Tribal' or 'Scheduled Tribe' and do not use term 'Adivasi' for themselves.[16] Adivasi studies is a new scholarly field, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, agrarian history, environmental history, subaltern studies, indigenous studies, aboriginal studies, and developmental economics. It adds debates that are specific to the Indian context.[17]
Definition and etymology
Adivasi is the collective term for the tribes of the Indian subcontinent,[3] who are claimed to be the indigenous people of India[18][19] prior to the Dravidians[20] and Indo-Aryans. It refers to "any of various ethnic groups considered to be the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent."[3] However, Tribal and Adivasi have different meanings. Tribal means a social unit whereas Adivasi means ancient inhabitants. India does not recognise tribes as indigenous people. India ratified the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the United Nations (1957). In 1989, India refused to sign the ILO Convention 169.[4]
The term Adivasi, in fact, is a modern Sanskrit word specifically coined in the 1930s by tribal political activists to give a differentiated indigenous identity to tribals by alleging that Indo-European and Dravidian speaking peoples are not indigenous.[5] The word was used by Thakkar Bapa to refer to inhabitants of forest in 1930s.[21] The word was used in 1936 and included in English dictionary prepared by Pascal.[6] The term was recognised by Markandey Katju the judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2011.[22][23] In Hindi and Bengali, Adivasi means "Original Inhabitants,"[3] from ādi 'beginning, origin'; and vāsin 'dweller' (itself from vas 'to dwell'), thus literally meaning 'beginning inhabitant'.[24] Tribal of India and different political parties are continuing the use of word Adivasi as they believe the word unites the tribal people of India.[6]
Although terms such as atavika, vanavāsi ("forest dwellers"), or girijan ("mountain people")[25] are also used for the tribes of India, adivāsi carries the specific meaning of being the original and autochthonous inhabitants of a given region,[5] and the self-designation of those tribal groups.[26]
The Constitution of India doesn't use the word Adivasi, and directs government officials to not use the word in official documents. The notified tribals are known as Scheduled Tribes and Janjati in the Constitution.[6] The constitution of India grouped these ethnic groups together "as targets for social and economic development. Since that time the tribe of India have been known officially as Scheduled Tribes."[3] Article 366 (25) defined scheduled tribes as "such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of this constitution".
The term Adivasi is also used for the ethnic minorities of Bangladesh, the Vedda people of Sri Lanka and the native Tharu people of Nepal.[27][28] Another Nepalese term is Adivasi Janjati (Nepali: आदिवासी जनजाति; Adivāsi Janajāti), although the political context differed historically under the Shah and Rana dynasties.
In India, opposition to the usage of the term is varied. Critics argue that the "original inhabitant" contention is based on the fact that they have no land and are therefore asking for land reform. The Adivasis argue that they have been oppressed by the "superior group" and that they require and demand a reward, more specifically land reform.[29] Adivasi issues are not related to land reforms but to the historical rights to the forests that were alienated during the colonial period. In 2006, India finally made a law to "undo the historical injustice" committed to the Adivasis.[30]
Tribals of North East India don't use the term adivasi for themselves and use the word tribe. In Assam, the term adivāsi applies only to the Tea-tribes imported from Central India during colonial times.[16]
Demographics
Percent of scheduled tribes in India by tehsils by census 2011Scheduled Tribes distribution map in India by state and union territory according to 2011 Census. Mizoram and Lakshadweep had the highest% of its population as ST (≈95%), while Punjab and Haryana had 0%.
One concentration lies in a belt along the northwest Himalayas: consisting of Jammu and Kashmir, where are found many semi-nomadic groups, to Ladakh and northern Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where are found Tibeto-Burman groups.
In the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland, more than 90% of the population is tribal. However, in the remaining northeast states of Assam, Manipur, Sikkim, and Tripura, tribal peoples form between 20 and 30% of the population.
The largest population of tribals lives in a belt stretching from eastern Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west all the way to western West Bengal, a region known as the tribal belt. These tribes correspond roughly to three regions. The western region, in eastern Gujarat, southeastern Rajasthan, northwestern Maharashtra as well as western Madhya Pradesh, is dominated by Indo-Aryan speaking tribes like the Bhils. The central region, covering eastern Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, western and southern Chhattisgarh, northern and eastern Telangana, northern Andhra Pradesh and western Odisha is dominated by Dravidian tribes like the Gonds and Khonds. The eastern belt, centred on the Chhota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand and adjacent areas of Chhattisgarh, Odisha and West Bengal, is dominated by Munda tribes like the Bhumijs, Hos and Santals. Roughly 75% of the total tribal population live in this belt, although the tribal population there accounts for only around 10% of the region's total population.
Further south, the region near Bellary in Karnataka has a large concentration of tribals, mostly Boyas/ Valmikis. Small pockets can be found throughout the rest of South India. By far the largest of these pockets is in found in the region containing the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, Wayanad district of Kerala and nearby hill ranges of Chamarajanagar and Mysore districts of southern Karnataka. Further south, only small pockets of tribal settlement remain in the Western and Eastern Ghats.
A Jarawa themed museum, showing casual clothing styles. The Jarawa are one of the indigenous tribes of the Andaman Islands in South Asia
Ancient and medieval period
According to linguist Anvita Abbi, tribes in India are characterized by distinct lifestyle and are outside of caste system.[42] Although considered uncivilised and primitive,[43] Adivasis were usually not held to be intrinsically impure by surrounding populations (usually Dravidian or Indo-Aryan), unlike Dalits, who were.[note 1][44] Thus, the Adivasi origins of Valmiki, who composed the Ramayana, were acknowledged,[45] as were the origins of Adivasi tribes such as the Garasia and Bhilala, which descended from mixed Rajput and Bhil marriages.[46][47] Unlike the subjugation of the Dalits, the Adivasis often enjoyed autonomy and, depending on region, evolved mixed hunter-gatherer and farming economies, controlling their lands as a joint patrimony of the tribe.[43][48][49] In some areas, securing Adivasi approval and support was considered crucial by local rulers,[5][50] and larger Adivasi groups were able to sustain their own kingdoms in central India.[5] The Bhil, Meenas and Gond Rajas of Garha-Mandla and Chanda are examples of an Adivasi aristocracy that ruled in this region, and were "not only the hereditary leaders of their Gond subjects, but also held sway over substantial communities of non-tribals who recognized them as their feudal lords."[48][51][52]
Irula men from the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu, c.1871
The historiography of relationships between the Adivasis and the rest of Indian society is patchy. There are references to alliances between Ahom Kings of Brahmaputra valley and the hill Nagas.[53] This relative autonomy and collective ownership of Adivasi land by Adivasis was severely disrupted by the advent of the Mughals in the early 16th century. Rebellions against Mughal authority include the Bhil Rebellion of 1632 and the Bhil-Gond Insurrection of 1643[54][55] which were both pacified by Mughal soldiers. With the advent of the Kachwaha Rajputs and Mughals into their territory, the Meenas were gradually sidelined and pushed deep into the forests. As a result, historical literature has completely bypassed the Meena tribe. The combined army of Mughals and Bharmal attacked the tribal king Bada Meena and killed him damaging 52 kots and 56 gates. Bada's treasure was shared between Mughals and Bharmal.
British period (c. 1857 – 1947)
During the period of British rule, the colonial administration encroached upon the adivasi tribal system, which led to widespread resentment against the British among the tribesmen. The tribesmen frequently supported rebellions or rebelled themselves, while their raja looked negatively upon the British administrative innovations.[56] Beginning in the 18th century, the British added to the consolidation of feudalism in India, first under the Jagirdari system and then under the zamindari system.[57] Beginning with the Permanent Settlement imposed by the British in Bengal and Bihar, which later became the template for a deepening of feudalism throughout India, the older social and economic system in the country began to alter radically.[58][59] Land, both forest areas belonging to adivasis and settled farmland belonging to non-adivasi peasants, was rapidly made the legal property of British-designated zamindars (landlords), who in turn moved to extract the maximum economic benefit possible from their newfound property and subjects.[60] Adivasi lands sometimes experienced an influx of non-local settlers, often brought from far away (as in the case of Muslims and Sikhs brought to Kol territory)[61] by the zamindars to better exploit local land, forest and labour.[57][58] Deprived of the forests and resources they traditionally depended on and sometimes coerced to pay taxes, many adivasis were forced to borrow at usurious rates from moneylenders, often the zamindars themselves.[62][63] When they were unable to pay, that forced them to become bonded labourers for the zamindars.[64] Often, far from paying off the principal of their debt, they were unable even to offset the compounding interest, and this was made the justification for their children working for the zamindar after the death of the initial borrower.[64] In the case of the Andamanese adivasis, their protective isolation changed with the establishment of a British colonial presence on the islands. Lacking immunity against common infectious diseases of the Eurasian mainland, the large Jarawa habitats on the southeastern regions of South Andaman Island experienced a massive population decline due to disease within four years of the establishment of a colonial presence on the island in 1789.[65][66]
Land dispossession by the zamindars or interference by the colonial government resulted in a number of Adivasi revolts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as the Bhumij rebellion of 1767-1833 and Santal hul (or Santhal rebellion) of 1855–56.[67] Although these were suppressed by the governing British authority (the East India Company prior to 1858, and the British government after 1858), partial restoration of privileges to adivasi elites (e.g. to Mankis, the leaders of Munda tribes) and some leniency in levels of taxation resulted in relative calm in the region, despite continuing and widespread dispossession from the late nineteenth century onwards.[61][68] The economic deprivation, in some cases, triggered internal adivasi migrations within India that would continue for another century, including as labour for the emerging tea plantations in Assam.[69]
Participation in Indian independence movement
There were tribal reform and rebellion movements during the period of the British Empire, some of which also participated in the Indian independence movement or attacked mission posts.[70] There were several Adivasis in the Indian independence movement including Birsa Munda, Dharindhar Bhyuan, Laxman Naik, Jantya Bhil, Bangaru Devi and Rehma Vasave, Mangri Oraon.
During the period of British rule, India saw the rebellions of several then backward castes, mainly tribal peoples that revolted against British rule. These were:
Adivasi literature is the literature composed by the tribals of the Indian subcontinent. It is composed in more than 100 languages. The tradition of tribal literature includes oral literature and written literature in tribal languages and non-tribal languages. The basic feature of tribal literature is the presence of tribal philosophy in it. Prominent tribal writers include Nirmala Putul, Vahru Sonawane, Temsula Ao, Mamang Dai, Narayan, Rose Kerketta, Ram Dayal Munda, Vandana Tete, Anuj Lugun etc.
In the Census of India from 1871 to 1941, tribal people and their religions were described in several ways: Forest tribe (1891); animist (1901); tribal animist (1911); hill and forest tribe (1921); primitive tribe (1931); and tribes (1941). However, since the census of 1951, the tribal population has been recorded separately. Some Adivasis have been converted to Christianity starting with British period and after independence. During the last two decades Adivasi from Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand have converted to Protestantism, as a result of increased presence of missionaries.
Animism (from Latinanimus, -i "soul, life") is the worldview that non-human entities (animals, plants, and inanimate objects or phenomena) possess a spiritual essence. The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Society estimates that 1–5% of India's population is animist.[83] India's government recognises that India's indigenous subscribe to pre-Hindu animist-based religions.[84][85]
Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of some indigenous tribal peoples,[86] especially prior to the development of organised religion.[87] Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals, "animism" is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so fundamental, mundane, everyday and taken-for-granted that most animistic indigenous people do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion");[88] the term is an anthropological construct rather than one designated by the people themselves.
Sarnaism or Sarna[92][93][94] (local languages: Sarna Dhorom, meaning "religion of the holy woods") defines the indigenous religions of the Adivasi populations of the states of Central-East India, such as the Munda, the Ho, the Santali, the Khuruk, and the others. The Munda, Ho, Santhal and Oraon tribe followed the Sarna religion,[95] where Sarna means sacred grove. Their religion is based on the oral traditions passed from generation-to-generation. It involves worship of village deity, Sun and Moon.
Other tribal animist
Animist hunter gatherer Nayaka people of Nilgiri hills of South India.[96]
Animism is the traditional religion of Nicobarese people; their religion is marked by the dominance and interplay with spirit worship, witch doctors and animal sacrifice.[97]
Hinduism
Adivasi roots of modern Hinduism
Some historians and anthropologists assert that many Hindu practices might have been adopted from Adivasi culture.[98][99][100] This also includes the sacred status of certain animals such as monkeys, cows, fish (matsya), peacocks, cobras (nagas) and elephants and plants such as the sacred fig (pipal), Ocimum tenuiflorum (tulsi) and Azadirachta indica (neem), which may once have held totemic importance for certain adivasi tribes.[99]
Adivasi saints
A sant is an Indian holy man, and a title of a devotee or ascetic, especially in north and east India. Generally, a holy or saintly person is referred to as a mahatma, paramahamsa, or swami, or given the prefix Sri or Srila before their name. The term is sometimes misrepresented in English as "Hindu saint", although "sant" is unrelated to "saint".
Sant Dhira or Kannappa Nayanar,[101] one of 63 Nayanar Shaivite sants, a hunter from whom Lord Shiva gladly accepted food offerings. It is said that he poured water from his mouth on the Shivlingam and offered the Lord swine flesh.[102]
Sant Dhudhalinath, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th-century devotee (P. 4, The Story of Historic People of India-The Kolis)
Sant Gurudev Kalicharan Brahma or Guru Brahma, a Bodo who founded the Brahma Dharma aimed against Christian missionaries and colonialists. The Brahma Dharma movement sought to unite peoples of all religions to worship God together and survives even today.
Sant Kalu Dev, Punjab, related with Fishermen community Nishadha
Sant Kubera, ethnic Gujarati, taught for over 35 years and had 20,000 followers in his time.[103]
Sant Jatra Oraon, Oraon, led the Tana Bhagat Movement (1914–1919) aimed against the Christian missionaries and the British colonial government
Sant Tantya Mama (Bhil), a Bhil after whom a movement is named after– the "Jananayak Tantya Bhil"
Saint Kalean Guru (Kalean Murmu) is the most beloved person among Santal Tribes community who was widely popular 'Nagam Guru' Guru of Early Histories in fourteen century by the references of their forefathers.
Sages
Bhakta Shabari, a Nishadha woman who offered Shri Rama and Shri Laxmana her half-eaten ber fruit, which they gratefully accepted when they were searching for Shri Sita Devi in the forest.
Maharishis
Maharshi Matanga, Matanga Bhil, Guru of Bhakta Shabari. In fact, Chandalas are often addressed as 'Matanga 'in passages like Varaha Purana 1.139.91
Avatars
Birsa Bhagwan or Birsa Munda, considered an avatar of Khasra Kora. People approached him as Singbonga, the Sun god. His sect included Christian converts.[105] He and his clan, the Mundas, were connected with Vaishnavite traditions as they were influenced by Sri Chaitanya.[106] Birsa was very close to the Panre brothers Vaishnavites.
Kirata– the form of Lord Shiva as a hunter. It is mentioned in the Mahabharata. The Karppillikkavu Sree Mahadeva Temple, Kerala adores Lord Shiva in this avatar and is known to be one of the oldest surviving temples in Bharat.
Vettakkorumakan, the son of Lord Kirata.
Kaladutaka or 'Vaikunthanatha', Kallar (robber), avatar of Lord Vishnu.[107]
Other tribals and Hinduism
Some Hindus do not believe that Indian tribals are close to the romantic ideal of the ancient silvan culture[108] of the Vedic people. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar said:
The tribals "can be given yajñopavîta (...) They should be given equal rights and footings in the matter of religious rights, in temple worship, in the study of Vedas, and in general, in all our social and religious affairs. This is the only right solution for all the problems of casteism found nowadays in our Hindu society."[109]
At the Lingaraja Temple in Bhubaneswar, there are Brahmin and Badu (tribal) priests. The Badus have the most intimate contact with the deity of the temple, and only they can bathe and adorn it.[110][111]
Shabari was a Bhil woman who offered Rama and Lakshmanajujubes when they were searching for Sita in the forest. Matanga, a Bhil, became a Brahmana.[114]
Brahmanization and Rajputization
Bhangya Bhukya notes that during the final years of the British Raj, while education introduced Westernization in the hilly areas of central India, the regions also parallelly underwent the Hinduization and Rajputization processes. The Gond people and their chiefs started doing the "caste–Hindu practices" and frequently claimed the "Rajput, and thus kshatriya status". The British government used to support these claims as they viewed the adivasi society to be less civilized than the caste society and believed that adivasi peoples' association with the castes would make the adivasis "more civilized and sober" and "easier for the colonial state to control". Bhukya also points out that central India's "Raj Gond families" had already adopted the religious and social traditions of the Rajputs before the British Raj in India, and there were "matrimonial relations" between a number of Gond and Rajput Rajas. However, the British governments' policies of offering "zamindari rights, village headships and patelships" fueled the process.[115]
According to Patit Paban Mishra, "the 'ksatriyaization' of tribal rulers and their surroundings, resulted in the Hinduization of tribal areas".[116]
Demands for a separate religious code
Some Adivasi organisations have demanded that a distinct religious code be listed for Adivasis in the 2011 census of India. The All India Adivasi Conference was held on 1 and 2 January 2011 at Burnpur, Asansol, West Bengal. 750 delegates were present from all parts of India and cast their votes for Religion code as follows: Sari Dhorom– 632, Sarna– 51, Kherwalism– 14 and Other Religions– 03. Census of India.[117]
Tribal communities in India are the least educationally developed. First generation learners have to face social, psychological and cultural barriers to get education. This has been one of the reasons for poor performance of tribal students in schools.[118] Poor literacy rate since independence has resulted in absence of tribals in academia and higher education. The literacy rate for STs has gone up from 8.5% (male– 13.8%, female– 3.2%) in 1961 to 29.6% (male– 40.6%, female– 18.2%) in 1991 and to 40% (male– 59%, female– 37%) in 1999–2000.[118] States with large proportion of STs like Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya have high literacy rate while states with large number of tribals like Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh have low tribal literacy rate.[119] Tribal students have very high drop-out rates during school education.[120]
Extending the system of primary education into tribal areas and reserving places for needing them, they say, to work in the fields. On the other hand, in those parts of the northeast where tribes have generally been spared the wholesale onslaught of outsiders, schooling has helped tribal people to secure political and economic benefits. The education system there has provided a corps of highly trained tribal members in the professions and high-ranking administrative posts. tribal children in middle and high schools and higher education institutions are central to government policy, but efforts to improve a tribe's educational status have had mixed results. Recruitment of qualified teachers and determination of the appropriate language of instruction also remain troublesome. Commission after commission on the "language question" has called for instruction, at least at the primary level, in the students' native language. In some regions, tribal children entering school must begin by learning the official regional language, often one completely unrelated to their tribal language.
Many tribal schools are plagued by high drop-out rates. Children attend for the first three to four years of primary school and gain a smattering of knowledge, only to lapse into illiteracy later. Few who enter continue up to the tenth grade; of those who do, few manage to finish high school. Therefore, very few are eligible to attend institutions of higher education, where the high rate of attrition continues. Members of agrarian tribes like the Gonds often are reluctant to send their children to school,
An academy for teaching and preserving Adivasi languages and culture was established in 1999 by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre. The Adivasi Academy is located at Tejgadh in Gujarat.
Economy
Most tribes are concentrated in heavily forested areas that combine inaccessibility with limited political or economic significance. Historically, the economy of most tribes was subsistence agriculture or hunting and gathering. Tribal members traded with outsiders for the few necessities they lacked, such as salt and iron. A few local Hindu craftsmen might provide such items as cooking utensils.
In the early 20th century, however, large areas fell into the hands of non-tribals, on account of improved transportation and communications. Around 1900, many regions were opened by the British government to settlement through a scheme by which inward migrants received ownership of land free in return for cultivating it. For tribal people, however, land was often viewed as a common resource, free to whoever needed it. By the time tribals accepted the necessity of obtaining formal land titles, they had lost the opportunity to lay claim to lands that might rightfully have been considered theirs. The colonial and post-independence regimes belatedly realised the necessity of protecting tribals from the predations of outsiders and prohibited the sale of tribal lands. Although an important loophole in the form of land leases was left open, tribes made some gains in the mid-twentieth century, and some land was returned to tribal peoples despite obstruction by local police and land officials.
In the 1970s, tribal peoples came again under intense land pressure, especially in central India. Migration into tribal lands increased dramatically, as tribal people lost the titles to their lands in many ways– lease, forfeiture from debts, or bribery of land registry officials. Other non-tribals simply squatted or even lobbied governments to classify them as tribal to allow them to compete with the formerly established tribes. In any case, many tribal members became landless labourers in the 1960s and 1970s, and regions that a few years earlier had been the exclusive domain of tribes had an increasingly mixed population of tribals and non-tribals. Government efforts to evict nontribal members from illegal occupation have proceeded slowly; when evictions occur at all, those ejected are usually members of poor, lower castes.
Improved communications, roads with motorised traffic, and more frequent government intervention figured in the increased contact that tribal peoples had with outsiders. Commercial highways and cash crops frequently drew non-tribal people into remote areas. By the 1960s and 1970s, the resident nontribal shopkeeper was a permanent feature of many tribal villages. Since shopkeepers often sell goods on credit (demanding high interest), many tribal members have been drawn deeply into debt or mortgaged their land. Merchants also encourage tribals to grow cash crops (such as cotton or castor-oil plants), which increases tribal dependence on the market for necessities. Indebtedness is so extensive that although such transactions are illegal, traders sometimes 'sell' their debtors to other merchants, much like indenturedpeons.
The final blow for some tribes has come when non-tribals, through political jockeying, have managed to gain legal tribal status, that is, to be listed as a Scheduled Tribe.
Tribes in the Himalayan foothills have not been as hard-pressed by the intrusions of non-tribal. Historically, their political status was always distinct from the rest of India. Until the British colonial period, there was little effective control by any of the empires centred in peninsular India; the region was populated by autonomous feuding tribes. The British, in efforts to protect the sensitive northeast frontier, followed a policy dubbed the "Inner Line"; non-tribal people were allowed into the areas only with special permission. Post-colonial governments have continued the policy, protecting the Himalayan tribes as part of the strategy to secure the border with China.
Ecological threats
Many smaller tribal groups are quite sensitive to ecological degradation caused by modernisation. Both commercial forestry and intensive agriculture have proved destructive to the forests that had endured swidden agriculture for many centuries.[121] Adivasis in central part of India have been victims of the Salwa Judum campaign by the Government against the Naxalite insurgency.[122][123][124]
Government policies on forest reserves have affected tribal peoples profoundly. Government efforts to reserve forests have precipitated armed (if futile) resistance on the part of the tribal peoples involved. Intensive exploitation of forests has often meant allowing outsiders to cut large areas of trees (while the original tribal inhabitants were restricted from cutting), and ultimately replacing mixed forests capable of sustaining tribal life with single-product plantations. Non-tribals have frequently bribed local officials to secure the effective use of reserved forest lands.
The northern tribes have thus been sheltered from the kind of exploitation that those elsewhere in South Asia have suffered. In Arunachal Pradesh (formerly part of the North-East Frontier Agency), for example, tribal members control commerce and most lower-level administrative posts. Government construction projects in the region have provided tribes with a significant source of cash. Some tribes have made rapid progress through the education system (the role of early missionaries was significant in this regard). Instruction was begun in Assamese but was eventually changed to Hindi; by the early 1980s, English was taught at most levels. Northeastern tribal people have thus enjoyed a certain measure of social mobility.
The criteria presently followed for specification of a community as a Scheduled Tribe are: (i) indications of primitive traits, (ii) distinctive culture, (iii) geographical isolation, (iv) shyness of contact with the community at large, and (v) backwardness.
Population complexities, and the controversies surrounding ethnicity and language in India, sometimes make the official recognition of groups as Adivasis (by way of inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list) political and contentious. However, regardless of their language family affiliations, Australoid and Negrito groups that have survived as distinct forest, mountain or island-dwelling tribes in India and are often classified as Adivasi.[130] The relatively autonomous tribal groups of Northeastern India (including Khasis, Apatani and Nagas), who are mostly Austro-Asiatic or Tibeto-Burman speakers, are also considered to be tribals: this area comprises 7.5% of India's land area but 20% of its tribal population.[131] However, not all autonomous northeastern groups are considered tribals; for instance, the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Meitei of Manipur were once tribal but, having been settled for many centuries, are caste Hindus.[132]
It is also difficult, for a given social grouping, to definitively decide whether it is a "caste" or a "tribe". A combination of internal social organisation, relationship with other groups, self-classification and perception by other groups has to be taken into account to make a categorisation, which is at best inexact and open to doubt.[133] These categorisations have been diffused for thousands of years, and even ancient formulators of caste-discriminatory legal codes (which usually only applied to settled populations, and not Adivasis) were unable to come up with clean distinctions.[134]
Demands for tribal classification
The additional difficulty in deciding whether a group meets the criteria to be Adivasi or not are the aspirational movements created by the federal and state benefits, including job and educational reservations, enjoyed by groups listed as scheduled tribes (STs).[135] In Manipur, Meitei commentators have pointed to the lack of scheduled tribe status as a key economic disadvantage for Meiteis competing for jobs against groups that are classified as scheduled tribes.[132] In Assam, Rajbongshi representatives have demanded scheduled tribe status as well.[136] In Rajasthan, the Gujjar community has demanded ST status, even blockading the national capital of Delhi to press their demand.[137] However, the Government of Rajasthan declined the Gujjars' demand, stating the Gujjars are treated as upper caste and are by no means a tribe.[138] In several cases, these claims to tribalhood are disputed by tribes who are already listed in the schedule and fear economic losses if more powerful groups are recognised as scheduled tribes; for instance, the Rajbongshi demand faces resistance from the Bodo tribe,[136] and the Meena tribe has vigorously opposed Gujjar aspirations to be recognised as a scheduled tribe.[139]
Endogamy, exogamy and ethnogenesis
Part of the challenge is that the endogamous nature of tribes is also conformed to by the vast majority of Hindu castes. Indeed, many historians and anthropologists believe that caste endogamy reflects the once-tribal origins of the various groups who now constitute the settled Hindu castes.[140] Another defining feature of caste Hindu society, which is often used to contrast them with Muslim and other social groupings, is lineage/clan (or gotra) and village exogamy.[141][142] However, these in-marriage taboos are also held ubiquitously among tribal groups, and do not serve as reliable differentiating markers between caste and tribe.[143][144][145] Again, this could be an ancient import from tribal society into settled Hindu castes.[146] Tribes such as the Muslim Gujjars of Kashmir and the Kalash of Pakistan observe these exogamous traditions in common with caste Hindus and non-Kashmiri adivasis, though their surrounding Muslim populations do not.[141][147]
Tribals are not part of the caste system,[148] Some anthropologists, however, draw a distinction between tribes who have continued to be tribal and tribes that have been absorbed into caste society in terms of the breakdown of tribal (and therefore caste) boundaries, and the proliferation of new mixed caste groups. In other words, ethnogenesis (the construction of new ethnic identities) in tribes occurs through a fission process (where groups splinter-off as new tribes, which preserves endogamy), whereas with settled castes it usually occurs through intermixture (in violation of strict endogamy).[149]
Tribals and are often regarded as constituting egalitarian societies. However, many scholars argue that the claim that tribals are an egalitarian society in contrast to a caste-based society is a part of a larger political agenda by some to maximise any differences from tribal and urban societies. According to scholar Koenraad Elst, caste practices and social taboos among Indian tribals date back to antiquity:
The Munda tribals not only practise tribal endogamy and commensality, but also observe a jâti division within the tribe, buttressed by notions of social pollution, a mythological explanation and harsh punishments.
Other criteria
Unlike castes, which form part of a complex and interrelated local economic exchange system, tribes tend to form self-sufficient economic units. For most tribal people, land-use rights traditionally derive simply from tribal membership. Tribal society tends to the egalitarian, with its leadership based on ties of kinship and personality rather than on hereditary status. Tribes typically consist of segmentary lineages whose extended families provide the basis for social organisation and control. Tribal religion recognises no authority outside the tribe.
Any of these criteria may not apply in specific instances. Language does not always give an accurate indicator of tribal or caste status. Especially in regions of mixed population, many tribal groups have lost their original languages and simply speak local or regional languages. In parts of Assam—an area historically divided between warring tribes and villages—increased contact among villagers began during the colonial period, and has accelerated since independence in 1947. A pidginAssamese developed, whereas educated tribal members learnt Hindi and, in the late twentieth century, English.
Self-identification and group loyalty do not provide unfailing markers of tribal identity either. In the case of stratified tribes, the loyalties of clan, kin, and family may well predominate over those of tribe. In addition, tribes cannot always be viewed as people living apart; the degree of isolation of various tribes has varied tremendously. The Gonds, Santals, and Bhils traditionally have dominated the regions in which they have lived. Moreover, tribal society is not always more egalitarian than the rest of the rural populace; some of the larger tribes, such as the Gonds, are highly stratified.
The apparently wide fluctuation in estimates of South Asia's tribal population through the twentieth century gives a sense of how unclear the distinction between tribal and nontribal can be. India's 1931 census enumerated 22million tribal people, in 1941 only 10million were counted, but by 1961 some 30million and in 1991 nearly 68million tribal members were included. The differences among the figures reflect changing census criteria and the economic incentives individuals have to maintain or reject classification as a tribal member.
These gyrations of census data serve to underline the complex relationship between caste and tribe. Although, in theory, these terms represent different ways of life and ideal types, in reality, they stand for a continuum of social groups. In areas of substantial contact between tribes and castes, social and cultural pressures have often tended to move tribes in the direction of becoming castes over a period of years. Tribal peoples with ambitions for social advancement in Indian society at large have tried to gain the classification of caste for their tribes. On occasion, an entire tribe or part of a tribe joined a Hindu sect and thus entered the caste systemen masse. If a specific tribe engaged in practices that Hindus deemed polluting, the tribe's status when it was assimilated into the caste hierarchy would be affected.
Constitutional safeguards for Scheduled Tribes
A number of constitutional and juridical safeguards for Adivasi have been encoded.[note 2]
Particularly vulnerable tribal groups
The Scheduled Tribe groups who were identified as more isolated from the wider community and who maintain a distinctive cultural identity have been categorised as "Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups" (PVTGs) previously known as Primitive Tribal Groups by the Government at the centre. So far 75 tribal communities have been identified as 'particularly vulnerable tribal groups' in 18 States and UT of Andaman & Nicobar Islands of India. These hunting, food-gathering, and some agricultural communities have been identified as less acculturated tribes among the tribal population groups and in need of special programmes for their sustainable development. The tribes are awakening and demanding their rights for special reservation quota for them.[150]
↑ Barnes: "Although regarded by some British scholars as inferior to caste Hindus, the status of "adivasis" in practice most often paralleled that of the Hindus [...] In areas where they accounted for a large proportion of the population, adivasis often wielded considerable ritual and political power, being involved in investiture of various kings and rulers throughout central India and Rajasthan [...] In central India there were numerous "adivasi" kingdoms, some of which survived from medieval times to the nineteenth century.[5]
The Hindu Marriage Act is not applicable to the members of the Scheduled Tribe as per Section 2(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act. If that be so, the directions issued by the Family Court under Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act is not applicable to the appellant."
Art. 15(4) – Special provisions for advancement of other backward classes (which includes STs);
Art. 29 – Protection of Interests of Minorities (which includes STs);
Art. 46 – The State shall promote, with special care, the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and in particular, of the Scheduled Castes, and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation,
Art. 350 – Right to conserve distinct Language, Script or Culture;
Art. 350 – Instruction in Mother Tongue.
Social Safeguard
Art. 23 – Prohibition of traffic in human beings and beggar and other similar form of forced labour
Art. 24 – Forbidding Child Labour.
Economic Safeguards
Art.244 – Clause(1) Provisions of Fifth Schedule shall apply to the administration & control of the Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in any State other than the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura which are covered under Sixth Schedule, under Clause * (2) of this Article.
Art. 275 – Grants in-Aid to specified States (STs &SAs) covered under Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution.
Political Safeguards
Art.164 (1) – Provides for Tribal Affairs Ministers in Bihar, MP and Orissa
Art. 330 – Reservation of seats for STs in Lok Sabha
Art. 332 – Reservation of seats for STs in State Legislatures
Art. 334 – 10 years period for reservation (Amended several times to extend the period
Art. 243 – Reservation of seats in Panchayats
Art. 371 – Special provisions in respect of NE States and Sikkim
Fifth and Sixth schedules of Indian constitution
Safeguards under Various laws
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,1989 and the Rules 1995 framed there under.
Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976 (in respect of Scheduled Tribes);
The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act1986;
States Acts & Regulations concerning alienation & restoration of land belonging to STs;
Panchayatiraj (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996;
Minimum Wages Act 1948.
Related Research Articles
Meena is a tribe from northern and western India which is sometimes considered a sub-group of the Bhil community. It used to be claimed they speak Mina language, a spurious language. Its name is also transliterated as Meenanda or Mina. They got the status of Scheduled Tribe by the Government of India in 1954.
The Gondi (Gōṇḍī) or Gond people, who refer to themselves as "Kōītōr", are an ethnolinguistic group in India. Their native language, Gondi, belongs to the Dravidian family. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha. They are listed as a Scheduled Tribe for the purpose of India's system of reservation.
The Santal are an Austroasiatic-speaking Munda ethnic group of the Indian subcontinent. Santals are the largest tribe in the Jharkhand and West Bengal in terms of population and are also found in the states of Odisha, Bihar, Assam and Tripura. They are the largest ethnic minority in northern Bangladesh's Rajshahi Division and Rangpur Division. They have a sizeable population in Nepal. The Santals speak Santali, the most widely spoken Munda languages of Austroasiatic language family.
Bhil or Bheel refer to the various indigenous groups inhabiting western India, including parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and are also found in distant places such as Bengal and Tripura. They speak various dialects of regional Indo-Aryan languages, collectively referred to as the Bhil languages, while the indigenous non-Indo-Aryan language that the Bhil originally spoke is lost. Bhils are divided into a number of endogamous territorial divisions, which in turn have a number of clans and lineages.
The Munda people are an Austroasiatic-speaking ethnic group of the Indian subcontinent. They speak Mundari as their native language, which belongs to the Munda subgroup of Austroasiatic languages. The Munda are found mainly concentrated in the south and East Chhotanagpur Plateau region of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. The Munda also reside in adjacent areas of Madhya Pradesh as well as in portions of Bangladesh, Nepal, and the state of Tripura. They are one of India's largest scheduled tribes. Munda people in Tripura are also known as Mura. In the Kolhan region of Jharkhand the Munda people are often called Tamadia by other communities.
The tribes of Jharkhand consist of 32 scheduled tribes inhabiting the Jharkhand state in India. In 1872, only 18 tribes were counted among the scheduled tribes from which Banjara, Bhatudi, Chik Baraik, and Mahli were marked as semi-Hindu aboriginal and Kora as proletariat Hindu. In the 1931 census, including the above four semi-Hindu aboriginal and Kora, a proletariat Hindu, the number was raised to 26 from 18. They were Birajia, Godait, Karmali and Paharia, but Kisan was excluded from the list. In the 1941 census, Baga, Bedia and Lohra were included again taking Kisan in the annexure and the number came to 30 which prevailed till June 2003. Kanwar and Kol were added on 8 June 2003 in the annexure and the number of Schedule Tribes came to 32.
The Kol people referred to a group of tribal communities of Chotanagpur in eastern parts of India. Historically, the Mundas, Oraons, Ho and Bhumijs were called Kols by the British.
The Tea-garden community of Assam is a term for a multiethnic, multicultural group of tea garden workers and their descendants in Northeast India. They are primarily concentrated in the modern state of Assam, where they have been notified as Other Backward Classes (OBC) and are loosely referred to as Tea Tribes. They are the descendants of peoples from multiple tribal and caste groups brought by the British colonial planters as indentured labourers from the regions of present-day Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh into colonial Assam during the 1860-90s in multiple phases to the newly established tea gardens. They are primarily found in districts with a large concentration of tea estates, such as Upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, and Golaghat, and Barrak Valley districts of Cachar and Karimganj. The total population is estimated to be around 7 million, of which an estimated 4.5 million reside in residential quarters built inside 799 tea estates spread across tea-growing regions of Assam. Another 2.5 million reside in the nearby villages spread across those tea-growing regions. They speak multiple languages, including Sora, Odia, Assam Sadri, Sambalpuri, Kurmali, Santali, Kurukh, Kharia, Kui, Chhattisgarhi, Gondi and Mundari. Assam Sadri, distinguished from the Sadri language, serves as lingua franca among the community.
The Gurjar are an agricultural ethnic community, residing mainly in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, divided internally into various clan groups. They were traditionally involved in agriculture, pastoral and nomadic activities and formed a large heterogeneous group. The historical role of Gurjars has been quite diverse in society: at one end they have been founders of several kingdoms and dynasties and, at the other end, some are still nomads with no land of their own.
There are 43 recognized Scheduled Tribes in Madhya Pradesh, India, three of which have been identified as "Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups" or "PTGs". The population of Scheduled Tribals (ST) is 21.1 per cent of the state population, according to the 2011 census. Bounded by the Narmada River to the north and the Godavari River to the southeast, tribal peoples occupy the slopes of the region's mountains.
The Ho people are an Austroasiatic Munda ethnic group of India. They are mostly concentrated in the Kolhan region of Jharkhand and northern Odisha where they constitute around 10.7% and 7.3% of the total Scheduled Tribe population respectively, as of 2011. With a population of approximately 700,000 in the state in 2001, the Ho are the fourth most numerous Scheduled tribe in Jharkhand after the Santals, Kurukhs, and Mundas. Ho also inhabit adjacent areas in the neighbouring states of Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar bringing the total to 806,921 as of 2001. They also live in Bangladesh and Nepal.
The Dhanka are a tribe or caste of India who believe themselves to be aboriginal, although they are unable to assert from whence they came.found in Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh ,Gujarat ,Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh they are no relation with dhanuk kurmi. They are historically neither Hindu nor Muslim and their occupations have changed over time, as circumstances have dictated for survival. Although similar groups in India are often referred to as adivasi, the Dhanka generally reject this term.
Bhumij is a Munda ethnic group of India. They primarily live in the Indian states of West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Jharkhand, mostly in the old Singhbhum district and also in states like Bihar and Assam. There is also a sizeable population found in Bangladesh. Bhumijas speak the Bhumij language, an Austroasiatic language, and use Ol Onal script for writing.
Komaram Bheem (1901–1940), alternatively Kumram Bheem, was a revolutionary leader in Hyderabad State of British India from the Gond tribes. Bheem, in association with other Gond leaders, led a protracted low intensity rebellion against the feudal Nizams of Hyderabad in the eastern part of the princely state during the 1930s, which contributed in the culmination of the Telangana Rebellion of 1946.
The Tadvi Bhil is a tribal community found in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in India. They are from the larger Bhil ethnic group, and are a clan of it. They use the surname Tadvi or sometimes the name of their Kul or Gan; the Dhankas of Gujarat and Maharashtra use Tadvi or Tetariya.
Gowari is an Indian caste of cattleman or herdsmen, predominantly residing in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.
The Katkari also called Kathodi, are an Indian tribe from Maharashtra. They have been categorised as a Scheduled tribe. They are bilingual, speaking the Katkari language, a dialect of the Marathi-Konkani languages, with each other; they speak Marathi with the Marathi speakers, who are a majority in the populace where they live. In Maharashtra the Katkari have been designated a Particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG), along with two other groups included in this sub-category: the Madia Gond and the Kolam. In the case of the Katkari this vulnerability derives from their history as a nomadic, forest-dwelling people listed by the British Raj under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, a stigma that continues to this day.
Sarnaism is a religious faith of the Indian subcontinent, predominantly followed by indigenous communities of Chota Nagpur Plateau region across states like Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh.
References
↑ Engin F Isin (2015). Citizenship After Orientalism: An Unfinished Project. Taylor & Francis. p.213. ISBN978-1-317-68137-3. Archived from the original on 23 March 2023. Retrieved 23 March 2023. Widely addressed as tribals, Adivasis are heterogeneous groups spread all over the nation having different languages and group identities.
↑ Isin, Engin (2016). Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory. Palgrave Studies in Citizenship Transitions. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p.202. ISBN978-1-137-47950-1. Archived from the original on 23 March 2023. Retrieved 12 April 2023. 'Adivasi' literally means 'original inhabitant', and it refers to heterogeneous adivasis tribal groups living all over the subcontinent.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Robert Harrison Barnes; Andrew Gray; Benedict Kingsbury (1995), Indigenous peoples of Asia, Association for Asian Studies, ISBN978-0-924304-14-9, retrieved 25 November 2008, The Concept of the Adivāsi: According to the political activists who coined the word in the 1930s, the 'adivāsis' are the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent ...
↑ Minocheher Rustom Masani; Ramaswamy Srinivasan (1985). Freedom and Dissent: Essays in Honour of Minoo Masani on His Eightieth Birthday. Democratic Research Service. Retrieved 25 November 2008. The Adivasis are the original inhabitants of India. That is what Adivasi means: the original inhabitant. They were the people who were there before the Dravidians. The tribals are the Gonds, the Bhils, the Murias, the Nagas and a hundred more.
↑ S. Faizi & Priya K. Nair, 2016. "Adivasis: The World’s Largest Population of Indigenous People," Development, Palgrave Macmillan; Society for International Development, vol. 59(3), pages 350–353, December.
↑ "Adivasi, n. and adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017. Web. 10 September 2017.
↑ Louise Waite (2006), Embodied Working Lives: Work and Life in Maharashtra, India, Lexington Books, ISBN978-0-7391-0876-5, retrieved 25 November 2008, The scheduled tribes themselves tend to refer to their ethnic grouping as adivāsis, which means 'original inhabitant.' Hardiman continues to argue that the term adivāsi is preferable in India as it evokes a shared history of relative freedom in precolonial times ...
↑ Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1980), The Scheduled Tribes of India, Transaction Publishers, ISBN978-0-87855-692-2, retrieved 25 November 2008, I have stated above, while ascertaining the general attitude of Mr. Jaipal Singh to tribal problems, his insistence on the term 'Adivāsi' being used for Schedule Tribes... Sir, myself I claim to an Adivāsi and an original inhabitant of the country as Mr. Jaipal Singh pal... a pseudo-ethno-historical substantiation for the term 'Adivāsi'.
1 2 Aloysius Irudayam; Jayshree P. Mangubhai; India Village Reconstruction; Development Project (2004), Adivasis Speak Out: Atrocities Against Adivasis in Tamil Nadu, Books for Change, ISBN978-81-87380-78-8, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... uncivilised ... These forests and land territories assume a territorial identity precisely because they are the extension of the Adivasis' collective personality ...
↑ C.R. Bijoy, Core Committee of the All India Coordinating Forum of Adivasis/Indigenous Peoples (February 2003), "The Adivasis of India– A History of Discrimination, Conflict, and Resistance", PUCL Bulletin, archived from the original on 16 June 2008, retrieved 25 November 2008, ... Adivasis are not, as a general rule, regarded as unclean by caste Hindus in the same way as Dalits are. But they continue to face prejudice (as lesser humans), they are socially distanced and often face violence from society ...
↑ Thakorlal Bharabhai Naik (1956), The Bhils: A Study, Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh, retrieved 25 November 2008, ... Valmiki, from whose pen this great epic had its birth, was himself a Bhil named Valia, according to the traditional accounts of his life ...
↑ Edward Balfour (1885), The Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Bernard Quaritch, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... In Mewar, the Grasia is of mixed Bhil and Rajput descent, paying tribute to the Rana of Udaipur ...
↑ R.K. Sinha (1995), The Bhilala of Malwa, Anthropological survey of India, ISBN978-81-85579-08-5, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... the Bhilala are commonly considered to be a mixed group who sprung from the marriage alliances of the immigrant male Rajputs and the Bhil women of the central India ...
1 2 R. Singh (2000), Tribal Beliefs, Practices and Insurrections, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., ISBN978-81-261-0504-5, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Munda Parha was known as 'Manki', while his Oraon counterpart was called 'Parha Raja.' The lands these adivasis occupied were regarded to be the village's patrimony ... The Gond rajas of Chanda and Garha Mandla were not only the hereditary leaders of their Gond subjects, but also held sway over substantial communities of non-tribals who recognized them as their feudal lords ...
↑ Milind Gunaji (2005), Offbeat Tracks in Maharashtra: A Travel Guide, Popular Prakashan, ISBN978-81-7154-669-5, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Navegaon is one of the forests in Maharashtra where the natives of this land still live and earn their livelihood by carrying out age old activities like hunting, gathering forest produce and ancient methods of farming. Beyond the Kamkazari lake is the Dhaavalghat, which is home to Adivasis. They also have a temple here, the shrine of Lord Waghdev ...
↑ Surajit Sinha, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (1987), Tribal polities and state systems in pre-colonial eastern and north eastern India, K.P. Bagchi & Co., ISBN978-81-7074-014-8, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The way in which and the extent to which tribal support had been crucial in establishing a royal dynasty have been made quite clear ... tribal loyalty, help and support were essential in establishing a ruling family ...
↑ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Central Provinces and Berar". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol.5 (11thed.). Cambridge University Press. pp.681–683, see page 683, first para, lines 4 to 6. The 16th century saw the establishment of a powerful Gond kingdom by Sangram Sah, who succeeded in 1480 as the 47th of the petty Gond rajas of Garha-Mandla, and extended his dominions so as to include Saugor and Damoh on the Vindhyan plateau, Jubbulpore and Narsinghpur in the Nerbudda valley, and Seoni on the Satpura highlands.
↑ P. 219 Calcutta Review By University of Calcutta, 1964
1 2 Piya Chatterjee (2001), A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation, Duke University Press, ISBN978-0-8223-2674-8, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Among the Munda, customary forms of land tenure known as khuntkatti stipulated that land belonged communally to the village, and customary rights of cultivation, branched from corporate ownership. Because of Mughal incursions, non-Jharkhandis began to dominate the agrarian landscape, and the finely wrought system of customary sharing of labor, produce and occupancy began to crumble. The process of dispossession and land alienation, in motion since the mid-eighteenth century, was given impetus by British policies that established both zamindari and ryotwari systems of land revenue administration. Colonial efforts toward efficient revenue collection hinged on determining legally who had proprietal rights to the land ...
1 2 Ulrich van der Heyden; Holger Stoecker (2005), Mission und macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen: Europäische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800 und 1945, Franz Steiner Verlag, ISBN978-3-515-08423-9, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The permanent settlement Act had an adverse effect upon the fate of the Adivasis for, 'the land which the aboriginals had rested from the jungle and cultivated as free men from generation was, by a stroke of pen, declared to be the property of the Raja (king) and the Jagirdars.' The alien became the Zamindars (Landlords) while the sons of the soil got reduced to mere tenants. Now, it was the turn of the Jagirdars-turned-Zamindars who further started leasing out land to the newcomers, who again started encroaching Adivasi land. The land grabbing thus went on unabated. By the year 1832 about 6,411 Adivasi villages were alienated in this process ...
↑ O.P. Ralhan (2002), Encyclopaedia of Political Parties, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., ISBN978-81-7488-865-5, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Permanent Settlement was 'nothing short of the confiscation of raiyat lands in favor of the zamindars.' ... Marx says '... in Bengal as in Madras and Bombay, under the zamindari as under the ryotwari, the raiyats who form 11/12ths of the whole Indian population have been wretchedly pauperised.' To this may be added the inroads made by the Company's Government upon the village community of the tribals (the Santhals, Kols, Khasias etc.) ... There was a wholesale destruction of 'the national tradition.' Marx observes: 'England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society ...[permanent dead link]
↑ Govind Kelkar; Dev Nathan (1991), Gender and Tribe: Women, Land and Forests in Jharkhand, Kali for Women, ISBN978-1-85649-035-1, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... of the features of the adivasi land systems. These laws also showed that British colonial rule had passed on to a new stage of exploitation ... Forests were the property of the zamindar or the state ...
1 2 William Wilson Hunter; Hermann Michael Kisch; Andrew Wallace Mackie; Charles James O'Donnell; Herbert Hope Risley (1877), A Statistical Account of Bengal, Trübner, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Kol insurrection of 1831, though, no doubt, only the bursting forth of a fire that had long been smouldering, was fanned into flame by the following episode:- The brother of the Maharaja, who was the holder of one of the maintenance grants which comprised Sonpur, a pargana in the southern portion of the estate, gave farms of some of the villages over the heads of the Mankis and Mundas, to certain Muhammadans, Sikhs and others, who has obtained his favour ... not only was the Manki dispossessed, but two of his sisters were seduced or ravished by these hated foreigners ... one of them ..., it was said, had abducted and dishonoured the Munda's wife ...
↑ Radhakanta Barik (2006), Land and Caste Politics in Bihar, Shipra Publications, ISBN978-81-7541-305-4, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... As usually the zamindars were the moneylenders, they could pressurize the tenants to concede to high rent ...
1 2 Economic and Political Weekly, No.6-8, vol.V.9, Sameeksha Trust, 1974, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Adivasis spend their life-times working for the landlord-moneylenders and, in some cases, even their children are forced to work for considerable parts of their lives to pay off debts ...
↑ Sita Venkateswar (2004), Development and Ethnocide: Colonial Practices in the Andaman Islands, IWGIA, ISBN978-87-91563-04-1, ... As I have suggested previously, it is probable that some disease was introduced among the coastal groups by Lieutenant Colebrooke and Blair's first settlement in 1789, resulting in a marked reduction of their population. The four years that the British occupied their initial site on the south-east of South Andaman were sufficient to have decimated the coastal populations of the groups referred to as Jarawa by the Aka-bea-da ...
↑ Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza; Francesco Cavalli-Sforza (1995), The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution, Basic Books, ISBN978-0-201-44231-1, ... Contact with whites, and the British in particular, has virtually destroyed them. Illness, alcohol, and the will of the colonials all played their part; the British governor of the time mentions in his diary that he received instructions to destroy them with alcohol and opium. He succeeded completely with one group. The others reacted violently ...
↑ Paramjit S. Judge (1992), Insurrection to Agitation: The Naxalite Movement in Punjab, Popular Prakashan, ISBN978-81-7154-527-8, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Santhal insurrection in 1855–56 was a consequence of the establishment of the permanent Zamindari Settlement introduced by the British in 1793 as a result of which the Santhals had been dispossesed of the land that they had been cultivating for centuries. Zamindars, moneylenders, traders and government officials exploited them ruthlessly. The consequence was a violent revolt by the Santhals which could only be suppressed by the army ...
↑ The Indian Journal of Social Work, vol.v.59, Department of Publications, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, 1956, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Revolts rose with unfailing regularity and were suppressed with treachery, brute force, tact, cooption and some reforms ...
↑ Roy Moxham (2003), Tea, Carroll & Graf Publishers, ISBN978-0-7867-1227-4, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... many of the labourers came from Chota Nagpur District ... home to the Adivasis, the most popular workers with the planters– the '1st class jungley.' As one of the planters, David Crole, observed: 'planters, in a rough and ready way, judge the worth of a coolie by the darkness of the skin.' In the last two decades of the nineteenth century 350,000 coolies went from Chota Nagpur to Assam ...
↑ HEUZE, Gérard: Où Va l’Inde Moderne? L’Harmattan, Paris 1993. A. Tirkey: "Evangelization among the Uraons", Indian Missiological Review, June 1997, esp. p. 30-32. Elst 2001
↑ Todd Scudiere (1997), Aspects of Death and Bereavement Among Indian Hindus and American Christians: A Survey and Cross-cultural Comparison, University of Wisconsin– Madison, retrieved 25 November 2008, ... the Vedic Aryan was not particularly eager to enter heaven, he was too much this-worldly oriented. A notion of reincarnation was not introduced until later. However, there was a concept of a universal force– an idea of an underlying monistic reality that was later called Brahman ...
↑ Hicks, David (2010). Ritual and Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion (3ed.). Rowman Altamira. p.359. Tylor's notion of animism—for him the first religion—included the assumption that early Homo sapiens had invested animals and plants with souls...
↑ "Animism". Contributed by Helen James; coordinated by Dr. Elliott Shaw with assistance from Ian Favell. ELMAR Project (University of Cumbria). 1998–99. Archived from the original on 10 January 2015. Retrieved 30 October 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑ S.G. Sardesai (1986), Progress and Conservatism in Ancient India, People's Publishing House, ISBN9788170070214, retrieved 25 November 2008, ... The centre of Rig Vedic religion was the Yajna, the sacrificial fire. ... There is no Atma, no Brahma, no Moksha, no idol worship in the Rig Veda ...
↑ P. 269 Brāhmanism and Hindūism, Or, Religious Thought and Life in India: As Based on the Veda and Other Sacred Books of the Hindūs (Google eBook) by Sir Monier Monier-Williams
↑ Mishra, Patit Paban (1997). "Critique of Indianization Theory". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 58. Indian History Congress: 805. JSTOR44144025.
↑ Sarina Singh; Joe Bindloss; Paul Clammer; Janine Eberle (2005), India, Lonely Planet, ISBN978-1-74059-694-7, retrieved 25 November 2008, ... Although the northeast states make up just 7.5% of the geographical area of India, the region is home to 20% of India's tribal people. The following are the main tribes ... Nagas ... Monpas ... Apatani & Adi ... Khasi ...
1 2 Moirangthem Kirti Singh (1988), Religion and Culture of Manipur, Manas Publications, ISBN978-81-7049-021-0, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The Meiteis began to think that root cause of their present unrest was their contact with the Mayangs, the outsider from the rest of India in matters of trade, commerce, religious belief and the designation of the Meiteis as caste Hindus in the Constitution of India. The policy of reservations for the scheduled castes and tribes in key posts began to play havoc ...
↑ Man, vol.v.7, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1972, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Nor, for that matter, does a traits approach to drawing distinctions between tribe and caste lead to any meaningful interpretation of social or civilizational processes. Social boundaries must be defined in each case (community or regional society) with reference to the modes of social classification, on the one hand, and processes of social interaction, on the other. It is in their inability to relate these two aspects of the social phenomenon through a model of social reality that most behavioural exercises come to grief ...
↑ Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1959), Lōkayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism, People's Publishing House, ISBN9788170070061, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Even the authors of our traditional law-codes and other works did not know whether to call a particular group of backward people a caste or a tribe ...
↑ Robert Goldmann; A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (1984), From Independence to Statehood: Managing Ethnic Conflict in Five African and Asian States, Pinter, ISBN978-0-86187-354-8, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Because the question of what groups are to be given preferences is constitutionally and politically open, the demand for preferences becomes a device for political mobilisation. Politicians can mobilise members of their caste, religious or linguistic community around the demand for inclusion on the list of those to be given preferences ... As preferences were extended to backward castes, and as more benefits were given to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, the 'forward' castes have ...
1 2 Col. Ved Prakash (2006), Encyclopaedia of North-east India, Vol# 2, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, ISBN978-81-269-0704-5, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... An angry mob of Koch-Rajbongshis (KRs) ransacked 4-8-03 the BJP office, Guwahati, demanding ST status for the KRs ... the KRs have been demanding the ST status for long, and the Bodos are stoutly opposed to it ...
↑ "Gujjars enforce blockade; Delhi tense", The Times of India, 29 May 2008, archived from the original on 22 October 2012, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Gujjars on Thursday blocked road and rail traffic in the capital and adjoining areas as part of their 'NCR rasta roko' agitation ... The NCR agitation, called by All India Gujjar Mahasabha, is in support of the community's demand for Scheduled Tribe status in Rajasthan ...
↑ "What the Meena-Gujjar conflict is about". Rediff. 1 June 2007. Archived from the original on 7 September 2008. Retrieved 26 November 2008. ... Rajasthan is sitting on a potential caste war between the Gujjars and Meenas with the former demanding their entry into the Schedule Tribes list while the Meenas are looking to keep their turf intact by resisting any tampering with the ST quota ...
↑ Mamta Rajawat (2003), Scheduled Castes in India: a Comprehensive Study, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., ISBN978-81-261-1339-2, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... endogamy is basic to the morphology of caste but for its origin and sustenance one has to see beyond ... D.D. Kosambi says that the fusion of tribal elements into society at large lies at the foundation of the caste system; Irfan Habib concurs, suggesting that when tribal people were absorbed they brought with them their endogamous customs ...[permanent dead link]
1 2 Mohammad Abbas Khan (2005), Social Development in Twenty First Century, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., ISBN978-81-261-2130-4, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... in North India, high caste Hindus regard the village as an exogamous unit. Girls born within the village are called 'village daughters' and they do not cover their faces before local men, whereas girls who come into the village by marriage do so ... With Christians and Muslims, the elementary or nuclear family is the exogamous unit. Outside of it marriages are possible ... Lineage exogamy also exists among the Muslim Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir ...[permanent dead link]
↑ Richard V. Weekes (1984), Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey, Greenwood Press, ISBN978-0-313-24640-1, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The preference for in-marriage produces the reticulated kinship system characteristic of Punjabi Muslim society, as opposed to Hindu lineage exogamy and preference for marriage outside one's natal village ...
↑ Lalita Prasad Vidyarthi (2004), South Asian Culture: An Anthropological Perspective, Oriental Publishers & Distributors, ISBN9780883868515, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... The tribal communities, by and large, also practise clan exogamy, which means marrying outside the totemic division of a tribe ...
↑ Rajendra K. Sharma (2004), Indian Society, Institutions and Change: Institutions and Change, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, ISBN978-81-7156-665-5, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Among many Indian tribes it is the recognized custom to marry outside the village. This restriction is prevalent in the Munda and other tribes of Chhota Nagpur of Madhya Pradesh ... the Naga tribe of Assam is divided into Khels. Khel is the name given to the residents of the particular place, and people of one Khel cannot marry each other ...
↑ John Vincent Ferreira (1965), Totemism in India, Oxford University Press, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... there is every reason to believe that the inspiration leading to the formation of exogamous gotras came from the aborigines ...
↑ Monika Böck; Aparna Rao (2000), Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice, Berghahn Books, ISBN978-1-57181-912-3, retrieved 26 November 2008, ... Kalasha kinship is indeed orchestrated through a rigorous system of patrilineal descent defined by lineage exogamy ... Lineage exogamy thus distinguishes Kalasha descent groups as discretely bounded corporations, in contrast to the nonexogamous 'sliding lineages' (Bacon 1956) of surrounding Muslims ...
↑ Thomas R. Trautmann (1997), Aryans and British India, University of California Press, ISBN978-0-520-20546-8, retrieved 26 November 2008, ...The radiating, segmentary character of the underlying genealogical figure requires that the specifications be unilineal ... we have in the Dharmasastra doctrine of jatis a theory of ethnogenesis through intermixture or marriage of persons of different varnas, and secondary and tertiary intermixtures of the original ones, leading to a multitude of units, rather than the radiating segmentary structure of ethnogenesis by fission or descent ...
Basu, Analabha; Sarkar-Roya, Neeta; Majumder, Partha P. (9 February 2016), "Genomic reconstruction of the history of extant populations of India reveals five distinct ancestral components and a complex structure", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113 (6): 1594–1599, Bibcode:2016PNAS..113.1594B, doi:10.1073/pnas.1513197113, PMC4760789, PMID26811443
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![Scheduled Tribes distribution map in India by state and union territory according to 2011 Census. Mizoram and Lakshadweep had the highest % of its population as ST ([?]95%), while Punjab and Haryana had 0%. 2011 Census Scheduled Tribes distribution map India by state and union territory.svg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/2011_Census_Scheduled_Tribes_distribution_map_India_by_state_and_union_territory.svg/220px-2011_Census_Scheduled_Tribes_distribution_map_India_by_state_and_union_territory.svg.png)
