Introduction                   

The objective of this paper is to examine how the ‘Tribal object’ was constructed before the writings of Virginius Xaxa. The paper tries to map how the term ‘Tribe’ has been used by various Western as well as Indian scholars over a period of time, and also look at the various alternative terms which came into existence because the meanings that the term ‘Tribal’ connotes have been found to be deeply problematic. This mapping involves a survey of not just the meanings of the terms but also a broad identification of the historical contexts in which these terms evolved, and how they have been used subsequently. For a long time, these terms were mainly coined and used by the western and upper caste scholars, many times in a simplistic manner. It is only recently that a few scholars who emerged from the ‘Tribal’ communities have begun to interrogate the dominant notions of the category called ‘Tribe’ and emphasized the problematic nature of the use of this term. I attempt to show, that their critiques have reconstituted the very meaning of the term ‘Tribal.’ I have grounded this paper around the ideas of Virginius Xaxa and use the theoretical framework laid by the Tribal Intellectual Collective India called Pre and Post Xaxa Tribal Studies.

The Notion of ‘Tribe’: Pre Xaxa

Historians trace the genealogy of the term ‘tribe’ in India to the colonizer’s imperative to produce knowledge about the colonized.  Initially, ‘tribe’ was used to describe various groups of people, along the axes of common ancestry or occupation: ‘regal tribe’, ‘wild tribe’, ‘pastoral tribe’, ‘agricultural tribe’ or even ‘mixed and imperfect tribes’ (Sengupta, 943). The well-known anthropologist Verrier Elwin points out that European merchants and travellers in India from the seventeenth century onwards used the term ‘tribe’ but in a very generic sense. Elwin says that it was used for certain communities, after a series of conflicts that ensued between the colonial rulers (7).

Elwin’s works on ‘Gond’ tribes is well-known as is Felix Padel’s work on ‘Konds’ in his book Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape. In his essay “Savaging the Civilized” Elwin and the Tribal Question in Late Colonial India” Ramachandra Guha observes that Elwin called attention to the neglect by the national movement of the predicament of the tribes. He further observes, “Hill and forest tribes” he [Elwin] remarked were a “despised and callously ignored group”. Their problem was as intense as that of the untouchables. Ramchandra Guha points out that the Government of India Act of 1935 which sought self-government ‘excluded’ certain tracts of predominantly tribal population. As a consequence, the Government of India Act 1935 which excluded the tribals sparked off a wide-ranging debate on the future of tribals in India.

At this juncture, Elwin’s works on tribals assumed singular importance simply because it is through his work the other Indians learnt many things about the tribals, their distinctive culture, their tradition and their way of life. The encounter between the ‘primitive’ and the ‘civilized’ was dismally one-sided in which the tribals stood to lose their lands and their forest, their culture and their self-esteem. Ramchandra Guha points out that:

Elwin’s plea, then, was for civilisation to allow the aboriginals to their lives in the way they knew best. This meant providing them security of the land, the freedom of the forest, and protection from landlords, money lenders, and subordinate officials (2379).

In his article “Colonial Transformation of Tribal Society in Middle India” K.S.Singh postulates two assumptions with regard to transformation of tribal society in colonial India: The first set of assumptions describes tribal communities as in isolation and tribals as Noble Savages, and their primitive condition was described as a state of Arcadian simplicity. He further suggests that the deterioration of tribal communities was attributed to the Sanskritisation of the semi tribal chiefs and to the vulnerability of tribal character (1221). He is of the opinion that missionaries are the protectors of the tribals against non-tribals. The second set of assumptions suggests that the tribes were a subsystem of the Hindu system and that they were absorbed into the Hindu system.

However, eventually, like many other categories, the term ‘tribe’ too gained prominence as a specialized category in India during the British rule. During this period, the people whom the British thought as the ‘oldest ethnological segment of Indian population’ were designated as tribes. This does not mean that tribes in India did not have a distinct identity of their own prior to the British rule. What is important to note here is that most scholars today seem to agree upon the fact that the creation of a separate category of ‘tribes’ was a colonial construction (Singh 36).

Singh observes that:

The colonial system bore harshly on the tribal communities who with a sensitivity born of isolation and with a relatively intact mechanism of social control revolted more often and far more violently than any other community including peasants in India (1229).

He discusses the deleterious effects of missionary activity during colonialism on the tribes of India.

When the British extended their administration into inaccessible forests of central India in the early nineteenth century, they found that these areas were inhabited by socially and culturally distinct groups that had been living in relative geographical isolation. They called these groups “tribes” in the sense of people living in the American and African continents under similar conditions. In this context, these populations were recognized as a special category for purely administrative convenience.

Apart from colonial rulers, many scholars have shown enormous interest in studying tribes. As a result, a huge body of knowledge has been created by those who are specialized in studying ‘tribes.’ British anthropologists, sociologists and Indian statesmen such as, Verrier Elwin, Von Furer Haimendorf, Govind Sadashiv Ghurye, Andre Beteille, Ajay Skaria, and M. N. Srinivas, have all set the pace for a sustained study of ‘tribes’.

Anthropologists and sociologists defined tribes in many different ways. While anthropologists such as Sir Herbert Hope Risley, Elwin, A.V. Thakkar and Haimendorf preferred to use the term ‘Aborigines’, American cultural Historian Paul Hutton called them ‘Primitive tribes’. Other scholars used some alternative terms such as ‘backward Hindus’ (Ghurye 1963), ethnic minorities (Pathy 1988) and so on. Before explaining what the term aborigines means and its implications for this kind of a study, let me look at how some of the recent scholars define the term ‘tribe’ itself.

Jacob John Kattakayam defines tribe as a cluster of village communities which share a common name, members of which occupy a common territory, language and culture, and are economically interwoven (13). Similarly, W.J. Perry defines tribe as a group speaking a common dialect and inhabiting a common territory (Perry). Indian anthropologists and sociologists seem to share a similar view.

The Backward Class Commission under the Chairmanship of Kakasaheb Kalelkar tried to provide certain criteria to be adopted for identifying the Scheduled Tribes.

In the preamble to their questionnaire regarding Scheduled Tribes, the commission observed that “the STs can be generally ascertained by the fact that they live apart in hills, and even where they live on plains they lead a separate excluded existence and are not fully assimilated into the main body of people. STs may belong to any religion, they are listed as STs because of the kind of life led by them” (Backward Class Commission, 1953, Appendix 11, p 224).

D.N. Majumdar, for example, argues that a tribe is a collection of families or groups of families with a common name and its members occupy a common territory and speak the same language. According to Majumdar, tribes also observe certain taboos regarding marriage, profession or occupation and have developed a meaningful system of reciprocity and mutuality of obligation. He further comments:

A tribe is a social group with territorial affiliation, endogamous, with no specialization of functions, ruled by tribal officers, hereditary or otherwise, united in language or dialect, recognizing social distance with other tribes or castes, without any social obligation attaching to them, as it does in the caste structure, following tribal traditions beliefs and customs, illiberal of naturalization of ideas from alien sources, above all consciousness of homogeneity of ethnic and territorial integration.[1]

A tribe is also understood as a group of people occupying a territory, bound by a sense of unity derived from the belief that their origins are from a unique mythical vision. Besides, it is argued, numerous similarities in culture, dressing, language, food habits and modes of entertainment give them a sense of belonging to one community. As L.P. Vidyarthi argues:

Till today they [tribals] have retained their customs and regulations, nearly all marry within their restricted local groups, and are sometimes guided by their own elders or political chiefs in their internal and external affairs. In other words, they form socially distinct communities in contrast to their neighbours (Vidyarthi 33).

However, there are others who seem to share a slightly different view. G.N. Devy, in his book Painted Words argues that the most useful indicator of tribal identity is language.

A cursory look at the definitions given above shows that large number of groups and communities, different from one another in many ways, is brought under a single nomenclature. In fact, Indian ethnographers and anthropologists are aware of these variations and the parameters they apply to describe a tribe. However, they continue to use the term in a rather problematic manner. Shereen Ratnagar in his book Being Tribes quotes Gail Omvedt’s statement which was delivered in the Verrier Elwin Memorial Lecture at the Bhasha Kendra in 2004 “… the term tribal is ‘demeaning’ and inaccurate…. (7)”. Thus, keeping this aspect in mind, it must be pointed out that there is no conceptual clarity with regard to the use of the term ‘tribe’ among literary critics, ethnographers, scholars, administrators, activists and social scientists.

Tribes as Aborigines

The term aborigine is mainly used in the Australian context to refer to the indigenous population and the literal meaning of the term is “from the sunrise.” In his article “The Mapping of the Adivasi Social: Colonial Anthropology and Adivasis”, Bhangya Bhukya discusses that:

During the colonial era, a range of disparate groups that lived for the most part in the more inaccessible hill and forest tracts, survived largely from hunting and gathering or rudimentary swidden agriculture, categorized by the British as “aboriginals” or “early tribes” (103).

However, the term ‘aborigine’ is not frequently used in India. Instead, the frequently used terms in India are tribes and Adivasis. The term aborigines or aboriginals connotes that these people were the first or original inhabitants of the land. In the Indian context, many terms are used in this sense since the tribes in India live in the forests and naturally in isolated regions. For instance, they are variously known as vanyajati (castes of forest), vanvasi (inhabitants of forest), Adivasi (first settler), janjati (folk people), adimjati (primitive people), anusuchit janjati (Scheduled tribe) and so on (Singh).

Scheduled Tribes (STs)

The Government of India refers to ‘tribes’ as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (STs), which is an administrative category following the description given in the Article 342 of the Indian Constitution.  However, critics have pointed out that the Indian nation state’s understanding is not free from the colonial understanding of the ‘tribes.’ For instance, it has been pointed out that the word ‘Scheduled Tribes’ itself comes from the administrative category of ‘Tribe’ that evolved through the British administrative system in India (Bindu 2). Through a series of legal enactments beginning with Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, nearly 200 communities were ‘notified’ by the colonial government as ‘criminal tribes’. After independence, these communities were ‘denotified’ and listed in the scheduled tribes, castes and ‘other backward communities.[2]

The umbrella category called ‘Scheduled Tribes’ has been contested for another important reason i.e. it homogenizes the various tribal communities in India. As we all know, each tribe in India has its own distinct social, traditional, political affiliations, economic status, language, culture, traditions and social aspects in terms of development. This is agreed upon even by the state. A good example of this kind of homogenization is the Anthropological Survey of India of 1987. Critics have argued that despite the best intentions of its editor, K.S. Singh, it suffers from the colonial legacy of ‘descriptive ethnography’ where the ‘people of India’ are enumerated into discrete and separate categories of ‘tribes and castes.’ (Anand 50).

The fact to be recognized first and foremost of all, while considering the problem of the Denotified Tribe and Nomadic Communities of India is that it is not a homogeneous group of communities, but a completely heterogeneous one. It is rather a diverse group comprising different sections within society, at present sailing in the same boat and encountering similar fate. The communities categorized under this title bear varied occupational traditions, carry different strands of history with them and have had quite diverse socio-economic relations with other sections of society. Their present categorization together is a sheer administrative categorization based on their single shared trait, that of nomadism or constant travelling on a community basis, and administrative complexities arising out of that. Apart from the administrative or governance-related problems, the other issues faced by the communities under the category, especially the occupational issues are not uniform, and therefore, the solution to their problems, too, cannot be one generalized solution.

Even within the category there are divisions, and it is absolutely essential to understand the difference between these to realize their specific social position both in historical and contemporary times, and the issues troubling each of them. It has been observed that there are great misunderstandings and confusions relating to these communities often within even the scholarly circles working with only one or other section, as well as the governmental or policy-making bodies who tend to go by nomenclatures. Hence, some basic clarification may not be out of place. All the communities under this category are not ‘Denotified and Nomadic’; but there are several traditionally nomadic communities and there are several communities who were de-notified, and with some communities there is an overlap of these two aspects. Similarly, it is often thought that, just as there are categories created for positive discriminatory action due to their specific historical reasons of being victims of traditional untouchability or of having total seclusion from the mainstream, this is yet another category having its own specific historical burden.

Though it is quite likely that such a category can and may be created, once again for undoing administrative errors and injustices, it needs to be noted that here, there are not one uniform but several varied historical burdens carried by different sections within the category. And with any of these communities, an overlap between different layers of categorization is always possible. Thus Pardhis, a tribe, were notified criminals and therefore are denotified, and may sometimes be nomadic; Nats are considered to be OBCs and are nomadic by nature of occupation, and were also denotified; whereas Vasudevs or Bhats have been traditionally nomadic but very much socially accepted.  There are communities in this category which were quite revered by the rural folk, others who were essential economic factors, and yet others who have been abhorred and treated as untouchables. Thus, the social position of various communities such as Banjaras, Pardhis, Bhats, Jogis, Gujjars, and Musahars is practically incomparable[3].

Particularly the Lambadas were recognised by different names, there are serious anomalies in the state-wise positions of these communities and their categorization at the level of central Government. A particular community may be categorized as SC in one state, as ST in another, fall in the OBC list at the centre and also be part of the DNT-NTs. With such discrepancies in identity, persons from the community residing in different states or moving from one state to another often have to face significant problems, not just in availing themselves of the benefits of reservations and other schemes in jobs and education, but also in terms of social behaviour and attitudes towards them.

The term ‘STs’ used in the post-independence period is closely linked with the welfare -related benefits offered by the government to these groups. Thus, this term is often used officially for purposes of administering certain specific constitutional privileges, protection and benefits to tribal populations as they are considered to be historically disadvantaged or ‘backward’. It is another matter that such schemes unfortunately have turned these people into vote banks for many political parties.

Criminal Tribes

The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 was ‘notified’ referring to the tribals as born criminals by the British Government. According to this Act any criminal tribe should be: (a) restricted in its movements to a specified area, or (b) settled in any place of residence (Radhakrishna 198). Thus the itinerant nature of the tribe was completely curbed. They were expected to show a licence if they were to move out of their settlement. By denying them their lifestyles the ruling class deprived the tribes of their very identity. Now the only identity they had was that of their ‘inherent criminality’. The provisions of this Act were extremely discriminatory and oppressive, and these people have been perpetually marginalised. Despite gaining independence from the British colonial rule, the plight of these tribes remains the same. They were ‘denotified’, but the prejudices associated with their supposedly inherent criminality remain. The oppression meted out through the CTA during British rule has been continued through the Habitual Offenders Act (HOA) 1952. They continue to be social outcasts, ignored by the state and harassed by the mainstream.

Meena Radhakrishna’s book Dishonoured by History: Criminal Tribes and British Colonial Policy is a thought provoking book. It is an innovative venture to study the impact of the Criminal Tribes Act, politically and socially. As Meena Radhakrishna points out, it was the British administrative and intellectual circles who considered the Criminal Tribes a ‘definable caste of hereditary criminals within the Hindu social system’; it was never thought so by the tribes or the Hindus concerned. To say that a person is criminal is one of the worst forms of discrimination. When the mainstream society believes that it is the truth, no matter what the reality actually is, the marginalised communities will live with that assumption ever in their minds, which will be a part of their very being. It gradually merges with their own consciousness, and they begin to identify themselves as criminals, even at times, taking to crime to eke out their meagre livelihood. They have been wronged by the people in power for generations and have been typecast as ‘criminals’. They have never been given the opportunity to prove their innocence. One wonders how long these tribes will face this inhuman treatment and can actually have the right to claim to be citizens of this country.

People on the Move: Nomads as Tribes

“Who are you?”

“We are nomads, saab.”

“Where have you come from?”

“We are nomads, saasb.”

“Since when are you staying here?”

“Even before you, saab.”

“Mind your tongue.”

“We will watch our language saab.”

“What work do you do?”

“Traditionally we have been artists…we have lost our forests and land…so

Now we beg for our survival.”

“Hmm. We know what kind of artists you are. We have been taught that all

All you tribes are “Born Criminals.”[4]

The word ‘Nomad’ means ‘no fixed place’ and nomadic communities are believed to have no fixed abode. The word ‘Nomad’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Nemo’ which literally means wanderers and “to pasture.” Although officially most wandering or nomadic communities are considered to be ‘tribals’ they are called by different names, in different languages, in different parts of India. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh nomads are called Drimmarulu which in Sanskrit as well as in Telugu literally means ‘wanderers’ and in Lambadi Ladne.

If we look at the village structure, the so called ‘upper caste people’ live in the middle of the village, Dalits live on the outskirts of the village, while Adivasis are those who live far from the village in the forest area. There are others who have no home in the village, no cultivable land and they migrate from place to place carrying their belongings on their head and they are called nomadic tribes. Lambadas are mainly nomads, and they largely subsist by rearing cattle, selling milk and milk products. In the past, they led a nomadic life and moved according to seasons and availability of large areas of pasture (Rao 26).

Rada Dyson-Hudson, an anthropologist, describes nomadic characters as having a pride hauteur, strong sense of individual worth and an equally strong sense of the nobility of pastoralism as a calling (51). This is the subject many anthropologists examined and which in fact attracts them to study nomadic communities. B. H. Mehta describes nomadism as “regular seasonal or cyclical or group sustenance (36).  He considers nomads to be grass-landers and cattle breeders. For these anthropologists, the so-called nomads are ‘tribals’ and often merely serve as the necessary objects of academic studies.

Adivasi and its Origins

With regard to Adivasis and their origins Ganesh Devy makes a pertinent observation:

In the process of development, we have forgotten that much that is valuable in Indian society, culture and heritage is of Adivasi origin, that in fact the Adivasi has much with him. A century and a half of deeply flawed education had taught us to ape the west in every respect. It has also taught us to leave the Adivasis out as the apes of the great Indian society (Devy 13).

The term ‘Adivasi’ has gained more public legitimacy than other terms in India. David Hardiman prefers to use the term ‘Adivasi’ over ‘tribe’ his point is that Adivasis have ‘shared a common fate in the past century and from this have evolved a collective identity of being Adivasi’. In his books he prefers to use the term Adivasi. Unlike other terms which were coined by non-tribals, the term ‘Adivasi’ is a self-designated term as it was coined by the ‘tribals’ themselves. During the first decades of the twentieth century, educated and politically active tribals from eastern and central India started to use the Sanskrit term “Adivasi”. During the course of their struggle, they discovered that terms such as tribal, aboriginal, girijan and so on are not only inadequate when it comes to representing their communities but also carry negative meanings and reveal them in a poor light. Thus, it is in this context they invented the new term ‘Adivasi’. Adi means earliest and vasi means resident meaning original inhabitant. It could have originated in Chhotanagapur of Bihar in 1930s, and it was widely popularised by a social worker, A.V. Thakkar, in the 1940s (Bhukya 13). Irrespective of the various names for individual tribes, the self-designated term Adivasi has since then become widely accepted. The main intention of using this term is to describe tribal communities collectively.

The acceptance of the term Adivasi, to some extent, can also be attributed to the recent developments all over the world such as liberalization and globalization and the role of the world organizations such as the UNO. Since the 1950s representatives of “indigenous people” have been networking at a global level under the auspices of the United Nations. They contributed towards elaborating international legal standards in order to preserve their diverse traditional cultures and in order to work towards a future of self-determination. Against this backdrop, some scholars like Bhangya Bhukya, K. Balagopal, Haragopal, and Ramdayal Munda prefer to refer to Adivasi movements as movements of empowerment and assertion of Adivasi identity.

However, it must be clarified that Adivasi movements are not to be understood as affected by global agencies nor are these movements always completely autonomous. Vibha S. Chauhan, in her article mentions the relation between the state and the Adivasis. According to Vibha Chauhan:

The relationship between the Adivasi communities and the state has been fraught with tension over time. These communities have been historically distanced from the wider “external” society not just because of geographical isolation but also because of an extremely keen sense of identity based on their specific and distinctive languages, cultures and social systems. An immense heterogeneity exists amongst the indigenous groups themselves and this gets clearly expressed by the nomenclatures that they use to describe themselves as members of distinct groups (57).

We must also resist the simplistic idea that Adivasi is a purely cultural phenomenon. On the contrary, Adivasi signifies an awareness of a distinct self-identity that is being carved out of a history of struggles against various dominant forces that these communities have been fighting against. Centuries ago, the Adivasis were driven into the jungles by the Aryans. They lived in harmony with nature, sharing its bounty. They were devoid of notions of property and possession. Though the British gave them literacy and a script, they had until then preserved their folk literature through oral traditions.

Research on Adivasi literature can reveal a great deal about their history which is generally missing in Indian writing and heritage. At the best there are exaggerated and fanciful accounts of praising the heroes. These are far from the truth. Folk literature, though it adheres to truth, has its own limitations. The literature has thus become a chronicle of the ways of change in Adivasi life that outlines both the need and necessity for tribal writing. Vaharu Sonawane is an Adivasi activist and his poem “Stage” is an apt example:

We never went on stage, Nor were we called

A gesturing finger showed us our proper place,

There we sat, and received praise. And they stood on stage

Telling us about our own pain. Our pain remains ours

It never became theirs… Our doubts we whispered.

They listened Hummed and hawed

They twisted our ears and warned us

Apologise or else… (Ramnika191-192)

It expresses the compulsion to speak of one’s pain in one’s own idiom. Moreover, it points to a political programme meant to conserve and promote these cultures and to attain self-determination in a wider political context and also make claims on forest resources, agricultural land and so on. Ever since the social category ‘Tribal’ was conceptualised, decisions regarding tribal development have been made from the top, whether these were to keep the Adivasi identity intact, or whether the forest dwellers were trying to occupy the subject position. It is rarely that the terms of development were determined in consultation with the Adivasis.

Tribe as Caste

From the 1920s onwards, Indians with sociological and anthropological training began to put their distinctive stamp on the understanding of caste (Bhukya 14). There has been much confusion among the scholars on the question of whether tribes and castes are one and the same. According to Haimendorf,

Anthropologists concerned with India have for some time debated the problem of the distinction between autochthonous tribal groups and Hindu castes. Those speaking of tribe-caste continuum hold the view that it is impractical to draw a sharp line between tribes and castes, whereas others feel confident of their ability to decide in concrete cases whether a given community should be classified as a tribe or a caste (Haimendorf 32).

N. Devy in A Nomad Called Thief points out that in the initial period of India’s contact with the western nations the two terms tribe and caste were used synonymously, and any difference between them lay only in the social status of the groups they described. Devy says that Louis Dumont, in his discussion of the caste system, tells us that almost till the end of the eighteenth century ‘caste’ was used for the socially privileged groups as against ‘tribe’ which was used for the groups lower in the social hierarchy. However, tribe became an independent category as the colonial rulers prepared an official list of communities in (1872) as the list of Indian tribes. Since then the ‘tribes’ are perceived as a distinct segment of Indian society. Eventually, as Devy rightly points out, these terms have become “much like long-worn masks” that start acquiring real personality. The result is that today, no Indian describes Indian society without taking recourse to the categories ‘caste’ and ‘tribe’ (Devy 10).

Another view is that in India, the continuities between tribes and castes are so much that it often becomes difficult to distinguish or separate one from the other. Not only is this the experience of contemporary students of tribal societies, but also of the census enumerators in the late nineteenth century. Often, communities were arbitrarily listed as tribes or castes, and this decision was left to the perception of the local community by the individual enumerator. There have been cases of communities classified as tribes in one state and as caste in another. The best example for this is, Lambadas are a tribe in Andhra Pradesh, Scheduled Caste in Karnataka and Denotified tribe in Maharashtra.

The Notion of ‘Tribe’: Post Xaxa   

Virginius Xaxa, points out that tribes have been seen as the natural equivalent of caste by many scholars even today. He also says that even change among tribes has been studied in terms of their transformation into caste. He explains that, paradoxically, this has been the case despite the fact that tribes have been seen primarily not only as a society but also as a particular type of society. Ideally, then, he says, the contrast should have been not with caste but with society, as in the case of the Oriyas, Bengalis, Telugus, etc (Xaxa 16).

A similar and related assumption put forward by scholars is that tribes were part of the Hindu religious order. Such a kind of classification began with the need to provide detailed information about people in the census. Thus, various groups of people have been categorized as castes and tribes. The criterion that has been used in the naming and enumeration is highly controversial and also ambiguous. Critics have challenged this kind of absorption which was spelt out by many anthropologists in terms of ‘the integration of tribals’ into the economic organization of caste system in India (Xaxa 14).

Representation of ‘Tribals’: Negative Connotations

The idea of ‘tribe’ has provided for the production of a large number of images such as seeing them as the true representatives of organic cultures and identities, detached from the more differentiated and modern set of political, economic and social relations typified by caste, religion and commerce (Sundar 34). Such theorizing, predicated as it is on such stereotypical images rather than a more complex representation, has allowed both for a romance with, and a rejection of, tribals. In the words of Deliege,

The modern subject’s nostalgia for a “lost” state of freedom, on the one hand, and its censure of the non-modern on the other, coalesce around this image. Thus, debates among Indian anthropologists have tended to operate within the dualism of tribal as “noble savage” who must be protected from the ravages of modernity and tribals as ‘primitive’ needing to be urgently assimilated into the State processes of a developing society (Deliege 13-14).

Tribes are also visualized through various derogatory terms such as ‘Savage’, ‘Primitive’, ‘Barbarian’ and so on. According to K.S. Singh, we find two kinds of opinions in the historical writings on tribes. One is the conceptual framework developed by the British administrators turned ethnographers and by anthropologists which was inspired by the then prevailing model in anthropology. In this framework of understanding, Singh says, tribal communities were treated as isolates or noble savages, and “the primitive condition was described as a state of Arcadian simplicity.” He further points out that the deterioration of tribal communities was attributed to the Sanskritisation of the semi-tribal chiefs and to the vulnerability of tribal character (Singh 1221). Singh challenges these views by arguing that,

…it is evident that in the semi- exposed tribal regions the portrayal of a tribal as a Noble Savage, innocent of the operation of the historical processes, was both naive and untenable, but this led to the build-up of a myth that has bedevilled all historical writings on Chotanagapur and inspired all tribal movements. This simplistic model also served to justify the presence and the role of the missionaries as the protectors of the tribals from the non-tribals. The second set of assumptions postulated that the tribes were a sub-system of the Hindu system and that they were being absorbed into the Hindu society (Singh 1223).

Ironically, the colonial notion that nomadic communities were ‘criminal communities’ continued to prevail during the period of post-independence India. The earliest expression of such representation (or ‘misrepresentation,’ as some scholars would like to call it today) can be found in the Report of a Reform Committee headed by Antrolikar on the eve of India’s Independence (Antrolikar 24). But the issue had to wait for a contesting voice until Marathi writers like Laxman Mane and Laxman Gaikwad came up with their life-stories in the early eighties. Laxman Mane and Laxman Gaikwad each coming from nomadic communities, were hailed as Dalit writers. It is during the last 30 years, that the various tribal voices and literary works have started making their presence felt. These writings were initially seen as ‘experimental Dalit writing’ by readers of Marathi literature. Nomadic communities in the states outside Maharashtra did not find similar spokespersons.

The laws of Independent India too are not free from the colonial notions of tribals as criminal-minded people. For instance, Criminal Tribes Act 1871, as Meena Radhakrishna, a colonial anthropologist, points out was a colonial piece of legislation in spirit, and she explains why such a law is problematic:

From 1871 onwards, many of the nomadic communities were declared ‘criminal tribes’ by the British, who were suspicious of their constant movements. Upon independence, the piece of legislation which had unjustly notified them as criminal tribes during the colonial period was annulled in 1952, and they then came to be known as denotified tribes. Not all denotified tribes are nomadic, and vice versa, but a large overlap remains between these two sets of people. These communities are mostly spread over the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and OBC categories (Radhakrishna 201).

Today, as is evident from the above discussion, the view that nomadic communities are criminals has come in for a serious criticism, even from the liberal non-tribal scholars, who have argued that tribals, far from being criminal in nature, are in fact quite “liberal and catholic in terms of interacting and exchanging ideas and resources with other communities and cultures (211).” On the other hand, they have pointed out that the tribals have been the real targets of criminal acts of violence perpetrated by the non-tribals and the so called civilized people. This is what G.N Devy has to say about what the state apparatus and the so-called mainstream culture have done to tribals:

Here is a random list of what we have given the Adivasis: Forest Acts depriving them of their livelihood; a Criminal Tribes Act and a Habitual Offenders Act; taxes and the tax collectors; alien languages for education; chemical fertilizers; a severe penal code; the compulsion to subscribe to a religion and enter it in their birth certificate; moneylenders; mosquitoes and malaria; naxalites and ideological war-groups; the Greyhound Police Academy; a schedule of their identity defined from outside; and perpetual contempt (6).

These oppressive interventions by the state, private companies and religious organizations in the social, cultural and economic matters of the tribes are yet to be investigated thoroughly. With increasing globalization, tribals today are being deprived of their livelihood and are forced to migrate to the nearest towns and cities where they experience hostility and exploitation. These are the people who have not been dependent on others, either for economic or cultural needs, and have had their own ways of sustenance for centuries!

Although, the identity of tribal people owes to the fact that they live far from the mainstream society, either in hills or in forests, and have their own traditions and cultures, what is conveniently overlooked are the changes that modernization brought in the lives of ‘tribals’ and in the process, the latter’s readiness to borrow from other traditions and aspects of life style from other communities.

One of the challenges today is that there are very few tribal writers or scholars to reflect on and write about tribal issues. For instance, in the Indian academic institutions such as universities, we hardly find scholars from tribal communities. Such a state of affairs is simply attributed to the inaccessibility of education to the tribal communities.

End Notes

[1]  Majumdar 48

[2]  Devy10, 2007

[3]  Mukut Saad August, 2011, Aruna Joshi

[4]  <http://budhantheatre.org/>

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Vislavath Rajunayak is Associate Professor, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

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