TRIBE

While race is now recognized as a biological term and the physical indicators for it are well established, there seems to be no consensus regarding the concept of tribe. Pioneering anthropologists carried out their studies of primitive societies without bothering to precisely define the concept of Tribe.

This is somewhat understandable if we went back to the beginnings of the discipline of anthropology. When societies were classified into civilized and uncivilized—as savage or barbaric—the task was simpler. All uncivilized societies were preliterate, meaning thereby the absence of writing in them. That meant that the transmission of culture was through oral tradition, and the history of the society went as far back as human memory could take it. Beyond this was prehistory. Absence of history, oral transmission of society’s knowledge pool to the younger generation, elementary technology, greater dependence on nature for survival, and faith in the supernatural described their way of life. Living in small hordes, and unaware of the world outside the narrow confines of the community, the geographically and socially isolated communities defined themselves as residents of a given territory, and as belonging to a specific racial stock. Initially, students of ‘Other cultures’ came to Non-Western societies and studied those small groups that were remotely located as ‘Little Communities’, cut off from civilizational societies and pursuing primitive economic activities in settlements that were cradle-to-the-grave arrangements.⁶

The popular image of the tribal was of a dark-skinned,⁷ semi-naked, uncouth individual who could easily be distinguished from the civilized world in terms of the ‘way of life’ led by them. When explorers went to the new world and areas other than Africa and the Pacific, and South Asia, they found the existence of tribes in the non-black populations as well. But the stereotype continued. The term ethnic group was used as a synonym for tribe. ‘Morgan’s conception of the tribe’, to quote Béteille, ‘and Durkheim’s conception of the polysegmental society were both rooted in the same evolutionary perspective. Their successors chose their examples not from India, China and the Islamic world, but from Australia, the Pacific Islands and North America where recent historical experience brought out the disjunction rather than the co-existence of tribe and civilization’ (ibid: 58).

Problems arose when countries like India were colonized. Described as an indigenous civilization, India was divided into civilized and uncivilized sections, but belonging to the non-Western part of Human Civilization. In India, the original inhabitants were pushed into remote tribal tracts by groups that migrated from abroad at different phases of its history—as nomads and pastoralists, or as invaders who became conquerors of parts of the vast territory of India. Many such groups who came from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Mongolia came as adventurers or nomads and gradually got assimilated with the local populace; this involved initial confrontation, accommodation, and, finally, integration into the main stream. Historians of the nineteenth century—mostly foreign, and primarily administrators or military officers of the Raj—called all such migrating groups tribes because of their common origin and distinct identity. But they also acknowledged the process of their gradual assimilation into the Hindu fold. The multiracial society of India had a history of co-existence of tribe and civilization ‘for centuries if not millennia, and were closely implicated in each other from ancient to modern times’ (ibid.: 58).

In the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, it was still possible to divide India into tribal, rural, and urban as if they were part of a continuum. The remote and inaccessible location and lack of contact gave a separate identity to tribals, and rural communities were sandwiched between the tribal and the urban. In today’s context, such a clear-cut division is not possible; with development taking place, many tribal areas, particularly of the north-east, can be classified into these three categories. Tribes settled in rural communities and the emerging urban centres do not answer the stereotypical profile of the Tribal. In the central parts of India, where interactions with the indigenous civilization had been the norm, their absorption within the Hindu fold (as hinted by D. D. Kosambi and N. K. Bose) has preserved their collective identities through endogamy, but converted them into castes. Any idyllic definition of the word Tribe does not apply to such groups.

In the Indian context, because of a continuous culture contact with the non-tribal communities surrounding them, it becomes difficult at times to isolate the tribes. Where the representatives of these groups have settled in villages with other groups, they are treated as one of the many castes, and they interact as such in the local caste system of the village.

In India, the term tribe has been used very loosely for denoting different kinds of groups.⁸ It is used not only for those groups that are regarded as the ‘original inhabitants’ but also for the migrant communities that came in succession from abroad to settle. British officers have freely used the term tribal for groups such as the Jats, Brahmans and Rajputs. Many groups take recourse to such references to assert their tribal past and making a plea for their inclusion in the tribal category.

In the absence of any precise definition, S. C. Dube chose to list the characteristics that generally seem to apply to a tribe:

1. Their roots in the soil date back to a very early period. If they are not original inhabitants, they are at least among the oldest inhabitants of the land. Their position, however, cannot be compared to that of the Australian aborigines, or American Indians, or native Africans. The Kols and Kirda of India had a long association with later immigrants. Mythology and history bear testimony to their encounters and intermingling.
2. They live in the relative isolation of the hills and forests. This was not always so. There is evidence of their presence in the panchanad and the Gangetic Valley.
3. Their sense of history is shallow for, among them, the remembered history of five to six generations tends to get merged in mythology. Some tribes have their own genealogists, with interesting anecdotes and remembered history.
4. They have a low level of techno-economic development.
5. In terms of their cultural ethos—language, institutions, beliefs, world-view, and customs—they stand out from the other sections of society.
6. If they are not egalitarian, they are by and large at least non-hierarchic and undifferentiated. There are some exceptions: some tribes have had ruling aristocracies; others have landed gentry.⁹

The Constitution of Indian Republic recognizes the existence of tribes and has a Schedule listing them for special treatment to facilitate their entry into the mainstream and enjoy the fruits of development. While taking this step, hailed by all as a well-intentioned policy, little attention was paid to the definition of the word Tribe. Perhaps the need was not felt as tribes had been listed in the Censuses since 1891. The 1931 Census—regarded as the last Census that had enumerated population by caste—has listed ‘Primitive Tribes’, the list of 1935 talks of ‘Backward Tribes’. Lifting these entries, the Government of India prepared the Schedule in accordance with the new Constitution, and included all without any exception, thus erasing a distinction between a Tribe and a Scheduled Tribe. Accordingly, the 1951 Census counted 212 tribes, constituting around 6 per cent of the Indian population. Over the years, this number has burgeoned to more than 700, although the percentage of population covered by the ST category is around eight not much different from the 1951 figure, taking cognizance of population growth. This increase in the number of tribal communities, I must mention, is mainly caused by state-wise recognition of tribal groups—in other words, sub-groups of tribals have been given separate region-based identities, with the result that a group that is considered a tribe in one state might have been denied that status in another. These anomalies were pointed out by the Dheber Commission way back in 1961. For example: ‘The old state of Hyderabad (Nizam) did not recognize the Yenadis, Yerukulas, and Sugalis as Scheduled Tribes, whereas the old Andhra State recognized them as such and with abundant justification. Similar is the case of the Gaddis who are found in Himachal Pradesh and the adjoining Punjab Hills. In the Punjab, they are treated as Scheduled Tribes only in the Scheduled Areas where they do not live’. Similarly, the State of Uttar Pradesh did not recognize the Khasa of Jaunsar-Bawar and the Gonds and the Cheros of Mirzapur district as tribes. These anomalies went on rising as the years passed. For example, the Gujjars, Kinnaura and the Lauhola are included in the schedule for Himachal Pradesh but not in Jammu and Kashmir. At a later date, the Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir, also known as Bakarwal, and practitioners of Islam, were granted the tribal status.

It is important to note that there is no indigenous word for tribe in any of the Indian languages. In Sanskrit, there is a word Aatavika Jana (meaning Banvasi or forest dwellers), which was used to denote the agglomeration of individuals with specific territorial, kinship and cultural patterns. Prior to the colonial period, they were also commonly referred to as a Jati—caste. But the Colonial administration began calling them tribes, and differ-entiated them from the other groups on the basis of animism. In this category, some food gathering groups and shifting cultivators were also included, though they lived closer to the villages. In the censuses, they were first called ‘forest tribes’. In the 1931 Census, they were named as ‘primitive tribes’. In 1935, the British began calling them as ‘backward tribes’.

Without questioning the nomenclature, anthropologists, both foreign and natives, took those groups as the subject matter of their study, and they were officially designated as tribes. It is interesting that in the 1931 Census, which had recorded castes for the last time, had given a listing of tribes. But even in this Census, the groups that were identified by a distinct tribal name were classified in terms of their religion. Only those that were not converted to any religion—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Jainism—were called Tribals. Hutton went to the extent of calling tribal religions residuals that were yet to enter the temple of Hinduism.

When India won independence, and the Constitution of the Indian Republic was being drafted, special provisions were introduced for the protection of the tribes and the so-called oppressed groups within the Hindu Caste system. The Constitution ordained special lists—called Schedules—of such groups for purposes of granting them special privileges with a view to ameliorating their conditions and improving their socio-economic profile.¹⁰

It must, however, be said that the Constitution of India nowhere defines the word Tribe. Article 342 of the Constitution says just the following:

 

The President may with respect to any State or Union territory, and where it is a State, after consultation with the Governor, thereof, by public notification, specify the tribes or tribal communities or part of groups within tribes or tribal communities which shall for the purposes of this Constitution be deemed to be Scheduled Tribes in relation to that State or Union territory, as the case may be.

 

Article 366 (25) defines the Schedule Tribes as follows:

 

Scheduled Tribe means such Tribes or Tribal communities or parts of groups within such Tribes or Tribal communities as are deemed under article 342 to be Scheduled Tribe for the purposes of this Constitution.

 

In the absence of any definition, the bureaucracy took recourse to the 1931 Census, which had listed the castes for the last time and prepared two schedules—one for the tribes and the other for the castes. Those groups included in these lists are called Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Castes (SC) respectively.

As was expected, the lists were not satisfactory and many groups that were not included in them sought their inclusion. It is at this point that the need for a clear-cut definition of the term Tribe was felt.

The Government of India set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee under the Chairmanship of Shri Anil K. Chanda, which proposed (1967) the following five criteria for judging the eligibility of any group as a tribe:

1. Indication of primitive traits
2. Distinctive culture
3. Geographical isolation
4. Shyness of contact with the larger community
5. Backwardness

The official documents nowhere provide any indicators for each of these variables to develop an objective index. Different people have interpreted each of these variables differently.

Objectively speaking, the first criterion—namely indication of primitive traits—is broad enough to cover all the other criteria: the primitives are those who have a distinct culture of their own, live in relative isolation, and therefore fight shy of contact with the outsiders, and as a consequence of their isolation, they have remained backward. What, then, are the additional ‘Primitive’ characteristics to be included in the first criterion?

Primitiveness of a community is a comparative term, as it is opposed to modernity—yet another term that is variously defined. Broadly speaking, primitiveness indicates the lingering state of backwardness of a group and its inability to catch up with the mainstream in terms of socio-economic development. Primitiveness may be attributed to lack of education, narrow worldview or Weltanshauung, ethnocentrism, cultural prejudices, lifestyle, and socio-economic inequities. No present-day society, however backward and underdeveloped, fits the nineteenth-century stereotype of a ‘Primitive’, stone-age culture. Construction of approach roads, opening of schools, use of modern means of agriculture (such as tractors, chemical fertilizers), use of national currency for monetary transactions replacing barter, and even the use of radio transistors, and now the mobile phones, have changed the material cultural profile of the so-called primitive communities.

What then are the key component variables of the concept ‘Primitive’?

The same is the difficulty with the concept of ‘Distinct Culture’. Can one not argue that primitiveness, as implied in the first criterion, will result in a distinct culture? Also, there can be a distinct culture, but it need not be primitive.

The criterion of ‘Geographical Isolation’ is also untenable. With increasing connectivity caused by tremendous improvements in the area of transportation and communication, there are a few islands of relative isolation with difficulty of access. Revolutionary changes brought about by advances in Information Technology have broken the communication barriers and reduced isolation. Democratic governance in the country has greatly contributed to the breakdown of isolation. The electoral process involves campaigning by various candidates in their respective constituencies, including village communities that are otherwise not regularly contacted. Such contacts not only break geographical isolation, but also help enlarge the cognitive horizons of the common people. They come to know of political parties, leaders and political issues. And they are also dragged into the political process either as fellow campaigners or as candidates for posts for different legislative bodies and local-self governments, such as Panchayat Samities and Panchayats or co-operative societies. No doubt, geography still hinders effective interaction in some areas, but the situation is vastly different from the days when savagery and barbarism were perpetuated because of lack of contact.

No groups fight shy of contact with others. Of course, shyness as a social norm of courtesy towards elders, or amongst people of the opposite sex, is not to be confused with the shyness exhibited by the people living in the non-civilized world. That is a matter of the past. Sale of rural products, such as dairy items and cash crops in urban markets, by these claimants of tribal status clearly indicates the entry of these people in the regional economy.

It is the concept of Backwardness that seems, however, to provide a dependable list of variables for developing a suitable index. But this might as well apply to many other non-tribal village communities. Backwardness is either an attribute of a territorial community or of individual families within it, and not of any biotic community. There are tribal areas in the north-east which are urban, and there are many individuals belonging to the so–called tribal groups who have excelled in business, or academics, or in politics. The homogeneity of backwardness implied in the definition does not correspond with the actually existing condition.

The new Tribal Policy draft document, issued by the Government of India in July 2006 acknowledged the redundancy of the five criteria. It boldly asserts: ‘…all these broad criteria are not applicable to Scheduled Tribes today. Some of the terms used (e.g. primitive traits, backwardness) are also, in today’s context, pejorative and need to be replaced with terms that are not derogatory’ (Para 1.2). In Para 20.4, it says that ‘Other more accurate criteria need to be fixed’. It is significant that the Tribal Policy acknowledged the need for a process of ‘descheduling’ so as ‘to exclude those communities who have by and large caught up with the general population. Exclusion of the creamy layer among the Scheduled Tribes from the benefits of reservation has never been seriously considered. As we move towards, and try to ensure, greater social justice, it would be necessary to give this matter more attention and work out an acceptable system’ (Para 20.6).

The question that arises is: at what stage does a tribe cease to be a Tribe? Is it that a Tribe remains a tribe for-ever? It can be argued that all segments of the world population was at one stage or the other a tribe, and in due course of time merged their identities to form part of one or the other civilization.

The groups that are regarded as tribes in India today can be broadly classified into the following categories.

I. Tribal Communities Living in Their Original Habitat

1. Relatively Isolated: Retaining most of the characteristics of their social organization, despite some culture contact (the Kadars);
2. Two or More Tribal Groups Living in the same Area: Such groups maintain mutual contact, and yet remain isolated from other non-tribal groups, demonstrating some sort of cultural symbiosis (the Todas, Kotas and Badagas);
3. Living with Other Tribal/Religious Groups in the same Community: These have sub-types:
   1. Followers of their own religion, retaining most characteristics of their social organization and culture;
   2. while remaining separate from other religious groups, accept the leadership and domination of the other groups;
   3. those moving towards Hinduization;
   4. Hinduized.
      1. Tribes that have been forced the degraded status of untouchables;
      2. those enjoying high status; and
      3. those assigned status in the ranges of the Hindu hierarchy.
   5. Baptized in religions other than Hindu
      1. Towards conversion; and
      2. Converts

II. Tribal Groups Living Away from Their Original Habitat

1. Settled in Neighbouring Villages: fThese could also be classified into five categories as in I (c):
   1. Followers of their own religion, retaining most of the characteristics of their social organization and culture;
   2. while remaining separate from other religious groups, accept the leadership and domination of the other groups;
   3. those moving towards Hinduization;
   4. Hinduized.
      1. Tribes that have been forced the degraded status of untouchables;
      2. those enjoying high status; and
      3. those assigned status in the ranges of the Hindu hierarchy.
   5. Baptized in religions other than Hindu
      1. Towards conversion; and
      2. Converts
2. Living in separate villages in other areassuch as Bhoksa of Nainital
3. Settled in industrial centres or cities, or in tea plantations, military recruits, and others.

This distinction of the original habitat seems to be very relevant in the sense that such groups are not migratory, and therefore there is a greater degree of territorial attachment. Like the Maoris in New Zealand, such indigenous people have ancestral claims, and despite their being modernized, their autochthonous roots cannot be challenged. As against these, the migrating communities lose their attachment to their parental land and show a greater degree of adaptability. All those who constitute the mainstream of a multicultural society have a queer mix of the Great Tradition and the little parochial traditions. Their being tribal is a matter of the past; that is why Col. Tod or Sherring calling all groups—Rajputs, Brahmans, Gujars—tribes¹¹ becomes less significant in today’s context, because these groups have entered the fold of civilization and even contributed to its richness. Even illiteracy does not block this transition. Those who are part of civilization also have stratification in social, economic and political terms.¹²

The difficulties are now being created as some of the groups which earlier made all attempts to become part of mainstream society by adopting new religions—Hinduism, or Islam, or Christianity¹³—have begun reasserting and reviving their past and claiming a tribal status. This is being done more to avail of the privileges that are granted to the tribals. It is being described now as a process of Reverse Sanskritization. Such groups do not fulfill the criteria set by the Government, but they insist that the same criteria are also not applicable to many groups that are already included in the List of Scheduled Tribes. They are using a double-edged weapon: either include us as our present life style is identical with some of those included in the Schedule, or de-schedule those who do not deserve to be there.