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EXCEL International Journal of Multidisciplinary Management Studies

Vol.2 Issue 3, March 2012, ISSN 2249 8834Online available at http://zenithresearch.org.in/

www.zenithresearch.org.in

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CONCEPTUALIZING TRIBES FROM DIFFERNT DISCIPLINARY

AND IDEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

RAHUL PUNARAM SONPIMPLE*

*Tata Institute of Social Sciences,

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

ABSTRACT

The preceding discussion on the concept of indigenous and its implication in the academics is

largely contextualized by westernized idea of indigenous people. However, the controversy in

India revolves primarily around whether or not the Scheduled Tribes are the descendant of theoriginal inhabitants of the territories which they now inhabit. It is argued that irrespective of

time and place of origin or their present habitat in India, many tribal communities had self

regulating economic and political systems hence ideologically they maintained their identity asindigenous despite actual cohabitation with other groups. This paper offers broad and critical

perspective on the concept of indigenous people in the context of India. The modernity in the

context of Indian caste society often locates as a necessary facilitator of change in socio-

economic conditions of marginalized groups. By contrast, it is quite evident modernity in thecontext of tribal society seen as a destructive factor. Therefore, this paper tries to examine

perspective of tribes on modern colonial state and modernity in post-colonial period. Having

discussed the relative socio- economical aspects of concept of ingenious people, the paper willdiscuss cultural subordination of tribes both in the colonial and in the post-colonial period.

KEYWORDS:Indigenous, Modernity, Scheduled Tribes, Subordination.

______________________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

Indian society is marked by considerable heterogeneity and has therefore, been perceived morein terms of differences than similarities. The major social categories in terms of which the

differences have been perceived are religion, territory, language and caste. These categories were

reinforced during the colonial period and turned into groups. These categories were reinforcedduring the British rule through the decennial enumerations and classification of the population

into groups and categories, one of the major intellectual and administrative preoccupations of the

colonial state. To these existing categories, a new category was added during this period. This

was the category of tribes. The study of groups that latter came to be described as tribes began

with the establishment of the Asiatic society of Bengal in 1874. (Xaxa. V 2005). From then onscholars administrators wrote general works on the land and people of different regions in

which references were made to castes and tribes. They also made inventories of castes and tribesin the form of handbooks, monographs, and gazetteers.

The period when anthropology came to be introduced as curriculum in the universities in India

and latter to the adoption of an analytical or action oriented approach in the study of tribes,

particularly in the post- colonial period, resulted into a flood of literature on tribes. This came


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from three main sourcesAnthropological Survey of India, University Department of Sociology

and Anthropology, and Tribal population. The research institutes that were established in the

mid 1950s mainly undertook problem- oriented research for the effective formulation andimplementation of development programmers in the tribal areas. Considerable research was

carried out in these institutes in the early phases, and it was widely disseminated. However, the

research outputs of these institutes have steadily declined both in quantity and quality terms. Thescenario has just been the opposite in case of the Anthropological Survey of India. Informationand data collected by it had remained for a very long time within the four walls of the

organization itself. It is only in recent years that efforts are being made to make these data

available to a wider readership.

Some anthropologists have described the categories of caste and tribe as colonial constructionin the sense that the character of these groups was solidified by the British through the process of

classification and enumerations. Further the category of caste was not only confined to the

intelligentsia but was also part of the thinking of the common man much before the advent of the

of the British. However, hardly anything corresponding to this existed in the case of those we

know as tribes today. It is on this count that the category of tribe has been described as acolonial construction (Beteille, 1995). It is was not that in the pre- colonial period there were no

social groups corresponding roughly to those identified as tribes in various administrativereports of the British, but such groups which had distinct local and regional nomenclatures ( for

example, Santhal or Nagas) were not categorized together under the general category of tribe.

There were also no literati cutting across these groups who wrote or reflected on the nature oftribal society. In this sense the category of tribe is part of the modern consciousness brought into

being by the colonial sate and confirmed by its successors after Independence.

Finally, some attempts have been made to identify the category of Jana in Indian history as

roughly corresponding to the modern category of tribe, associated with an egalitarian system of

social organization and in categorical opposition to Jati or caste, with a hierarchical system oforganization. Others caution against an identification, arguing that the notion of Jana was more

amorphous, overlapping in many instances with other categories that would be classified as

non- tribes.

TRIBES AND THE CONCEPT OF MODERNITY

The term indigenous people is often used interchangeably to mean tribes and other original

natives in the Indian context. Adivasi people is also argued to be more apt to meanindigenous people. The contention behind these terms is to use them to mean a certain

category of people. Over the last few decades the term has been a source of a lot of contentionand political movements. There has been a shift in the approaches of people belonging to

certain lingual and regional groups for a claim to these terms.

As the question of tribes is closely linked with administrative and political considerations,

there has been increasing demands by various groups and communities for their inclusion in

the list of schedule tribes of the Indian constitution. The focus of the entire logic of creation ofthe list was conceptualized from features such as geographical isolation, simple technology

and condition of living, general backwardness to the practice of animism, tribal language,

physical features etc. These however varied across different contexts, leading to striking


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differences with respect to each other, marking a clear distinction between what Indian

anthropologists defined as tribes and what their discipline was obliged to define as tribes. The

demarcation of tribes from castes came, though vague, in 1901 when the census definition oftribes was associated with people who practiced animism.

Since Indias pre-independence period, three different schools of thought or ideologyregarding the tribal population are still persisting: (a) ideology of tribal separation, isolation or

alienation, (b) ideology of tribal assimilation, acculturation or absorption, and (c) ideology of

tribal integration or harmonization. India is not only a multilingual and multiethnic country,but also multicultural. Indian society is stuffed with various tribes, castes and religions. In

such a country, the first school claims that the tribal population should be kept cut off from the

orbit of mainstream non-tribal population, while the second school claims that they should beassimilated, acculturated or absorbed in the non-tribal mainstream society. But the third school

views that they should be civilized or socialized, and more fully integrated into the mainstream

society retaining their distinctive tribal culture. The third school acts as a reformist, which

seeks to bring about over all development of tribal communities and peaceful integration or

harmonization with the mainstream non-tribal larger society without dismantling their owncultural identity.

There has been considerable difference in the approach of colonial ethnographers and the

native ethnographers. While the primary aim of the former has been to distinguish tribes fromcaste, showing tribes to be living in complete isolation from the rest of the population and

therefore without any interaction and therefore without any interaction or interrelation with

them, that of the latter was to show the close association of the tribes with larger society or

civilization (Xaxa, 1999). Tribes are viewed in such a conceptualization in terms of theirrelations with the larger mainstream society, jeopardizing the identity of the tribal group or

community and placing their individual existence at risk.

Tribes are viewed as devoid of the positives of the modern society, presented as a backward

and illiterate society. However, with the advent of the so-called modernization in the tribal

context, it would cease to be tribal and become modern. Such a definition negates tribes theright to exist as a society in itself and similar to any other kind of society.

BEING INDIGENOUS

The term indigenous to be used in such a case for tribes or other groups and communitieswould overcome some of the inherent conceptual problems. The definition of indigenouspeople as given by the ILO convention of 1989 and the Working Group on Indigenous

Population set up by the Human Rights Commission of the UNO are conceptualized in three

aspects. Firstly, they are those people who lived in the country to which they belong beforecolonization or conquest by people from outside the country or the geographical region.Secondly, they have become marginalized as an aftermath of conquest and colonization by the

people from outside the region. Thirdly, such people govern their life more in terms of their

own social, economic and the cultural institution than the laws applicable to the society or thecountry at large. This definition looks at indigenous people as victims of conquest and

colonization; to demarcate and easily identify outsiders.


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To locate tribes in the conquest of the above definition of indigenous people in the Indian

context is with the use of the term adivasi, the word used in the Indian language for

indigenous people. This term has however been used effectively to mean tribes for more than acentury now to distinguish people different in terms of features, culture, language, social

organizations etc. Ghurye (1963) uses the term aborigines to define tribes as with the

contention that tribes would be autochthonous to India if not to the exact geographicallocation. Today only those who have been historically subjected to domination andsubjugation are said to compose the category of indigenous people.

In India, the coming of the Aryans is taken as the historical factor for determining the original

people of India. However, those belonging to the Dravidian language speaking group have not

been considered as indigenous people, even though it is recognized that they were theinhabitants before the coming of the Aryans owing to their non-marginalization. There can be

claims by several groups of people who are now absorbed in the mainstream Hindu society, as

much as by other groups who were pushed out of areas they first settled in and could not find

shelter elsewhere. Also the migratory nature of traditional tribes makes it difficult to limit the

definition to people settled and expanding in a particular geographical locale for aconsiderable period of time to classify them as natives of that particular place. Many tribes as

in the north-east as the Nagas, the Mizos and the Kukis are said to arrive much later than othernon-tribes (Xaxa, 1919). This poses the problem of including all tribes as earlier settlers before

the Aryans and hence concluding that all tribes are indigenous and non-tribes are not. Roy

Burman (1992) points out several groups as till recently being autonomous in terms ofpolitico-legal structures and a self regulated economy and hence belonging to the indigenous

identity. However, since most of such groups today are brought under administrative control

today, this definition does not succeed in defining such people as indigenous people as even

many groups with even simple technology were integrated with the wider society (Burman,1983).

The politicization and administrative constructions are stronger today for identification of

indigenous people and has come to be understood more in terms of oppression and

marginalization. The need to define these groups comes from the territorial and linguistic

insecurity from the others in terms of resources and share of power. This is the precisereason that various regional groups have tried to raise the theory of the sons-of-the-soil across

various spaces of time to maintain the domination of the groups in power against themarginalized in the manipulation of the concept of indigenous people, denying groups,

especially tribes of their own cultures and beliefs, control over natural and mineral resources.

They are denied the privileges and rights over their habitats, providing constant ground forcontest and exploitation.

INDIGENOUS CULTURES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE

ENVIRONMENT

THE CASE OF ORAONS

UNESCO report on the Indigenous People and relationship to land : A working paper (2000)

observesProfessor James Sakej Henderson attempts to illustrate this distinct relationship and

conceptual framework by stating that the Aboriginal vision of property was ecological space


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that creates our consciousness, not an ideological construct or fungible resource ... Their

vision is of different realms enfolded into a sacred space ... It is fundamental to their identity,

personality and humanity ... [the] notion of self does not end with their flesh, but continueswith the reach of their senses into the land. Such a relationship manifests itself in the

elements of indigenous peoples cultures, such as language. For example, an Inuit elder tried

to articulate this relationship by stating that our language contains an intricate knowledge ofthe Arctic that we have seen no others demonstrate.

The forest is not just economically important for the tribals, it also has deep religioussignificance. Tribal people inhabiting the Phulwari ki Nal wildlife sanctuary in Rajasthan can

be said to worship their environment. Bhils, for example, revere Magra Baosi, their name for

the living mountain who is believed to possess bones, blood, and hair in his rocks, rivers, trees,and mosses

.Magra Baosialong with other spiritual entities, such as animal and plant spirits

but also ancestors and ghosts, who are said to prefer a jungle residenceare installed(sthapa

hua) in a network of forest shrines and sacred groves, referred to variously as devrasthans,

devrasthals, and devravan Burman,(1994). These spiritual entities are tended by various

categories of religious specialists. For example, shaking, trembling, and emotionallychargedshamans (spiritual healers), are defined locally as those able to channel spiritual

energy from the forested mountain into their own bodies for the purpose of healing.

The Oraon tribes in the Chotanagpur plateau have a deep and intimate relationship with theenvironment. It is also associated with their traditional world-view that views nature as a

harmonic whole. They believe that the order of nature must be maintained in order to assure

human survival and well-being. This view is more eco-centric in the world-view which regards

ecology as the closely linked factor for existence. The Oraon world-view indicates that suchefforts cannot succeed and humanitys living conditions cannot be improved unless the

surrounding environment is respected and cared for in a responsible manner.

An interesting and significant aspect of Oraon mythology which signifies the construction of

close association with nature is the theory of construction, destruction and reconstruction of

Earth. Their god, Dharmes had destroyed the Earth when he saw it filled with vices byreigning fire on it. He had earlier created it by the suggestion of Mother Sita (supposed to be

the consort of Dharmes, signifying his wisdom). The monkey, Hanuman, forgot to inform the

god when half the world was cleansed and hence humans perished except for a pair who hid ina cave. After a while when the god realized that he was wrong to had mistakenly destroyed

humans, he went to Sita for advice who advised him to go hunting. It was at this place hefound the bhaia-bhain, the pair who had hid themselves. He gave them the knowledge of better

agriculture, taught them to make rice beer for offerings in case of crop failures and also gave

them the knowledge of procreation. He instructed them to sleep with a log in between andinstructed the boy that if he crossed the log, mankind would multiply. The boy in course of

time crossed the log and had an offspring and in that process the earth was filled again (Xalxo,

2006).

The peculiar aspects of the construction of sexuality which emerges from this mythology, is

significant because for them this mythologies and religious constructions define the way oflife, explaining the dominance in their own world-views on every aspect of life, social,

economic or household. The chief God has personified wisdom in the name of Sita, a woman


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By the later part of the 19th

century, tribes were starting to get recognized as different from

other cultures. They were however thought of as aborigines without caring much about their

exact origin. It was understood to be fundamentally different from caste in the sense of non-Hinduisation and separation of cultural practices and beliefs of the Hindu people, as beef

eating, food sharing etc.

The significant aspect in the entire discourse is the attributing of a primitive status to them.

Basic amongst these, from the mid-eighteenth century, was the hierarchy of modes of

subsistence. Hunting was considered the lowest stage in social evolution; it was succeeded bypastoralism and then agriculture, and industry was the culmination of development. Similarly,

the ways in which societies had transformed their physical environment was treated as

emblematic of their relationship with the time of modernity. Many of the groups that came tobe called tribes lived in forests or hills, seen as the "wild" portions of the land, away from the

"civilization" associated with plains or riparian areas. Indeed, the association of forests with

wildness was so strong that many colonial officials were to recommend that forests be cleared,

that these communities be removed from forests as a way of civilizing them, or that they be

introduced to "humanizing tendencies" of settled agriculture (Government of Bombay 1898)

The post-colonial construction of tribes and the language associated with the erstwhile wild

people saw a clear distinction of the nationalist and elite leaders of allotting caste a superior

status and subverting the tribes as wild and uncivilized, as most of the British officers. So, asfar as the politics of time went, proto-nationalist and nationalist understandings colluded with

the colonial discourse of anachronism, developing if anything, a much stronger emphasis on

how advanced the castes were relative to the tribes.

But the politics of time was and is intertwined with and inseparable from that of gender, and

this politics was so different that the kind of sympathy that colonial officials had for Bhil men

accused of witch killing no longer came easily. In an important and highly insightful article,Kaushik Ghosh (n.d.) has explored the theme of primitivism in Bengali modernity, focusing

specifically on how Kol societies were imagined by the Bengali middle class. Pointing out that

Bengali nationalism internalized the colonial characterization of Indians as effete, he suggests,first, that the ascription of masculinity to Kol society was part of an attempt to recover

masculinity for the middle class. Second, he suggests that the sexual objectification of Kol

women was especially significant since it occurred at a time when nationalist discourse wasconstructing Bengali womanhood in a language that erased her sexuality, and cast her

basically as an embodiment of motherhood and sacrifice.

These two attitudes- adivasi society as highly male, and adivasi women as highly sexual anderotic figures-were in all likelihood common to late-nineteenth and early- twentieth-century

Indian middle-class attitudes towards tribes. Both were different from colonial ascriptions.

Colonial officials harped on shared masculinity; middle-class discourse dwelt on the need to

become masculine, somewhat (though not quite) like the tribes. Colonial officials often castsavage women not as wildly sexual beings but as responsible and stabilizing figures in the

family; middle-class writers, in contrast, reserved these qualities for middle-class women,

denied the sexuality of upper- or middle-caste women, and displaced that ascription ofsexuality onto the "tribal woman." Thus it is that in nationalist accounts and post independence

ethnographies there is a far greater and more consistent emphasis on the "sexual freedom" of


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adivasi society and the sexuality of adivasi women than in colonial accounts!' The emphasis

on the sexuality of adivasi women continues today. But the ascription of the masculinity to

adivasi society was a more complex and tenuous affair. Late Indian nationalism often deniedmasculinity to adivasi societies, or at least marginalized the implications of such masculinity.

The nationalist movement was, in ways that have been demonstrated over and again by

scholars, a claim for the masculinity of the Indian people, and especially of the Indian middleclasses and upper castes. What made the Indian middle classes and upper castes especiallymasculine, in this representation, was their claim to control the project of modernization.

Modernity, rather than a splotchy palette of truthfulness, loyalty, bravery, and primitiveness

came to be the central defining parameter of masculinity (Skari, 1997).

The paternal attitude of the colonial rulers described Bhils as brave, honorable, wild yetsimple and ignorant. The feminizing of the colonized was an important ideological stance

which sought to justify the colonial rule. The categorization of castes in general as deceitful,

untrustworthy and lying and corrupt and comparing them to tribes in general as being

principled, honest and courageous sought to effeminate castes. They extended the colonial

agenda with this concept that castes which were effeminate were ruling the innocent andmasculine tribes and thus they had to be protected from the lazy and lying people. Therefore,

we can see the use of metaphors of traditional descriptions of feminity to describe theHinduism as a religion and Hindus as a people. It draws on the parallel in the portrayal of the

feminine as the site of disorder. In some of these aspects then, a corollary can be drawn that

the tribe in colonial understanding was to caste as male was to female.

In a departure from dominant British understandings, protection was not sought for an

endangered masculinity threatened by effeminate castes; rather, it was for a fragile adivasiculture-metaphorically feminine, and only about a marginal masculinity at best-which could

not survive the onslaught of the masculine modernity of the Indian nation (Guha, 1996).

CONCLUSION

The historical experience of the Indian people in terms of colonization has indeed created a

very significant understanding of how the nation views its indigenous people and how these

people view the nation. There has always been a lot of speculation over the nature ofdevelopment paradigm to be followed for the indigenous people in the country, which has

come to be understood as tribes, not without its own inherent problems in terms of definition

and conception. Peculiar customs, traditions and cultures separate these people from themainstream civilization, often thought to be modern and progressive. What is significant is to

understand the importance of their perceptions about these notions. The modern state has avery different political and economic agenda which usually comes in direct conflict with the

traditional rights of these people. Legal and customary rights and laws are usually framed

within these people on the basis of their own beliefs and practices. To understand and

deliberate on any issue concerning the indigenous people in the country, their ownunderstandings and perceptions need to be understood in the appropriate context before trying

to mainstream or develop them.


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