Table Of ContentINDIAN TRIBES IN TRANSITION
India has witnessed a sea change in its social structure and political
culture since Independence. Despite the developmental model that the
country opted for, the hangover of the Raj continued to encourage
fissiparous tendencies dividing the Indian populace on the basis of
religion, ethnicity and caste hierarchy.
This book argues for the need to develop a fresh approach to dis-
mantling the stereotypes that have boxed the study of India’s tribal
communities. It underlines the significance of region-specific strate-
gies in place of an overarching umbrella scheme for all Indian tribes.
The author studies tribes in the context of changing political and
social identity, gender, extremism, caste dimensions and development
issues, and offers a new perspective on tribes to accommodate the
diversity and transformations within culture over time and through
globalization.
Lucid, accessible and rooted in contemporary realities, this volume
will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and
social anthropology, tribal studies, subaltern and Third World studies,
and politics.
Yogesh Atal is Professor Emeritus at the Madhya Pradesh Institute of
Social Science Research, Ujjain, and member of the Indian National
Commission for Co-operation with UNESCO, Ministry of Human
Resource Development, Government of India. He was appointed by
UNESCO as its Regional Adviser for Social and Human Sciences in
Asia and the Pacific and retired as Principal Director in 1997.
This page intentionally left blank
INDIAN TRIBES
IN TRANSITION
The need for reorientation
Yogesh Atal
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Yogesh Atal
The right of Yogesh Atal to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-96077-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66019-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 Anthropology today and tomorrow : a tribute to
Professor S. C. Dube 6
2 Defining ‘tribe’: a conceptual crisis 24
3 Socio-cultural dimensions of development 50
4 Issues in tribal development 61
5 Social science input to Man and the Biosphere
Programme (MAB) of UNESCO 73
6 Sustainable rural and tribal development 85
7 Tribal studies: need for reorientation 95
8 March of tribal women 110
9 Concern for indigenous knowledge 121
10 Tribal unrest, state politics and empowerment
in contemporary India 129
11 Anthropological perspective to study youth in Asia 139
v
CONTENTS
12 Ethics in research and research in ethics 159
13 Anthropology and the future of humankind 173
Bibliography 187
Index 189
vi
INTRODUCTION
This is a collection of my essays written in the past few years in response
to invitations by various institutions to serve as keynote addresses to
the national-level seminars and conferences on different aspects of tribal
development and connected anthropological researches in India.
I sincerely feel the need to promote thinking and research on a sig-
nificant, though grossly neglected, part of our multicultural society –
the tribals. Of late, there is some decline in anthropological research
on tribes, although people from other disciplines have begun showing
interest in them. That is why some of the universities, particularly in
the North-East, have both the department of anthropology and the
institute of tribal studies. In addition, some of the states have set up
tribal research institutes. However, these institutes which started with
much fanfare are now dwindling structures with poor and ill-trained
staff, generally headed by bureaucrats and statisticians who have no
commitment either to research or to the welfare of the tribals. Most
tribal research institutes have been reduced to tribal museums. There
is a need to revamp these centres of research with fresh perspectives
and well-trained scholars with a multidisciplinary orientation.
It should, however, be noted that social science research in this
country began with the study of the tribes. Defining anthropology as
the ‘study of other cultures’, British scholars – that included not only
trained anthropologists but also administrators and missionaries –
found India a good site for anthropological research. Their writings
constitute a significant part of literature on Tribal India. But anthro-
pology of those times had a different orientation. It was the queer, the
exotic and the primitive aspect of the lives of the tribes that attracted
alien ethnographers who described these cultures in the idiom of ‘eter-
nal present’, giving the impression that they are non-changing. Not only
this, the authors showed so much concern for the tribal cultures that
1
INTRODUCTION
they feared their disappearance with the onslaught of modernization.
Their plea for the preservation of tribal cultures was so very eloquent
and forceful that they were criticized for keeping the tribes as ‘anthro-
pological zoos’. The policy formulated for the tribes by Verrier Elwin
at the behest of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was called A Philosophy for
NEFA . That ‘philosophy’ clearly ordained to protect the tribals from
outside influences. However, Elwin responded to the mounting criti-
cism by denying his – or for that matter of the colonialists’ – intentions
to keep them in a zoo. By the wisdom of the hindsight one can now
say that the philosophy advocated was part of the British strategy to
‘divide and rule’. In our enthusiasm, created by the euphoria of inde-
pendence, we unquestioningly adopted the ‘manifest’ intentions and
allowed the creation of vested interests in the name of ‘tribes’ and
so-called oppressed classes merging in them several primordial groups
of different hues and fostering separate identities. Independent India
pursued the dual policy of separate identities of the so-called backward
groups – tribes and ‘lower’ castes – and promoting national integra-
tion. If gaining independence meant partition of India along commu-
nal lines – partial acceptance of a two-nation theory – it also meant
encouraging vested interests along caste and tribal lines. Strangely,
India of the 1950s was divided into Urban, Rural and Tribal segments.
While the first two groups were geographical, the third group was
based on autochthonous character of the populace. However, a liberal
interpretation of the word ‘tribal’ was then employed in terms of the
remote and isolated location of the various tribal communities.
It is a historical fact that in the beginning only anthropologists
studied the tribes; other social sciences showed complete indifference
towards them. Moreover, the students of tribal societies were expatri-
ates, and the discipline of anthropology was described as the study of
‘other cultures’.
The consequence has been the dearth of non-anthropological,
discipline-specific studies in the earlier years. As the discipline of anthro-
pology began making roots in India, Indians also started studying the
tribes, but these researchers, too, were non-tribals.
It was, in a way, a mixed blessing: the students focussing on the tribal
studies developed an interdisciplinary approach and attempted to
cover all aspects of tribal culture and society. The cultures were viewed
holistically. Such an emphasis led to the distinction between sociology
and anthropology. Sociologists were regarded as those that studied
their own society and anthropologists were regarded as those who
studied tribal societies. Besides, the holistic approach in anthropology
2
INTRODUCTION
also meant that a student graduating in that discipline also studied
and researched subject matters related to physical anthropology and
prehistoric archaeology.
Strangely enough, at the present stage of the development of social
sciences, the emphasis on holistic approach and on interdisciplinarity –
the approaches that anthropology mothered and nourished – is also
adopted by other social sciences. It must, however, be said that the
‘ideological underpinnings’ of anthropology of the colonial times were
rather different. Holistic approach was used to emphasize that all parts
of the culture are so intertwined that any change brought therein may
disrupt their integration. Ethnographies were used to demonstrate
the non-changing character of these societies and to classify them in
the category of the primitives and the backward so that they received
a separate treatment. This approach somehow prevented the tribal
groups from joining the so-called mainstream of Indian society.
Today the situation has changed. In the last 50 years, tribes have
been studied more by the Indians than the non-Indians. And in their
studies, disciplines other than anthropology have been increasingly
involved, with the result that the recent studies of the tribal areas have
varied orientations. The tribals themselves have changed significantly
in their social demographic characteristics. They are no longer prelit-
erate, and their life ways do not correspond to the descriptions of ear-
lier ethnographies. Literacy, urbanism, connectivity and participation
in the national political process are some of the indicators on which
tribal development can be rated. No doubt, there are deficits on all
these fronts in each of the 700-odd tribes listed in the State Schedule,1
but none of the tribal groups today corresponds to the ideal type of
a primitive society of the nineteenth century. Lumping them together
may be administratively convenient, but it is sociologically absurd.
There is nothing like a separate Tribal India. Tribes are scattered in
different parts of the country, they belong to different racial stocks
and speech communities and they live in varied habitats. Their con-
tacts with the neighbouring settlements have broken their isolation,
and they have thrown leadership which effectively partakes in Indian
polity.
It is sad that while the discipline of anthropology is growing in the
country as is evidenced by the number of teaching departments or
the number of anthropology graduates, not much research is taking
place in the tribal areas. Way back in 1973, when I was Director at
the ICSSR, we brought out a brochure identifying fresh priorities for
anthropological research in the hope of giving a spurt to research in
3
