India must redefine ‘tribes’ to reflect current realities

How relevant are decades-old classification of tribes across India? Anthropologists and sociologists must study and inform the public about the new realities across India’s tribal enclaves

The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution lists several tribes in India and the tribes thus listed are known as the ‘Scheduled Tribes’. As per Article 342, 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 parts of or 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’.

However, while promulgating the above, Article 342 does not specifically provide a definition or a description as to what constitutes a tribe. The ubiquitously accepted classification for a tribe is generally invoked from the description provided in the 1931 census, wherein such groups that are designated as ‘backward tribes’ live in the ‘Excluded’ and ‘Partially Excluded’ areas of India.

Defining Schedule Tribes

We get further elucidation and exposition about tribes from the first Backward Classes Commission (Kaka Kalelkar Commission, 1953) which says that the Scheduled Tribes ‘lead a separate exclusive existence and are not fully assimilated in the main body of the people. They may belong to any religion.’

Further, we have the Lokur Committee (1965) which recommended five criteria for identification of the tribes, namely, primitive traits, distinct culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and backwardness.

By and large the above descriptions/definitions seem to hold good in the contemporary context too from the perspectives and domains of the State, the civil society, and academic circles. Anthropology and sociology texts at different levels, going right up to the postgraduate one, still subscribe to the days of the genesis of the description of a tribe, and the primordial model of a tribe.

Outdated descriptions

Recent studies and writings on tribes and field visits to tribal areas do not support the primeval descriptions and models that are vastly prevalent today and are based on studies of yore, some of which happen to be from the colonial period, or sometime after Independence.

It is not out of place to mention here that many of these studies, particularly during the colonial period, looked at the tribals mostly as ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’, and if they were more charitable, then as ‘primitive’. So, in general, being ‘isolated’ and ‘shy’ meant ‘backwardness’. The groups that led a ‘separate exclusive existence’ and ‘were not fully assimilated in the main body of the people’ and had a ‘distinct culture’, that is, a different one from those of the so-called civilised groups, put them in a completely different and lower realm.

Further, some from among the Scheduled Tribes were officially designated by the State as ‘Primitive Tribal Groups’ (PTGs). Mercifully, some time back realisation dawned on the State that the label ‘Primitive’ was not only denigrating but was also indeed derogatory and offensive. Subsequently, a new categorisation emerged and the erstwhile moniker of PTGs was changed to ‘Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups’ (PVTGs). Today the class of Scheduled Tribes subsumes Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.

Impact of positive discrimination

As can be readily seen from the above discourse, groups that were different in terms of various cultural traits and were at different socio-cultural and economic levels from the so-called civilised groups, or were at variance from the purported ‘mainstream’, were designated as ‘backward’, and hence categorised as tribes.

What is the situation today regarding the status of the tribes? We are in the eighth decade from the time the Constitution of India came into force. Due to the policy of protective or positive discrimination (read reservations) and various other schemes and policies favouring the tribal population, plenty of changes and developments have occurred in the lives of the tribes.

The literacy rate of the tribes that was abysmally low (just 8.53 per cent) in 1961 has risen to 58.96 per cent as per the 2011 census. Taking into consideration just this single factor of rise in literacy rate has multifarious impacts on a given group and in its wake socio-economic indicators as also health indicators improve gradually. Also, we have empirical evidence that upward educational mobility, particularly among the Scheduled Tribes (and Scheduled Castes too), invariably means concomitant economic and social mobility due to the policy of positive discrimination.

Because of the above, overall reproductive health factors like the lowering of maternal and infant mortality occur. Besides, marked educational attainment does not happen in geographically isolated pockets but in the context of societies that are complex. That means the tribes concerned have been integrated to various degrees with other groups which happen to belong to different ethnicities in terms of customs and traditions, food and dress, language and religion, and so on.

This means that over time, the tribes have been cohabiting with different castes and religious groups for varying periods. Such integration leads to countless changes due to acculturation, and the tribes, over time, lose some of their exclusive cultural traits, but also, simultaneously do borrow and adopt social and cultural traits and get impacted economically from the societies with whom they share common locales.

Changes in Chhattisgarh

Recent field visits by this author to different districts of the much-in-the-news Chhattisgarh has shown as to how the Gonds, the largest tribal group in the state, have integrated with other ethnic groups. Also, Gond women have formed Self Help Groups (SHGs) with women from other castes.

In Magarlod, Dhamtari district, the Gond live in villages along with the Kamar (PVTG), the Sahu, and the Yadava (the latter two are OBCs). In Dumarpali, Raigarh district, the Gond cohabit with the Sahu and the Nishat (SC), and have formed SHGs with the latter two. Similar, multi-ethnic cohabitations are come across in Kanker and many other districts of Chhattisgarh. Many Gond households have also gone in for entrepreneurial pursuits in many areas of the state by establishing piggeries and poultries, wherein they rear quails too.

What is observed in Chhattisgarh is by no means an isolated incident. In the Northeast of India too we come across different kinds of developments where many of the tribes happen to be the major communities. Anthropologists and sociologists now have the task of delineating such developments based on more empirical data from different tribal enclaves, and inform the larger society as regards the way new sorts of integration are occurring.

The primordial notion of tribal homogeneity itself is under question. Incipient, if not overtly manifest, socio-economic stratification has emerged and is evident among the tribes.

(The author thanks the Bharat Rural Livelihood Foundation for arranging and supporting his field visits to Chhattisgarh)

(M A Kalam, a social anthropologist, is visiting professor, International Institute of Migration and Development, Thiruvananthapuram.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.