Q.What were the main arguments on either side of the debate about how to relate to tribal communities?

The debate had two clear sides, disagreeing over whether tribal communities were culturally distinct and over what policy followed from that.

[!ANSWER] British administrator-anthropologists argued for a protectionist policy of isolating tribal communities to shield their distinct cultures from exploitation. G.S. Ghurye argued the opposite nationalist position -- tribes were 'backward Hindus,' not a separate culture, so isolation only kept them as museums of primitive life, and their problems were shared with other backward sections of Indian society, not tribe-specific.

The question asks for the two sides of a real historical debate about tribal policy, so the answer should lay out each position and what each was actually arguing.

One side was the protectionist position, held mainly by British administrator-anthropologists. They treated tribal communities as culturally distinct populations, closer to what they saw as 'primitive' society, and argued that the state needed to actively shield these communities -- through isolation and special protection -- from exploitative contact with the wider Hindu and market economy, on the reasoning that unregulated contact would erode or destroy tribal ways of life.

The opposing side was the nationalist position, associated most closely with G.S. Ghurye. Ghurye rejected the premise that tribal communities were culturally separate from the rest of Indian society; he described them instead as 'backward Hindus,' meaning populations that shared in the broader social and religious world of Hindu India but stood at a more disadvantaged stage of development. From this, he argued that isolating tribal communities did not really protect them -- it turned them into living museums, preserved as specimens rather than allowed to develop. He further argued that the harms of contact with the wider economy were not unique to tribal groups at all; they affected backward and disadvantaged sections of Indian society more generally, so there was no special case for a separate, isolating tribal policy.

The two sides therefore disagreed both about a basic fact -- whether tribal communities were culturally distinct from caste Hindu society -- and about policy -- whether isolation/protection or integration into the national mainstream served tribal communities' interests better.

[!ANSWER] British administrator-anthropologists argued for a protectionist policy of isolating tribal communities to shield their distinct cultures from exploitation. G.S. Ghurye argued the opposite nationalist position -- tribes were 'backward Hindus,' not a separate culture, so isolation only kept them as museums of primitive life, and their problems were shared with other backward sections of Indian society, not tribe-specific.