Sociology · Ch 2 — Social Institutions: Continuity and Change
Tribal Communities
Tribal Communities
Understanding Tribal Communities
The word 'tribe' is surprisingly modern, even though the communities it describes are among the oldest in India. For a long time, sociologists and administrators defined tribes not by what they were, but by what they were not. Tribes were seen as communities that lacked a written religious text, did not have a formal state or political system, and had no sharp class divisions. This negative definition, however, only tells half the story.
A more useful approach is to classify tribes using two broad sets of characteristics: permanent traits and acquired traits.
Permanent Traits: The Unchanging Markers
These are features that are relatively stable and often used to map the distribution and diversity of tribal communities.
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Region and Distribution: The tribal population is spread across India, but with clear concentrations. About 85% of all tribals live in a wide belt called 'middle India', stretching from Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to West Bengal and Odisha in the east. The heart of this region includes Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and parts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Of the remaining 15%, over 11% live in the North-Eastern states, leaving just over 3% in the rest of the country. However, if you look at a tribe's share of a state's population, the North-East has the highest concentrations. In states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland, tribals make up over 60% and sometimes up to 95% of the population. In contrast, in most other states, the tribal population is less than 12%, except in Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
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Ecological Habitat: Tribal communities live in a wide range of environments, including hills, forests, rural plains, and even urban industrial areas.
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Language: Tribal languages fall into four major groups. Two of these — Indo-Aryan and Dravidian — are shared with the general Indian population. Tribals account for only about 1% of Indo-Aryan speakers and about 3% of Dravidian speakers. The other two groups, Austric and Tibeto-Burman, are almost exclusively tribal. Tribals account for 100% of Austric speakers and over 80% of Tibeto-Burman speakers.
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Physical-Racial Traits: Tribes are classified under five racial categories: Negrito, Australoid, Mongoloid, Dravidian, and Aryan. The last two are again shared with the rest of the Indian population.
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Size: The size of tribal communities varies enormously. The largest tribes, like the Gonds, Bhils, Santhals, Oraons, Minas, Bodos, and Mundas, number over a million people each. At the other extreme, some Andamanese islander groups may have fewer than a hundred members. According to the 2001 Census, the total tribal population was about 84 million, or 8.2% of India's population. By the 2011 Census, this had grown to about 104 million, or 8.6% of the population.
Acquired Traits: How Tribes Change and Are Classified
These traits are based on a community's interaction with the wider world, especially the Hindu mainstream and the modern economy. Two main criteria are used:
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Mode of Livelihood: Tribes can be categorised as fishermen, food gatherers and hunters, shifting cultivators, settled peasants, and plantation or industrial workers.
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Degree of Assimilation into Hindu Society: This is the dominant classification in both academic sociology and public affairs. It can be viewed from two perspectives:
- From the tribes' point of view: Communities are differentiated by their attitude towards Hindu society. Some are positively inclined towards Hinduism, while others resist or oppose it.
- From the mainstream point of view: Tribes are seen in terms of the status accorded to them in the Hindu caste hierarchy. Some have been given a relatively high status, but most have been assigned a low status.
The Career of a Concept: The Great Tribe-Caste Debate
During the 1960s, a major academic debate emerged: are tribes fundamentally different from caste-based Hindu society, or are they just one end of a continuum?
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The Continuum Argument: Scholars who argued for a continuum saw tribes as not fundamentally different from caste-peasant society. They were simply less stratified (with fewer levels of hierarchy) and had a more community-based, rather than individual, notion of resource ownership.
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The Difference Argument: Opponents argued that tribes were wholly different because they lacked the central notion of purity and pollution that is the bedrock of the caste system. Tribals, often described as 'animist', had more egalitarian and kinship-based social organisations.
By the 1970s, both sides of the argument were shown to be flawed. The tribe-peasantry distinction did not hold up against any of the commonly used criteria:
- Size: Some 'tribes' like the Santhal, Gonds, and Bhils are enormous and spread over vast territories.
- Isolation: Many tribes have been in contact with mainstream society for centuries.
- Religion: The religious practices of tribes and castes often overlap.
- Means of Livelihood: Many tribes, like the Munda and Hos, have long since taken up settled agriculture. Conversely, in the absence of other options, some caste groups have turned to hunting and gathering.
This debate was accompanied by a large body of literature on how tribes were absorbed into Hindu society over the ages. The mechanisms included Sanskritisation (adopting upper-caste rituals and customs), being accepted into the Shudra fold after conquest, and general acculturation. This process is seen by some as natural, and by others as exploitative. Early anthropologists focused on the cultural aspects of this absorption, while later writers emphasised its exploitative and political nature.
Some scholars have even argued that the very idea of tribes as 'pristine' or 'original' societies is a myth. They propose that tribes are actually a 'secondary' phenomenon, arising from the exploitative contact between pre-existing states and non-state groups. This contact itself creates an ideology of 'tribalism', where groups begin to define themselves as tribals to distinguish themselves from the newly encountered 'others'.
The popular image of tribes as 'stone-age' hunting-gathering societies untouched by time is a powerful but inaccurate stereotype. History shows that adivasis were not always oppressed. There were powerful Gond kingdoms in Central India, like Garha Mandla and Chanda. Many so-called Rajput kingdoms emerged from the stratification of adivasi communities themselves. Adivasis often dominated plains people through raids and by serving as local militias, and they held a special niche in the trade of forest produce, salt, and elephants.
National Development versus Tribal Development
The drive for national development, especially in the post-independence Nehruvian era, has had a devastating impact on tribal communities. This development involved building large dams, factories, and mines. Because tribal areas are rich in minerals and forests, tribals have paid a disproportionate price for the progress of the rest of Indian society.
- Dispossession of Land: The exploitation of minerals and the construction of hydroelectric projects have led to the widespread dispossession of tribal land.
- Loss of Forests: The systematic exploitation of forests, which began under British rule and continued after independence, has been a major blow to communities that depended on them.
- Private Property: The introduction of private property in land has disadvantaged tribes, whose traditional systems were based on community-based collective ownership.
- In-Migration: Development projects have triggered heavy in-migration of non-tribals into tribal regions. This disrupts tribal communities and cultures and accelerates their exploitation. For example, the industrial areas of Jharkhand have seen a dilution of the tribal share of the population. The most dramatic case is Tripura, where the tribal share of the population was halved within a single decade, reducing them to a minority.