Tribe – The Career of a Concept

The debate about whether tribes are fundamentally different from caste-based peasant society or merely one end of a continuum dominated the 1960s. Those who argued for the continuum saw tribes as less stratified — with fewer levels of hierarchy — and holding a more community-based, rather than individual, notion of resource ownership. Opponents, however, insisted that tribes were wholly different because they lacked the central notions of purity and pollution that define the caste system. This argument for a tribe-caste distinction rested on an assumed cultural difference: Hindu castes, with their beliefs in purity, pollution, and hierarchical integration, versus ‘animist’ tribals, with their more egalitarian and kinship-based modes of social organisation.

By the 1970s, all major definitions of tribe had been shown to be faulty. The tribe-peasantry distinction did not hold on any of the commonly advanced criteria:

• Size: Some Indian “tribes” like the Santhal, Gonds, and Bhils are very large and spread over extensive territory.
• Isolation: Many tribes have long since turned to settled agriculture (e.g., Munda, Hos), and even hunting-gathering tribes like the Birhors of Bihar employ specialised households to make baskets, press oil, etc.
• Religion: In a number of cases, “castes” (or non-tribals) have turned to hunting and gathering in the absence of other alternatives.
• Means of livelihood: The criteria simply did not separate tribes from peasants in practice.

The discussion on caste-tribe differences was accompanied by a large body of literature on the mechanisms through which tribes were absorbed into Hindu society throughout the ages. These mechanisms included Sanskritisation, acceptance into the Shudra fold following conquest by caste Hindus, and acculturation. The whole span of Indian history is often seen as an absorption of different tribal groups into caste Hindu society at varying levels of the hierarchy, as their lands were colonised and forests cut down. This process is viewed in two contrasting ways:

• As natural, parallel to the process by which all groups are assimilated into Hinduism as sects.
• As exploitative, with later writers concentrating on the exploitative and political nature of the incorporation, while the early school of anthropologists tended to emphasise the cultural aspects.

Some scholars have argued that there is no coherent basis for treating tribes as “pristine” — original or pure — societies uncontaminated by civilisation. Instead, they propose that tribes should be seen as “secondary” phenomena arising out of the exploitative and colonialist contact between pre-existing states and non-state groups like the tribals. This contact itself creates an ideology of “tribalism”: the tribal groups begin to define themselves as tribals in order to distinguish themselves from the newly encountered others.

Nevertheless, the common idea that tribes are like stone-age hunting and gathering societies untouched by time persists, even though this has not been true for a long time. To begin with, adivasis were not always the oppressed groups they are now:

• There were several Gond kingdoms in Central India, such as Garha Mandla and Chanda.
• Many of the so-called Rajput kingdoms of central and western India actually emerged through a process of stratification among adivasi communities themselves.
• Adivasis often exercised dominance over the plains people through their capacity to raid them and through their services as local militias.
• They also occupied a special trade niche, trading forest produce, salt, and elephants.

Moreover, the capitalist economy’s drive to exploit forest resources and minerals and to recruit cheap labour brought tribal societies into contact with mainstream society a long time ago.

National Development versus Tribal Development

The imperatives of ‘development’ have governed attitudes towards tribes and shaped state policies. National development, particularly in the Nehruvian era, involved the building of large dams, factories, and mines. Because tribal areas were located in mineral-rich and forest-covered parts of the country, tribals have paid a disproportionate price for the development of the rest of Indian society. This kind of development has benefited the mainstream at the expense of the tribes. …