The National Committee Report on Tribal People

Vying for Tribal Status

Although the report does not focus on De-notified Communities much, understandably so, for its concern is with tribes in general, it does make some insightful comments on them, eventually consolidating the idea that those in India who are constrained to lead an abominable existence, living on the margins of hunger, are the tribal people, some of whom have been listed as Scheduled Tribes and many others who are still knocking at the doors of the administration and judiciary for their recognition as a constitutional category. We do not know for certain the number of such cases that are pending decisions but the fact that there were a large number of such cases in 1993 (Singh 1993:12) means that their number must have swelled several-fold over the last 25 years, with only a handful cases being decided in their favour. Known to our memory is the Gujjar demand for inclusion in the list of the Scheduled Tribes in Rajasthan, but umpteen other demands have not only been voiced from time to time but sustained through social movements and political action. It is quite likely that in some cases the academic help by a few anthropologists might have been sought to render justification to the peoples’ claim for tribal status. ² Against this backdrop, the report (p. 24) submits: ‘[The] demand for inclusion in the category of Scheduled Tribe will continue in the future’.

Why do different groups in different parts of the country strive for the nomenclature of a Scheduled Tribe? Field studies among ‘De-notified Tribes’ which actually are listed as ‘Scheduled Castes’ point out that one of their major demands is their transfer from the category in which they are presently placed to that of ‘Scheduled Tribe’. Why is a tribe an ‘important marker of identity’ among communities in India? Is it because the term ‘tribe’ is free from the stigma that is inherent in the practice of untouchability and confinement to their settlement with a limited access to the outside world? Even while they may be ‘flesh-eaters, spirit drinkers, pleasure-seekers, merry-makers and unmindful of the Hindu mores of purity and impurity’, as they are sometimes described in ethnographic accounts, tribal people are not discriminated in the way caste is. In other ways, tribes are not regarded as the ‘abettors of untouchability’. The list of Scheduled Tribes, it is well known, was prepared keeping in mind the criterion of ‘isolation’, whereas with Scheduled Castes ‘discrimination’ was the main index.

Furthermore, in spite of their purported Hinduisation, resulting primarily because of their long-term exchange relations with Hindu communities in their neighbourhoods, they are still considered ‘outside the Hindu fold’ and in their self-perception, they also think so. Their recognition as ‘tribal’ serves two purposes: first, they continue to keep their entitlement to the benefits of the policy of compensatory discrimination; and second, they are outside (thus, ‘free from’) the oppressive Hindu caste order. Thus, not surprisingly, in the future, it is likely that not only more and more groups would vie for a Scheduled Tribal status but also it is quite likely that such a demand of a group would be severely opposed by those who are already listed. The ‘insiders’ would not like the ‘outsiders’ to find a place among them, notwithstanding a similarity in their social and cultural characteristics, for this would make the competition for scarce resources, jobs and scholarships, seats in the state and central bodies, stiffer. The conflict between the Meena (a ‘Scheduled Tribe’) and the Gujjar (an aspirant to the status of ‘Scheduled Tribe’) in Rajasthan is an example known full well to us.

Defining Tribe

Just like the Draft of the National Policy for Scheduled Tribes (2006) and Justice Jasraj Chopra’s report on the demand of the Gujjars for recognition as a Scheduled Tribe (2007), the report under discussion also puts on record the problems we encounter while examining the claim of a community as a tribe. In an earlier article, the main architect of the report, Virginius Xaxa (1999), had said that the state is principally concerned with a classification of communities into different categories—with scheduling (or de-scheduling) of tribes, in this context—than with taking up the issue of identifying the operational criteria and parametres according to which a community of people could be defined as a tribe.

A community called itself by a name, but whether it was a ‘tribe’ or ‘caste’ or ‘the other backward class’ or ‘de-notified tribe’ was the taxonomic categorisation that outsiders (the political state in most cases) attempted for them. The common term that a community used in India for describing it was jati, which meant ‘kind’, ‘breed’, ‘people having a common ancestry’; it certainly did not exclusively mean ‘caste’, as the term is now usually understood (Srivastava, 2016). It was indeed revealing to me in December 1971 when in the village of Kamre in Ranchi, both the Oraon and the Brahmin referred to themselves by the same term, jati: so the Oraon were ‘Oraon jati’, the Brahmin, ‘Brahmin jati’. If we have imposed these appellations (like tribe, caste) on people, for one or the other purpose, it is expected from us that we would justify the classification of people in different categories on the basis of the non-polemical definitions of these concepts that are being used. It is here that the ‘definition of tribe’ becomes imperative, for having a relatively uncontested classification. However, our observation is that those anthropologists, who at one time, were unswervingly committed to defining a concept, are now shying away from this exercise. They now think that the social phenomena are too fuzzy (and ‘unbounded’) to be defined in precise terms; attempts to offer definitions depress into quagmires and their protagonists are charged for succumbing to much discredited positivism.

Tribe is Janus-faced

The outcome of this thinking is that we tend to proceed intuitively, in a conjectural manner, assuming erroneously that we all share the same understanding of a concept. And, if the concept happens to be of the ‘tribe’, we think that ‘their’ (the people’s) understanding is similar to that of ‘ours’ (the outsiders), which is incorrect and misleading. In fact, by skirting the matter of definition and not realising its importance, we are doing great disservice to social science and the cause of advocacy and action. Howsoever difficult, debatable and stupendous this task may be it is our primary duty to define the concepts, which actually condition the distribution of scarce resources among different groups of people. The exercise has to be judiciously and meticulously carried out, lest it exacerbates ill-will among communities and denies some of them of their rightful place in the acknowledged list of beneficiaries.

The Xaxa Report reiterates the distinction between ‘tribe as a social and cultural entity’ and ‘tribe as a politico-administrative category’ (p. 24). The first designation is entirely based upon the anthropological criteria emanating from the statement that a ‘tribe is a cultural isolate’. This means that for understanding its social organisation and way of life, there is little need to refer to other communities or the exterior world for the tribe is self-contained having restricted relations with other communities. This perspective is often known as one of ‘methodological holism’.

Earlier, anthropologists regarded isolation (geographic, included) as the sole criterion for defining a tribe and now the emphasis is on the tribe’s attempt towards identity assertion and cultural rejuvenation since this is quintessential for creating internal solidarity. Earlier, a tribe was seen more or less as a fixed system, now it is seen as an unremitting process of fortifying the identity of a community, taking its past and memories, the episodes of its struggle and protest as principal cultural ingredients. Earlier, a tribe was studied as an ‘enduring entity,’ now ‘tribalisation amidst globalisation’ has captured our attention. From a ‘typological approach’, we have now graduated to a ‘processual approach’.

For the second, the matter of identifying communities for constitutionally granted benefits against the backdrop of virulent protests that may be launched by ‘in-groups’, those who are already scheduled, for they do not want the others to be included as their competitors, it is extremely important that a definition of tribe is attempted keeping in mind the changes that have settled down in the tribal ways of living and the irrevocable interaction of tribes with the outside world. We are still following the criteria that were laid down in the B. N. Lokur Committee (1965), ³ the shortcomings of which are well known (Srivastava, 2008). In fact, as stated previously, different types of reports, issued by the central and state governments as well as non-state actors, have expressed the pressing need to have a fresh look at the issue of the definition of tribe so that the scheduling of communities is objectively and undisputedly attempted.

Giving a critical summary of the various attempts that were made to define a tribe and note the changes that have occurred in its people, the report states that as the Constitution is committed to the protection of tribal communities, the ‘focus is on the devise of scheduling’ (p. 51). The question at this juncture is: ‘How to schedule?’ We cannot go by the people’s designations of themselves, which we know that they are, in all likelihood, motivated (and instigated) by economic and political concerns. There must be a scientific way of doing it which would bury all objections and unjust claims to rest. The matter is further complicated because the report, in its perusal, refers to ‘tribal communities’ in general, and not just to 705 Scheduled Tribes (p. 24), comprising 8.6 per cent of the total population of India. By doing so, it has included within its purview a number of communities which may be tribal in ‘social and cultural terms’, but have yet to be recognised so for ‘political and administrative purposes’.

Against this background, when a community straddles between two statuses, which may be the case with the other communities as well that figure in other lists whose interests are also to be protected by the political state, it is important that a definition is evolved that takes care of both the ‘socio-cultural’ and ‘politico-administrative’ aspects.

The difference then between these two aspects has to be kept in mind. The definition of tribe lays emphasis on kinship, religion, dialect and a subsistence economy, whereas that of the Scheduled Tribe on poverty, backwardness, marginalisation and a low Human Development Index. For the first, a tribe is ‘closed, enduring and culturally configured’; for the second, it is ‘open, changing and economically penurious’. External impacts are marginal to the first, and if at all they are there, they are benign; to the second, external factors are oppressive and exploitative, and are central to understanding the predicament and dynamism of tribes, irrespective of the social esteem they wielded in the past.

While delineating a definition of tribe, we must also examine the relevance of two other terms—out of a multitude of terms used for Indian tribes—namely, adivasi and ‘indigenous people’, which are quite in vogue, giving the impression that these can be used interchangeably for ‘tribe’ and ‘Scheduled Tribe’. The first term, analogous to the term dalit, is employed as an ‘umbrella’ to bring under its canopy all ‘pristine inhabitants’ of the land together with a political agenda, to resist usurpation of their land, siphoning off their resources and defilement of their rivers. The term ‘indigenous’, which has a tremendous heuristic value in the case of Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, is contested in the Indian context and unless the ‘indigenousness’ of the communities is archaeologically and historically established it is advisable to refrain from using it (Béteille, 1998). A people’s claim over a tract of land where they have been residing for years is one thing and the assertion that they are indigenous to that area is another. Each of these claims has its own political implications with long-term consequences.

Tribes and the ‘Mainstream’

Periodically, task forces, committees and commissions, often named after their respective chairpersons, have been set up to look into the condition of tribes and suggest workable measures for their amelioration. Unexceptionally in the reports that these august bodies have submitted at different points in time, two points are worthy of notice.

First, while Indian society is fast developing in domains of commerce, education and science and technology, which have increased its productive output, millions of Indians are still not a part of the growth story which is so proudly told. The gains of development have not reached the tribal hinterlands with the people suffering a double whammy of disadvantaged habitations and an irremediable history of neglect. Thus, along with the pockets of affluence, one glaringly comes across islands of deprivation, poverty and gaping inequality; and so to redress this, the achievements of development should be equitably distributed. Since tribes are the ‘silent sufferers’ of gross inequality, and do not have the history of protesting the way the others do, we need to improvise not only specific programmes for them but also their delivery mechanisms have to be different. What has to be ensured is that these schemes reach people and bring about the desired qualitative effects. The present report, like the earlier ones, follows the same battery of thoughts which ipso facto is a normatively correct way of speaking about the relationship between development (an ‘external impetus’) and tribes (the ‘recipient groups’).

Second, for the earlier reports, the goal of these carefully introduced developmental changes was to ‘integrate’ the tribal people within the ‘mainstream’ of Indian society. The Draft of the National Tribal Policy (2006) called this process the ‘mainstreaming’ of tribes, without letting its readers know what is included in the ‘mainstream’. The policy of integration, which is believed to have been inaugurated in Verrier Elwin’s A Philosophy for NEFA (1959) was regarded as the sharpest rejoinder to the idea of assimilation that persuaded, cajoled, encouraged and even forced people to accept a uniform set of cultural norms and practices. Integration allowed different cultures to thrive, but in the private sphere, and in the public domain, it meant rendering allegiance to a ‘common national culture’, which in fact was understood as the ‘mainstream’. That it might just be composed of the norms and values of the dominant culture cannot be ruled out.

The report, it seems to me, is well aware of the problems that come with the usage of the concept of ‘mainstream’. Let the tribespersons be empowered to seek their differential linkages with the institutions that modern India provides. Let them be free to choose their cultural patterns and the ways in which they want to interpret (and reinterpret) their traditions, the elements of their culture they wish to keep and those they wish to discard. Let them improvise the relations of their identity and customs with Indian modernity. This way would result varying combinations of the syntheses of tradition and modernity, thus asserting the truth of unity in diversity.

Resources and Livelihood

Tribes inhabit the resource-rich areas of the country. For instance, the forest cover is greater than 67 per cent in 58 districts, of which 51 are ‘tribal districts’. The tribes use natural resources of their habitat for subsistence, for their bare minimal survival. Many of them have yet not developed the concept of surplus and thus are far away from commercial interests. It is not a romantic view of tribal communities, which is quite in vogue in popular literature as well as anthropological writings, but field ethnographers have repeatedly described in great detail the respectful attitudes that tribal people have towards nature. For instance, for them, the forest is a sacred place containing abundant food resources. The tribal ethos is that they would target only as much food as they needed for their survival. They also take adequate care of the forests. They know that forests are their lifeline. If they are depleted the life of their people would fall in jeopardy. ⁴ It was indeed heart-rending to them when they were accused by the colonial powers for destroying their forests, which actually became a pretext for declaring forests as ‘public property’ to be cared for by the state leading to the classification of forests as Reserved, Protected, Wildlife Sanctuaries, National Parks, all leading eventually to the ‘marginalisation of tribes’ (p. 49). In their own forest land, whenever they entered to collect dead wood or fallen leaves and fruits for their survival, they were labelled ‘encroachers’ who could be legally persecuted. It was only with the coming of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 that the situation could be redeemed in favour of tribal communities.

Tribal areas are fabulously rich in minerals. The states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have considerable mineral reserves—they have 70 per cent of India’s coal deposits, 80 per cent of high-grade iron, 60 per cent of bauxite and cent per cent of the nation’s chromium reserves. An important fact is that half of the top mineral-yielding districts are tribal and they also have a forest cover of 28 per cent, more than the national average of 20.9 per cent. The spectrum of wealth in tribal areas, thus, was (and is) sufficient reason for any power to alienate them from their traditional habitats.

The report portrays a sensitive account of the lives of people whose land was acquired (by persuasion or coercion) using the principle of ‘eminent domain’ for the extraction of minerals and forest wealth; or for setting up industries, national parks, railway lines; or for settling refugees, and in some cases, streams of immigrants encroached upon tribal land. Being highly gullible, tribal families lost their land because of an incorrect interpretation of laws—recording of tribal land as government land, manipulation of records and the general evil intentions of outsiders who had befriended the highly credulous tribal people for acquiring control over their land. Earlier, moneylenders and liquor vendors had these nefarious designs. We have a rich folklore that tells us of tribal indebtedness continuing for generations, and of tribal men being taken away by merchants who were venturing out of their traditional locations to new emerging commercial centres in different parts of the country to set up their businesses. These men worked for shop owners almost like bonded labourer as their parents and grandparents were ‘eternally’ indebted to their patrons and so they were forced to work in unjust conditions, perhaps for their entire life. Debt-bondage trapped people for ever. Even after legal intervention, we hear of places where tribal bondage continues unabated.

Although beginning with the colonial period, after our Independence, the so-called ‘development projects’ increased exponentially, for the notion of development came to be equated with growth in material appurtenances and economic wealth, requiring not only vast amounts of resources, particularly minerals, but also the land the tribal people owned or possessed for years. Among the many things, development also meant an ‘involuntary displacement of people’, either to be shifted to unknown places with no guarantee of their livelihood or to be left on their own to fend for themselves.

The report tells us that the total number of people displaced because of dams—and India is one of the largest dam-building country in the world—is somewhere between 20 and 50 million people, of which 40 per cent are tribal, and considering the fact that they are 8.6 per cent of the total population, their number is disproportionately represented in the figure of displaced persons. Surely, we need to look closely at the non-displacement strategies of development. It is clear from the debates that are being pursued in tribal communities, especially among women, that the meaning of development that the state patronises is diametrically opposed to theirs: the latter want to live with dignity, freedom to choose the lifestyle they consider as the best and are justly protected from the stratagems that deprive them of their lifeline.

Development versus Protection

A point that runs through the entire report is that while focused attention has been paid all these years to bringing about development in tribal areas, the protection of people from the instruments of exploitation, which have multiplied with the impetuous forces of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, was accorded a secondary place. The construction of roads, railway lines, dams and water reservoirs, factories and industries, mining sites and initiation of afforestation projects, building up of colonies for the new settlers and factory workers, all hailed as the insignia of development, were at the cost of tribal land and livelihood, causing swarms of displaced and project-affected people, who flocked to cities to lead the life in destitution and humiliation, working in the tertiary sectors of village and urban economies. A significant number of domestic help, virtually running middle class homes in cities and metropolises, are from tribal areas, and just a decade ago (or even less) they were land-owners, living a life of dignity and self-determination when one or the other ‘development project’, promising them of ‘windfalls’, deprived them in reality of their livelihood, and they were forced to migrate to other locations for survival. The cities, at least, ensured that ‘they would not go hungry’. Studies of De-notified Tribes also tell us that people were forced to resort to a career in crime because their habitats were spoiled, they were forced to leave their land, forests and occupations and were unable to vouchsafe their survival (Gandhi, 2008).

Which factor would largely explain the marginalisation of tribal people? According to the report, it is the lopsidedness of ‘development’ and ‘protection and security’ for the people.

Initially, tribes were ‘docile bodies’. They complied with the commands of the ‘protagonists of development’, soon to discover that gains of these programmes were far from reaching them. This disillusionment accumulating over time has caused among tribes (and the other analogous groups) serious doubts about the acclaimed benefits from development.

The scenario is now locally set for a critical introspection of the changes that are fast occurring. Although tribal people are not ‘politically very vocal’ (p. 398), barring some of their renowned leaders (such as Jaipal Singh or Ram Dayal Munda, in recent years), they have quickly understood that development is a ‘mirage’, a ‘djinn that does not produce miracles’, and, therefore, it must be rejected, with its ‘class character’ candidly exposed. Tribal protests, often peaceful, against the corporate interests are often dealt with violently by para-military forces of the state and private security staff of the corporations (pp. 30–31). The discourse that outsiders (particularly those sections of society whose interests are thwarted by tribal resistance) have thence created is that ‘tribes are anti- development’, ‘they are ultra-conservative’ and ‘they defy change’. However, empirical studies clearly state that these images of tribes are defective, for people do not oppose development per se, they reject a particular kind of development, one that has perniciously affected their livelihood, made them homeless and snatched their traditional rights over forests and land.

The report makes an important contribution to the understanding of left-wing extremism in India which it relates to the mounting frustration caused by a mutual reinforcement of the following factors: massive displacement of people because of development programmes, deprivation, widespread poverty, lack of educational facilities, incessant exploitation by outsiders (such as traders, moneylenders), poor civil administration and a feeling of being neglected for years. The report suggests that the situation can be rectified by the state’s upholding of the sanctity of law in these areas, exercising vigilance on all institutions that work therein so that the rights of local people are not marauded. As a consequence of the lackadaisical attitude of law-enforcing agencies, untrammelled market forces have entered into these areas, eventually causing a serious trust deficit in people and a feeling that the administration is unwilling to protect their rights and interests. Therefore, for bringing the situation under control, confidence should be built among people by protecting their land and forest rights, and by providing them with the benefits of development.

While thinking about institutions of economy, polity and governance, a common proclivity on our part is to sidetrack the issues of culture which is not the case with this report. Tribal people, like any other community anywhere in the world, have the right to preserve their culture. They should have the prerogative to decide, as was said earlier, which aspects of their customs and practices they would like to preserve and which they would like to rebut. Information on the tribal ways of living, their value systems, episodes of their respectful attitude towards their environment—in essence, the ‘positive aspects’ of their living, the ‘richness of their culture’ (p. 25), their ‘cultural genius (p. 396)—needs to be disseminated through mass media, so that non-tribal people, who sometimes harbour negative thoughts about tribes, come face-to-face with what the reality is. For ‘centring tribal issues’, the report proposes the establishment of ‘tribal chairs’ in universities, to focus on researches on tribal communities in Fifth Schedule areas (p. 397). Our suggestion is that the need of the centres of tribal research is more in metropolises for perilous beliefs and stereotypes germinate more here than in tribal-dominated areas and the reason for this is that they hardly get an opportunity to interact with tribals, and therefore nurse skewed ideas about them. Surely, native anthropology and auto-ethnographies are on the rise but for breaking the shackles of intellectual ghettoisation (for example, only ‘tribals can understand tribals’), it is important that non-tribals are inspired to take up the study of tribal communities and report on them.

The report has a string of suggestions regarding the improvement and transformation of tribal profiles of education, health, governance, empowerment, gender relations, statutory council and legal systems and stopping of land alienation, and each one of these components deserves a separate discussion. Unfortunately, the reports of different commissions and committees, in which not only are great minds concertedly involved, but their finalisation also requires heavy financial expenditure, remain undiscussed; the wider world often does not come to know of their arguments and suggestions. Besides being a product of hard work, each report has its novelty and if it is not taken up for a critical appraisal the entire effort is wasted.