Given the diversities among tribal communities in India, in which specific contexts should they be considered as a single category?. (UPSC CSE Mains 2022 - General Studies Paper 1)
- European anthropologists, with the arrival of colonialism, applied the term "Tribe" to the people who lived in a ''primitive'' or ''barbarous'' condition in backward areas and did not know writing. Since then, the word ''tribe'' has become a technical and administrative term to denote the aborigines.
- The tribes in India are generally referred as ''adivasis'', meaning, indigenous people or original inhabitants of the country. Tribal society is often referred varyingly as ''primitive society'', ''folk society'', ''simple society'' and ''pre- literate society''.
- The tribal people are isolated in ecology, demography, economy, politics and other social behaviour from other ethnic groups. They live in various ecological and geo-climatic conditions ranging from plains and forests to hills and inaccessible areas. Most of them are in isolation and are considered socially, economically, educationally and technologically backward.
In the conceptualization of tribes in anthropology, three distinct but interrelated elements are intertwined.
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- Firstly, tribes in anthropology are first of all invariably seen as society. It is a society like all other societies. The characteristic of tribe as a society is related through its boundaries. At the same time, boundaries of tribes have been defined- linguistically, culturally and politically by anthropologists. Boundaries set certain limit of interaction in the legal, political, economic and social relation of its members.
- Secondly tribes are also seen as a type of society, a society that is different from other types of societies.
- Thirdly tribes are also seen, as representing a particular stage in the socio-political formation and with passage of time will move to new stage such as nation, nationality or the nationhood. Now while these three distinct aspects have gone in the making of the concept, the last two have overshadowed the first to which the tribes owe their separate and independent existence.
- In the Indian context tribes were identified and described primarily in terms of them being outside the civilization. It is common experience that groups and communities brought under the broad category of tribe do not identify themselves in terms of tribes, (except by the educated) but by their tribes’ name such as the Santhals, the Oraons, the Khasis or the Garos, etc. This truth also necessitates to understand in proper perspective the notion and process of tribal transformation, Sanskritisation and Hinduisation, language factor in tribal identity, the issue of misconstruction of tribal identity, and community life of tribes.
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