Tribal Communities

Answer : The tribal people have been considered as a primitive segment of Indian society. They have remained deprived and exploited. They have been living in forest and hills without having contact with so called civilised and advanced neighbours. There is no population pressure, and there was no attempt to penetrate their areas and impose alien values and belief on the tribals. The British introduced the system of landownership and revenue. Annual tax was levied on tribal ....

Answer : Elwin began his work in India as a Christian missionary with Gandhian leanings, unacceptable both to the British Raj and to his own church in India. India’s “primitive” tribals won his heart, eventually; he lived with them and devoted his enormous energies, towards helping them, writing about them and defending their rights and their ways of life. The government of India, after freedom (in 1947) appointed Elwin as a consultant to reform and improves living ....

Answer : The question of tribal integration with the larger society is studied by Sociologist from two broad points of views viz. cultural, political and economic. Cultural theory of integration is mostly forwarded by early sociologist of India, who developed Tribe-caste continuum theory. S.C. Roy stated that janas and Jatis are mutually co-exist in Indian society since the beginning of Indian civilization.

S.C. Dube notes little tradition of tribal culture is interlinked with great tradition of Hindu Society. ....

Answer : The tribal communities of India have had an integral and close knit relationship with the forests and have been dependent on the forests for livelihoods and existence. The relationship was mutually beneficial and not one sided. Though they were using the land but didn’t have rights over the land. In the absence of real ownership of the land, the already marginalized local dwellers and tribal people suffered from the administrative wrath. Thus, this amounted to ....

Answer : An ethnic group is a group having distinct culture, language and customs. Ethnicity refers to the identification of this group with its distinct culture. This ethnicity develops over a long period of time and it gives its members a sense of self confidence and assertiveness.

Integration of tribal people means they should adopt the modern ways of living according to their convenience and alien culture should not be imposed upon them. If it is imposed forcefully, ....

Answer : Historically, tribal people have lived in the inaccessible forested areas. They have lived in isolation for years. Because of this isolation they have developed a culture and identity which is distinct than the mainstream identity. Madan and Mazumdar have identified various features of tribes which distinguish them from others. These are as follows.

1. They are a territorial group and identify themselves with a territory even if they have migrated elsewhere.
2. They have a distinct culture characterized by ....

Answer : Major effects of geographic and social mobility has impacted tribal culture and social structure. Today this can be understood from ten-sion present between modernity and tradition in tribals. Many tribes are migrating toward urban area for employment. This migration has created a new culture due to mixing of their culture assumptions, traditions, thoughts and beliefs with effective local culture, in which there has occurred a combined form of their culture and local culture.

Usually tribals migrated ....

Answer : Caste is that system of social stratification based on birth which puts many restriction on its members regarding marriage, food habits, occupation and social interaction etc. On the other hand, tribes are collection of family or group of family which has a general name, whose members inha- bit in a specific territory and speak same language.

The occupation of members of a caste is generally same whereas members of a single tribe engage in different occupations. ....

Answer : Anthropologists have differed on the question relating to tribe and caste. According G.S. Ghurye

tribal people are backward Hindus differing only in degrees from the other segments of Hindu society. Elwin argued for the recognition of separate social and cultural identity of tribal people, whereas the government of India gives tacit recognition to this identity of keeping alive under constitution sanction their lists of Scheduled Tribe. According to Andre Beteille there are certain commonly observed ....

Answer : Due to multiplicity of factors and complexity of problems involved, it is not very easy to classify the Indian tribes into different groups. However, the commissioner for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes took up the task and investigated the possibility of adopting classification criteria. Keeping this aim in view the state governments in India were asked to suggest the characteristics which seemed to them most suitable in distinguishing the aboriginal groups i.e. tribes from the ....

Answer : Tribal communities suffer a lot of problems in all of world but in the case of Indian Societies they are marginalized in all works of life. The major problems of tribal communities are land alienation, poverty and indebtedness, health and nutrition and educational depravation.

Land is very important from the tribal point of view. In the tribal areas, industries are not very developed and the tribal mainly derive their living from agriculture. In many places, tribal ....

Answer : During recent years. Migration of tribals has drawn the attention of several scholars. It is estimated that development schemes like dams, mines, industries and various projects have resulted in the displacement of about 40 per cent tribals between 1951 and 1991. The illiterate and powerless tribals have been compelled to leave their resource-rich regions and migrate to other places. This has resulted in the problem of their resettlement. One estimate is that about 20 per ....

Answer : The policy of isolation or sergregation gathered strength from the thinking of foreign rulers and some others. It argued that tribals would be safer and happier in isolated packets or ‘parks’ where they could preserve their cultural traits better. But this policy was criticized on the plea that it cannot lead to tribal advancement because of its isolationist nature. Simultaneous to the policy of segregation the social workers, religious reformers and philanthropists were in favour ....

Answer : Despite equality in power and wealth, there is inequality in prestige among tribes. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown reports on the Andaman Islands that they accord honour and respect to three kinds of people (i) older people (ii) people endowed with supernatural powers (iii) people with certain personal qualities.

Because personal characteristics are so important, systems of stratification in these groups have an openness about them not often found in more advanced societies. Almost no organizational or institutional barriers ....

Answer : A number of thinkers such as Dalton, Risley, Majumdar and Ghurye have argued that the various problems of the tribe may be eliminated with their integration into the Hindu Society. The social integration is uniting a separate group (i.e. tribe) into one group (i.e. Hindu society) by removing the previous social and cultural group differences. Cultural integration is the adjustment of traditional cultural traits by absorbing new cultural traits. Integration of tribe in Hindu society ....

Answer : Vidyarthi and Rai in "Tribal culture of India" identified three major policies for the development of the tribals. They are the policy of segregation, assimilation and integration. They were advocated by different experts for different reasons.

During the British period the introduction of railways, starting of mining and rise of urban centres pierced the isolation of the tribal population. The contact of the tribals with the outer world was extremely unsavoury experience for them. They ....

Answer : According to the 1991 census, the tribes constitute 8.08% of the total population of India. These are the people forming the lowest rung of the society and therefore, Constitution has provided for special provisions, under article 15(4), 16(4) , 19(5), 46, 164, 244, 275(1), 330, 332, 334, 338, 339, 342 and part V and VI schedule. Article 46 enjoins the state should promote with special care, the educational and economic interest of the weaker sections ....

Answer : The concept of tribal stratification is different from the concept of social stratification in general or modern industrial society. In the tribal society the position of an individual and correlated roles are especially ascribed and traditional in nature. The age, marriage, consanguinity, charismatic power etc. are the basic factors of assigning the roles or position in the social hierarchy. According to Durkheim the tribal society is characterised by mechanical solidarity which lacks high degree of ....

Answer : A large number of tribes in India have been still living in far flung or disparate jungle with their distinctive pattern of culture and socio-economic system. Since the time of British rule, they have been exploited by the landlord and outsiders or Dikku. They are considered as uncivilised and uncultured by the rest of the society. After independence, under the policy of social justice, these venerated section of the society was provided with special protection ....

Answer : Many scholars have assumed that the gap between the tribals and non-tribals is partially the result of political policy of imperial colonial power and partly because the non tribals considered the tribals ethically and culturally distinct from the rest of the population. According to Ghurye, on cultural and linguistic plane, the tribals are not markedly different from the neighbouring non-tribal or Hindu rural community. Many tribal groups have moved out of their semi-isolated habitats and ....