"Tribe" in India: A term shrouded in uncertainty
- Part 1 -

Sanjoy Akoijam *

The words 'tribe' and 'tribal' have been in the news very frequently in the past few days all over India, including Manipur too. The main reason behind this is the election of Shrimati Droupadi Murmu as the 15th President of the Republic of India, the first 'tribal' to hold the highest office of the country (she is a member of the Santhal tribe, a large Scheduled Tribe that mainly inhabits parts of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar).

Also in the news in Manipur is a renewed push by the STDCM (Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee Manipur), urging the State Gov-ernment to take up prompt measures to enlist Meitei/Meetei in the list of Scheduled Tribes (STs) of India.

The Meitei ST Status demand movement has been a stop-start affair for the last ten years, always overshadowed by other move-ment. Most of us in Manipur and the whole of India take the terms 'tribe', 'tribal', 'ST', etc. for granted, and we all have a vague idea of what it means to be associated with the term. But there is always more than meets the eye.

So, what exactly is a 'tribe' or 'Scheduled Tribe' in India, and why is the term shrouded in uncertainty ?

A renowned Indian anthropologist, DN Majumdar (1950) defined a tribe from an anthropological perspective as " as a social group with territorial affiliation, endogamous, with no specialization of functions, ruled by tribal officers, he-reditary or otherwise, united in language or dialect, recognizing social distance with other tribes or castes, without any social obloquy attaching to them, as it does in the caste structure, followed tribal traditions, beliefs and customs, illiberal of naturalization of ideas from alien sources, above all conscious of homogeneity of ethnic and territorial integration."

The definition of tribe is not given clearly in the Constitution of India. However, the Constitution refers to `Scheduled Tribes' vaguely in Article 366 (25) as "such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Ar-ticle 342 to be Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of this Constitution".

Article 342 of the Constitution prescribes the procedure to be followed in matter of the specification of Scheduled Tribes. This article has two clauses: 1. The President of India after discussion with the Gov-ernor of respective States or a Union Territory, may specify tribal communities or tribes or groups within tribal commu-nities or parts of tribes which shall for the purposes of the Constitution of India be considered to be Scheduled Tribes

in relation to that Union Territory or State as the case may be by public notification. 2. Parliament may by law include in or exclude from the list of Scheduled Tribes specified in a notification issued under clause (1) any tribe or tribal community or part of or group within any tribe or tribal community, but save as aforesaid a notification issued under the said clause shall not be varied by any subsequent notification.

The Lokur Committee in 1965 laid down some essential characteristics to identify a community as a Scheduled Tribe. The characteristics include indications of primitive characters, geographical isolation, shyness to contact with the other communities generally, distinctive culture and backwardness. These criteria for identification are not given in the Constitution but it has become well established over the years.

It takes into consideration various reports which include the defmitions contained in Census of the year 1931, the first Backward Classes Commission reports of 1955, the Advisory Committee on Revision of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe lists (Lokur Committee), 1965 and the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes orders (Amendment) Bill, 1967.

In 2014, a committee was formed led by the Union Tribal Affairs Secretary Hrushikesh Panda, to review the guidelines of recommendation and recognition of a com-munity (or part of the community) in the Scheduled Tribe list of India.

The new criteria that the committee forwarded included autonomous religious practices, although practicing the Hindu way of life would not be a bar, marital relationship with another tribe (the majority in the tribe should marry within the tribe or with other tribes), distinctive culture, historical and geographical isolation, social-economic and educational backwardness and distinc-tive language.

The new recommended criteria are yet to be accepted by the Central Government. It may be mentioned that both the Lokur Committee criteria and the Panda Com-mittee criteria have been criticised by renowned social scientist Andre Beteille as being based on "political considerations rather than academic definitions."

It may be mentioned that in 1973, the Dhebar Commission created the category of Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) as a separate category. They were judged to be less devel-oped among the tribal groups. In 1975, the Government of India initiated to identify the most vulnerable tribal groups as a separate category called PTGs and declared 52 such groups, while in 1993 an additional 23 groups were added to the category, making it a total of 75 PVTGs, spread over 18 States and one Union Territory (Andaman & Nicobar Islands) in the country (2011 census).

In 2006, the govern-ment renamed the PTGs as PVTGs (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups). According to the 2011 Census of India, scheduled tribes constitute 8.2% of the total population of the country. There are 705 ethnic groups notified as Scheduled Tribes accord-ing to the Constitution of India. The number of tribes scheduled under the Constitution of India is quite large, and the heterogeneity is massive.

Each tribe is quite dis-tinct from the other. Since tribes are different from one another in terms of diverse aspects, it is not easy to define or classify them. For instance, the Karbi tribe of Assam, North Eastern India is completely different from the Bhil tribe of central and western India, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan or Maharashtra in terms of morphology, socio-cultural dimensions and way of life.

Though there are some similarities or common traits, tribes from differ-ent parts of India have their own distinctive cultures and features. Tribes of different regions of India are different from one another in terms of physical features, cultural and tradition, economy, polity, etc.

A majority of the tribes are in their transitional phase in terms of cultural practices, belief and world view, dietary habits, lifestyles, occupation and other socio-economic factors, though some basic dis-tinctive features like dialects, territorial distribution, customs, etc. remain constant. Many scholars have referred to the Scheduled Tribes as "indigenous people of India".

However, there are several objections regarding the same. Many tribal communities, especially those in Central and East India have been re-ferred to as the first settlers (autochthones) of the Indian sub-continent. However, there are also numerous communities in India that are indigenous to the land who are not classified as Scheduled Tribes.

Many of these non-ST in-digenous peoples are the dominant communities in their respective states. Virginias Xaxa, a renowned tribal scholar once wrote that there are tribes in India especially in the north-east whose settlement in the territories they inhabit today is an even later phenomenon than the settlement of many non-tribes in other parts of India.

So, imposition of a New World (The Americas, Oceania, etc.) perspective of dividing populations into indigenous people and colonists/ migrants may not be applicable to most of the Old World counties, including India.


(More to follow)