Category Archives: De- and re-tribalisation

“The guiding principle is that no person who was not a Scheduled Tribe by birth will be deemed to be a member of Scheduled Tribe merely because he or she has married a person belonging to a Scheduled Tribe. Similarly a person who is a member of a Scheduled Tribe would continue to be a member of that Scheduled Tribe, even after his or her marriage with a person who does not belong to a Scheduled Tribes. However, status of the children born out of such marriages would depend on the particular caste status of the father.” – National Commission for Scheduled Tribes
https://www.ncst.gov.in
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=33998

“Despite the descriptive inadequacies of the term ‘tribal’, the alternatives are equally imprecise; ‘tribal’ is a politicised category all over India [Beteille 1991], but in Arunachal Pradesh the term is used with little controversy, and often with pride by those to whom it refers.” – Research Description “Tribal Transitions at SOAS”
https://www.soas.ac.uk/tribaltransitions/description/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=9346

“Of the four Andaman islands tribes, it is Jarawa’s situation that is most precarious.” – Surabhi Sinha in “Save Jarawa” (Times of India, 2 June 2021)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/phases-of-life/save-jarawa-32818/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=14820

“In India, the term ‘tribe’ has referred, since the 16th century, to groups living under ‘primitive’ and ‘barbarous’ conditions. The colonial administration used the term to distinguish peoples who were heterogeneous in physical and linguistic traits and lived under quite different demographic and ecological conditions, with varying levels of acculturation and development. In the various countries of South Asia, tribal peoples were often called by derogatory terms such as jungli (‘savage’) during the colonial period.” – Marine Carrin, General Introduction to Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous People of South Asia (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 2 South Asia, Volume: 36, 2021)
https://worldcat.org/en/title/1285067971
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=48430