Category Archives: Modernity

“[N]ow we live in a world of rapid development in the media. We cannot let our culture and society stop. Folklore was what we had, but we have also evolved. We live in a world where we all use mobile phones and Facebook. We are spread across much of India like Assam, Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha as well as Bangladesh and Nepal. Everyone has different influences from where they live and change in different directions.” – Santali poet, scholar and translator Ivy Imogene Hansdak interviewed by Norwegian writer and filmmaker Audun Nedrelid (The Johar Journal, Vol. II, January-June 2021)
https://joharjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Volume-II-January-June-2021.pdf
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=35277

“Since the advent of the digital era, tribals are asserting themselves not only through oral narratives but in written and visual mediums as well. Here I would like to give three examples to show how tribals are judiciously using digital platforms to reach out.” – Santal writer Sunder Manoj Hembrom in “Preserving Tribal Memory through New Forms of Orality in the Digital Era” (conference paper delivered during Tribes in Transition-III: “Preserving Tribal Memory through New Forms of Orality in the Digital Era”, New Delhi 22 September 2021)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=45026

“The tribal peoples access to forests has almost gone. Their life-style is changing rapidly. They have already mingled with the non-tribals and imbibed their culture and life-styles. The fact of the matter is they can no longer live like their ancestors, no longer depend on the vanishing forests for their sustenance. It will be to their advantage if they are equipped to meet these changes with a balanced approach; otherwise they will just be swept over. We hope they will retain the tribal values that have relevance even today and accept the good brought in by modernization. It is a question of survival.” – Rama Sastry & B. Ramdas in “Work and Wisdom of Vernacular” (Supported by UNESCO)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=1929

“A group of women recall their bygone days: In our big village we girls and boys were together in pairs. But the pairs of our friendships are no more. Some of us have shut ourselves up indoors.” – Synopsis by Boro Baski for “Rasi Nato (Big Village)”, a song composed and performed by staff and students of the Rolf Schoembs Vidyashram (Non-formal Santal school, Ghosaldanga village, Dist.-Birbhum, West Bengal), included in the Santali video album “Ale Ato” (Our Village)
https://youtu.be/3UbSfSI2jN4
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?page_id=25317

“The awakening of India was two-fold: she looked to the west and, at the same time, she looked at herself and her own past.” – Jawaharlal Nehru in The Discovery Of India (1946, OUP Centenary ed. 1989, p. 329)
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.98835
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=17554

“[T]hey face the challenge of facing the modern world on a daily basis and feeling the need to belong to.” – Mari Marcel Thekaekara, writer and Co-founder of ACCORD-Nilgiris quoted in The Hindu (27 January 2017)
https://www.thehindu.com/society/A-messenger-from-the-mountains/article17102329.ece
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=22373

“India lives in its villages, but it has been forced to go to its cities to work. We have created a nation where nearly half of the wealth is generated by the labour of these unseen and unheard men, women and children. We call them migrant labour. For all the wealth generated by the cities, the migrants live in poverty, working in jobs that profit others but bring them very little.” – Chitvan Gill in “The lives of the unseen, unheard men and women who build the cities we inhabit” (Scroll.in, 31 May 2020)
https://scroll.in/article/962825/photo-essay-the-lives-of-the-unseen-unheard-men-and-women-who-build-the-cities-we-inhabit
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=33992

“The Madhus of the world suffer violent deaths not because we failed to modernise them, but because of the intrinsic connections between their terrible fate and well-being — in 70 years after Independence, post-colonial governments have virtually replicated colonial government policies towards the Adivasi.” – Nissim Mannathukkaren in “The Adivasi in the mirror: The lynching of Madhu in Kerala must shock our conscience into recognising the dispossession of India’s tribals” (The Hindu Opinion, 3 March 2018)
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-adivasi-in-the-mirror/article22911351.ece
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=24460

“There is no other way but to redefine ‘modernity’ and the goals of development, not to narrow it to ‘environment’ but to widen it to a sustainable equitable just society based on harmonious non exploitative relationship between human being to human being, and human being to nature. We cannot be either politically naive or apathetic or playing the unseen hand of free economy.” – Acceptance speech by Medha Patkar and Baba Amte (Narmada Bachao Andolan), Laureates of the 1991 Right Livelihood Award (“a courage-powered community for social change committed to peace, justice and sustainability for all)
https://rightlivelihood.org/speech/acceptance-speech-medha-patkar-and-baba-amte-narmada-bachao-andolan/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=10420

“Only a few [tribals] are genuinely proud of their own culture, understand its roots and want to bring about some rapprochement between its traditions and the requirements of modernity.” – Guest Column titled “Hands off tribal culture” (India Today, 9 January 2014)
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/guest-column/story/19800915-hands-off-tribal-culture-821415-2014-01-09
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=2299

“Scheduling was the act of committing certain areas to a written list or inventory of ‘special administrative regimes’; here, normal laws and regulations prevalent in the rest of British India would not be applicable. […] The underlying belief behind this categorization was that modern representative democracy with electoral politics and law courts was highly unsuited to tribal communities.” – Saagar Tewari, quoted by Richard Kamei in “Uncivilising the Mind: How anthropology shaped the discourse on tribes in India” (Caravan Magazine, 1 March 2021)
https://caravanmagazine.in/books/anthropologists-tribes-india
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=11544

“The recent trend is to use exotic species for manicured lawns and gardens. This means indigenous species are losing even more space, and our local species decline with them. New lifestyle patterns are also changing things. For example, India’s urban sparrow population has dipped. Even growing up, sparrows were as common as a crow or a pigeon. But now they’ve almost disappeared. Why?” – Rashneh Pardiwala in “Why It’s Hard to ‘Change Mindsets’ on Environmental Protection Among India’s Elites”; interview on environmental education at her Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE) in Mumbai (Asia Blog, 27 July 2015)
https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/interview-why-its-hard-change-mindsets-environmental-protection-among-indias-elites
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=14402

“Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi had distinguished the modern university from its medieval forerunners by envisaging for it an autonomous sphere in relation to the emerging nation-state.” – Suranjan Das, Vice-Chancellor of Jadavpur University Kolkata (The Telegraph, 30 September 2020)
https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/calcutta/the-relevance-of-vidyasagar/cid/1793177
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=35639

“[T]he primary identity of every citizen of India, over and above all other identities of religion, caste, language, race and suchlike, is that of an Indian.” – Romila Thapar (Emeritus Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University) quoted in “Nationalism does not allow the Hindu in India to claim primacy” by Ziya Us Salam (The Hindu, 2 March 2016)
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/historian-romila-thapar-says-nationalism-does-not-allow-the-hindu-in-india-to-claim-primacy/article8300752.ece
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=20996

“In Nehru’s view, the process of modernization must not be taken as forcing a sudden break with the tribals past but help them build upon it and grow by a natural process of evolution.” – Chittaranjan Mishra in “Tribal Philosophy and Pandit Nehru” (Odisha Review, November 2017)
https://magazines.odisha.gov.in/Orissareview/2017/November/engpdf/100-110.pdf
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=16310

“Despite the modern obsession with factories, mines and airlines in a newly independent India, [Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay] pointed out that for millions of villagers […] handicrafts were a source of income and pride.” – Feminist writer Gloria Steinem reviewing “A Passionate Life: Writings by and on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay” by Ellen Carol Dubois and Vinay Lal Openmagazine (7 April 2017)
https://www.openthemagazine.com/article/books/kamaladevi-chattopadhyay-the-last-teacher
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=20948

“[N]o good purpose can be served by turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and the resulting failures of policies, thereby distorting the picture of the true conditions of tribal populations. […] The tribals were dislodged from their traditional sources of livelihood and places of habitation.” – Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf in Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival (University of California Press, 1982), pp. 320-1
https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/rarebooks/downloads/Haimendorf_Tribes_of_India.pdf
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=12724