“Development is invariably a form of change, but not all forms of change can be termed development”: A context for India’s tribal heritage, past and present
A useful analytical framework to study the deprivation and development of Adivasis in the larger Indian context.
THE selection of papers in this volume, presented at the International Seminar on “Adivasi/Scheduled Tribe Communities in India: Development and Change” in August 2009, captures diverse facets of the predicament of Adivasis today. As stated by the editors, development is invariably a form of change, but not all forms of change can be termed development. There are forms of change that lead to deprivation and dispossession, which leave communities at a lower level of well-being than before. In the language of social exclusion, this is a process of adverse inclusion with negative results compared even with the state of exclusion.
Then there is relative deprivation compared with absolute deprivation arising out of growing inequality during a period of rapid economic growth. The editors argue that a discussion on well-being and deprivation and change in the condition of Adivasis necessarily calls for a relational analysis. The Adivasi regions are excluded for provision of services, but they are not excluded for extraction of minerals or exploitation of water resources for electricity generation and irrigation. […]
SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND ADVERSE INCLUSION: Development and Deprivation of Adivasis in India Author(s): DEV NATHAN & Virginius Xaxa Hardback 2012, Price: Rs. 750.00
“Is it eccentric to live in beautiful scenery in the hills among some of the most charming people in the country, even though they may be ignorant and poor?” – Verrier Elwin quoted by G.N. Devy in The Oxford India Elwin >>
Despite their vast differences, anthropologists, including Elwin and Ghurye, as well as Srinivas and other Indian public figures and intellectuals, effectively erased or negated tribes’ worldviews and beliefs. When discussing the materialistic well-being of tribes, many anthropologists and other thinkers have also sometimes perpetuated a “saviour complex,” portraying tribes as bereft of the agency to express their own aspirations, and seeing it necessary to salvage tribal people from the clutches of their insubstantial living conditions without a deep consideration of how their ways of life have thrived in the past.
The word “tribe” itself, in fact, has always been a contentious term. Due to the lack of an adequate term, indigenous people chose to adopt it to identify their place in the world. […]
In Anthropological Perspectives on Indian Tribes, another insightful book published last year, the anthropologist Subhadra Mitra Channa writes that people categorised as tribes are not merely remnants of a static past. She reminds us that tribal religions and customary laws are as relevant as organised religions and institutionalised laws in modern society, and refers to the morungs of the Nagas, the dhumkuria of the Santals and the gotuls of the Gonds as equivalents to schooling systems in mainstream societies. She also suggests that tribes are separate from Hindu society (except for tribes such as the Bhotiya, Rajputs living along the Indo-Tibetan border). Channa argues that implicit to theories such as Sankritisation is an evolutionary approach towards tribes, implying that there is a ladder towards attaining higher status under the fold of caste Hindus. This erases the history of “domination, and of hierarchies within politics,” between tribes and others. […]
Source: “Uncivilising the Mind: How anthropology shaped the discourse on tribes in India” by Richard Kamei (doctoral candidate at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai), Caravan Magazine, 1 March 2020 URL: https://caravanmagazine.in/books/anthropologists-tribes-india Date visited: 20 March 2021
“Doctors in the region [Palakkad district] argue that while the proportion of people with mental illnesses is not unusually high, the problem is a crisis because of their socioeconomic vulnerability.” […] “The non-inclusivity of Adivasis is nothing but racial discrimination. Adivasis were always ruled.” | In-depth analysis (Scroll.in 5 April 2023) >>
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