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The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Forest Rights Act) gives members of tribal communities the right “to collect, use, and dispose of minor forest produce including bamboo, brush wood, stumps, cane, tussar, cocoons, honey, wax, lac, tendu or kendu leaves, medicinal plants and herbs, roots, tubers.” – Azim Premji University Team
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?page_id=24973
Full screen viewing link: https://archive.org/details/GothAdivasiStoriesfromGujarat
Home, shelter and security as well as music, education, nature, and books for every child
In 1911, the American poet and novelist James Oppenheim wrote the now infamous poem “Bread and Roses“, inspired by the women’s suffrage activist Helen Todd. Working as a factory inspector for the state of Illinois, Todd spent her days listening to women’s accounts of low pay, inequality, and the drudgery of their work. Along with four other women from the Chicago Women’s Club, an association of wealthy middle-class women that had recently established some of the first kindergartens in Chicago, Todd began organising Illinois automobile workers for women’s right to vote in the summer of 1910. Inspired by a discussion she had with a young woman the night before giving a speech, Todd pronounced that the women’s “vote will go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature, and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country“. More than 70 years after the Seneca Falls convention declared women’s universal suffrage as its goal, the seemingly impossible became inevitable, and in 1920 Congress past the Nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution.
Source: Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future >>
“If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? … I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and … toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.”
George Orwell quoted in Two Cheers for Democracy (London: Penguin Books 1976), p. 76 | Learn more about Childhood | Childrens rights: UNICEF India | Safe search | Ecology and environment | Misconceptions | Modernity | Seasons and festivals | Social conventions >>
The house, in which British novelist George Orwell was born more than 110 years ago, has been converted into a museum by the Bihar Government >>
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Combine the name of any particular state, language or region with that of any tribal (Adivasi) community.
Ask a question that includes “tribal” or “Adivasi”, for instance: “Adivasi way of life better?” (or “tribal way of life worse?”)
Add keywords of special interest (music, poetry, dance just as health, sacred grove and biodiversity); learn about the rights of Scheduled Tribes such as the “Forest Rights Act” (FRA); and the United Nations “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, “women’s rights”, or “children’s right to education”.
Specify any particular issue or news item (biodiversity, bonded labour and human trafficking, climate change, ecology, economic development, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, global warming, hunter-gatherers in a particular region or state, prevention of rural poverty, water access).
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Read or download titles for free (eBooks & Magazine) >>
Suggested reading with additional information on this website
by Pow Aim Hailowng & Priya Kuriyan
in 8 Indian languages and English >>
Learn more about tribal culture & Tulika books >>
Review on Scroll.in >>
Marginalised but not Defeated by Tarun Kanti Bose (a seasoned public interest journalist) reviewed by Amit Sengupta:
The book travels across the Hindi hinterland, onwards to the west, Gujarat and Maharashtra, then to the East, Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, and covers the various tribal regions in the remote and sublime landscape of North-east India. It talks about the Khasis, Nagas, Karbis, Garos, Rabhas, Misings, Daflas, Bodos, Akas and others in the North-east. It enters the invisible lives of the Santhals, Mundas, Hos, Kharias, Paherias, Oraons, Mundas, Bhils, Gonds, Kols, Koyas, Todas, Banjaras, etc in the Central Provinces, in Dandakaranya and Jharkhand, among the 550 tribal communities in India.
Read the full book review: Marginalised but not Defeated by Tarun Kanti Bose, Uppal Publishing House, 2023 (277 pages, Rs. 1,295) on https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/book-review-marginalised-but-not-defeated >>
The book documents the hard and difficult struggle to implement the Forest Rights Act, how the oppressed adivasis have united into forest unions, how they are now entering into new thresholds of protracted struggles and victories in a non-violent manner. The mainstream development paradigm is being questioned and new rainbows of collective, community reassertions are happening across the tribal belt in India. More so, in most cases, led by brave, empowered and resilient women.
That is why the name of the book: Marginalised but not Defeated. A must for all young journalists, social science students, editors, civil society groups and the academia.
Tribal Arts in India: The National Inventory of Tribal Museums. Foreword by GN Devy (Project Director, Bhasha Research and Publication Center). Vadodara: Purva Prakash Publications, 2012. ISBN 9788192240558, Rs. 1400 | More information | Read or download titles for free (eBooks & Magazine) >>
Emerging globalized world is partly responsible for undervaluing the philosophy and traditions of the traditional community. […] Tribal Philosophy and Culture: Mao Naga of North-East seeks to emphasize the vitality of cultural practices and traditions to face the onslaught of this phenomenon. Mittal Publications, Rs. 750.00 | More information >>
Indigenous Peoples: Responding to Human Ecology by Lachman Khubchandani. Central Institute of Indian Languages & Bhasha Research & Publication Centre, 2009. | More information | Read or download titles for free (eBooks & Magazine) >>
A Rogue and Peasant Slave by Shashank Kela “fills a gaping hole in the literature on adivasis by examining the effect of changing economies and political structures on the culture and lives of the adivasis.” | Book review by Stan Thekaekara >>
Tribal Dances of India. Foreword by Pt. Birju Maharaj. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org >>
Adivasis legal provisions, languages, locations : a reference document for the status of adivasis and denotified & nomadic jatis in India. Vadodara : Adivasi Academy and Bhasha Research & Publications Centre, 2004. Rs. 250 | More information >>
Foreword by Nicholas Thomas, Afterword by
Ruby Hembrom >>
Another India: Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia
Exhibition Catalogue: 136pp; Full Colour; ISBN 978-0-947595-24-1 | Learn more (UK)
“Over one hundred artefacts, paintings and photographs from the collections of MAA [Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge], many of which have never been exhibited before […] complemented by artworks by contemporary artists from the communities represented, commissioned with support from the Art Fund. Written by Mark Elliott, Senior Curator (Anthropology), Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. | Find a copy in a library near you on worldcat.org >>
Timotheas Hembrom | Adivaani >>
“The reason we want to publish in English because we want other people to read us and know about us. Even though Adivasi writing has been published in indigenous languages, the reach is very limited.” – Ruby Hembrom on the need for establishing a publishing house for Indian indigenous literature | Learn more >>
“Aparna Vaidik’s [book] My Son’s Inheritance goes deeper into Indian history and culture, and shows that instead of being a recent phenomenon, violence, physical and psychic, has been endemic to the Indian socio-polity since ages. […] Vaidik locates this violence in communal enmities between the Hindus and the minorities, particularly Muslims, which often validates itself as retributive justice. Deep psychic violence also operated, the author reminds us, among Hindus themselves. Many Indian Muslims and Christians, we are asked to remember, were Hindus of the lower castes, or ‘non-Aryan’ tribals, who converted out of Hinduism because of the torture of untouchability and ostracisation.” – Book review by Suparna Banerjee >>
Books on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by Pankaj Sekhsaria:
1) Islands in Flux – the Andaman and Nicobar Story (2017)
2) The Last Wave – An Island Novel (2014)
3) The Jarawa Tribal Reserve Dossier (2010)
More information >>
A 10-book series in Odia and the languages used by four tribal communities in Odisha (Kui, Saura, Munda and Juanga), in the Odia script. “They are the first-ever books for the reading pleasure of children in these languages” | More information >>
Cadence and Counterpoint, Documenting Santal Musical Traditions by Johannes Beltz, Ruchira Ghose and Maria-Eve Celio-Scheurer (eds.). Niyogi Books, New Delhi 2015. ISBN 978-93-83098-92-7. Rs. 1595 | More information >>
Santal Music: A Study in Pattern and Process of Cultural Persistence
by Onkar Prasad. Tribal Studies of India Series T115. New Delhi: Inter-India Publications | More information >>
Musical Instruments of Tribal India by Dilip Bhattacharya. New Delhi: Manas Publications 1999. ISBN 8170490928. Rs. 2995 | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org >>
A Nomad Called Thief: Reflections on Adivasi Silence and Voice by GN Devy
Orient Blackswan, 2006, 199 pages. ISBN 978-81-250-3021-8 | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org >>
Voices from the Periphery: Subalternity and Empowerment in India by Marine Carrin and Lidia Guzy (eds.). New Delhi: Routledge India, 2012. | More information | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org >>
Performing Identities: Celebrating Indigeneity in the Arts
by Geoffrey V. Davis, G. N. Devy, K. K. Chakravarty. Routledge India, 2014. ISBN 9781138795990. More information | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org >>
Writings from North-East India by Tilottama Misra (ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011. More information | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org >>
Celebrating Life: The Santal Experiment in Freedom. Ten Years of a Non-Formal Santal School (1996-2006) by Boro Baski and Kumkum Bhattacharya (eds.). Sattore: Ghosaldanga Bishnubati Adibasi Trust, 2007. Rs. 100. More information >>
Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability, “a must-read for every child and adult in the nation and a must-include in every school’s curriculum” – The Hindu Literary Review | Order details: navayana.org | Find a library copy on WorldCat.org | Learn more >>
Celebrations and Convergence for
Conservation In Western Ghats (PDF, 3 MB) >>
Learn more
Western Ghats tribal heritage and ecology >>
Learn more | Backup (PDF, 6,8 MB) >>