“[I]ndigenous people in India also feel the claustrophobic confines of their identity which has been imposed on them by others, be it the colonial administrator, the colonial anthropologist.” – Santali poet, scholar and translator Ivy Imogene Hansdak in “Is tribal identity relevant in today’s world?”, Inaugural Speech, National Conference “Tribes In Transition-II: Reaffirming Indigenous Identity Through Narrative” (2017)
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The Yerukulas were first criminalised by the British and forced into a ‘reformatory’ colony named ‘Stuartpuram’ in 1913. P. Samuel Jonathan reports on the tragic history of a community devastated by colonial prejudice and tracks their struggle to reclaim a life of dignity. | Read the full story >> The Yerukulas were originally traders of grain and salt … Read more
ASHOKA, ELEPHANT BOY, Age 17Excerpts from Mother India’s Children by Edward Rice Sometimes India reminds me of the ocean. It looks like one great undifferentiated mass of people, like so many identical waves. To the tourists who jump from Calcutta to the Taj Mahal in Agra and then to Bombay, it is. All Indians look … Read more
Rights for forgotten tribes Predictably, public discourse on the Gujjar-state-Mina (as the census spells them) standoff in Rajasthan has centred on two, or, at best, three issues […] It is easy to forget, in the midst of all this noise, that the Minas are not the only Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Rajasthan. But everyone, ranging from … Read more
Source: Lachman Khubchandani in Indigenous Peoples: Responding to Human Ecology (pp. 14-15) | Free eBook download | Backup >> Indigenous Peoples: Responding to Human EcologyAuthor : Lachman KhubchandaniPublisher : Bhasha Centre and CIIL, 2009Pages : 130 Indigenous Peoples reflects on the current development crises in a framework of human ecology and discusses how Adivasis have responded. … Read more
Bhagoriya is a well known dance of the Bhils, a large tribe of Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh. The dance is associated with a festival known as `bhagoria’ and a fair called bhagoriya haat. The tribal unwed boys and girls prepare for this fest that serves the purpose of marriage bureaux by establishing link between … Read more