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

A historical plea to ‘secure the advancement of the tribals without disturbing the essential harmony of their life and secure their integration without imposition’: Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes Commission – Government of India

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Indians are truly rooted in an ethos of living in harmony with their land. There was a time when the Indian subcontinent was carpeted in green… watered by glacial rivers, blessed by rolling hills and productive grasslands, lush rainforests and wave-kissed mangroves. All creatures, great and small, found niches here and thrived. Varied cultures were … Read more

Ganesh N. Devy – biographical notes

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Ganesh N. Devy, formerly professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, and a renowned literary critic and activist, is founder and director of the Tribal Academy at Tejgadh, Gujarat, and director of the Sahitya Akademi’s Project on Literature in Tribal Languages and Oral Traditions. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for … Read more

Revival of interest in aboriginal history: The “Khoe”, descendants of herders who introduced pottery 2000 years ago – Southern Africa

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Read the full article by Prof. Andrew B. Smith >> The name ‘Hottentot’, or its Afrikaans shortening ‘Hotnot’, became a disparaging term for people of colour at the Cape. Today we refer to the aboriginal herders of the Cape by the name they would have called themselves: Khoekhoen =’people people’ or ‘real people’ (non-gender specific plural). … Read more

Video | People of the hills celebrate their annual Wangala festival in Asanang: “We Garos are tuned into world music and culture” – Meghalaya

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PHEROZE L. VINCENT, The Hindu, November 24, 2012 | To read the full article and view more photos, click here >> The Garo tribe of Western Meghalaya celebrates the winter harvest with a three-day festival. […] Alva Sangma, the editor of Achik Songbad, a Garo weekly, offered this reporter a lift from Tura. Alva, a former … Read more

How “The path of music and poetry” showed the path of teaching and leading technology education: “In our tradition, a promise given to a teacher must be fulfilled”

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The IIT Adivasi’ who became a frontbencher At 4.30pm on July 7, as the shadows lengthened on the freedom memorial, Hijli jail, in Kharagpur, Yama took away a campus favourite. Living alone and quietly in a small apartment outside the IIT campus was a bespectacled, diminutive, 89-year-old professor. He was “The IIT Adivasi”, the only … Read more