“Adivasi [Adibasi] – which is derived from Sanskrit – is applied to the dark-skinned or Austro-Asiatic indigenous groups of India (usually those from Eastern India). It is a commonly-used term in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha. It is also used by the local Mongoloid tribes of North Eastern India for the migrant workers who were brought in as indentured labourers to work in tea plantations during the colonial period. ‘Tribal’ is a very broad term in the English language, as we all know, and includes all the different indigenous groups of India.” – Santali poet, scholar and translator Ivy Imogene Hansdak (email dated 27 March 2020)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=23032
Anyone who has had some meaningful interaction with India’s indigenous or adivasi people, cannot fail to be touched by the encounter. There is a directness in them, an absence of artifice or guile, an almost childlike innocence, born of simplicity combined with a lack of greed and avarice. The more interior and untouched a village, … Read more
Indigenous languages by GANESH N. DEVY | Full text | Backup (PDF, 100 KB)Excerpts from the modified version of the text of UNESCO lecture, October 2008 RECOGNIZED as ‘Aborigines’ in Australia, as ‘Mâori’ in New Zealand, as ‘First Nations’ in Canada, as ‘Indigenous’ in the United States, as ‘Janajatis’ in India, or as ‘tribes’ in … Read more
Several indigenous authors—Easterine Kire, Jacinta Kerketta, Dolly Kikon, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Temsüla Ao, Joy Pachuau, Senganglu Thaimei, Gladson Dungdung, Veio Pou, Kham Khan Suan Hausing, Ngamjahao Kipgen, Hoineilhing Sitlhou and many more—are writing stories foregrounding their perspectives, concepts, and theories about tribes. This is a step towards undoing tribes’ invisibility in literature. Yet, discrimination against … Read more
I cannot give you my forest is a documentary directed and produced by filmmakers- Nandan Saxena and Kavita Bahl. It has received the National Film Award for Best Environment Film in 2014. Filmed in the forests of Odisha, ‘I cannot give you my forest’ is a window into the lives of the Kondh ‘adivasis’. The … Read more
This essay was first published in the Economic and Political Weekly (August 11, 2007) under the title, “Adivasis, Naxalites, And Indian Democracy” and is republished here with the author’s permission as it – unfortunately – remains as relevant today. […] On 13th December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly of … Read more