Customs

“We have a song for every situation. We feel money takes away from the enjoyment of life. But to earn a livelihood, people have to learn other languages.” – Santal teacher Pada Murmu interviewed by Nandini Nair (OPEN Magazine, 13 January 2017)
https://openthemagazine.com/features/dispatch/santali-talking-time/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=21581

Resources for the classroom: Learning from and about India’s tribal communities, their culture and knowledge systems

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“[I]t is some of the basic values and ideology imbibed in the traditional tribal socio-cultural milieus that should have been emulated and promoted amongst the non-tribal mainstream, not, as has been going on, the other way round.” – Arup Maharatna (Professor, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune), in Who Is Civilised?’: In Praise of Tribal … Read more

Interview with Richard K. Wolf on his study titled “The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India”

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Excerpt from an interview with Richard K. Wolf, author of an award-winning study of Kota culture: The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India (Permanent Black, Delhi 2005 ISBN 81-7824-126-9) and University of Illinois Press, 2006. It was a promising start. While at the University of Illinois, Wolf met … Read more

Research on populations of different social rank: “The genetic heritage of the earliest settlers persists”

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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. The narrative is changing today. […] Tribes are people with a functional social order, culture, customs, cosmology and metaphysics. They must be … Read more

eJournal | Irish Journal of Anthropology: Special issue on Adivasi identity

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TABLE OF CONTENTS GUEST EDITORIAL GENERAL EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 11 HARALD TAMBS-LYCHE COMMENT ONWILL INDIA HAVE TO LIVE WITH CASTE FOR ALL TIME TO COME? ARTICLES 14 HARALD TAMBS-LYCHEDOMINATION BY HEGEMONY, OR FORCE COUNTERED BY RESISTANCE? THE INDIAN CASTE ORDER BETWEEN SCOTT AND GRAMSCI 31 SANJUKTA DAS GUPTAFROM REBELLION TO LITIGATION: CHOTANAGPUR TENANCY … Read more

An environment minister’s call for a change in the colonial outlook: “Forests, tribal forest dwellers and life forms living in forests complement one another and are not rivals”

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Forests, tribals and wildlife are not rivals, says [former] environment minister Anil Madhav Dave addressing senior-level forest officers at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun The meeting of state forest secretaries to develop mitigation measures for faster green clearances for projects in wildlife habitats, which began today, saw the environment minister Anil Madhav Dave … Read more