UNIT 32 STUDYING TRIBES UNDER

COLONIALISM

Structure
32.0 Introduction
32.1 Perceptions of Tribes Before Colonial Annexation of Territories
32.2 Tribes and their Colonial Rulers
32.3 Romanticism and Tribal Protection: Colonialism and Anthropology in 20th Century
32.4 Tribals and the Nationalists: Anthropology for Nation Building
32.5 Summary
32.6 Glossary
32.7 Exercises

32.0 INTRODUCTION

This unit shows how the different perceptionsof tribes and their problems have
influenced the anthropological writings of our times. In the main we identify two
tendencies in this unit: one which argued for the isolation of tribes in order that their
ancient heritage be preserved and the second one that argued for the assimilation of
tribal people into the mainstream of Indian life. Between these two ends of the
spectrum there were varying degrees of opinion that reflected the status, political
stance and historical conjecture at which particular actors stood. But this was only
part of the story as perceptions of tribes were also determined by the exigencies of
colonial rule. Thus the competing perceptions of tribes, as we know them today, were
a result of the transformations of the polity, society and economy in different points
in history. It uses selected primary and secondary materials for this purpose.

32.1 PERCEPTIONS OF TRIBES BEFORE COLONIAL

ANNEXATION OF TERRITORIES

The first forays of British colonists into North and Central India in the late 18th
century got them in touch with several non-agricultural communities. These communities
were dependent on both land and forest resources for their survival and often came
into conflict with their rulers in order to meet their needs. In his recent work on
Khandesh and Central India Sumit Guha shows that early British accounts in the
region suggest that the complex interrelationships between pre-colonial regimes of
natural resource management, environmental changes and tribal subsistence in the
Maratha period. The resultant identity of people as tribals is then governed by the
multiple contexts of survival within which these people used to live. Larger patterns
of resource use and the impact of other forces on them also determined the political
economy of such identities and survival systems.

In pre-colonial Central and Northern India one of the main factors that had an impact
on both identity and subsistence was the military conflict between ruling elite in both
the Maratha and Mughal periods. The chieftain societies of different tribes like the
Gonds or the Khakkars or Jats also participated in these conflicts. At the same time
the tribals who were peasants and or gatherers in the forests were forced to support
their own chieftains and therefore formed bands in forests and formed important part
of the chieftains mercenary army. In this context it is important to remember that the
term “tribes” has been used very loosely for communities which were existed in a
“pre-class society”. In keeping with this definition many communities that were later
45
Social Questions Under described as peasants by Britishers were termed tribes by the accounts of the
Colonialism medieval period. Chetan Singh’s early article on the role of tribal chieftains in Mughal
administration clearly identified warrior and ruling classes of indigenous kingdoms as
superior tribal linkages. Amongst these were the Jats, the Kakkhars, Baluchis and
Afghans in this vein, the chief feature of their society not only being their blood and
kinship line of descent but also their pastoral and non-sedentary occupational
characteristics. In a later article Singh is however more categorical about the mention
of hunters and gatherers as primitive people. For example he writes of their references
in Akbarnama where tribal people were described as “men who go naked living in
the wilds, and subsist by their bows and arrows and the game they kill”. He also
argues that the medieval texts show that in case of tribals like the Gonds “that people
of India despise them and regard them outside the pale of their realm and religion”.
Such an identification of tribals as outside the realm of the sedentary cultivation was
contingent upon the development of a system of land administration which was an
important characteristic of the Mughal 16th and 17th centuries and British regimes of
the 19th century. Before that the British perceptions of tribes were conditioned by
their own contingencies. For example the Anglo-Maratha conflicts of the 18th century
led to descriptions that described the Gond chieftains as the “lords of the rugged hills”
and their subjects as people who were prone to anarchic behaviour and “ habitual
depredations”. Some of these depredations were described as “ravages of lawless
tribes” who assisted the errant and “chaotic rulers. We see similar perceptions of the
tribes on the Northeast frontiers of the British Rule. Writing about the Eastern Naga
tribes in the early 19th century Captain Michelle said that the Nagas carried on the
most profitable trade in slaves and suppressed all ryots in their neighbourhood. The
greed of gain caused endless feuds between villages and tribes. . There are numerous
accounts like this that stress the importance and the situation of the tribes before the
annexation of territories and after British domination. In almost all these accounts the
tribal problem appears to be one where the British see themselves as people who
have a duty towards teaching tribals civilised behaviour and an orderly life. While this
expression of the civilising mission did not change after the annexation of territories.
Rather it expressed itself in a different form.

32.2 TRIBES AND THEIR COLONIAL RULERS

The advent of colonialism in regions that were earlier under residencies and indigenous
chieftancies saw the assertion of British colonial sovereignty in several significant
ways some of which have been described by Nandini Sundar in the context of tribal
Bastar. However from the point of view of perceptions about tribals themselves
perhaps the most important factor that influenced them was the settlement of territories
and land rights in the Provinces with significant amount of tribal populations. The
permanent settlement in Bengal in the late 18th century and the subsequent ryot
settlements in Madras, Central Provinces and United Provinces all betrayed a bias
towards a certain notion of the agrarian society which was firmly grounded in the
ideas about modernity and progress. Within this perspective an evolutionary way of
seeing development also influenced the colonial images of tribal life. For example the
Report of the Ethnological Committee of the Races of Central Provinces that
described its task in the following manner:

“We have confined our analysis entirely to very curious tribes in this
country, which are usually called aborigines, their original seat in reality
being unknown and which are supposed to be different in languages,
custom and physical formation from the greatness of India”.

The term ‘race’ excluded all races and castes that were considered immigrants, i.e.,
the Hindu cultivators who settled in the valleys and the plains since the ancient times.
It only included the tribals who were considered the original inhabitants of the country
46
and carried special reports on areas like Chanda, Bhandara and others that were Studying Tribes Under
considered to be strongholds of tribal population. The notion that tribes were the Colonialism
original and isolated inhabitants of the forests was useful to colonial officials in their
endeavour to take over the fertile plains and valleys of different parts of the country.
In keeping with this image they were also described as rather timid, shy and well
behaved. For example Briggs remarked in his Lecture on the Wild Tribes that they
were the “best behaved wild tribes” even while they lived in seclusion and acted as
the “wild beasts around them”.

The second characteristic of the official images in the early and mid 19th centuries
was the notion that these “primitive tribes” were essentially animist forest people who
hated the intrusion of outsiders into their life. A good example of this was the
description of the Baigas and the Gonds of the “remotest hills” in the Central Provinces
who were described as living in harmony with nature. Forsyth’s account of the
Maikal hills was reflective of this when he wrote that:

“The real Byga of the hill ranges is still almost in the state of nature.
They are very black, with an upright slim, though exceedingly wiry
frame showing less of the negretto type of features than any other of
these wild tribes.... Destitute of all clothing but a small strip of cloth....
The Byga is the very model of a hill tribe”.

This introduction to the Byga is accompanied by Forsyth’s detailed account of the

forest hunt and the pursuit of game. He considered their cultivation practices and
hunting as a sign of their seclusion and primitiveness.

Finally, despite such a classification of the Bygas, Forsyth and his colleagues were
not unaware of the differentiation within the tribal economy. Tribals were classified
according to their level of development and their amalgamation of the Hindu society.
Social customs and conventions was a yardstick to assess the ‘scale of civilisation’.
On the economic front the scale of civilisation that the report referred to was
measured by the yardstick of progress which was manifested in the idea of a
peasant. This meant that the colonial ideals about the improvement of the tribal
society was centred around their perception of their own role in teaching tribal people
how to live a civilised life. This meant that they were to be taught plough cultivation
that was more desirable than shifting cultivation and that all those living in the rural
areas had to be taught the value of a sedentary peasant society.

It is in this context that the first impressions of bewar (a term for shifting cultivation
in the Central Provinces) justified the British need of intervention for the improvement
in Baiga lifestyle in consonance with the above-mentioned idea of progress. In colonial
terminology the terms bewar and dhaiya were used for the Baiga cultivation. The
term bewar was sometimes also used for the field that the Baigas prepare for
cultivation. Despite this confusion, in all cases the term dhaiya and bewar were used
for survival systems that were classed primitive, isolated and highly destructive to forests.
For example, Richard Temple just after the formation of the Central Provinces that:

“One great cause of wastage and destruction of the forest is called Dhya
cultivation? This Dhya cultivation is practically a substitute for ploughing
and a device for saving trouble of that operation. It is resorted to by hill
people who are averse to labour and have virtually no agricultural capital”.

Temple classified the dhaiya economy as “primitive” or “backward”. Its traits were
laziness and wastefulness. He implied that the tribals of the Central Provinces preferred
to do the minimum amount of labour to eke the minimum that they needed. Above
all such images also stressed the fact that bewar cultivation was not eco-friendly and
brought about the destruction of the forests. All these arguments were used to justify
colonial interventions for controlling land and forests in the 19th century.
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Social Questions Under
Colonialism 32.3 ROMANTICISM AND TRIBAL PROTECTION:
COLONIALISM AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN 20TH
CENTURY

The late 19th century saw a worsening of living conditions of tribal people in the tribal
areas. Most areas like Bihar, Orissa and Central Provinces, land alienation and
indebtedness amongst tribal people grew at an alarming rate. At the same time the
conditions of tribals in forests also worsened as they were reduced to providing cheap
labour to the forest department. All this created conditions of extreme dissatisfaction
that also led to much protest by tribal people. Some of the most famous ones were
Birsa Munda’s movement in 1875, the Gudem Ramapa Uprising and the Santhal
Uprising that forced the colonial policies. In other areas like the Mandla district of
the Central Provinces Baiga tribal people fled from the forests and the British were
forced to negotiate with them so that they remain in their villages and work for the
forest department. They were thus forced to create an area where the otherwise
banned practice of shifting cultivation would be allowed in some part of the forests.
All these protests and negotiations not only resulted in some welfare measures being
put into place but also resulted in the crystallisation of the tribal cultural identity which
was reflected in anthropological and official texts of the time.

One of the most important debates of the time was the debate about the demarcation
of tribal areas into protected zones under the Government of India Act of 1935. The
enactment of the provisions showed that the tribals had now become completely
dependent on the welfare measures of the state to meet their basic needs. The
debate on the measures proposed under the Act also revealed the way in which
different people viewed tribal people. One of the most important figures in the debate
was W.V. Grigson, an official who was commissioned to enquire into conditions of
tribals in the Central Provinces viewed them with the lens of benevolent patriarchal
authority. In the Maria Gonds of Bastar he wrote that the Marias, a primitive tribe
of Bastar, were people who had lived in harmony with forests and thus he said that:

“In most of this area (penda area) the forests have been too remote and
inaccessible to be exploited, and that, even though some fine timber has
been sacrificed much that has gone is over mature. Vast areas of forest
have been reserved by the State, and it is not possible to work half these
reserves. The Maria does not rage through the forest clearing patches
for cultivation at random; he has more or less definite rotations, and a
field of two to three years’ they may have a twelve or fourteen years’
rest, and a dense forest at the end of it. The axe and fire have let the
light of civilisation penetrate slowly but surely into the Bison-horn country
as nothing would have done for centuries; they alone have prevented the
Abujhmarh tract from remaining a trackless wilderness”.

This view marked a significant departure from the views of officials in the 19th
century. It also showed that the officials were forced to recognise the rights of tribal
people in a manner that they were being articulated at that time. Further people like
Grigson also reflected upon the role of the British Empire in tribal development when
he wrote that,

“Above all there must be an approach to some elements of ‘economic

democracy’ if the aboriginal is to play his due part in the India of the
future.... There is no political democracy without economic democracy”.

For Grigson ‘economic democracy’ denoted ownership of land, freedom from

indebtedness and from exploitation of labour at unusually low wages. To achieve
‘economic democracy’ outside intervention in tribal areas had to be restricted and
48
government protection ensured. However what is significant about Grigson’s perception Studying Tribes Under
is the fact that he considered the people in Bastar as similar to that of people in Colonialism
Africa when he wrote that:

“The primitives have more in common with African tribes than they have
with people in other parts of India such as the plains of Bengal, the Punjab
or Maharashtra…. I don’t think that “self governance” outside the village or
tribe has ever entered their heads. It is obvious that what is needed is a form
of protectorate and this can only be achieved through benevolent autocracy”.

The belief that tribals were not able to look after their own interests was largely
based on the assumption that they had always lived in a hostile society that had
exploited them. The creation of a protectorate would in fact enable forces that had
their benefit at heart to protect their interests and also bring about their economic
development. This perception was integral to many official anthropologists of the
period whose vision was also informed by the European anthropological writings of
their times. The most prominent of these anthropologists was Verrier Elwin who
worked first in Central India, then Eastern India and finally the NorthEast. The
romanticism and the functionalism of his anthropology have had an important impact
on the way in which people have looked at tribal people. In the 1940s Elwin wrote
in his famous pamphlet, Aboriginal, that “a tribe that dances does not die”. By
making such a statement he exemplified the fact that tribal people were distinguished
from others by their distinctive cultural identity. For Elwin the ‘primitive’ was a
romantic category which he described in the following way when he wrote that:

"The life of a true aboriginal is simple and happy, enriched by natural

pleasures. For all their poverty, their days are spent in the beauty of the
hills. A woman carrying a load to the hill-top pauses a moment to see
the scene below her. It is the ‘sweet forest’ the ‘forest of joy and
sandal’ in which they live".

The ‘forest of joy’ was Elwin’s dreamland - a place where people tended the dead,
were devoted to the soil, staged a magnificent and colourful tribal festivals, and were
infused with the spirit of sharing. For Elwin these were ‘things of value in tribal life’.
For him the ‘primitive’ constituted a ‘pure’ and a ‘pristine’ state of existence that was
morally superior to the civilized world. Elwin’s image of the forest dwellers voiced
his despair at the tendency towards the destruction of an idyllic society. However this
emotion was not expressed in a vacuum and embedded in it the critique of the
modern industrial society. Thus he said that:

“Until modern life is itself reformed, until civilisation is itself civilised,

until war is vanished from Europe and untouchability from India, there
is no point in trying to change the aboriginals”.

"Far better let them be for the time being – not forever of course; that
would be absurd. Perhaps in twenty, fifty or hundred years a race of
men may arise who are qualified to assimilate these fine people in their
society without doing them harm. Such men do not exist today".

Elwin assumed that the contact between the tribals and the wider agrarian society
would result in the injustice to their cause. In this he also critiqued the British rule
for its policies towards the tribals. He opposed the British policy of extending of
modern commercial economy into these areas, and wanted a relaxation of forest
rules. In this he also received the support of some colonial officials, noteable amongst
whom was the Governor of Bombay, Mr Wylie who wrote that:

“We are dealing with people whom their admirers describe as the ancient
lords of the jungle but whom I personally prefer to consider as forest
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Social Questions Under labourers isolated from the normal working of the law of demand and
Colonialism supply and as such at the mercy of the Forest Department who are the
sole pervayors of the labour from which, if the inhabitants of the forest
villages are to stay there at all, they have got to make a livelihood”.

Sharing such a crtitique with Elwin also ensured that many colonists like Wylie and
Grigson also shared with him the solutions to the problem. Ideally Elwin wanted the
forest dwellers to acquire the spirit and benefits of civilisation without a painful
transition process. Thus he wrote that:

“I advocate, therefore, for the aboriginals a policy of temporary partial

protection, and for their civilized neighbours a policy of immediate
reform....It is not enough to uplift them into a social and economic
sphere in which they cannot adapt themselves, but to restore to them
liberties of their own countryside”.

By advocating this position, Elwin showed how systemic change in forested areas,
were organically linked to changes in modern society, which he considered decadent.
Such a perception of tribes, their problems and he solutions was to influence the
thinking of scholars down the ages. The most prominent of these is Ramachandra
Guha, who in a recent biography of Verrier Elwin celebrated the cultural primitivism
for which Elwin became really well known:

“Most of all Verrier Elwin must be distinguished from other primitivists

in that he actually lived with the persons whose culture he so vigorously
celebrated. The narrator of primitivist revelries has the choice, which he
generally excersices. ‘to return, at the end his sojourn, to the highly
civilized countries he came from’…. Not many who wrote so eloquently
of the return to nature,’ he [Elwin] remarked, ‘were prepared however,
to take the journey themselves, at least not without a return ticket”.

Elwin was living with the tribals and his understanding of their problems was therefore
based on their experiences and life rather than the participant observation of an
academic anthropologist. But even if this distinguished him from others, his long-term
ideas and the policies that he recommended succeeded in supporting the benevolent
imperialism of people like Grigson. But it is not only Guha who were influenced by
colonial anthropology. Several other actiivists and anthropologists also used the
arguments of people like Elwin and Grigson to justify their arguments for the restoration
of traditional tribal rights and identities in the current polity.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, tribes were seen as self sufficient and isolated societies
that lived in harmony with nature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a significant body
of environmental history concentrates on the history of state forest management and
its impact on the rights of local people. In these studies, some historians follow the
assumptions of their predecessors by stressing that tribal communities had stable
systems of survival. However the notion of stability and harmony is elaborated in
terms of the theory of ecological prudence. Authors like Ramachandra Guha and
Madhav Gadgil argue that pre-colonial societies were well-adjusted caste institutions
that regulated resource use where each community occupied a specific ecological
niche in society. These ecological niches were closed and self-contained systems of
resource use that were regulated by social and cultural codes. And within this system
the tribes were given the niche of being either hunter gatherers or shifting cultivators
who were well adjusted to their surroundings in all its aspects.
The notion of a community is characterised by the idea of egalitarianism and
homogeneity where there is little differentiation in terms of access to resources. It
is also marked by the fact that political and ritualistic authorities are the source of
resource management as well as the cohesiveness of the community. Kinship is
50 defined as the organising principle of labour and the conceptual and the cultural
aspects of society defined the way in which the community related with other and Studying Tribes Under
defined the boundaries of the community. This is reflected in the work of Nandini Colonialism
Sundar and Ajay Skaria who attempt to complicate the picture by hinting at the
transformation of community identities in history. While they are right about the
transformations in identity, they too refuse to acknowledge the fact that the identities
that they themselves were writing about were a result of the underdevelopment of
tribal regions. The self-perceptions of tribals people of themselves as the original
inhabitants or as shifting cultivators and hunters and gatherers got solidified with the
colonial governement putting a ban on these practices. Thus the primordial tribal
identity was hardly traditional in nature and infact reflected the destruction of the
productive forces in tribal societies.

32.4 TRIBALS AND THE NATIONALISTS:

ANTHROPOLOGY FOR NATION BUILDING
In the contrast to the views of the anthropologists and the colonists the nationalists
of the 1930s and 40s were severly critical of colonial policies and hostile towards
anthropological writings that celebrated the cultural primitivism. The supporters of
tribal culture values considered the relationship between tribes and peasants to be
exploitative in character. They contended that the segregation of these people was
the most effective way of modernising them. Nationalist anthropologists and
Congressmen contested these assertions, thereby arguing that the basis of exclusion
was completely unfounded. The Congress debated the pro-exclusion British officials
on two counts. The first argument was political. It concentrated on being anti-
imperialist in its stance and laid emphasis on the development of an overwhelming
Indian identity that was intended to mobilise people against the colonial rule. The
second contention contested the social and anthropological basis of the contentions
made by those supporting the government policies of Exclusion and Partial Exclusion.
The Congress thought that the future of tribals was integrally linked with the economic
progress of the rest of the Indian population. They did not want to deny these
communities an opportunity to associate and learn from other advanced communities.
They disagreed with the official view that the tribal people had special needs and
rejected anything that celebrated the distinctiveness of cultures. For example in this
scheme of thinking anthropology deserved contempt. Two leaders of the Central
Provinces, M.S. Aney and N.M. Joshi, charged all anthropologists with desiring to
keep all the “primitive races of India uncivilised and in a state of barbarism as raw
material for their science in order to add to their blessed stock of scientific knowledge.
But the most articulate position in this respect was taken by G.S. Ghurye in his
monograph Aborigines – so called and their future in which the crux of his thesis
was that ‘aborigines’ were an integral part of the Hindu society since a very long
time. Explaining why these communities must be called “so-called aborigines” he said
that:

“It is clear from this discussion that the proper description of these
peoples must refer itself to their place in it near Hindu society and not
to their supposed autochthonism. While sections of these tribes are
properly integrated with Hindu society, very large sections, in fact a bulk
of them, are rather loosely assimilated. Only very small sections, living
in the recesses of the hills and the depths of the forests, have not been
more than touched by Hinduism. Under the circumstances the only
proper definition of these people is that they are imperfectly integrated
classes of Hindu society. Though for the sake of convenience they may
he designated the tribal classes of Hindu society, suggesting thereby the
social fact that they have retained much more of the tribal creeds and
organisation than many of the castes of Hindu society, yet they are in
reality Backward Hindus”. 51
Social Questions Under According to Ghurye, the historical process inevitably led to the Hinduization of the
Colonialism tribals. He argued that they would witness moral and economic betterment if they
were ‘properly assimilated’ into such a society. Their dance and music would be
allowed in Hindu society; and even if they lost some part of their culture, they would
be at an advantageous position in the long-run. Of the preservation of “tribal culture”
Ghurye stated that:
“Isolationism or assimilationism does not therefore appear to owe its
inspiration either to a supposedly queer academic interest of the
anthropologist or to the possibility of the perverse mentality of British
administrators. It is very largely a matter of opinion as to [which is] the
best way of preserving the vitality of the tribal people only secondarily
complicated by other considerations”.
Ghurye stated that the exclusion of the tribals was a political statement that was to
be opposed. According to him its sociological and historical assumptions were
inaccurate. He saw the peasant and tribal communities as open and dynamic structures,
each influencing the other. But despite this conceptual framework, the merits of the
assimilation of the tribes into Hindu society continued to be over emphasised in
Ghurye’s work.
Ghurye was not the only nationalist sociologist to criticise the pro-Exclusionist policies.
In an essay entitled ‘Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption’ Nirmal Kumar Bose laid
down his interpretation of the relationship of the dominant Hindu communities with
tribes. He said that,
“From what has been observed among the Juangs and from the reading
of law books, it is to be noted that the Hindu society while absorbing a
new tribe or while creating a new jati by differentiation of occupation,
always guaranteed or tried to guarantee monopoly in a particular
occupation to each caste within a given region. The last point is very
important; for the same jati may be found practising many different
trades if it finds the prescribed hereditary occupations no longer
economically satisfactory”.
The stances of both Ghurye and Bose resulted in a defence of Hindu culture and
society. They saw the tribal identity as a sub-set of the larger identity of the caste
Hindu society and therefore did not consider the assimilation into Hindu society a
major problem. But this was not true of all nationalists. Social workers like A.V.
Thakkar reflected upon the need to develop a strong nationalist identity. In 1941
Thakkar wrote that,
“These people were the original sons of the soil and were in possession
of our country before the Aryans poured in from the North West and
North East passes, conquered them with their superior powers and
talents and drove them from the plains to the hills and forests. They are
older and more ancient children of the soils than the Hindus and more
so than the Muslims and Anglo-Indians. But they are steeped in ignorance
and poverty and do not know their rights and privileges, much less their
collective and national responsibilitie”.
In his interpretation of the tribal past, Thakkar tried reinstate the position of these
communities as the ‘original inhabitants of India’. However in doing so he also
asserted that the present conditions of poverty and ignorance in which tribal people
lived had to be changed. This transformation could not be brought about through a
policy of isolationism or Exclusion. Thakkar argued that the spirit of provincial
government of national responsibility could only be inculcated into these communities
through a policy of “assimilation”. But his path of assimilation was slightly different
from that of Ghurye and Bose. He said that:
52
 “It is difficult for me to understand why these persons [persons in favour Studying Tribes Under
of Exclusion and Partial Exclusion] fear the contact with the Hindus and Colonialism
Muslims of the plains. In few cases the social evils of the plains are
likely to be copied by unsophisticated aboriginals. But it is not right to
consider that contact will only bring bad customs into tribal life and that
the aborigines will suffer more than they benefit. Safeguards may be
instituted to protect the aborigines from more advanced people of the
plains, as has been done with regard to non-alienable land. But to keep
these people confined to and isolated in their inaccessible hills and jungles
is like keeping them in glass cases of a museum for the curiosity of
purely academic persons”.

Thakkar considered the strategy of assimilation was an essential part of their

development process. He believed that if these communities learnt some good things
from the Hindu society, they would also be exploited by it. Hence he proposed a
different type of a policy of protection for these communities. Rather than the
confinement of these communities in a segregated space, he proposed protection of
the forest communities through the legislation of special laws. In this sense, even if
Thakkar was opposed to the Exclusion, he was in favour of some kind of protection
for tribals.

The predominant nationalist view that the tribes was not a historically and
anthropologically valid category was reflected in the writings of post colonial writers
who were inspired by them. Reviewing the literature on tribes and peasantry Andre
Beteille wrote in 1987 that there was no satisfactory way of defining the tribal
society. Arguing that it was difficult to call any one a tribal in Indian society, rather
the agrarian society was comprised of a heterogeneous body of peasants cut up into
various ethno-linguistic categories. In a similar vein Guha also argues that historically
informed anthropologists like G.S. Ghurye and D.R. Gadgil were justified in repudiating
the categories of aboriginals and tribals and that the historical record supported such
skepticism. Thus we find that the anthropologists, sociologists, and historians of
contemporary tribal India were profoundly influenced by the writings of people who
studied tribes in the colonial times.

32.5 SUMMARY

In this unit we introduced you to various strands of writings on tribal studies. We

saw how the colonial officials and the nationalists differed in their perceptions of
tribes in India. Different shades of opinions amongst both of them have also been
spelt out.

32.6 GLOSSARY

Pre Class Society : Historically societies that emerged before the formation
of classes occurred. These societies were primarily
marked by kin based or lineage based formations.

32.7 EXERCISES
1) What were the different views of British officials about tribes in India?
2) What was the defining principle of the nationalists on tribes in India?

53
SUGGESTED READINGS
Arnold, D. and Guha, Ramchandra, eds, Nature, Culture and Imperialism:
Essays on the Enviornmental history of South Asia, Oxford Uni. Press,
N. Delhi, 1995.
D’Souja, Dilip, Branded by Law : Looking at India’s Denotified Tribes, Penguin
Books, New Delhi, 2001.
Gadgil (Madhav) and Guha, RamChandra, This fissured Land, Oxford University
Press, 1992.
Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism : Colonial Expansion, Tropical Eden and the
Origin of Enviornmentalism –1600-1860, Cambridge, 1994.
Grove, Richard, Ecology, Climate and Europe, Oxford Uni. Press, Delhi, 1998.
Nigam, Sanjay, “Discipling and policing ‘the criminals’ by birth”, Indian Economic
and Social History Review, Vol.27, No.2, 1990.
Rangarajan,Mahesh, Fencing the Forests, Oxford Uni. Press, Delhi, 1996.
Singha, Radhika, Despotism of Law.
David Arnold, Colonizing the Body, Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth
Century India, Delhi, 1983.
“Touching the Body: Perspective on the Indian plague”, in Ranajit Guha, Gayatri
Chakravarty Spivak, Eds, selected subaltern Studies, Oxford University Press,
1983.
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