Sociology

 TRIBE–CASTE CONTINUUM

The Tribe-Caste continuum means the transformation of a tribal group into a caste group. In ancient society, caste originated on the basis of the division of labour. The tribe evolved on the basis of communities feeling and inhabiting a definite geographical area.

The term continuum was used for the first time by Robert Redfield in his book, The Folk Culture of Yucatan (1941), to understand the interaction between tribal, folk, semi-urban and urban communities.

Much before Redfield pinpointed the areas of continuity between folk and urban cultures, Census officials confronted this problem, when the census operations began under the supervision of British administrators. Initially, they used the term ‘tribe’ in a rather loose sense, describing even such groups as the jats and Ahirs as tribes. However, when J. H. Hutton took over the charge of census operation, rigour was applied. It became an important discussion on the points of distinction between ‘tribe’ and ‘caste’. If a group could be shown to be clearly Hindu in its religious beliefs and practices, it was a caste; if it was ‘animist’, it had to be treated as a tribe. Economic, political and ecological factors were of secondary importance.

Ethnographers, sociologists, social anthropologists, social workers and others have been grappling with the problem of developing one way of defining a tribe or tribal society. Sometimes it becomes so wide that it also included peasantry. Nadeem Hasnain in Tribal India Today (1988), has dealt in detail with this problem presenting all the possible viewpoints.

According to Andre Beteille, there are certain commonly observed differences between tribes and castes. The tribes are relatively isolated as to the castes. They are a world within itself having few externalities. Tribes speak a variety of dialects which separates them from non-tribes. They follow their own religion and practices which are not common in Hinduism. Language is a criterion of difference as tribes speak their local dialect, for example, Mundas and Oraons of Chota Nagpur speak different dialects but Bhumij has lost their tribal dialect and speak the dominant language of the area.

According to F.G. Bailey tribe and caste should be viewed as a continuum. He seeks to make a distinction not in terms of the totality of behaviour but in a more limited way in relation to the political-economic system. Briefly has argument is that a caste society is hierarchical while a tribal society is segmentary and egalitarian. But in contemporary India, both caste and tribe are being merged into a different system which is neither one nor the other.

Surajit Sinha opines that many of the lower castes in India seem to share with the tribal’s emphasis on equality in social behaviour within one’s own ethnic group, considerable freedom of cultural participation for the women, and a value system burdened by puritanical asceticism. Further, the supernaturalism of these lowest castes has some similarities with that of tribes.

N.K. Bose in his Hindu Methods of Tribal Absorption (1941) showed the mode of absorption of Jati influence by the primitive tribes of Orissa.

Marin Oran’s, study Santhal: A Tribe in Search of Great Tradition (1965) goes on to show, how on a different plane, many tribes in India are being attracted towards the complex belief of high Hinduism. In certain cases, the process of Hinduisation of tribes due to intimate cultural contacts has been so rapid that such tribes remain ‘tribes’ for the namesake only. However, the concept of the tribe-caste continuum has gained currency in the writings of social analysts.

According to Ghurye tribal people are backward Hindus differing only in degrees from the other segments of Hindu society. Elwin argued for the recognition of the separate social and cultural identities of tribal people. The government of India gives tacit recognition to this identity of keeping alive under constitution sanction their lists of Scheduled Tribe.

According to Herbert Risley, the convention of endogamy is not rigidly enforced in the tribe whereas such is the case in a tribe. But this view is not acceptable since the law of endogamy is enforced with extreme rigidity in some tribes.

According to D.N. Majumdar, the tribe looks upon Hindu ritualism as foreign and extra-religious even though indulging in it and in the worship of God and Goddesses whereas in the caste these are a necessary part of the religion.

The tribes in India have been influenced by certain traditions of the communities around them. The major neighbouring community in all the areas has always been Hindus. As a result from the very period, there have been several points of contact between the Hindus of the area and tribal communities living within it. The nature and extent of contact the pattern of mutual participation and the characteristics of revitalization movements have been different in different parts of India.

The ethnographic records establish that the contacts varied from semi-isolation to complete assimilation. The numerous castes among Hindus have emerged out of the tribal stratums. The recent studies of tribes of Himalayan western and middle India have left no doubt that some of the tribes are Hinduized to the extent that they have been assimilated with the different castes at different levels in the caste system.

There are numerous other tribes that have undergone selective acculturation and have added selected traits or features of the regional Hindus to their respective traditional cultures. In this practice of acculturation, most of them failed to occupy any rank in the castes hierarchy while few of them were integrated into the lower strata of the Hindu social system.