ISSUES OF INTEGRATION AND AUTONOMY OF TRIBES IN INDIA
Colonial Policies and Tribes in India
Although the early anthropological work of the colonial era had described tribes as isolated cohesive communities, colonialism had already brought irrevocable changes in their world. In most parts of the country, colonialism brought the radical transformation of the tribals as their relative isolation was eroded by the penetration of market forces and they were integrated with the British and princely administrations. A large number of money-lenders, traders, revenue farmers and other middlemen and petty officials invaded the tribal areas and disrupted the tribal’s traditional way of life. They were increasingly engulfed in debt and lost their lands to outsiders, often being reduced to the position of agricultural labourers, sharecroppers and rack-rented tenants. Many were forced to retreat further into the hills. Belated legislation to prevent the alienation of land by the tribal people failed to halt the process.
Verrier Elwin, who lived nearly all his life among the tribal people in central and north-eastern India and who had one of the formative influences in the evolution of the new government’s policies towards the tribes, was referred to the fate of the tribal people under British rule as follows: they suffered oppression and exploitation, because there soon came merchants and liquor-venders, cajoling, tricking, swindling them in their ignorance and simplicity until bit by bit their broad acres dwindled and they sank into the poverty in which many of them still live today. Simultaneously, missionaries were destroying their art, their dances, their weaving and their whole culture.
Colonialism also transformed the tribals relationship with the forest. They depended on the forest for food, fuel and cattle feed and raw materials for their handicrafts. In many parts of India, the hunger for land by immigrant peasants from the plains led to the destruction of forests, depriving the tribals of their traditional means of livelihood. To conserve forests and to facilitate their commercial exploitation, the colonial authorities brought large tracts of forest lands under forest laws which forbade shifting cultivation and put severe restrictions on the tribal’s use of the forest and their access to forest products.
Network railways and roadways extended to tribal areas because tribal areas were resource rich areas. So to exploit these resources like forests and mines, Britishers broke their isolation. Along with the Britishers, there comes a band of moneylenders and plantation farmers. These outsiders had different economic motives and ways of life. They had no sensitivity to tribal culture and ecology.
Loss of land, indebtedness, exploitation by middlemen, denial of access to forests and forest products, and oppression and extortion by policemen, forest officials and other government officials was to lead to a series of tribal uprisings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example, the Santhal uprising and the Munda rebellion led by Birsa Munda and the participation of the tribal people in the national and peasant movements in Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Following the various rebellions in tribal areas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the colonial government set up ‘excluded’ and ‘partially excluded’ areas where the entry of non-tribals was prohibited or regulated. In these areas, the British favoured indirect rule through local kings or headmen.
The Britishers never engaged in development activities since they didn’t want others to disagree with their stance on mining and forests. They desired the strong British tradition and the modest tribal tradition. They encouraged the Christianization of tribes as a result. Gandhi claimed that the emergence of Hindu nationalism in India is mostly due to conversion. According to S.C. Dube, the British intended to convert people into violent tribes. The ongoing insurgency is, therefore, a British legacy. A.R. Desai claims that tribes in India live in a state of voluntaristic isolation. British measures helped to end their isolation. Tribes weren’t ready for such an abrupt invasion and disruption of their segregated existence. Even now, people are still being affected by this abrupt exploitation and pervasive poverty.
With the aid of Christian missionaries who converted many tribal people to Christianity, the British government had still also built a number of schools and hospitals in the tribal territories. Himendroff says that Christian missionaries were crucial in bringing tribes from darkness to light, and he shares this opinion. They introduced rationality, knowledge, and contemporary healthcare. He contends that this does not excuse British engineering of the caste and tribal divide. Thus, for the most part, the tribal people suffered from colonial-feudal dominance, ethnic biases, illiteracy, poverty, and isolation during the British period.
Issues of integration and autonomy of tribes in India
The people who are now categorised as tribal once made up a significant portion of India’s population and lived in isolated forests and hilly areas. They had enjoyed an autonomous life of their own. Tribes were exploited by colonial policy toward them, and their connection to the natural world was severed. Inequalities in tribal circumstances were brought about by the colonial government’s policy of isolation and assimilation in the past. The administrators’ and missionaries’ adoption of the western conception of modernity led to attempts to incorporate them into the culture at large. While some tribes, including those in the northeastern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and others, were left in isolation, others received modern education.
The tribal population has generally remained aloof from mainstream society in the past. They have their own social, political and economic setup that is not integrated with that of the larger society. After independence, the constitution framers sought to maintain this autonomy through the fifth and sixth schedules of the constitution.
Ghurye, the father of Indian sociology, has criticized the constitution makers for the provisions of autonomy that were included in the constitution. According to him, it works against national integration and would fuel secessionism. He also criticized Nehru for speaking about tribal integration (through the “tribal panchsheel”) while, in reality, he supported tribal autonomy as expounded in Schedule V and VI. Ghurye considered tribals as backward Hindus as, though they internalized the rites and rituals of Hindu society, they were yet to internalize the Hindu epistemology like Karma, Samsara and Moksha. According to him, tribal and Hindu cultures have undergone cultural fusion.
Perhaps the most controversial of all approaches were suggested by Verrier Elwyn, who favoured isolation of tribes from the mainstream society. For this, he proposed the setting up tribal national parks where people from outside, such as missionaries, merchants and money lenders, are not allowed entry. The idea was that by barring the entry of outsiders, the exploitation of tribals and the death of their culture by interaction with the larger society can be prevented. Though Elwyn himself retracted from this suggestion later, the Inner Lie Permit policy that effectively barred outsiders from Arunachal Pradesh has created a rather desirable situation. Tribes like Apa Tani of this region have progressed materially by embracing modern education and technology but have still preserved their culture.
Though tribal areas are given relative autonomy and protection, they have not been without external interference. The Central Indian tribes are historically assimilated into the wider society compared to those in other parts of the country. The mineral rich area attracted a number of mining companies who were able to circumvent rules along with state patronage in certain cases, that has led to the alienation of tribal land. Now, in the absence of education and skills, they find themselves struggling to cope up with the world. It is not just a matter of livelihood alone. The tribal population has a deep relationship with their land and the elements. By displacement, they lose their culture and the social fabric gets disrupted. They take up jobs in the informal sector, such as in construction and mining. Assimilation with the wider society becomes a survival strategy. By doing so, they put at stake their tribal identity. When the exploitation and alienation of tribals go beyond a limit, they decide to assert their identity and even demand separate statehood or nationhood. This is perhaps borne by the belief that political empowerment can come only with territorial identity. Schedule VI, with its greater provisions for autonomy, can be used as an effective tool for meeting tribal aspirations even in central India (which are now covered under Schedule V).
Thus, issues of integration and autonomy were made more challenging by the complexity of the Indian tribal population. Another problem was ethnic-tribal sub-nationalism. The need for autonomy allows for the organic evolution of developmental policies to fit the tribal way of life and culture. On the other side, aggressive steps should be taken to integrate them so they can escape their state of isolation and backwardness. An excessive emphasis on autonomy may result in isolationist attitudes. Integration could jeopardise the tribal peoples’ cultural identity, though.
_______________________________
Verrier Elwin- his book ‘The Baiga’ in 1939. ‘The Aboriginals’ in 1944. (Policy of Isolation)
G. S. Ghurye- his book ‘The Schedule tribe’ in 1959. (Policy of assimilation)
Jawaharlal Nehru – in his manuscript discovery of India (Policy of integration)
Post a Comment