Tribes in India

TRIBES IN INDIA 

The word ‘Tribe,’ according to sociology, means “A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture.” Hence, the term ‘Tribe ‘can be traced back to 13th-century medieval English, where ‘tribe’ was meant to be the biblical connotation of “the twelve tribes of Israel.” The word is from Old French tribu, in turn from Latin tribus, referring to the original tripartite ethnic division of the Roman state: Ramnes (Ramnenses), Tities (Titienses), and Luceres.

In India, on the other hand, it seems ‘tribes’ have inhabited the Indian sub-continent for a very long period—the species known as Ramapithecus was found in the Siwalik foothills of the northwestern Himalayas. The people of India belong to different anthropological stocks. According to Dr. B. S. Guha, the population of India is derived from six main ethnic groups:

1. Negritos: The Negritos, or the brachycephalic (broad headed) from Africa, were the earliest people to inhabit India. They survive in their original habitat in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, such as the Andamanis tribe in India.

2. Pro-Australoids or Austrics: After the Negritos, the Austrics came to inhabit India. They represent a race of people with wavy and curly hair plentifully distributed over their brown bodies, long heads with low foreheads and prominent eye ridges, noses with low and broad roots, thick jaws, large palates and teeth and small chins. Austrics tribes, which are spread over the whole of India, Myanmar and the islands of South East Asia, are believed to “form the bedrock of the people.” They were the main builders of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

3. Mongoloids: The Mongoloids are the people who have features that are common to those of the people of Mongolia, China and Tibet. These tribal groups are located in the northeastern part of India in states like Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Ladakh and Sikkim.

4. Dravidian: The Dravidians spread all over India, surpassing the population of the first two peoples, Negoritas and Austria. It is believed that they formed the backbone of the Harappan and Indus Valley civilizations. This group comprises the whole of Mediterranian. This group constitutes the bulk of the scheduled castes in North India. This group has a sub-type called the Oriental group. 

5. Western Brachycephals: There is not much information on this particular group, but it is believed that the Parsi population of India belongs to it.

6. Nordics: Nordics or Indo-Aryans were the last immigrants to India. They comprise the Indo-Iranians. Their first home in India was western and northern Punjab, from where they spread to the Valley of the Ganga and beyond. Many of these tribes belong to the “upper castes.”

Apart from their origins in the Indian Subcontinent, these tribes are divided into several units of tribes with different cultures and languages. We shall now look into a list of tribal languages in India, which constitutes much of the country’s linguistic data.