A world map with its neatly marked out spaces and colours simultaneously conveys and obscures the heterogeneity of organized human existence. At one level, such a cartographical representation indicates that the global order is not a singular and homogeneous unit. That it is a system of heterogeneous peoples is discernibly conveyed by those spaces that are specifically marked out with neatly demarcated boundaries and colours. At another level, the same representation obscures the fact that each of these constituent units, contrary to what is being conveyed by the neatness of boundary and specificity of colour, is by no means monochromatic; each of these units consists of heterogeneous collectivities. And this obscured heterogeneity of our organized systems of collective life often becomes intelligible through the discourses on minority, ethnic group and tribe. Countries in South Asia have their share of such minorities, ethnic groups and tribal people.

The three categories, viz., minority, ethnic group, and tribe might conjure up different images of human collectivities in these countries. In India, the term ‘minority’ more often than not refers to ‘religious’ groups, while in Afghanistan and to some extent in Pakistan, the expression may conjure up the images of ‘ethnic’ and ‘tribal’ groups. Unlike religious and even ethnic group, the expression ‘tribe’ often evokes the idea of ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ people who exist at the margins of civilization and/or the nation-state. In that, the marginality of their existence, in terms of political, socio-cultural and economic parameters, makes tribal people stand out as a distinct category of people.

Incidentally, the marginality of the tribal people in our part of the world is also reflected in the idea of these people as the autochthones. Prominent narratives present these people as the original habitants of the region who were later driven deep into the forests and or mountains by the incoming waves of immigrants. According to some sociologists, the adivasis, the forests dwellers, in India are one of those peoples who had been marginalized by the Indo-Aryan immigrants. Similarly, amongst some leftist-anarchist theorists, many of the tribal people who inhabit in the mountain/hill ranges in India’s Northeast as well as in Myanmar are seen as those people who have escaped from the vagaries of ‘state’ formation.

Incidentally, this latter reading of the tribal people as those who escaped from ‘state’ formation is a counter narrative to the familiar anthropological idea of tribals as ‘primitive’ people who are located at an earlier stage in the linear trajectory of human progress. Although provocatively argued by James Scott as ‘why civilization does not climb mountains’, in this reading the so-called ‘primitive’ condition (e.g., marked by an absence of a written script) of the tribal people is seen as a product of their rational or conscious choice to escape the ‘state’ formation.

The marginality of the tribal people under the nation state system in South Asia can also be seen from the fact that there is a critical link between the ideas of ‘civilization’ and ‘history’ that inform ‘nationhood’. For instance, the idea of ‘Indic civilization’, with its high culture/Sanskritic tradition, gives a tangible selfhood to the ‘nationalists’ in South Asia as a 5000 years old civilization. This claim becomes the bedrock in crafting a ‘history’ of the ‘nation’ which, in turn, gave impetus to the anti-colonial movement for freedom. In this construction , tribal people become ‘people without history’ and to some, also people who are outside the fold of that (high culture or Sanskritic) civilization. In short, the tribal people become those who exist at the margin of state and its society.

 

It is this location of the tribal people that has produced the varying discourses on how one must approach these people. Acknowledging the marginality of the tribal people, generally speaking, there are three different positions on the issue of how one must approach the issue of the tribal people. The first alludes to the idea of conservation of the tribal people and their ways of life, a view best represented by people like Verrier Elwin who favoured isolation of these people. In fact, initially he even suggested the creation of a ‘National Park’ where the tribal people could live the life of their own and protect themselves against the ‘hasty and unregulated process of civilization.’

A second strand criticized the above position of isolating the tribal people as nothing more than the creation of a museum of these people rather than helping them to utilize resources of modern knowledge and improve their condition. Thus, scholars like G.S. Ghurye looked at the tribal people in India as ‘backward Hindus’ and sought to assimilate them into the Hindu culture.

A third approach, often exemplified by Pandit Nehru, favoured the effort to engage with the tribal people in ways which would enabled them to develop themselves along the lines of their own genius. Referred to as an approach to integration, it seeks to encourage self-administration by the tribal people themselves in order to protect their rights over land and preserve their cultures. However, it must be noted that each of these approaches must be understood in the light of actual responses of the state and society towards the aspirations and challenges faced by the tribal people.

Given the historicity of their marginal existence, and in light of the changing spectrum of political, socio-economic and cultural churnings of the contemporary times, the tribal people have repeatedly voiced their concerns and aspirations, many of which took the form of socio-political movements and rebellions. These aspirations will tell us that the tribal people are not without their own agency and that their life forms cannot simply be reduced to ‘spectacles’ for the so-called non-tribal people to consume and/or to reaffirm themselves as civilizing and benevolent persona. Overall, we can broadly discuss these voices under the broad four domains.

 

In the political domain, one of the major assertions of the tribal people relates to their right to over their land and collective affairs to determine their life and govern themselves. Many of such assertions have taken the form of armed rebellion for a separate sovereign and independent state of their own (e.g., the Naga nationalist movement that confronts the post-colonial states of India and Myanmar). Understandably, existing states have responded with a mixture of a heavy hand and financial inducements. While the aspiration in the form of ‘right to self-determination’ may take the form of movements for separate sovereign states for the tribal people in some cases, in others, it is essentially a struggle for autonomy within the existing states.

 

There has been a lot of churning in the economic domain as well, especially with the changes which are associated with the advent of neo-liberal political economy. Big dams and mining industries in mineral rich tribal areas have become a major flashpoint of conflict due to the real prospect of dislocation and displacement of the tribal people. A fight against such aspects of political economy has become a salient reflection of the aspiration of the tribal people in many parts in South Asia.

For instance, the controversy over forests rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is a case in point. The fight of forest dwellers to land and to collect minor produce under the act has been reportedly denied by the forest officials, while at the same time, two lakh hectares of forest land has been illegally handed over to the private corporations. Simultaneously, a majority of states in India did not even implement the act (Goa, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh and some northeastern states).

In the religious and cultural domains, reflecting the rise of identity politics, the tribal people have become the site of conversion politics whereby the so-called mainstream religious groups try to appropriate the tribal people (e.g., the Hindu right and Christian missionaries amongst the tribal population in India). On the other hand, the tribal people themselves are also asserting their traditional identities in the form of ‘revivalist movements’. Some of these assertions are seen in India’s Northeast such as Donyi-Polo and Rangfraism (Arunachal Pradesh), Heraka (Assam, Nagaland and Manipur), Bathouism (Assam), and Seng Khasi (Meghalaya).

As for the social domain, there have been movements within the tribal people to transform their traditional institutional practices. The struggle of some men in Meghalaya (India) to bring about a change in the institutional practices (such as matrilineal and inheritance) of the Khasi society is a case in point.

It must go without saying that the above aspirations of the tribal people are angst of a more general reflective which is generic in nature. Their manifestations differ from country to country in South Asia and within each country as well. Incidentally, the idea of ‘South Asia’ may itself bring about a different understanding of what and who is a tribe. There is a general tendency to understand ‘South Asia’ as a mere geographical expression, forgetting that it is equally pregnant with civilizational and cultural connotations as well. The observation that ‘South East Asia’ begins from India’s Northeast is a reminder that ‘South Asia’ is racially and civilizationally different from ‘South East Asia’. In that the tribal people in ‘North West Frontier’ region may be different from those in the ‘North East Frontier’ and both may be different from those residing on the Indian plateau, just as the latter may be different from those in Maldives. However, the struggle of the marginal people who are known as the tribal people in South Asia, will continue to tell us the story of human ingenuity and struggle to shape our decisions on the forms of life that we can and must follow.