Tribal Scenario of Koraput Plateau

tribal scenario of koraput plateau

FOREWORD

The prologue of the present publication entitled, tribal scenario of koraput plateau written by the author meticulously, precisely and effectively pronounces all essential aspects of Koraput populace, with special reference to the Hill Tribes, the typical features of land where they live, the socio-cultural nexes, economies including livelihood pursuits, religious and ideological bases, Politico-jural network and the like. The manner of presentation of the discourse is unique as the prologue itself contains dialogues with a veteran octogenarian anthropologist of our country, Professor (Dr.) B.K. Roy Burman, who is a living encyclopaedia on tribal society, culture and development and whose contributions have expanded the horizon of Knowledge of current anthropologists and tribal lovers. In course of conversation, both have touched very significant matters, such as the paradigm shifts in tribal affairs, tribal welfare and development strategies, problems of mainstreaming, nature and features of the Fifth Schedule and Sixth Schedule and Tribes Advisory Council as Constitutional instruments and their functioning, etc. Another important matter to be mentioned here hinted at the provision of good governance in Scheduled Areas, which is one of the Constitutional mandates.

The prologue also contained discussions on one outstanding publication of the Planning Commission entitled, Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas : March 2008, which could never be lost sight of while planning for the implementation of development schemes and programmes in extremist affected areas. We are all deeply concerned with the causes, losses and cure of inceasant insurgent activities of extremists based on violence. Anther report of the Planning Commission referred to in the text is Prevention of Alienation of Tribal Land and its Restoration, 2004 and is essentially relevant in the context. The author is emphatic that our policy should be to diagnose the areas of discontent and implement suitable measures to ameliorate the violent situations through negotiated solutions. The author further pleads that superficial understanding of land and people of Koraput plateau may deteriorate the position instead of bettering.

The denizens/ inhabitants of hills and forests constitute predominantly the major population of Koraput plateau since prehistoric times. As the first settlers they claimed to be inventors of food production by using technologies of both broadcasting and transplantation in varieties of lands, such as dry upland, terraced land in hill slopes, swidden land with undulating features and low wetland both irrigated and non-irrigated and practised mono-cropping as well as multi-cropping. They have been applying their indigenous skills and technologies in the production process and exhibited their excellence in water management too. Taking the views of anthropologists, ethnographers and administrators, the author has taken painstaking efforts in highlighting the virtues and achievements of Koraput populace.

According to the author the term ‘Hill Tribes’ was introduced in Koraput in 1917 when the agency tract covered the then districts of Ganjam and Vizagapatanam and the entire district was a part of the Agency Tract. Consequent upon the formation of Orissa state on the April 1, 1936 Koraput district consisted of the major portion of the district of Vizagapatam and the list of Hill Tribes was amended by Government of Orissa, Revenue Department notification No. 148/R, dated 14th January 1943. Further, The Agency Tracts Interest and Land Transfer Act, 1917 and Regulation 2 of 1956 are significant in providing legal protection to the ownership of tribal land.

The most outstanding revelation in the present publication is to view Koraput as a part of the Dandakaranya region and its socio-cultural nexus has been synthesized by the author. Following the Gazetteer of India, the author has identified the Dandakaranya region and the Koraput plateau which is located at its centre towards the northern part of the Eastern Ghats. As per the map along its legend the Dandakaranya region includes 66 police station areas in Odisha, 12 Tahasil areas of Chhattisgarh and 46 Mandal areas of Andhra Pradesh. This exercise immensely helps understanding precisely the synthesis of socio-cultural nexus of Koraput plateau. In fact, the politico-administrative boundary and socio-cultural boundary are conceptually different. The Dandakaranya region as a whole reflects both fusion and fission of socio-cultural fabrics of the area in course of time, but contains a compact and cohesive network encapsulating unity amidst endless diversities. Bio-cultural diversities have more merits than demerits in a holistic perspective in the entire Dandakaranya region. In such a situation, the people of the region feel free to look beyond the boundaries of their respective states and exhibit interactions in their life ways. In other words, the people of the region share with each other in life-crises rituals, customary worldview, magico-religious beliefs and ritual performances, folk-wisdom, indigenous knowledge, artistic manifestations, performing art, folk crafts and the like. Thus, in a nutshell, Koraput plateau consisting of the undivided Koraput district epitomises Dandakaranya region as a significant part of our national culture.

Studies on social history of a region and its populace are few and far between. The writing tradition in remote areas started consequent upon the evolution of scripts for any language. Written languages are a later phenomenon and in its absence spoken languages were in vogue. Recorded social history especially for non-literate people was well nigh impossible for documentation. Therefore, our investigation of an area and its people remains obscure and incomplete. The earlier ethnographic records on land and people prepared by scholars throw some light on land features and people’s way of life. Besides, the administrators living and working in any area and coming in contact with people have left some precious reports which help us in reconstructing the past, For example, the British administrator’s reports are extremely helpful in more than one way. The Hill Tribes designated by the British Administrators opened innumerable scopes to understand them as such in a specific area, but created certain problems later to continue their designation. Each such Hill Tribe had a discrete entity with unique ethno-cultural identify, of course, defined and redefined from time to time. It may be stated here that the colonial administrators and ethnographers had no adequate time to go deep into any study on tribal life and culture. They were rather superficial in presenting facts which were readily available for them. Thus, the real lifestyle tribal falk was often distorted. They had hardly sufficient time to verify the truth. Whether matters connected with their religious faith and ideology or socio-economic organisation, all had reflections of the British conception. Thus, tribal ethnography was more or less distorted, mystified and often remained far from truth. 

It is observed that during the post-independence period the proposals for inclusion in the list of Scheduled Tribes as well as Scheduled Castes have become a perpetual process. It has been mentioned by the author that some Hill Tribes have not been included in the lists for which they have been representing from time to time. The criteria as per Lokur Committee prescription for determination of communities as S.Ts, such as primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large and backwardness have become obsolete today. Moreover our constitution has nowhere mentioned about the definition of the Scheduled Tribe. Hence, there is need for evolving unambiguous and appropriate criteria for the purpose. However, proposals for inclusion in the list received from various communities, especially inhabiting extremist affected/ prone areas and left out inadvertently from the list need further probe and scrutinization and deserve all sympathetic consideration for inclusion, so that they derive benefits out of reservation based on protective discrimination. Such reservation may be area specific in the list meant for the entire state.

The author has critically examined the terminological clarification and the conceptual frame of ‘tribe’ citing views of anthropologists, ethnographers and experts expressed from time to time. His discussion of the tribes of Koraput Plateau is more elaborate, informative and appropriate and depicts both pre-colonial and post-colonial situations. The historic perspective of tribal formation has been depicted along with relevant matters connected with brief tribal studies, processes of the Hinduisation, tribalisation, tribe-caste dichotomy and the like. Valuable views of authorities have been quoted appropriately. This portion is extremely helpful for the planners, policymakers, researchers in several ways while reconstructing the historical dimension as well as socio-cultural dimensions of tribal situation in Koraput plateau. It may be reiterated here that terms ‘tribe’ and ‘caste’ did not show clear distinctions rather synonymity between them during the eighteenth century. In our country, tribes do not constitute isolated wholes rather intimately interrelated with the rest of the population and justify a part of the continuum, styled as the ‘Folk-Urban Continuum’ as developed by Professor Robert Redfield, incorporating folk (tribal communities), peasant (rural caste communities including Dalits) and urban (town and city dwellers) and each such segment although has uniqueness is mutually inclusive and interactive. 

The undivided Koraput district which is predominantly populated by the S.Ts is a multi-ethnic, pluricultural and multi-lingual region. History has witnessed its locational changes over time consequent upon its affiliations to adjoining regions, but retained its basic status as an ‘Agency Tract’ and subsequently as ‘Scheduled Area’ under the Fifth Schedule of our constitution for the purpose of development administration. In spite of inevitability of socio-cultural changes from hoary antiquity till the present day Koraput has been maintaining its uniqueness in lethro-cultural personality configuration. 

The author has been sensitive in his observation of the tribal folk under the canvas of British policy of isolationism and negation of welfare as well as development intervention for the people and also the later situations during the post-independence period. In the recent past tribals were having a kind of sub-human living because of relative deprivation. They were surviving amidst all odds because of their rich traditions and cultures which acted as safety valves with necessary coping mechanisms for bio-cultural adaptation. They were noted for their simplicity, honesty, faithfulness, hospitality, sobriety and all the virtues despite economic backwardness and marginalisation. Further, despite shallow history, limited aspirations and worldview they were conscious of the world around them for necessary adjustments. Instances of stealing, cheating, gambling, deposing false statements, infidelity, prostitution, accumulating property through exploitation of fellowmen, etc. were conspicuous by their absence among the tribesmen. They were usually not going back from their commitments lest they should ruin themselves because of supernatural vengeance. It is unfortunate that we have neither understood them properly nor opened dialogues with them to know their felt needs in their earnest perspective. Under certain circumstances and extraneous influences, our documentation of their socio-cultural aspects has been sheer mis-representation of facts. However, our societal system does not accept such a misconception although they are ought to manifest differentiations amidst a lot of similarities. Classifications and categorizations are our own value-loaded ones which lack objectivity in our outlook and it creates avenues for extremist violence and disaster. Labelling some sections as ‘primitive’ was another blunder, which, of course, was revised later as ‘Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups’. In the plea of gray sameness we have acted against their socio-economic and political organizations, which need revival and rejuvenation. As people of simple societies they are unable to comprehend bewildering complexities through introduction of modern institutions without creation of adequate awareness about their fit into their societies and cultures. They represent closed societies but with open mind and with freedom of thought, judgment and action. Therefore, they are to be handled with care in various life situations as they are a part and parcel of our great civilization. They are, no doubt, different from each other, but do not show exclusion from the rest of the population of our country because of several similarities. Their societies are simple and small scale having segmental structure. 

Socio-cultural changes are inevitable in any community. Currently, the inroad of development activities, modernization., monetization of economy, introduction of private ownership of landed property, weakening of traditional tribal councils, proliferation of anti-social activities, violation of traditional norms and conditions, etc. have remarkable impacts on tribal life. The author has clearly stated the positive and negative aspects of such changes, labelling as ‘the balance sheet of socio-cultural and economic gains and losses’. It is interesting to mention here that whether ‘positive aspects’ or ‘negative side’, each contains both gains and losses simultaneously and together, so that the readers can be judicious in assessing them in their right perspectives. As the people themselves are the architects of their own destiny, it is left to them to follow the path to uphold their traditions and cultures and simultaneously develop to stand on their own, promote their self dignity and make them free from servitude, which are the cardinal goals of development. 

In the most befitting manner, the author has, in the chapter-II of the present publication, incorporated the chapter-III of the Report of Special Multipurpose Block Committee, 1960 headed by Dr. Verrier Elwin, containing ‘The Fundamentals of An Approach to the Tribes’. Even after a lapse of half a century the report has retained its relevance in the contexts of tribal society, culture and development. In consonance with Nehruvian Tribal Panchashila, the committee had prescribed the practices to be followed by the people as well as the development practioners and experts. It has elaborately discussed the methods of implementation of development schemes and projects, selection of right officials, working of people’s own team, introduction of simple plans and concentration on limited programmes instead of multiplicity of schemes and programmes. The problems connected with land and forest, appropriate investment of money, avoidance of distribution of free gifts in terms of money as well as materials, etc. have been clearly delineated. The committee prescribed precisely the conduct of Multipurpose Block officials in remote tribal areas. The personnel should be enthusiastic in performing their work among the tribals more efficiently. The committee had emphatically analysed the term ‘backward’ and vehemently opposed its use for the simple and honest tribal people. The committee pleaded for the term humility “as the dominant virtue of the most successful administrators in tribal areas throughout the world”. As per the findings of the committee, minor officials of Forest, Police and Revenue Departments exploited the tribals in several ways. The Committee pleaded for the revival of tribal councils as powerful instrument to check corruption and harassment. Further, all tribal programmes/schemes should have tribal bias, or in other words, adapted to tribal felt needs. While preserving their cultures and traditions they should develop. The concluding sentence of the Chapter was “We must cherish there and help them to grow so that there will be no loss of those imponderable treasures that give dignity to the life of Man”. 

The two chapters in the publication have been brilliantly carved out and become thought provoking, informative and create scopes for expansion of our thought on several related aspects. One important aspect is the provision of good governance for the tribals of Koraput Plateau. As it is an extremist affected area the foremost attention is to create situations in order to stop violent manifestations for restoration of peace. This could be possible through enhancement of the quality of administration, preferably by the introduction of single line of administration, promulgation of laws, rules and regulations and their implementation, or in other words the confirmation of the protective regime. The evolution of appropriate and effective personnel policy is a dire need. There shall be efforts to end discontentment, deprivation and exploitation of all kinds. There shall be adequate assistance for the provision of food, clothing, shelter and medical facilities for healthy living. There shall be efforts to have avenues for reinvention through cultivation of their own genius, with expert support from outside. There is need for fortification of their value orientations to combat exploitions. Further, there is need to appreciate their creative talents and encourage their inherent skills, indigenous wisdom, so that they derive and cultivate their inner strength for beneficial activities, instead of unlawful involvements. And ultimately we cherish a better future for our tribal brethren. The author, Shri. K.C Panigrahy, Director, Tribal Museum, Koraput deserves our commendations.

Prof. (Dr.) Krushna Kumar Mohanti

Retired Professor of Anthropology and former Director, Seheduled Castes & Seheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute, Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development studies and Academy of Tribal Dialects and Culture, Orissa, Bhubanesear

PROLOGUE

A veteran anthropologist, B.K. Roy Burman was questioned “you talk about a paradigm shift in tribal affairs. What do you mean?”. Roy Burman’s answer was “At the time of India’s independence, tribal people in central India were seen as backward, superstitious, naive and poor. Even well meaning people concentrated on relief and improving their physical conditions."

After 1947, the so-called mainstream concept had a more intensive implication in the tribal society. It was found that some tribal societies were sceptical of the relief/welfare measures. The focus shifted to development, protection and participation. There was an assimilative approach to ‘mainstream’ and the ‘backward’. There was an effort to modify the development package for the tribals. It was decided to allocate some additional funds for their development. The officials began to use what was to be additional allocation as the main fund for development. In the 1970s the Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP)concept, strategy and approach came up . A special bureaucratic machinery was created for the purpose. However, tribal people were not given the scope to determine their own development priorities. I had insisted that the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) should provide for an elected body that should have both administrative and decision-making roles. ITDP had no tribal advisory body. Technocrats controlled it. The siphoning of resources in tribal areas was facilitated by the infrastructure developed under the TSP.”

Next question was “what have been the key failures of the Indian states handling of tribal affairs?” He replied, “One of the concerns was in drafting the Fifth Schedule I think, it was to safeguard tribals from the feudal forces. But then it led to strengthening of the bureaucracy. For almost 40 years now, bureaucrats have controlled tribal affairs in Fifth Schedule areas.

Whereas the Sixth Schedule is a better instrument of autonomy, the Fifth Schedule is more of a paternalistic tool of protection. In all these years, the Centre has invoked the Fifth Schedule only once. And all these talk of the state’s governor having the power to set aside any law in a Fifth Schedule area is wrong. The governor’s powers in this matter are not discretionary. The governor has to act on the advice of the state’s council of ministers, which means that it is the state government that has the power, not the governor. As for the Tribes Advisory Council, it is a consultative body, not a truly advisory body.”

Another question was “What are the appropriate ways to reorganise good governance of Scheduled Areas?”. Roy Burman answered “It is high time to move away from the paternalistic Fifth Schedule (applicable to Central India) to the Sixth Schedule (applicable to only the Northeast), which offers better prospects of self-rule. When it was adopted, several areas were predominantly tribal. Over the past 50 years, there has been large-scale migration of tribal people out of these areas, while non-tribals have settled in. I have argued for long that areas in the Fifth Schedule that have tribal concentration should be brought into the Sixth Schedule areas where tribals are a minority should be considered ‘ancestral domains’ where tribals enjoy certain privileges. There is already the example of Bodoland, where Bodos are a minority. The concept of ancestral domain, with diverse nuances, is gaining currency across the world. The ecology and resources of such areas would be protected, regardless of who rules.” (Ref: down to earth/org.in/node/13214)

From the above conversation with Prof. Roy Burman we may switch over to the exercises undertaken by the Planning Commission about three years back in their write-up titled ‘Development Changes in Extremist Affected Areas: March 2008’. The Planning Commission can claim to be the most reliable repository of comprehensive information of government and can boast of a staggering collection of statistical data, reports of investigations, recommendations, among other things. But now it seems, the Planning Commission’s role has been reduced from the positions of a steering to that of a nearly indicative nature by the present generation of policy makers, who prefer to leave planning to the magnates of the market economy, instead of the state. (Banarjee, Sumant:EPW)

The above referred document of the Planning Commission is an important document in the background of increasing Naxalite activities mainly in the scheduled areas. Though the terms of reference did not specifically mention Naxalites (or Maoists), the committee’s brief was to identify causes of unrest and discontent in areas affected by “Widespread displacement, forest issues, insecure tenancies and other forms of exploitation like usury, land alienation and imperfect market conditions….”. The expert groups consisting of scholars from several disciplines with the differing opinions could prepare a consensus report on several contentions issues and come up with a unanimously agreed set of recommendations, suggests that all is not lost. The report may not come as a surprise to those who have followed the earlier finding by civil rights groups and also other reports of the Planning Commission like. “Prevention of Alienation of Tribal Land and its Restoration” (2004).

The findings of the report need to be noted seriously by the rulers (both the political and bureaucratic). While drawing our attention to the positive effect of the Naxal movement, the expert group pointed against the high level of violence that its cadres indulge in and cautioned that “…. no state could agree to a situation of seizure of power through Violence when the constitution provides for change of Government through electoral process” But their findings also reveal how despite change of government, successive rulers who get elected use and misuse laws to suppress the poor and disadvantaged. There seems to be a design behind this continuity. The rulers, irrespective of party affiliation, are lackadaisical and sloppy in implementing pro-poor legal measures. “….recognised as a political movement with a strong base among the landless and poor peasantry and adivasis”. The report warn the government against resorting to ‘security-centric’ measures like setting up vigilante groups, such as salwa judum and have called for “….. An ameliorative approach with emphasis on a negotiated solution”, and urged the government for resumption of the peace talks.

Now, let us be frank. In quite a large swathe of inaccessible territory, the state’s writ does not run and the Naxalities have been able to establish a parallel and alternative order that has largely benefited the adivasis (as acknowledged in the above referred Report, despite reservations about their violent methods). 

The superficial understanding of the people of Koraput Plateau, their Culture and environment has been the greatest deterrent reaching for the spirit of insurgency, terrorism, environmental deterioration etc. Who the Koraput populace are ? The Koraput populace are those still considered by the government as ‘backward’ and need for special care and promotion. But it seems under the so-called special care and promotion the government and also the so-called civilized society are nurturing inequality and exploitation of the people of Koraput Plateau. The people of Koraput Plateau have the right to the enjoyment and conservation of the specific endowments of the nature in specific territories apart from their right to physical survival in the context of the large scale displacement from their original habitats. The co-relation between the destruction/loss of the hill tribe environment and the loss of cultural diversity and biodiversity with the exploitation by the so-called extremist movements are to be understood in proper perspective by the rulers, designers of developmental Programmes and projects, the civil societies, political classes.

Here an attempt has been made to draw the picture of Koraput populace and reproduce the chapter III of the ‘Report of Special Multipurpose Block Committee: 1960’ headed by Verrier Elwin which seems relevant in the context of so-called Naxal insurgency. The Rulers may have to ponder over the ground realities and it may be inevitable to redesign the governance of Koraput Plateau.

K. C. Panigrahy

Director

Tribal Culture Research Centre (TCRC) & 

Tribal Museum,

Koraput- 764020, Odisha 

Chapter : I

An overview of Koraput Populace

A tribe : an introduction :

The problem with tribal identity in India, which is an official identity derived from the Constitution of India, is that no single feature can be taken to be normative in defining a tribe. Nowhere in the Constitution do we find a definition. Article 342 simply says that the President of India can "specify the tribes or tribal communities... to be Scheduled Tribes" and that the Parliament also has the power to include and exclude groups to and from the list. To justify the enlistment of communities under the "Scheduled Tribes," the government of India did make several criteria. This may have been done surreptitiously for its existence and why it has been done so is not widely known. The criteria include "tribal language, animism, primitivity, hunting and gathering, 'carnivorous in food habits,' 'naked or seminaked,' and fond of drinking and dance'. "These things in my opinion, are simply absurd; and the criteria do not simply match those enlisted. Jagannath Pathy's lamentation is most appropriate. "Not only that over 90 percent of the enlisted groups do not subscribe to these features, but also the criteria [itself] convey the blatant prejudice of the dominant people." André Béteille's words best express the situation in my opinion. He says,

Ethnographic material from India did not figure prominently in the general discussion regarding the definition of tribe. The problem in India [or the task of the anthropologists] was to identify rather than define tribes, and scientific or theoretical considerations were never allowed to displace administrative or political ones... Indian anthropologists have been conscious of a certain lack of fit between what their discipline defines as ‘tribe’ and what they are obliged to describe as ‘tribes’, but they have sought a way out of the muddle by calling them all ‘tribes in transition’.” [ Andr’e Beteille : The Concept of tribe with special reference to Ind : Archive Europeans de Sociology 27 (1986): 299]

One of the major intellectual and administrative pre-occupations of the colonial state and to these existing categories, a new category was added during this period. This was the category of 'tribe'. In a sense the term 'tribe' is a colonial construct but not the notion of 'tribe'. In 1871 the first census in British India was initiated and it added the category 'tribe' with no definition. In fact in each decennial census of colonial India the term 'tribe' was equated with different nomenclatures without a proper definition, which is continued till date. This term was further institutionalized in Indian society through ethnographic and anthropological accounts written on them along with the usage of heuristic tools like race, photography and anthropometric measurements. This term was then institutionalized in the constitution as 'Scheduled Tribes'. For studying tribes in colonial and postcolonial India, anthropologists undertake three different models. One is colonial model which perceived 'tribes' as isolates and noble savages. The second model assumes 'tribes' as a sub-system of Hindu social order and third model sees 'tribes' as indigenous communities. The colonial model has a heavy influence in postcolonial India, in terms of framing policies for tribal development and also in identifying 'tribes', whereas in academic sphere the term 'tribe' is not much used and taken as a derogatory term. Thus lays a vacuum in the administrative accounts and in academic literature. The matter of fact is, it is easier to identify 'tribes' but difficult to define 'tribes' in contemporary India. It is in this context the application of the term 'indigenous' becomes debatable. 'Tribes' in India are still viewed within the colonial framework whereas there has been a lot of social and economic change within the tribal communities. A person from a tribal community can be 'fashionable' or 'modern' but he or she still carries his or her ethnic identity. This process of transition remains undocumented. [ Rahul Ashok Kamble : ‘Colonialism, Anthropology and Defining Tribes in Contemporary India’ : Paper in the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS).]

The Term Tribe :

The Anthropological Survey of India under the ‘People of India Project’ identifies 461 tribal communities in India. They are enumerated at 84, 326, 240 persons constituting 8.2 per cent of the total population as per 2011 census. The share of the scheduled tribe population to the total population in 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 was 6.94, 7.85, 8.00 and 8.01 percent respectively. In 2011 census the share of the scheduled tribe became 8.2% of the India Population. The question of tribes in India is closely linked with administrative and political considerations. Hence there has been increasing demand by groups and communities for their inclusion in the list of scheduled tribes of the Indian Constitution. That partly explains the steady increase in the proportion of the scheduled tribe population in India especially in the period between 1971 and 1981.

There has been more concern with the identification of tribes than with their definition. This does not mean that lists have been drawn without any conception of tribe whatsoever. There did exist some conception. This was obvious from the use of criteria that were adopted. These ranged from such features as geographical isolation, simple technology and condition of living, general backwardness to the practice of animism, tribal language, physical features, etc. The problem, however, lay in the fact that they were neither clearly formulated nor systematically applied. One set of criteria was used in one context and quite another in another context. The result is that the list includes groups and communities strikingly different from each other in respect of not only size of the population but also the level of technology and other characteristics. Indian anthropologists have been acutely aware of a certain lack of fit between what their discipline defines as tribe and what they are obliged to describe as tribes. Yet they have continued with the existing labels.

The early ethnographers were not very clear about the distinction between caste and tribe in India. The 18th century writings, for example, showed synonymous use of the term tribe with caste. Later it was even used in a cognate manner as one could see in the use of phrase ‘caste and tribes of India’ by Risley and many others in their writings. Efforts to make a distinction between the two began to be made after initiative was taken to collect detailed information about the people for the census. The census officials were, however, far from clear with regard to the criteria of distinction. It is with the 1901 census that one finds a mention of criteria howsoever inadequate that may be. It defined tribes as those who practised animism. In the subsequent censuses animism was replaced by the tribal religion. Although the criterion so introduced was highly unsatisfactory, it continued to be used widely and extensively.

It is only in the post-independence period that more systematic effort was made towards distinguishing tribe from caste. Though the distinction between the two was made in both colonial and post-colonial ethnography, the relation between the two was differently conceived in the two ethnographies. In the colonial ethnography, the concern shown by the British administrators-scholars was to mark off tribe from caste. Hence tribes were shown to be living in complete isolation from the rest of the population and therefore without any interaction or interrelation with them. In contrast the main concern in the native ethnography has been to show close interaction of the tribes with the larger society or the civilisation. Both Ghurye (1963) and Bose (1975), for example, stressed the nature of interaction between tribes and the larger Hindu society and the ways in which tribes have been drawn into the Hindu society. They stressed similarities between the two societies. Sinha (1958) even goes to the extent of viewing tribes as a dimension of little tradition that cannot be adequately understood unless it is seen in relation to the great tradition.

In view of such conception, tribes have come to be primarily studied in relation to features and characteristics of the larger society. The focus is on how tribes are getting absorbed into the larger society, the so-called mainstream, by becoming caste, peasant, class and so on. With such conceptualisation, the identity of the tribal group or community is indeed put at risk. This is because of the way tribes have been conceptualised in anthropological literature and the reference with which tribal society in India is studied. [ Virginius xaxa : Tribes and Indigenous People of India : 2006 ]

Poultry Dynamics in tribal life Koraput - Das Kornel - 1999) For most of the nineteenth century, the populace of the highlands, like the other tribes of peninsular India, lived in conditions that were indeed ‘ideal’ for an ‘affluent’ existence. Few people in India enjoy a happier life than the residents of some of these valleys’ "(Crooke, 1857: 37)."

Initially, colonial administration remained aloof from the polarities of social antagonism. Through ‘protective’ legislation and ‘concern’ for the tribal people against the tyranny of the local and traditional chiefs, colonialism preserved, though not for long, its image as an arbitrator, mediator and even protector of the highland people. The report of a senior administrator at Koraput in 1865 presents a paternalist attitude:

The hill chiefs are quite competent to keep down crime in their own estates if they choose, and to deliver the criminals over to the Magistracy; but besides being open to bribery and other influences, they are very often themselves the offenders, and so great is the prestige of their authority, that they may offend with perfect impunity. Nobody in the hills could venture to lay a complaint against his feudal superior, without the actual location of the police in the neighbourhood. It is this alone, with the repeated tours of the European officers of the district, that leads to the detection of heinous crime, in these wild and distant localities (Carmichael, 1869:108).

It is not clear from the available reports what the nature, intentions and incidence of these ‘crimes’ in the highlands were. It is, however, important to mention that the contextual meaning of ‘crime’, as the colonial administration viewed it, differed from the way the popular culture of the highlands viewed criminality. At the same time, the customary corrective prerogatives were different from those of the colonial magistracy. More important, there were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ criminals in the highlands, from the point of view of the highlanders. As we later see, the rebels in the highlands who openly resisted colonial administration7 and the Hindu chiefs were imprisoned as criminals. In the highlands, those tribes which were in the forefront of tribal movements were referred to. in administrative reports, as ‘criminal tribes’. (Nanda : 1994)

The lack of a ‘written’ history has created an atmosphere of timelessness in the social anthropology of tribal societies. It is not surprising that a large portion of existing literature emphasises the unchanging aspects of ritual behaviour within a somewhat static frame of reference. This has given rise to the historical character of tribal studies. Yet another cause of such a historical analysis is the lack of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of tribes. Related disciplines of social sciences must come together in order to provide a holistic study of tribal social formations. Such a study of the historical process must extend beyond that of colonialism to the pre-colonial times that account for many existing ritual practices. This requires a critical examination of not only the existing colonial ethnographic prose of counter-insurgency (Guha, 1983), but also available oral traditions. Such a historical reconstruction is significant in two ways. First, it provides for a possible dialogue with the past in that the present and the future of tribal formations can be analysed in a historical perspective. Second, the accepted concepts and stereotypes commonly used in tribal studies, such as Hinduisation, tribalisation and the tribe-caste dichotomy, can be re-examined. Such a re-examination must take into consideration the social history of not only the tribe, but also the broader society at large, in order to bring into focus the local forces at work.(Nanda : 1994)

Now we may peruse extracts from Jagannath Pathy: 1995 to have a overview on history and ethnography of the hill tribes of Koraput Plateau. In these extracts ‘Kandha’ may denote the hill tribes also of Koraput Plateau.

The British conquest of Orissa commenced in 1803 and by 1830 virtually all the Hindu kings had come under British rule. But several 'muthaheads'- far from recognising British suzerainty, relentlessly continued to resist the alien invasion. In 1835, the Hindu king of Ghumsar refused to pay any tribute (peskash') to the British,and the peasants revolted against the foreign encroachment. The rebellion was crushed with military might and the king fled to the Kandhamals with his family and treasury.The Kandha gave him shelter while the British army ravaged dozens of Kandha villages, looted their stocks of grain, and publicly hanged several Kandha leaders. In turn, the first batch of British soldiers were killed [Boal 1963: 1-7]. The ailing king died soon in one of the villages, but the entire Kandha region was in a state of unprecedented insurrection.

In August 1836, Russell, a member of the Board of Revenue responsible for controlling the disturbances, sent a brief note to the Madras government, saying that in the Kandhamals the people were notorious for• frequent rites of human sacrifice and female infanticide. He suggested that in order to rule over the Kandha territory, it was necessary to revive the fairs formerly held in different localities, as well as to establish a network of new market centres where the British administrators could conveniently approach the Kandha (Madras Presidency -selections 1854). The officer was perhaps bound to explain the local British failure to annex the Kandha territory. Anyway this constituted the first ever written note on these pernicious practices of the Kandha.

Consequently Colonel John Campbell was appointed as the assistant collector of Ganjam district to stamp out these oppro-brious practices by annexing the Kandha territory at any cost. In 1841, Lieutenant S C Macpherson succeeded Campbell. Both of them wrote and published books on Kandha ignominious rites, and a few other soldiers and administrators prepared local reports on the subject. These happen to be the only sources on the Kandha people and culture, especially on their flagitious customs.Subsequent scholars, including of the post-colonial period, have mostly reproduced,over and over again, the earlier information of the colonial soldiers ad nauseam, without any significant or critical evaluation.

It needs to be noted that neither Campbel or Macpherson had any knowledge of the Kui, the Kandha language. Even their knowledge of Oriya was insignificant. Both depended upon Oriya traders, chiefs and local officers for information regarding Kandha society and culture. Their acquaintance with the Kandha was "confined to military expeditions in the winter seasons"[Bailey 1957:177].General Campbell's book was "bombastic, unreliable and fiercely determined to blacken the character and achievements of Macpherson who was dead when Campbell wrote his book" [Bailey1957: 177]. And Macpherson's letters and official reports were published by his brother as "an apologia' (1957:177). Indeed there was a prolonged and bitter jealousy between these two administrators. "For various reasons Campbell and Macpherson alternated several times with one another. When Campbell had charge, he reversed the arrangements made by Macpherson and on one occasion succeeded in getting Macpherson and his entire staff put under arrest. When Macpherson had charge, here trieved and then imprisoned Sam Bisoye, in whom Campbell had frequently expressed his confidence" [Bailey 1960:176-77]. Small wonder that little can be systematically or coherently compiled about Kandha history and culture from their writings. Yet astonishingly, their books and reports have been approvingly cited umpteen times by subsequent ethnographers and anthropologists.

Principally standing upon these official reports and books, a number of subsequent British administrators have written a few pages each on Kandha human sacrifice and female infanticide [Dalton 1872; Hunter1872; Frazer 1890; Risley 1891; Maddox1901; O'Malley. 1908; 'Thurston 1909;Russell and Hiralal 1916; Roy 1922 and many others]. Frazer on that basis even asserted that the "best known case* of-human sacrifices systematically offered to ensure good crops is supplied by the Kandhas" (1890:1-384). Suffice it to state that hardly any one of them had any direct contact with the Kandha. For instance Dalton acknowledged that his:

...personal acquaintance with the Kandhas is very limited. I have seen a few in attendance on tributary chiefs, and have fallen in with some families of the tribe in the Bonai dependency, but they had been too long dwelling in a servile position amongst aliens to have retained any distinctive or typical characteristics of their race, and could converse only in Oriya (1872: 285).

Any expectation that ethnographers such as Risley and O'Malley could have verified and elaborated on the accounts of the British soldiers is completely belied. In 1885, the British government had asked Risley to make a comprehensive field survey of the tribes and castes of Bengal for better administration and also as a contribution to comparative ethnological research. Though he claimed that his work was "the first attempt to apply to Indian ethnography the methods of systematic research sanctioned by the authority of European anthropologists"(1891, I: Preface), he relied upon the information provided by Jamesh Taylor, the Tahasildar of Kandhamals, and Rev Father Schaff. They in turn asked their subordinates to administrate an exhaustive interview schedule with as many as 391 questions.There was, however, not a single question of female infanticide, and three out of the four questions on human sacrifice were of trivial nature. And yet depending largely upon the accounts of the British soldiers, Risley wrote extensively on frequent inter-clan wars to capture wives, female infanticide and human sacrifice. Fortunately he did admit that he had serious "difficulty in ascertaining the precise form of exogamy practised by them,and indeed in getting any information at all on the subject" [Risley 1891:1-399, emphasis added]. If on such an unoffending subject the information could not be collected, how could he trust the soldiers to collect information on the atrocious practices of the Kandha half a century earlier?

It is true that Risley had some minor reservations about the earlier colonial accounts, but not with regard to the substantive issue of human sacrifice. He wrote:

Much has been written about the religion of Kandhas. But the subject can hardly be regarded as having yet been fully cleared up. Major Macpherson's account of the matter ascribes to the Kandhas religious conceptions of a very advanced character,quite out of keeping with their primitive social organisation, and one is inclined to suspect that the persons from whom he derived his information must have described to him rather their ideal view of what the religion of the tribe ought to be than what it actually was (1891:1-403).

The 'meriah' (the person sacrificed) "as a victim rather than a god may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers who have described the Kandha religion" [Risley 1891: 1-407]. With regard to human sacrifice, as he was "not in aposition to add any fresh facts to those already on record in the reports" (1891*: 1-404), he approvingly quotes from Frazer's description of the rite. The status of colonial ethnography is thus self-explanatory.

The work of another better known British scholar, O'Malley (1908), "bears the stamp of having beep written at second hand from the information of local officials, and is quite inaccurate in its account of the history of the region..."[Bai!ey 1957: 177], This is obviously a very mild criticism. It is not a simple question of finding errors in the colonial accounts of the history of a territory or of the socio-political system, but essen-tially one of victimisation of an independent people through colonial constructions of customs such as widespread slaying of female infants and the atrocious crime of human sacrifice. Evidently, Bailey's own research was not directed at restoring the dignity of the people by exposing the colonial conspiracy.

That aside, the point is that neither the supposedly independent anthropologists of colonial times [Friend - Pereira 1903,1905;Elwin 1944] nor those of the post-colonial period [Bailey 1957, 1960; Das 1956, 1960;Raman 1957; Boal 1963; Niggemeyer 1964;Banerjee 1969; Pathy 1976; Patnaik and Das Patnaik 1982] have made any significant effort to demystify the imperial power structure and the Kandha "vile' customs.Rather by reiterating the colonial justification for annexation of Kandha lands, they have unwittingly provided much needed legitimacy to the colonial army actions and accounts.

In conformity with the then popular indological theory of the Aryan invasion either annihilating or pushing back the indigenous peoples into the interior in hospitable jungles [Bhowmick 1982:297], British administrators such as Macpherson(1842) noted that the Kandhas were pushed into the hills by the Aryans who in turn displaced the docile Kurmo of the region.There is no way of knowing the actual history.There is no trace of the Kurmo in the recorded history of the area, and the economy of the Kandha is best suited to their present habitat than to the plains [Pathy 1984: 44-52;Kosambi 1975:41 ]. In any case, the Kandhas were in entire possession of the territory and were the rulers of the country when the Oriyas arrived [Russell and Hiralal 1916:111-465]. After the 19th century, the numerous surrounding Hindu kingdoms were periodically engaged in wars among themsleves as well as with the Kandha to assert their rule over the hills of adjoin interrior territories [Bailey 1957:178]. The Kandha strongly opposed any alien political domination, but eventually around 350 years ago, some of the kings managed to send some of their subjects from the plains to curb the resistance struggle of the Kandha and protect their own frontiers from Kandha raids and guerrilla warfare. These immigrants established a few fortified and separate settlements in the hills [Pathy 1976:5-7] Depending upon their power and popularity they were able to expand their domination beyond these Hindu settlements. This history is based on British accounts; the immigrant Hindu people opine that their ancestors were pushed into the area due to their inability to survive in the plains as well as intra-village factional fights [Bailey I960: 25-26].

It may be added that the British conception of property being one of individual ownership, the administrators never comprehended the local corporate-based occupation and use of land and land-based resources. The notion of 'res nullius' was adopted to usurp the corporate resources of the indigenous peoples. Risley wrote that the Orissan Kandhas, ... claim full rights of property in the soil in virtue of having cleared the jungle and prepared the land for cultivation. In some villages individual ownership is unknown,and the land is cultivated on a system of temporary occupation subject to periodical redistribution under the orders of the head-man (1891: 1-408).

Given such ignorance of the concept of group rights and the nature of axe cultivation,it was not surprising that the company thought initially that prolonged military expeditions into Kandhaland was costly. The local' administrators could persuade the Company only on the moral grounds of suppression of female infanticide and human sacrifice [Bailey 1960: 70].

The afore mentioned promises were given when the British were finding it difficult to conquer the people and there was a clear danger of uprising in the recently annexed territories [Bailey 1960: 182]. But once the colonial system consolidated itself through the recognition of the mutha heads, all the promises of Kandha rights and property were violated unilaterally. The Kandhas were forced to pay plough tax, cess tax and watchman tax in 1875, besides a large number of dues (mamuls), such as when someone dies or marries, for mediating in marital and land disputes, and so on. Around 1870, they were prohibited to distill liquor, practise axe cultivation, marry by capture and perform many religious rites. Several Christian missionaries infiltrated the area and started proselytising and deculturalising the Kandha. Several roads, bridges, schools and government rest houses were constructed with compulsory unpaid labour ('bheti') of the Kandha. And since 1875, every household was forced to pay one-fourth of a rupee for the road construction fund, which was increased and continued until independence [Thiady1965:25-31.59-60]. In addition, at frequent intervals Kandhas (including the recalcitrants) were sent to work in the Assam tea plantations. In 1917, several thousands were taken to Mesopotamia to serve in the world war [Boal 1963: 61]

The distorted ethnography not only legitimised colonial terror and brutalities but also dehumanised the Kandha, who eventually internalised the degradation and transformed the conquerors into altruistic benefactors and self-sacrificing partners striving for the good of humanity and civilisation. That is why Kandha ethnography cannot be fully demystified through an examination of folklore and oral traditions.Careful utilisation of such sources may at best tangentially help to locate the broad historical tendencies affecting the material and cultural life of the Kandha. The best course to pursue is to locate ethnographic and administrative reports with reference to forms and periods of Kandha militancy, confusion, submission and compromise.Unfortunately this paper has not been able to enter into such a demanding complexity.

Second, by outright exaggeration of exotica - manufactured or otherwise - and subtle distortion of events, colonial ethnography has been able to capture the minds of the Kandha. Put simply, the tragedy of the Kandha is alienation from the past and internalisation of one and a half centuries of colonial and post-colonial propaganda about their cultural inferiority and their ancestors' heinous crimes and barbaric customs of female infanticide and human sacrifice. The memory assigned and the ethnography produced about their past, even if totally false, is contemporarily rooted, at least among the 'acculturated'. No serious analyst can separate this out of the context of their half century-long resistance against the intrusion of the mightiest power of the world, the subsequent intimidation,persecution and general trauma plus the repeated circulation of unsubstantiated accounts of customs and crimes of their forefathers even in the post-colonial era. In sum, several generations of the Kandha,their society and culture have been victimised by manufactured myths and colonial partisan interests, and there is little respite even now.

Third, the task is to present the Kandha with their own history and ethnography, written from their own point of view. Such a possibility can only be contemplated in the context of a Kandha national struggle for safeguarding their identity and resource base. But such a development is yet to materialise. Mean while liberal and radical scholarship could and should try to dismantle and demystify the so-called truths of colonial times by associating so-called heinous practices with the existing systems-of political, economic and institutional power,which produced and sustained the information or myths. It is not "a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power... but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social,economic and cultural, within which itoperates..." [Gordon 1980: 133].

The task is formidable and of crucial significance, not simply with regard to the Kandha but also to hundreds of other indigenous peoples who have been criminalised in the name of knowledge,science and civilisation.

In such a desperate ethnographic matrix,it is not easy to reconstruct the history and culture of the Kandha. The following seeks to utilise the internal and logical contradictions in the colonial ethnography with respect to female infanticide and human sacrifice. The oral tradition is not of much help when the society, being prosecuted and intimidated for generations, has in large part internalised the guilt. Perhaps there may be still some scope for selective recovery of legends and folklore, but we have not been able to explore the possibility. 

The concept of ‘Tribe’ was induced to Koraput Plateau in the year 1917 by the Government of Madras Presidency under the ‘Agency Tracts Interest and Land transfer Act, 1917. The Act came in to force precisely on August 14, 1917 and the whole population of Koraput were termed as the ‘Hill Tribes’. The defination of the ‘Hill Tribe’ was :

“Anybody or class of persons residing in the agency tracts; not being a Land Holder (ie. Maharaja of Jeypore Zamindari) that may be notified for the purpose of the Act by the Government.”

From the above legal definition of the British administration, it is clear that all the communities residing in the highlands of Koraput are Hill Tribes. The term tribe become the masks of the whole population of Koraput Plateau.

In independent India the ‘Hill Tribes’ of Koraput were divided into three categories i.e. Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes under the constitution order of 1950. It seems the experts and the theoreticians have divided the whole population of Koraput artificially without designing any scientific parameter. Ultimately the so-called OBC communities of hill tribes become the most disadvantaged groups in Koraput Plateau. 

Exclusion of Certain hill thibe communities in Orissa Portion, though in Andhra Portion all are notified as STs.

The layman's image of koraput tribe is that of a small group of people living in seclusion, accustomed to carefree and hand to mouth existence without any idea of saving for the rainy day and traditionally unmindful of the intricacies of modern life unless and until their traditional customs and taboos, mates and ethos and way of life are tampered with. This concept of tribal life and culture is a figment of the imagination of the age-old relations existing between tribals and their non-tribal neighbours; a myth as an empirical truth.

Tribals of present day very rarely live in perfect isolation anywhere in the world. They are caught between conventional and current cultural changes that is sweeping throughout the world. The degree of percolation of socio-economic process is mainly conditioned by the nature of communication and transport facilities available in Koraput region. The rapid strides made by Community and Tribal Development Projects and Programmes ultimately led to creation of new economic opportunities and a shift in the age old cultural standards and value-attitude systems of the people of this region.

The indifferent developmental projects/ schemes in tribal areas, designed by babus started upsetting the apple-cart of existing social system resulting in violation of tribal endogamy and family disorganisation. Gambling, prostitution, cheating, pick pocketing etc have also made their appearance amongst the tribes. Previously such violations of traditional norms used to be severely dealt with by the tribal council by ex-communicating the offenders and heaping all sorts of insults on them in order to make life unbearable for the culprit and his family in this society through ostracisation. Now-a-days such cases just end up with mild contemptuous remarks. Coffee and tea slowly replaced the traditional nutritious ragi gruel. Drinking illicit toxic liquor is also on the increase whereas they depended on healthy home brewing substances. Increased monetary transactions due to payment of wages in cash and the immoral activities of non-tribal workers served as catalisers in accelerating the process of social degeneration. The developmental schemes and programmes engineered for so-called development of this region made them conscious of new opportunities and ways of life and at the same time subjected them to sacrifice their traditional institutions with great stress and strain. The balance sheet of Socio-Cultural and Economic gains or losses can be summarised as follows :

1. The Positive aspects are :

(a) Tribes who acquired skills during the execution of developmental schemes and programmes got employment in urban areas as skilled or unskilled labourers and yet uprooted them from their family or home anchors.

(b) Some persons among the tribes have been motivated to strive for modern ways of life based on improved technology and have been able to stabilise their position, at the cost of neglecting their traditional vlaue systems.

2. On the Negative side are :

(a) The programmes and the schemes have been like a capricious lover of the tribals, giving bountiful gifts for sometime and then deserting them with complete unconcern when the purpose is sewed.

(b) The tribes who worked as casual labourers during the continuation of the programmes or schemes were left high and dry. The traditonal sources of livelihood no longer satisfies the need and at the same time the new hope which sustained them for sometime has disappeared like a mirage.

(c) The most hard hit of all in the process has been the younger generation. A good number of them could successfully challenge the traditional authority structure of the society, because of the economic opportunities provided by the schemes.

(d) The final result was - the younger generation unthinkingly discarded the traditions of the old. After a certain period the trauma of a guilty complex on the one hand and a superiority or inferiority complex of merely - 'being used' on the altar on the other hand goaded by these two complexes, compelled them seek escape in alcoholism, gambling etc. and other social vices.

(e) In this milieu, when the economic motive is added, the slippery slope of degeneration easily takes them to the practice of cheating, pick-pocketing and other delinquent behaviour without any compunctions.

(f) The same set of factors has also played an important role in creating a fertile ground for converting them into political iconoclasts of a sort to flourish in the area.

(g) Over and above these, the traditional social restrictions in sex life were subjected to great strain due to the monetary and other allurements available during the execution of the Project periods.

Taking an overall view, one cannot help feeling that the balance is heavily loaded on the negative side. But here a question arises, whether this negative balance is just another confirmation of the classical view of the harmful effects of contact between people of different levels of culture and technology or whether it is the result of inadequate planning and incomplete approach to the problem of (by the forcible induction of) development.

Further, establishment of industries for betterment of the people of this region seems to have been dealt with more as a territorial nexus than as an additional resource base. Its main purpose was to extract and exploit natural resource at one end and export for marketing at the other, but the human situation seems to have been considered more in terms of instrumental value than end value. 

Now the tribal consciousness in relation to its own tradition and history and in relation to outsiders is taking shape as an important part of the subaltern consciousness of the region. The tribals of Koraput region during the last six decades have gone through the trauma of various domineering forces in the name of progress and development.

First, they were the targets of the 'missionary solution' which detribalised their rituals, customs and morals; it was followed by a vigorous reaction of the forces promoting Hindu institutions, disturbing their indigenous ethos. Second, the British rulers followed the policy of segregation under the garb of 'protection' and 'Excluded' and 'Partially Excluded' areas; tribals were linked with primitiveness, and the task of defining their direction of change was delegated to colonial administrators, guided by the theory of 'isolation'. Third, the Indian Government after the Independence, charged with the sentiments of 'national integration', enshrined guarantees in the Constitution for the economic, socio-cultural and educational upliftment of Scheduled Tribes, which seems now led to terrorism.

When the norms and values of one culture dominate the other (through subjugation, colonisation, acculturation and assimilation or in the name of development) these can generate dissonance between the two or result in the indistinguishable assimilation of one culture, weaker in demographic or economic terms, with the other. Feelings of resentment against outsiders and virtual rejection of the outsiders among a section of tribals indicate their uncertainty and a sense of helplessness, about their future.

Expressing ideals of the pluralistic heritage of India, a statesman of 1950's viewed as follows :

"Every flower has the right to grow according to its own laws of growth; ..... to spread its own fragrance, to make up the cumulative beauty and splendour of the garden. I would not like to change my roses into lilies nor my lilies into roses. Nor do I want to sacrifice my lovely orchids of rhododendrons of the hills':"

In the words of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru : "there is no point in trying to make them a second rate carbon copy of ourselves."

We indicated earlier that all the communities of Koraput Plateau were termed as ‘Hill Tribes’ and in 1950 under the constitutional order the hill tribes are categorised into Scheduled Tribes(ST), Scheduled Castes(SC) and the rest of about 40% were left over tribes have been made general i.e. same as higher castes. It seems, we the outsiders have made ... legal provision to grab their land legally. Which they could not dare to do from 1918 to 1950. Of course these non ST, leftover, tribes were subsequently notified as other Backword Classes (OBCs). 

Chapter : II

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF AN APPROACH TO THE TRIBES*

One of the Committee's terms of reference is : 'To advise the Government of India on how to give the programme a proper tribal bias'. This advice has, in fact, already been given by the Prime Minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) himself, in his Foreword to the second edition of Dr. Verrier Elwin's A Philosophy for NEFA, in which he says :

We cannot allow matter to drift in the tribal areas or just not take interest in them. In the world of today that is not possible or desirable. At the same time we should avoid over-administering these areas and, in particular, sending too many outsiders into tribal territory.

It is between these two extreme positions that we have to function. Development in various ways there has to be, such as communications, medical facilities, education and better agriculture. These avenues of development should, however, be pursued within the broad framework of the following five fundamental principles :

(1) People should develop along the lines of their own genius and we should avoid imposing anything on them. We should try to encourage in every way their own traditonal arts and culture.

(2) Tribal rights in land and forests should be respected.

(3) We should try to train and build up a team of their own people to do the work of administration and development. Some technical personnel from outside will, no doubt., be needed, especially in the beginning. But we should avoid introducing too many outsiders into tribal territory.

(4) We should not over-administer these areas or overwhelm them with a multiplicity of schemes. We should rather work through, and not in rivalry to, their own social and cultural institutions.

(5) We should judge results, not by statistics or the amount of money spent, but by the quality of human character that is evolved."

The Prime Minister has noted and elaborated these points on a number of occasions, and has spoken on the caution needed in developing the tribal areas. Pointing out the disastrous effect of the 'so-called European civilization' on tribal people in other parts of the world, ‘putting to an end their arts and crafts and their simple ways of living’, he has declared that, "now, to some extent, there is danger of the so-called Indian civilization having this disastrous effect, if we do not check and apply it in the proper way’. ‘We may well succeed in uprooting them from their way of life with its standards and discipline, and give them nothing in its place. We may make them feel ashamed of themselves and their own people and thus they may become thoroughly frustrated and unhappy. They have not got the resilience of human beings accustomed to the shocks of the modern world and so they tend to succumb to them.’ We must therefore, be very careful to see that in our well-meant efforts to improve them, we do not do them grievous injury’. ‘It is just possible that, in our enthusiasm for doing good, we may over-shoot the mark and do evil instead’. ‘It has often happened in other areas of the world that such contact has been disastrous to the primitive culture and gradually the primitive people thus affected die out."

"I am alarmed" he has said again, "when I see not only in this country but in other great countries too-how anxious people are to shape others according to their own image or likeness, and to impose on them their particular way of living."

Imposition and 'their own genius' : 

The first of the Prime Minister's principles has become the basis of the Government of India's policy for the tribes, every where applauded but little followed. We are to impose nothing and to allow the people to develop along the lines of their own genius and tradition.

'Imposition' has many implications. It is not confined to giving orders and forcing people to do things. The imposition of example can be equally injurious. The presence of a large number of officials, in unfamiliar and comparatively expensive dress, staying in houses of a type unsuited to the rural scene and climate and not adaptable to the tribal family or way of life, may cause the tribes to adopt a way of living that is too costly for them and which they will discover later is unsuited to their economy. It may cause them to despise their own arts, social and political institutions, and kind of life in a pathetic belief that to imitate a junior official is to be 'modern'.

Imposition by money is even more serious. It is possible to uproot the hill people from their hills by gifts of money, for the tribesmen do not often look ahead; it is possible to bribe them, quite cheaply, to accept all sorts of things, but the result is not an organic growth. To adopt new practices because you are being paid to do so is not to develop along the lines of your own genius.

And there is imposition by over persuation. Propaganda and education there must be, but sometimes Block officials, in their natural enthusiasm, almost force the people to do things which are not a natural growth from within.

The result is sometimes a kind of pauperization, often a loss of self-reliance; their is an uprooting which the prime Minister has expressly condemned.

Land and Forest : 

The second principle is that tribal rights in land and forest should be respected. This principle, in effect, covers the entire problem of exploitation. There are areas where the tribal people are so strong, as in Assam, where there is little exploitation; there are otherplaces, however, where even after nearly twelve years of Independence, this problem remains unsolved and many of our efforts to develop the tribes economically fail because they are enslaved by the money-lender, the rapacious trader, the liquor-vendor, and they are still dominated and impoverished by low-grade officials whose activities in the far interior it is so hard to supervise and check. In this Report we suggest various ways whereby these evil practices can be controlled.

Particularly, when we try to persuade the people to develop new land for cultivation, it is impossible to expect them to take up their work with enthusiasm unless they feel that the land is their's in perpetuity. Freedom from anxiety is a basis for enthusiastic work. This too we will deal with later on.

The guarantee of land, adjustment of forest laws to tribal conditions, integration with the rest of the country, choice of the right officials are as necessary as any expensive schemes of development, and without them the schemes may fail. The right psychological climate must be created if enthusiastic and co-operative work is to be done.

Their own team : 

The Prime Minister's warning about the introduction of too may outsiders into tribal territory and his desire that we sould 'build up a team of their own people' to do the work of administration and development has in general been greatly neglected in all the Multipurpose Blocks, except in Assam and Manipur.

This can hardly be regarded as satisfactory. The employment of tribal people, quite apart from the justice of doing so, has many advantages. They know the language and thus have an intimate relationship with their fellows that few outsiders can hope to gain. In most cases, though not always, they understand the tribal psychology, customs and manners and can adapt schemes for development better than outsiders-though some well trained and sympathetic outsiders have been found who can enter into the tribal mind extremely well. The use of local tribal officials gives a sense of pride and confidence to their fellows and enourages them to hope that there may be similar opportunities for their children. A tribal official may be expected, though unhapplily this is not always true, to stick to his job, to grumble less about amenities and to be happier in his own country.

Simplicity : 

The directive to avoid over administration and not to overwhelm the people with a multiplicity of schemes is generally ignored. At recent Seminars on the Multipurpose Blocks at Ranchi and Pachmarhi, where the Prime Minister's Tribal Panchshila was strongly commended to the delegates by the Governor of Bihar and Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh respectively, the Conferences immediately proceeded to work out a fantastically elaborate programme, which even included the establishment of cycling clubs, on the principle apparently that if the tribals have insufficient bread they had better eat cake.

This really will not do. Not only are the people themselves in the undeveloped areas being confused, but the Block officials tend to go round in circles desiring to impress their superiors by the range and veriety of their performance rather than by its depth. A tribal official of wide experience has written that one reason for what he regards as the failure of the Multipurpose Blocks may be due to the fact 'that all these Multifarious programmes have been brought to the tribal people all of a sudden and too much in a hurry. Sufficient time has not been given to them to realise the value of all these programmes.' And another careful observer has remarked that 'it must be remembered that tribal people (and for the matter of that others also) are not capable of absorbing several ideas simultaneously. In my experience it is always preferable to concentrate on one idea at a time rather than to expend energy on the dissemination of several ideas at a time, many of which may not be completely understood.' It has been observed in a note on the Bastar Multipurpose Blocks that, 'we are wasting a lot of energy on non-essentials (Social Education, construction of unnecessary roads etc) whereas we should concentrate almost exclusively on agriculture and Public Health.'

And finally, we should take careful note of one of the recommendations of the Renuka Ray Committee.

'A basic factor that can make a substantial difference in the success or failure of a plan for tribal welfare is its simplicity. Our studies have clearly brought out that the danger of attempting too much is that little is achieved. In framing the recommendations, we have been largely guided by this overriding consideration of adopting a simple and direct approach to planning for the welfare and development of the tribes. Apart from the fact that sufficient personnel of the right type are not available to introduce, at this stage, every conceivable scheme of welfare and development, there is the danger of over-administration, as pointed out by the Prime Minister, which is resented and resisted by the tribal. Even if no active resistance is offered, the mere multiplicity and complexity of schemes confuse the tribal who is unable to assimilate all the advice that is directed to him. Further, it is now clear to any serious student of the working of plan schemes that overdoing or unduly hastening the process and pace of develpment often leads to passivity, a disposition to accept but not to do. We recommended that :

"The plans for tribal welfare need to be very simple. It is important, at least in the initial stages, to concentrate on a few selected programmes, that have a vital bearing on the felt needs of the people, so as to secure ready understanding and willing participation on the part of the tribals." 

This is all very well, but how is the policy of simplicity to be achieved ? Everything is going the other way, towards more and more of what has recently been called complexification- a word as elaborate as the thing it describes. What should be left out ? 

In any plans for future Blocks in the tribal areas, irrespective of the amount of money to be provided, nearly all the funds should be allotted for Agriculture and allied subjects, for Health, and for Communications. Rural Housing is not a matter of priority : Social Education should consist of only two or three items. Rural Arts and Crafts should concentrate only on essential industries. Education could be left to the Education Departments, for there seems little point in introducing yet one more agency to deal with this subject. A lot of small things of doubtful utility in tribal areas, such as smokeless chulas for houses with open bamboo walls, village latrines and bathrooms which are rarely used, radio sets which are always going out of order, could be omitted. All our energies should go to the great basic things food, water, healthy bodies, mobility.

At the same time much more attention should be paid to such fundamental problems as ownership of land, amendment of the local forest rules, the revival of tribal self-government, relief of indebtedness, and the correct approach to the people, which will cost nothing but without which development schemes may fail.

One thing which confuses the Block officials is the endless stream of printed and cyclostyled decuments which pours down from Delhi. On the one hand, they are told to keep everything simple, on the other they are continually exhorted to take up every possible little scheme that the ingenious brains of the metropolis can devise. There should be some screening of this literature at the Ministry or State level to ensure that the P.E.Os. do not get confused in this manner. 

Rivals or Allies : 

We will consider later in detail the possibility of 'working through, and not in rivalry to the people's own social and cultural institutions'. This has become a matter of urgent importence in view of the new schemes of democratic decentralization and the introduction of Statutory Panchayats in the tribal areas. While these meet an essential need and attempt to fulfil a great ideal in the more developped places, we feel that caution is needed in introducing them at present among the tribal people. The decline of the traditional tribal council all too often means that in effect the control of local progress passes into the hands of the non-tribals, a process which even election does not seem to check.

The most characteristic systems of natural tribal education are actually destroyed by our education programmes which, in fact, would succeed better if they would regard the old institutions as allies and not as rivals and would work through them. Even the humble tribal medicineman can be enlisted as an ally to assist the progress of modern medicine. We will deal with these matters in the appropriate chapters and it wll be sufficient to remark here that, though this policy is difficult, it is entirely possible (as has been proved in NEFA and other parts of north-eastern India) though it requires knowledge, sympathy and imagination. At present the indigenous institutions are being slowly killed by the development programmes and we feel that this is not healthy and much greater effort should be made to reverse the process. 

The Danger of Money : 

'We should judge results, not by statistics or the amount of money spent, but by the quality of human character that is evolved.' It is Investment in Man that is important. This is everywhere agreed, yet the success or failure of a Block is still estimated by the amount of money spent or surrendered, the statistics of school enrolment, the number of fruit trees planted (it is seldom stated how many survive), the acres brought under cultivation, irrespective of whether more food is grown or not. Block officials are constantly worried about expenditure. We suggest later other yardsticks of progress that might be used, though admittedly this is a difficult matter.

The fundamental thing is to realise that twentyseven lakhs of rupees can buy things but it cannot buy men. The progress of the Multipurpose Blocks largely depends on who goes to administer them. Money can encourage good workers; it can free them from domestic worries : but it cannot create them.

This undue stress on the spending of money, and the belief that the villagers have to be 'baited' to work at the improvement of their own life and living has been emphasized by Mr. Carl Taylor. The result has been that, all over India and even more obviously in the tribal areas, there has been a reversal of the original spirit of the Community Development programme.

"An undue and unwise amount of material and financial assistance", he says, "has been given to motivate the people." This automatically has led to a lot of construction activities and thus programme operation become more and more a "work" or "construction" programme and less an extension programme. Gram Sevaks, the extension agents at the village level, have given more and moe of their time to construction and supply activities. 

Because a large amount of government - provided materials and funds were required, accounting for and management of funds and meterials become necessary. The result was the programme became more and more an administrative and an administrator's programme and less and less a community development extension programme No one planned this line of programme evolution but the logic of the development was inevitable due to the relatively great emphasis on physical targets and relatively small emphasis on the development of the people. I believe it is correct to say that the programme in day to day operation has never become a people's programme. It has been and continues to be primarily a government programme. I believe furthermore that it will continue to be a government programme until relatively more emphasis is put on the skills of extension and relatively less emphasis on the skills of planning and administration.'

Any visitor to a Multipurpose Tribal Block will immediately appreciate the importance and the truth of this.

We may call one more expert witness, Mr Albert Mayer, whose study of rural development in Etawah (Uttar pradesh) is, of course, far removed from tribal India, but whose observations are very pertinent, even more pertinent, to the tribal areas. He considers that, while much good has been done, on the whole, 'the N.E.S. projects are inadequate in systematic planning, thoroughness and follow-up. This is alarming. With the beginning of the N.E.S and imperative orders to start a large number of projects on exact dates, regardless of the availability of trained and devoted manpower or established supply lines, a serious deterioration started to set in. Projects were started with the merest skeleton of personnel, often of quite inadequate character and understanding. Instead of catching up, we are falling farther behind... We are perforce failing the people....by not being able to furnish technical and semi-technical help. With all their enthusiasm, labour, and money they will be more frustrated because so many of their achievements are very poorly done'. The cumulative result, Mr Mayer concludes, is that less work will be done than should be expected for the effort and expenditure put in. That will be undoubtedly disappointing, but the real disaster will be 'that all the targets set will be achieved on paper by wishful reporting, and by wishful acceptance of reporting punctuated by prepared visits into the field. That we are fast moving towards a more universal frustration ‘can be verified readily through impartial visits and discussions by someone not in the hierarchy, someone to whom field people can talk freely without fear of being considered incompetent or inadequate... praise or criticism by higher authority is becoming based on mechanical results: the upside-down fiscal criterion. How much money have you spent ? How fast ? Will you spend it by 31st March ? The result of this is a false set of values' Mr Mayer, therefore, believes that we are exceeding a realistic rate of expanding the C.D. programme, chiefly because, apart from the shortage of finance and supplies, it involves too many and too varied items both for the present quantity and quality of our personnel and for the absorptive capacity of the village. The result is a greatly diluted reproduction of the substance and worth of the early prototype C.D. projects which only leads to cynicism among villagers and observers alike.

This was written about the situation in one of the more advanced places in India. How much more true it is of the long-neglected and isolated tribal areas!

A wide distribution of free gifts of money or materials may have an undesirable effect. In the agricultural field, it is important that we should avoid the danger of giving too many free gifts to the tribal. In the field of housing, we should not put up buildings for him, which he may actually do better for himself. He should be helped to utilise his own resources and this aid should of course be on a non-loan basis. But we should not do those things which he is perfectly able to do himself. In particular we would not recommend too much mechanised aid in the tribal areas. The tribal tends to become accustomed to governmental assistance, with the result that he cannot readjust himself easily when particular schemes come to the end.

In the past, there has been a commendable spirit of self-reliance among the tribal people. They have made their own paths, built their own bridges: when a house is burnt down, the whole village combines to erect a new one; the community comes together to help the old or bereaved to till their fields. In the Christian villages of Assam, there are large numbers of schools maintained by public subscription; many a Christian Khasi woman, for example, when she cooks her food, puts aside a handful of rice, which is later taken to the Church and sold for the upkeep of schools. In the Buddhist frontier villages, the people take a daily contribution of food to the Temple, where it is used for the maintenance of hostels for boys who go there to receive training in simple arts, literacy and moral and religious duties. In Manipur even High Schools, with reasonably well-paid teachers, have been maintained by the people without any help from Government.

Money quickly destroys this spirit. Today even the Buddhists demand grants and subsidies for their Temple-hostels; a group of Khasis suggested that the best way of using the Block funds would be to divide it up and distribute it to the people at so much a head. In Tripura at one time there was a belief that every tribal household was entitled to a grant of Rs.500/- simply because it was tribal. There is a general belief that there is easy money to be had for the asking, and Community Development is being regarded as a great charitable society, where you can get everything free of charge. There is little idea that the people will help Government to build a better India; all the stress is on what Government will do for the people.

Great Expectations : 

The tendency is aggravated by the unwise and unrealistic promises that are often made when Blocks are started. The people are assured that a new age is beginning, prosperity is just round the corner. In one village they were told that if they co-operated with the development programme they would soon be owning their own jeeps and even aeroplenes !

V.I.Ps and other visitors, who are often unacquainted with the realities of the situation, make matters worse by even more ambitious statements, and the continual investigations by evaluation teams and committees like our own still further complicate the situation. As a party of tribal folk remarked; "So many important people come to look at us, all asking the same questions, and nothing whatever happens." One Block headquarters was visited, in the space of a few months, by members of the Renuka Ray Committee, the Inaccessible Areas Committee, a 'Border Areas Relief Committe', a sub-committee of the Central Advisory Board for Tribal Welfare which was enquiring into nomadic tribes (which did not exist in the District) and our own Committee, as well as several high officials of the State. 

The Staff and its Approach :

Both the Renuka Ray Committee and the Inaccessible Areas Committee have criticised the quality of the officials employed in the Multipurpose Blocks and other under-developed areas. The first finds that the Block officials are not on sufficiently friendly terms with their people and seem to regard themselves as superior to them. 'A sense of awe, more than a feeling of friendly co-operation seems to prevail among the local tribals.' The second refers to the fact that service personnel of low calibre is all too often posted to these Blocks. ‘Often enough official postings to such remote areas are deemed to be a form of punishment. Upon receiving posting orders, a common practice is to utilise all accumulated leave, and in the meantime, make every effort to have the posting orders cancelled. If such attempts are not successful, the official eventually takes up his duties as a last resort and carries out their performance in a dispirited and uninterested way.'

Our own experience has been that the above observations are true to some extent but at the same time we would like to stress the fact that we have met a number of officials at all levels who were keen, enthusiastic and anxious to learn. Some of the V.L.Ws appeared to us extremely good and nearly all the present P. E.Os were carrying on their work with sincerity, and often with intelligence, in face of almost overwhelming difficulties, not the least of which was the fact that their status was not sufficiently high for them always to exercise the gift of leadership over their own team or to deal effectively with representatives of the State Departments. 

At the same time nearly all the officials, including those who inspired our respect, were lacking in any intimate knowledge of their people and had very little idea of general policies for tribal development. Not one of those we interviewed had heard of such a thing as scientific jhuming, hardly anyone had taken the trouble to learn a tribal language or to read any books about his area and there was general lack of interest in any kind of specialized approach to the tribes, except, of course, the importance of spending as much money as possible in the shortest possible-time. Comparatively few of the officers have had any orientation training and even those who have had it do not seem to have benefited very greatly.

The general attitude and approach to the tribes has improved throughout the country : thirty years ago they were generally regarded either as picturesque 'museum specimens' to be collected or as ferocious savages to be avoided. Today there is a very wide measure of respect for the tribal civilizations and a recognition that these fine people have a real contribution to make to the rest of India and that, as they get opportunity, they will play an important part in her life. 

But although some of the officials and social workers in the Multipurpose Blocks have been inspired with the new attitude, many of them have not. There is still all too common a tendency for officials to regard themselves as superior, as heaven-born missionaries of a higher culture. They boss the people about; their chaprasis abuse them; in order to get things done' they do not hesitate to threaten and bully. Any failure is invariably placed at the tribal door; in report after report, we have found the Block officials blaming everything on the laziness, the improvidence, the suspiciousness, the superstitions of the people.

Altogather too much fuss is made of the hardships of living in a tribal area and officials seem to regard themselves as heroic martyrs who are carrying a burden for heavier than anything the white man had to bear. Yet there is surely nothing very dreadful in being sent to live in the quiet and lovely countryside, on a great and exciting mission, among some of the most friendly, hospitable, courteous and charming people in the country. Missionaries do it without a word of complaint; forest officers give their whole lives to the hills and jungles with enthusiasm; scientists clamour for permission to go to the backwoods and pay large sums of money to do so; merchants and money-lenders go about among the tribal people, learn their language, endure conditions of the greatest hardship, with nothing but a smile. A complaint- psychology has developed in some of the Blocks which does not make for enthusiastic and efficient work.

This suggests that a wrong attitude has been created among officials. One way whereby this has been done is through the way we talk, which tends to increase subconsciously the sense of superiority. The word 'backward' is a very dangerous one. It is being used ad nauseam all the time-backward tribes, backward areas, backward classes. How then can we avoid thinking of ourselves as advanced, elevated, progressive and thus superior ? And how can the educated tribals, so constantly described in these disparaging terms, fail to develop an acute inferiority complex with all its unhappy consequences ? In any case, 'words like 'backward' and 'uplift' imply subjective judgements which are often based on a wrong sense of values. Who is backward—the simple honest tribesman or the merchant who exploits him ? Who is backward—the creative artist at her tribal loom, the gentle mother with her child among the hills, or the inventor of the atom bomb which may destroy her and all the world ? Are these self-reliant cooperative tribes the really backward as against the self-seeking, individualistic, crafty products of our industrial civilization ? 

The use of 'primitive' as equivalent to 'backward' is equally objectionable, and we comment elsewhere on the extraordinary suggestion that a list of tribes 'according to their primitiveness' should be prepared. The tribes were referred to recently in Parliament as 'these unfortunate people' and a recent publication by the Ministry of C.D & C. classifies them in a single sentence not only with the Scheduled Castes but also with the blind, the deaf and the mute !

It is true that many of the tribals, like some people all over the world, are weak, impoverished, exploited and unfortunate. But most of their ills are due to the neglect and folly of the 'advanced' and not to anything inherent in themselves. And it is entirely wrong to apply a blanket description of this kind to the splendid hill people, some of the happiest and gayest in India, with their zest for life, their freedom of spirit, who have faced and overcome difficulties that would long since have over whelmed the 'civilized'.

Another unfortunate term is 'Scheduled Tribes' which makes them sound as if they really were museum specimens and which in resented by the educated. It is even more unfortunate that it is usually used in the expresson 'Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes' and that both groups with their totally different problems, should be associated together and dealt with by one administrative organizaton. This has undoubtedly lowered the social status of the tribes in public opinion.

Adaptation : 

It is not easy for the town-dweller to adapt himself to the country or for sophisticated modern man to adjust himself to the hard and simple life of the tribes. But of all the different techniques of adaptation, the first and most important applies to our own minds and hearts, a matter on which shri Nehru has spoken frequently:-

"We ought to be careful," he has said, "about appointing officers any where, but we must be doubly so when we appoint them in Tribal areas. An officer in the tribal areas should not merely be a man who has passed an examination or gained some experience of routine work. He must be a man with enthusiasm, whose mind, and even more so whose heart, understands the problem it is his duty to deal with. He must not go there just to sit in an office for a few hours a day and for the rest curse his fate for being sent to an out-of-the-way place. That type of man is completely useless. It is far better to send a totally uneducated man who has passed no examination, so long as he goes to these people with friendship and affection and lives as one of them. Such a man will produce better results than the brilliant intellectual who has no human understanding of the problem. The man who goes there as an officer must be prepared to share his life with the tribal folk. He must be prepared to enter their huts, talk to them, eat and smoke with them, live their lives and not consider himself superior or apart. Then only can he gain their confidence and respect, and thus be in a position to advise them”.

Some one once said that : 'The entire policy of the Prime Minister with regard to the tribal people of India may be summed up in one word—Humility'. We believe that this is true. Humility has been the dominant virtue of the most successful administrators of tribal areas throughout the world. 

Humility is not a popular virtue and is not generally supposed to pay a very high dividend; it can, if insincere, be one of the most obnoxious of human characteristics. But if it is sincere, it will enable us to approach our task without fear of failure, save us from countless mistakes, and win us the true affection of many tribal friends.

This attitude expresses itself in very definite and practical ways. It is not expressed, for example, by keeping tribal visitors waiting for a long time outside one's house or office, and by not offering them seats. We have sometimes noticed that at community feasts officials have chairs to sit on, while the tribals squat on the ground. At meetings of Block Development Committees, officials and non-tribals nearly always have the best places, while the tribals sit almost unnoticed at the back. It is still all too common, in fact, at any meeting between officials and the people, for the former to sit on chairs and the latter to squat on the ground. Could not everybody sit down together, if necessary, in the old Indian fashion, on the ground ? This may seem a small matter, but it is a symbol of something very big.

Now let us admit frankly that it is very easy to talk about being dedicated to the tribes or loving them or being one with them. It sounds wonderful on paper, but it is by no means easy to carryout in practice. When a Block official is first appointed, in the first flush of his enthusiasm every thing seems simple, but as the months go by it becomes more difficult, for the tribal people are like people all over the world. Most of them are friendly, honest, hospitable, good, but just as anywhere else in the world, some of them are dishonest, mean, untruthful, treacherous. It is easy to love the friendly; it is not easy to put up with those who cheat or betray you and, in some cases, an official or social worker in the tribal areas, who has begun well, loses his enthusiasm and grows impatient with the people he is trying to serve. He becomes mentally hostile to them and feels that some how he has been cheated. The hardships and loneliness of his life then begin to oppress him and what at first was a great adventure now becomes a rather dreary chore, and he applies for transfer or resigns. This is why it is essential that we should not be inspired merely by romantic sentiment, but build up within ourselves a store of inner strength, with an attitude based on knowledge and reason, so that when the testing days come we will not fail.

What are the qualities which the tribal people themselves, for they are the real Selection Board which passes the ultimate judgement, admire is an official or voluntary worker ?

The first is something which is rather hard to define, but is generally expressed by the words ' personality' or 'character'. The tribal people do not generally take to a negative person, someone who is dull, peevish or flat. They like a clubbable man, to use an expression of Dr. Johnson's. This does not mean that they necessarily prefer a 'hearty' character to a quiet one, 'indeed some very successful officers have been on the quiet and gentle side. They like the real, the genuine, the sincere far more than the back slapper. But an officer must not be too shy, or his reticence will be mistaken for pride. A warm generous, affectionate, positive but not too effusive character is best. But if one does not have these estimable characteristics, it is no good trying to put them on. The thing is to be simple and natural for oneself.

Then again the tribal people are admirers of men and women who work hard. Indeed, the capacity for work holds a high place in their ethical code, and they always condemn the slacker in their folk-tales. They criticise an official who in his office or on tour does not fulfil his duties, of which they are becoming increasingly aware. They admire promptitude and panctuality in others even if they do not practise it themselves.

Many of them are strongly democratic, but others have a great respect for their Chiefs and for the aristocracy. They have a sense of genealogy and history. But both types are extremely sensitive to any assumption of superiority by outsiders. They like to feel that an official is a person of position, authority and dignity, but at the same time they expect him to mix freely with them on terms of equality : they expect him to be always accessible.

They appreciate any genuine interest in their customs and traditions and respond readily to expressions of admiration for their textile and other arts. They are delighted when an official puts on a tribal hat or coat, or if his wife wears one of their clothes or ornaments. Most of them like talking about themselves and appreciate an attentive hearing. They are apt to talk for a very long time and patience is a virtue we have to cultivate.

In fact, patience and an even temper are qualities admired even by the most warlike tribes. They very strongly resent being shouted at or roughly treated. No one should ever, on any account whatever, strike or beat them. It is sometimes said that this is the best way of handling them, that they respect a 'man who is not afraid of them, and that once they have been put in their place' they become devoted friends. Our experience is that such friendship is generally based on fear and that a blow is brooded over and resented for years.

To the tribal mind the family is one of the most important things in the world, and a married official with his wife and children who can establish a real home among them, and show them something of the beauty of family life quickly finds himself accepted in tribal society.

The people expect an official to act quickly and always fulfil his promises. They know nothing about red tape and, when they hear about it, think it very silly. This is why it is essential that there should be a certain flexibility in the financial and other rules governing work in the interior. 'Workers among the tribes,' says Shri N. K. Rustomji, who as Adviser for NEFA and Diwan of Sikkim has had wide experience of them, ‘must be men of adventure and elastic intellect. The mind must be constantly on the alert to discover ways and means of overcoming the hundred and one problems of administration in such unusual areas and amongst such unusual people. The successful administrator will be ever experimenting. For it is through experiment that, in the last resort, the most practical solution can be found to the knottiest problems. And if only a small percentage of the experiments meet with success it will be something gained. But the worker who plods along the beaten track, hesitant to undertake any venture lest it might not meet with immediate success, will be of little use for work in areas where the commonly accepted rules and practices are impractical of implementation and are a hindrance to the development and growth of the people.'

Very important to tribal psychology is the love of truth and a belief in justice. This is why sincerity in an official is more important than academic or technical qualifications. The people expect him to tell them the truth even if it is unpalatable and nothing causes greater trouble than for him to make promises which he cannot fulfil. The frank, truth-speaking type is thus more likely to succeed than the glib, the smooth or the slick. The tribal people are becoming aware of the large sums of money now allocated for their benefit and are demanding a high standard of integrity in their officers. They may be profoundly disturbed by a discrepancy of only a few annas, which we may hardly notice.

For the puritan they have little use; they dislike anyone who pries and meddles, who is always wanting to do them good, never happy unless he is showing something up. Despite the harshness of their environment, they have a zest for living, an immense capacity for enjoyment; they are affirmative, positive people and they expect their officials to enjoy life with them.

Freedom from fear : 

We have received from a P.E.O. in charge of one of the Multipurpose Blocks an interesting note on what he calls the 'fear complex' among the tribal people which has been created by the exactions of the low grade officials and non-tribals who visited their villages. In general the voice of the P.E.O is insufficiently heard in Delhi or the capitals of the States. Some of them are now beginning to feel a deep affection and sympathy for their people, even though they may not yet have any great knowledge of their social and cultural background; they are in daily touch with them; and some are deeply disturbed by the things they see. In general, however, they do not feel it appropriate (as is perhaps natural in the case of Class II officials) to express their views freely. When they do, however, we should listen and pay attention to what they say.

We will, therefore, summarize this P.E.Os report. He points out that, however liberal and generous the policy at the higher level may be, the tribals are often governed at the village level by the worst kind of petty official. We have already mentioned the tendency to send development workers to tribal areas as a punishment. This is even more marked in the Police and Revenue Departments. It has apparently been assumed that, because there is so much poverty and little incidence of crime in the tribal areas, bad officials will have less opportunity for taking bribes and exploiting the people.

This, however, is unfortunately not the case. Supervision by higher officials is inevitably weak in the remoter areas; the tribal people are ignorant of the law and in any case they are unwilling to go to a District head quarters to make complaints and are terrified of being summoned to a court which may be thirty or forty miles away from their homes and to which, if a case is raised against them, they may have to go a dozen times. In one such case a tribal had to walk an aggregate of over 3000 miles before it was settled.

The tribal people suffer from the exactions of minor officials in the three main administrative Departments- Forest, Revenue and Police.

Forest : 

In the Multipurpose Block about which we have received this report, it is estimated that every Forest Guard is paid an annual tithe of seven and a half seers of grain by every tribal family in his beat as a sort of protection fee. This entitles the donors to free collection of fuel, fruit, gum, bamboos and thatching-grass from the forest without any interference. Sould they need timber for building their houses, they obtain it by making additional payment in kind- a cow, chickens, ghee or wheat.

Some of the more enterprising tribals arrange with the local Forest Guard on a personal cash payment to be permitted to remove timber even from the Reserved Forests. If a tribal wishes to clear the forest for shifting cultivation he pays a fee of two rupees an axe. In some areas this fee, which is normally regarded as a kind of tax, is much higher. This, of course, is done on the understanding that if the tribal concerned is caught by the Ranger or the D.F.O. he will have to face the consequences and will not refer to the Forest Guard who has assisted him. The Forest Guards also make it their joint responsibility to provide the Forester of their beat with free food-provisions throughout the year.

Police : 

The incidence of crime is low, yet the unfortunate police constables have to live. Therefore, since crime is the most profitable source of income for a constable, crimes have to be committed. Non-official non-tribals of the locality help to 'frame' the tribals by putting up false complaints against them, placing, for example, bottles of illicit liquor in tribal houses or the equipment for distilation in tribal fields, and then arranging to have them 'discovered' by the police.

In every village the Kotwar or Chowkidar is the official informer. He is never a tribal but usually a Harijan or member of one of the 'Other Backward Classes.' He too collects regular protection money from the villagers, of which he takes part himself and gives the rest to the police. This works out at about Rs.2 for each family every year and is paid in cash. There are not very many police men in the tribal areas and their food rations, when they visit a village on tour, are requisitioned from well-to-do tribals without difficulty. Sometimes it is arranged that the tribal will give hospitality to such an important person as a constable. In return the hosts are given preferential treatment by constables and Sub-Inspectors and this enhances their social position.

Revenue : 

The Patwari is the Revenue official who in many areas collects land revenue and recovers arrears. He is supposed to give regular receipts but very often he conveniently forgets to issue them and the amount is put down as arrears. These gradually accumulate and are then demanded in a lump sum later on.

The Patwari also prepares an annual report in which he records the boundaries of the land cultivated by various tribal farmers. It often happens that when a new Patwari takes over charge, he finds that some of the people have encroached on Government lands and have been cultivating them for a number of years. In such cases he has an excellent opportunity to collect suitable gratification in cash. Those tribals who do not pay are reported in the Tahsil courts.

The Patwari is paid his protection money both in cash and kind according to the ability of the cultivator- and not on a flat rate for each house or family as in other cases.

The strongest weapon in the hands of village level officials is the threat of summons to a court and there are very few tribals indeed who can stand up against it. Quite apart from the waste of time and the economic loss on fines imposed, a tribal who is arrested and taken to court losses face and his social position is impaired.

Non-official non-tribals :

The exploitation of the fear complex is not confined to officials. The non-official outsiders who live in the tribal areas cause even more disquiet to the tribal mind. Before the elections of 1951 those non-tribals who lived in the tribal areas were like Banias in any other rural part of India. Their rates of interest on loans and their other practices, fair or unfair, were similar to those elsewhere, but after the elections the situation changed.

Each political party needed representatives in the villages to canvass for votes. Such canvassers cultivated the most vocal members of a village to help them and these always were non-tribals, often persons without ordinary means of earning their livelihood. After the elections they became 'leaders' in the tribal areas and particularly if the party candidate whom they represented was elected, they gained a good deal of local power and assumed the tradition of leadership of the village community. They were able to do because of the influence of the party they represented and of the Government officials who did not wish to offend them. Where the villagers refused to accept them they became informers against them and worked up criminal charges against some of them. In the Panchayat elections that followed, which were fought on a party basis, these local leaders got themselves elected as party candidates.

Such people are often neither substantial landholders nor the best cultivators or traders in the village. Yet they have as high, or even bigher standards of living than anybody else. The money that makes this possible has to come from somewere and the P.E.O. declares that it comes as a result of a 'grand conspiracy' between the local 'leaders' and minor Government officials who create trouble for the people if they do not give them what they want.

Previously the whole village used to be disturbed when a Patwari, Forest Guard or constable visited it. Yet, after all, such visits were not very common and rarely occured more than two or three times a month. During the day or two that the visit lasted the villagers were nervous and apprehensive, but once the visitor went away they felt relieved and peaceful again. But the new class of alien leaders has changed this. They are on the spot and the villagers are kept in a state of anxiety all the time. They feel that some one has his eye upon them. They fear that at any moment they may be falsely implicated in a case and this has made them jumpy and nervous.

The result of this has been to make the tribals uneasy and discontented with their lot. Their culture their traditional tribal councials and even their way of thinking are being ruined, not by any activity of the development programme but by the invasion of low grade, unscrupulous and ignorant non-tribals into their life. As a result some have themselves become selfish, crafty and money-minded. A new phenomenon has been created which was hither to unknown and these tribals have begun exploiting their poorer brethren in the same way as the non-tribals are exploiting them.

This situation, as reported by the P.E.O., will be familar to any one who has ever lived in a tribal area. Hundreds of examples could be given, but we will be content with a brief description of what two of us observed during a visit to another Multipurpose Block in another State, where the activities of certain minor officials were brought to our notice. It was reported that shortly before our visit a vaccinator went to one village and took five rupees from the people for vaccinating them. He went on to another village where the people were afraid of treatment, and took six rupees apiece for not vaccinating them. Another complaint was about a junior forest officer who erected a number of pillars to mark the boundaries of a new reservation. He forced the tribal people to engage themselves without payment on this task, which in any case must have been most distasteful to them, and then made them give him two rupees for every pillar erected. Both in this Block and in other Blocks we heard many complaints that money was not paid promptly and that compensation for land taken for official buildings was not paid. We also received a report about some outsider who went into a hill village and declared himself to be an official of the Excise Department. He said that he had come to inspect the tobacco crop and, having done so, demanded ten rupees as tax. Although one of the village leaders told the people that they should not pay and the man was an impostor, they were so afraid that they ran after him and begged him to accept the money. This sort of incident, which used to be common all over India in the days before Independence, should surely have come to an end by now. Nothing is more likely to dim the enthusiasm of the people for development schemes than not being paid promptly and properly, and any kind of illegal demand has a deplorable effect on them.

We do not suggest, of course, that all subordinate officials or non-tribals outsiders in the tribal areas are corrupt and oppressive. Some are kind, helpful and friendly: some are themselves disturbed by what goes on. But there are still far too many of the wrong kind.

We speak elsewhere in this Report of the heavy burden laid on the tribal people by Forest Laws, Prohibition Laws and the gradual advance of the rule of law in the realm of land possession. With the loss of their former freedom and their own simple and informal way of doing things, they have become bewildered in a world of red tape. It is said that every villager in a tribal area, if he is to survive, has to break some kind of law every day of his life. This result in lowering the respect for law in general and imposes a sub-conscious sense of guilt. 

This is an important matter, partly because these children of India should not, on purely humanitarian grounds, be troubled in this way, partly because, as we stress in several places in this Report, people cannot do their best work unless they are happy. It is, however, difficult to do anything about it. It often happens that where a tribal reports his difficulties to a social worker or development official and the latter takes it up with the officers of the Department concerned, the tribal, out of fear, lets his would be helper down, denies that he ever made any complaint and even accuses his helper of inventing the case for some advantage of his own. We cannot blame the tribal for doing this, for if he does succeed in placing a complaint against an official, the latter may be transferred but his successor makes it his business to take it out of the complainant in order to ensure that he will not complain again.

If the Tribal Councils can be revived they will be a powerful instrument to check this kind of corruption and harassment. As education spreads in the tribal areas we may hope that the people will learn to stand up for themselves more vigorously. Already officers in the Multipurpose Blocks are, we are glad to say, generally strongly on the side of the tribals and their presence will help to ease the situation. The modification of the Forest and Land Laws, the establishment of rights to land, a general improvement in human relations between tribals and officials will all help. We suggest that not only development workers but officials of the Revenue, Forest, Police and Excise Departments should be given very careful briefing to create a new attitude; that there should be much stricter suprevision: that Rasad books, as we suggest in Chapter Eight, should be introduced everywhere; and that superior officers should not resent complaints made by the tribals (who are almost always very honest in what they say and will never make a complaint unless they are driven to despair) and should take immediate and drastic action where necessary.

Whatever is done, it shuld be recognized that many of the tribal people are afraid of us and we will never integrate them fully with the rest of India or enable them to advance as we desire, unless this 'fearcomplex' ceases to exist.

Adaptation to Tribal Needs : 

The suggestion that the programmes of development in the Multipurpose Blocks should have a 'tribal touch' or a 'tribal bias' has been sometimes misunderstood. It does not mean putting feathers in one's hair or going about with nothing on. It was first used when it became apparent that the adoption of stereotyped plans (admirable for developed districts) had generally been taken over as they stood for introduction into the tribal areas, and that there was no serious attempt to adapt the budget to tribal needs or the policy to tribal life. Today, although most of the schematic budgets have been revised in a more realistic way to suit local requirements which vary, of course, from Block to Block, very little has been done to implement the policy of developing the people along the lines of their own tradition and genius, which holds the first priority in the Prime Minister's Panchashila for the tribes.

The first and last problem of tribal India is proverty, and to give a programme a tribal bais means first that it must aim, if necessary to the exclusion of all else, at economic improvement, which itself may have to be quite different from that desirable in other parts of the country. Here indebtedness is a special problem because of the simplicity and innocence of the people. The ordinary agricultural programme may not always be suitbale, for the tribal people eat different things (they often prefer the millets to rice, for the example, and like meat and fish) and marketing of their saleable products is often impossible for lack of communications.

They are attached to their own culture, religion and way of life, and unless the development programme is very carefully adjusted it may do as much harm as good, destroying much that is of value and putting little in its place.

The 'tribal touch' or 'tribal bias', therefore, means that we must look, if we can, at things through tribal eyes and from the tribal point of view. We must find out what means most to them. We must see that they do in fact get a square deal : we must save them from the exploiters who still invade their villages, and ensure that in the future they will be in a position to administer and develop their own areas.

A tribal bias means that we recognise and honour their way of doing things, not because it is old or picturesque but because it is their's, and they have as much right to their own culture and religion as anyone else in India. * It means that we must talk their language, and not only the language that is expressed in words but the deeper language of the heart. It means that we will not make the tribes ashamed of their past or force a sudden break with it, but that we will help them to build upon it and grow by a natural process of evolution. It does not mean a policy of mere preservation; it implies a constant development and change, a change that in time will bring unbelievable enrichment, as there is ever closer integration in the main stream of Indian life and culture.

Museum Specimens : 

Almost invariably, when anyone speaks about the need of developing the tribal people on scientific lines or of preserving their arts and institutions, the accusation is made that we wish to preserve them as museum specimens. This idea was first mooted over twenty years ago and it has been repeated ever since, although it is hard to see what possible justification there can be for it. We might as well say that by preserving the sari we are keeping Indian women as museum specimens. We do not know of a single responsible person in India today who has the desire to hold back the development of the tribals in order to preserve them for study or as a picturesque enclave in our rather drab modern world. Even if anyone wished to do so, it would obviously be impossible under present conditions. 

We feel, however, that in view of the fact that we are advocating the development of the people on the lines of their own tradition and genius, we should make it absolutely clear that we have no interest in any kind of artificial preservation of tribal customs or ways of living. Where these are good we should try carefully to help the people to develop from within into something better. We fully recognize that as a result of our own recommendations great changes will come, not only in the comparatively small area which is at present subject to intensive development, but later throughout the whole of tribal India. We are suggsting for this purpose thirty crores of rupees for new Special Tribal Blocks. You do not keep people as museum specimens by spending very large sums of money on policies that are bound to cause far reaching changes.

We would also stress the fact, again in order to avoid misunderstanding by those who may not take the trouble to read out Report, that there is no question whatever of isolating the tribal people. We have infact, placed the development of communications very high in the order of priorities and have strongly emphasized the need of opening up the entire tribal areas. The unity of the hills and of the plains is as essential to the general national interest as it is to that of the hill and forest people themselves. At the same time we have stressed the need of caution, for too rapid a contact is not desirable and in the past, as a result of exposure to the outside world, some of the tribes have become psychologically maladjusted, culturally impoverished and grossly exploited by the outside world. We feel, however, that the 'middle path', suggested by the Prime Minister, of bringing the good things of modern life to these people and of proceeding with caution and by a system of planned contact and adjusted exposure, should ensure that the evils that have affected them in the past will not affect them in the future. We may indeed look forward to an enriching process of mutual fertilization: we have much to give the tribes and they have much to give us.

Conclusion : 

Some of the tribal areas have already made, and we hope that soon they all will make, sensational progress in material prosperity. Yet this prosperity may be positively dangerous unless there is a simultaneous ethical and spiritual renaissance. It is unhappily true that when a tribal enters our world of today he all too often loses the fine qualities that formerly distinguished him. India is a secular state and it would be improper for official or even voluntary organizations that receive support from Government, to promote any particular religion or ideology. But the tribal people themselves have ideals which in their own way are good and beautiful. We must cherish these and help them to grow so that there will be no loss of those imponderable treasures that give dignity to the life of Man.