Social Inclusion and Education in India

Scheduled Tribes, Denotified Tribes and Nomadic Tribes

Ghanshyam Shah, Joseph Bara

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000089110
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Classi sociali e disparità economica

This book examines social inclusion in the education sector in India for scheduled tribes (ST), denotified tribes and nomadic tribes. It investigates the gaps between what was promised to the marginalized sections in the constitution, and what has since been delivered.

The volume:
• Examines data from across the Indian states on ST and non-ST students in higher, primary and secondary education;
• Analyses the success and failures of education policy at the central and state level;
• Brings to the fore colonial roots of social exclusion in education.

A major study, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of education, sociology and social anthropology, development studies and South Asian studies.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Tribes in India and their education

Ghanshyam Shah and Joseph Bara

The present volume is a collection of papers focusing on status of education of scheduled tribes (ST), denotified and nomadic tribes in some of the Indian states. They emerge from the survey of education of these communities sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) during 2012–14. In fact, the study on the “Educational Status of Scheduled Tribes: Attainments and Challenges” (ICSSR:ESTAC) is a repeat study of the ICSSR conducted in the early 1970s. The study of education of denotified tribes (DNT), nomadic tribes (NT) and semi-nomadic tribes (SNT) is the first of the kind. Though both sets of studies have a common framework to map out the status of education and socio-economic factors, they differ in their scope and methodology. The latter is an exploratory effort, confined to a household survey of a sample of DNTs, NTs and SNTs. The former (ST) carries out a survey of households as well as upper primary, secondary school and college students (for the sampling method see the Appendix). It may be noted that the 2012–14 ICSSR study on STs does not cover the northeast frontier states of India. The full-fledged state-based reports of the STs are available from the ICSSR. This volume is an attempt to present some of the studies focusing on certain aspects of the educational scenario of these communities based on the survey data collected for the project. Besides mapping out the spread of education by level in these communities and the process of constructing an egalitarian society in a multi-cultural society, it specifically looks at the following: Who is educated and who remains behind? What obstacles do students of these deprived communities face inside and outside educational institutions in acquiring education?

Scheduled tribes

Scheduled tribe is primarily an administrative category created by the government to rule a group of communities. In the nineteenth century, when the colonial government begun enumerating the Indian people through a census, it initially used the terms ‘tribe’ and ‘caste’ interchangeably to classify the natives. For the first time, the Government of India made an effort to prepare a list of ‘primitive tribes’, and later the Government of India Act 1935, used the term ‘backward tribes’ for the communities largely residing in the interiors from the plains to hills and forests and who followed cultural practices different from the mainstream Hindu society. The Indian Constitution, 1950, has retained the terminology of the 1935 act, but with a slight alteration, using ‘scheduled’ instead of ‘backward’. Articles 341 and 342 of the constitution empowered the President to specify certain groups as ‘scheduled tribes’. Article 366 (25) defined ‘scheduled tribes’ as “such tribes or tribal communities or parts of groups within such tribes for the purpose of the Constitution”. By the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) order, 1950, issued by the President in the exercise of powers conferred by Clause (1) Article 342 of the Constitution of India, 212 tribes were declared to be scheduled tribes. Later, by an act of Parliament, several other communities have been included from time to time.¹ As of 2017, 645 communities have been considered scheduled tribes.

There is no precise sociological definition of the term ‘tribe’ in which all the scheduled tribes have been categorized. Different anthropologists and public policy architects use the term ‘tribe’ differently in different contexts, based on one’s perspective on social processes and development. The western sociologists and anthropologists, such as Lewis Morgan (1818–81) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1901), who subscribe to evolutionary theory, construct various stages of human development. Their construction is based on their perceived socio-economic growth of their own European society to the present ‘modern’ stage. According to them, the present western society is the most civilized, and the others will inevitably follow. In that trajectory, the first stage was that of a band. It was “an association, more or less residential of nuclear families”(Renfrew 1973; Maisels 1990). The second stage is that of a tribe. In this sense, a self-styled civilization looks at tribes as primitive and backward in terms of the trajectory of evolution, and they are required to pass through stages to become civilized qua modern. In Indian languages, including Sanskrit and Prakrit, there is no special word analogous to a tribe. The English-Sanskrit dictionary translates the word ‘tribe’ as jana or jati, which means ‘community of people’. Niharranjan Ray (1972: 5) observes,

A careful analysis of long list of janas in epic Buddhist, puranic and secular literature of early medieval times and the context in which they are mentioned makes it clear that hardly any distinction was made until very late in history between what we know today as ‘tribes’ and such communities of people who were known as the Gandharas and Khambojas, Kasi and Kosala, Angas and Magadhas, Kurus and Panchalas, for instance.

However, in the contemporary discourse, different STs of the northeast states prefer to be recognized by the name of their tribe or collective as a tribe or tribal people. In other parts, they are known as Jan-jati, Adivasis, Vanvasi, Vanyajati, Adimjati, Girijan and Pahari. In some parts, more often than not, the mainstream people look down upon them. In the past, they called them ‘Kaliparaj’ (black people) or ‘uncivilized or primitive’ (Jangali and Pachaat).

In the earlier categorization of communities set by the British rulers, geographical location, economic condition and lifestyle of a community were the guiding principles for preparing the list of STs. The Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes posed this question in 1950 to the state governments in 1950: “What criteria [have] they employed to distinguish the ‘tribals’ from the rest of the population?” According to the Assam government, the characteristics of tribals were (a) descent from Mongoloid stock, (b) being members of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic group and (c) the existence of a unity of social organization of the village or clan type. According to the Madhya Pradesh government, the tribals were of ‘tribal’ origin, speaking a ‘tribal’ language and were residents of the forest areas. The Hyderabad government considered those social groups to be tribals who resided in forests; observed an animistic religion; used a social dialect; practiced marriage by force; resorted to hunting, fishing and gathering of forest food as the means of subsistence; etc. (Mamoria 1957). On the basis of the empirical studies carried out by anthropologists and census data, one can say that these are the communities which had been residing in forests and hills with less interaction with the people of the plain region. There are certain common socio-cultural characteristics which, by and large, distinguish them from the non-ST population of their vicinity. Until the ‘modern’ times of the British era, most of them had not become an organic part of the mainstream Hindu society. Their traditional social and religious beliefs, customs, lifestyle and languages/bhashas are different from the followers of institutionalized religion residing on the plains.²

According to the 2011 census, there are 104.2 million STs. Over six decades, their population has increased nearly 3.5 times. They were 30.1 million in 1961. Besides natural fertility growth, new communities have been added from time to time by constitutional amendment. In terms of historical experiences, cultural differences and geopolitical factors, ST can be divided into (a) frontier or northeast tribes and (2) non-frontier tribes spread in the northwest Himalayan region, eastern, central, western and southern part of the country. The northeast region includes Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. Some of these states have a predominantly ST population, varying from 68 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh to 94 per cent in Mizoram. The remaining northeastern states also have significant tribal populations. They together constitute nearly 12 per cent of the STs of the country.

Two of the Union territories – Lakshadweep on the southwestern coast and Daman and Diu in the western region, though small in terms of area and population, have a sizable ST population of 94 per cent and 54 per cent, respectively. The remaining 85 per cent of the STs are spread in the northwest Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as eastern and in a central belt, including West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, and in western India – Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa. Of all the states, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Rajasthan have a sizable ST population which is more than 12 per cent of the state population.

The number of STs as identified by the government varies from state to state. Though the number is, by and large, related to the size of the state and ST population, it is not always so. The largest number of tribes (104) is enumerated in Arunachal Pradesh. The total ST population in the state is less than ten lakh. As against that, Madhya Pradesh, with 153 lakh population, has 43 tribes. Odisha has 62 tribes. All Union territories – Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep – have fewer than ten tribes. Many of the tribes are not socially homogeneous. In terms of interpersonal social actions, including marriage relationships, they are often divided.

Within each state, a majority of them are concentrated in certain blocks and districts. There are 60 districts and 600 blocks where STs constitute more than 80 per cent of the population. On the other hand, they are almost invisible, less than 10 per cent, in the majority of the districts (58 per cent) and blocks/tehsils (60 per cent). The number of villages with more than 90 per cent population has also increased from 59,549 to 63,056 during the last decade. Moreover, the tribal villages, unlike non-tribal villages, are scattered. They are spread over a large area and divided into hamlets. Only 10 per cent of them live in urban areas. In 1961, their urban population was barely 1 per cent. Even today, they constitute only 2.3 per cent of the total urban population. Except in the towns in close vicinity of their concentrated populations, they are almost invisible in the large cities. According to the census, they are almost absent in metropolitan cities like Delhi. It seems that the migrant STs are left out from the enumeration.

Among all the STs, a few tribes have been identified as ‘primitive’. They are now called ‘particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG)’.³ These groups engaged in hunting and gathering, have zero or negative population growth and have an extremely low level of literacy in comparison to other tribes. Initially, 52 tribes were identified as primitive tribes. Their population was estimated at 7,73,684 persons in 1961. Later some other tribes were added to this category. In 2001 there were 75 such groups. According to the 2001 census, their population is calculated as 2.7 million. They have been identified in most of the states. Their highest number is in Madhya Pradesh.

Each tribe has a dialect which they normally speak in the local areas with their community people and also for the exchange of goods in bazaars. Over the last six decades several of their languages have disappeared. According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2017), 197 languages in India are listed as endangered. According to the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, 780 languages are spoken. Of them, 220 have been lost in the last 50 years (www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/). Many of these are the languages of various tribal communities.

Denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes

The Indian Constitution does not refer to categories like ‘denotified’ or ‘nomadic’ tribes. These categories have evolved gradually during the colonial rule. Denotified tribes are those who were once considered under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, as ‘hereditary criminals’ and called ‘criminal tribes’. They were subjected to surveillance and confinement. Many of these communities resisted and rebelled against the ‘foreign’ power, be that the British, Moghuls, Marathas or Rajputs, who impinged on their autonomy and rights to natural resources. Most of them were not settled in a particular area. Among the categorized ‘criminal tribes’, many were nomadic communities. The settled communities looked upon them with suspicion because of their nomadic character. After independence, following the recommendation of the All India Criminal Tribes Inquiry Committee report in 1949, the 1871 act was repealed in 1952. These communities became ‘denotified tribes’. But the policy makers of the post-independence India were al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: tribes in India and their education
• 2 Tribal education in central India: conditions under colonialist and nationalist moves
• 3 Uneven growth and a hurdled path: education of the scheduled tribes in Chhattisgarh
• 4 Strands of educational participation of scheduled tribes
• 5 Academic performance of the scheduled tribe students in West Bengal
• 6 Under the shadow of prosperity: scheduled tribe students in Gujarat
• 7 The paradox of education: stereotyping equality of the scheduled tribes in Odisha
• 8 Invisible discrimination: educational status of the scheduled tribes of Telangana state
• 9 Outliers in Kerala: educational status of scheduled tribes
• 10 Educational status of the denotified tribes of Telangana
• 11 Educational constraints and condition of denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes in Rajasthan
• Appendix: Method and sample for ST ICSSR–sponsored studies on “education status of scheduled tribes: attainments and challenges” (ICSSR: ESTAC) 192
• Index