INDIAN SOCIETY: STRUCTURE & PROCESSES

PROJECT

On

TRIBAL LIFE IN INDIA

Submitted to:

DR. AYAN HAZRA

Assistant Professor

Faculty: Indian Society- Structure and Processes

Submitted by:

SANKALP PARIHAR

Roll No. 142 Semester

III, Section A

Submitted on:

30TH NOVEMBER, 2020

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY UPARWARA POST, ABHANPUR,

ATAL NAGAR, RAIPUR (C.G.) - 492002

DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY
I, SANKALP PARIHAR, have done research on the topic “TRIBAL LIFE IN INDIA”. I
hereby declare that this Project has been prepared only for academic purposes and is the outcome
of the investigation and preparation done by me under the able guidance and supervision of DR.
AYAN HAZRA, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Hidayatullah National Law
University, Raipur.

……………………………

Sankalp Parihar
Roll. No. - 142
Semester- III
Section – A

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Mr. SANKALP PARIHAR, Roll Number 142, student of Semester III,
Section-A of B.A.LL.B (Hons.),Hidayatullah National Law University, New Raipur
(Chhattisgarh) has done the work on the project titled “TRIBAL LIFE IN INDIA” under my
guidance and supervision. The research work is fit for evaluation and submission.

Place: Raipur DR. AYAN HAZRA

Date: 30.11.2020 Faculty of Sociology

.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Working on the project “TRIBAL LIFE IN INDIA” was a source of immense knowledge, through
this I received chance to deeply understand the situation of Tribes in India. I would like to express
my gratitude to Dr. Ayan Hazra sir for his guidance and support throughout the course of this
project. I acknowledge with deep sense of gratitude, the encouragement received from sir for this
project.

………………………

SANKALP PARIHAR
Semester- III
Section- A
Roll. No. 142
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

S No. Particulars Page No.

1. Declaration of Originality i
2. Certificate ii
3. Acknowledgement iii
4. Introduction 1- 10
5. Major Tribes in India (Geographical Division)

North; North, North-Eastern tribes

Central Zone Tribes
Southern Tribes

6.
11- ----

7. Major Findings, Conclusion and Suggestions

8. Bibliography
 INTRODUCTION

Tribes generally are defined as a group of people that share a common connection with their
ancestors or a group of people which has a similar culture passed down to them by their
ancestors and these clusters of live in an enclosed society of their own. The word tribe is said
to be originated from the latin word ‘Tribus’ which was used in the three division of early
people of Rome1. The idea of tribes is not limited to a certain geographic and tries can be
found all over the world, the tribes are called a ‘Clan’ in the European part of the world and
were referred to as primitive, indigenous, aboriginal etc by the English settlers in India. The
initial settlement of tribes can be traced back to the ancient times when Rome created
division within the society because of the reasons of difference among the people, these
differences were mainly due to family, class and earning capacity of the masses, in Indian
context tribes are called ‘Adivasis’ and are referred as earliest settlers of lands. Before the
caste division in India people were divided into different tribes and each tribe had its’ own
chief which controlled the tribe. Tribes have had a rich past but due to the lack of written
texts most of those culture is unknown to this generation. There were traces of tribal structure
in the great epics of Hinduism i.e. Ramayana 2 and Mahabharata3. Ramayana had a tribal girl
names Sabri and Mahabharata referred to tribals as sudras, dravidas, pulindas and saoras etc.
Tribes had always been subject of outer aggression and the Aryans destroying the Harappan
civilization is an example of that. With the wiping out of tribal societies there was a constant
process of assimilation of tribes into the generic society. The greats Indian texts have
examples of this wherein it is stated that the ‘Chandala’ tribe was assimilated into the Hindu
society and were given a specific task of covering up dead bodies. This assimilation of tribes
into societies led to creation of classes amongst the society. The atrocities towards the tribal
societies can be seen in the medieval history as well. During the Mughal rule the chiefs of the
Indian tribal societies were forced to convert into Islam. The Gond dynasty of Jabalpur were
defeated by Mughals and were forced to be converted. With the british coming to India came
their very own idea of colonizing the tribes. The East India Company penetrated into the
tribal regions and demolished the native forests for their personal gains. The british were the
first ones to start the commercial exploitation of tribes, they started acquiring the forests for
timber, forest land were being used for tea production4 and there was a massive deforestation

1
2

3
4
for the construction of railways5.
The britishers also adopted the path that Mughals took with conversion and infact were
granting incentives to Christian missionaries for preaching Christianity in India 6, the
britishers even came up with an ordinance to preach Christianity in India. With the sepoy
mutiny in 1857 the missionaries got patronage from the govt to spread speedily but unlike
Hinduism and Islam this conversion spree came with education reforms for the tribals. Due to
the constant exploitation of tribes there were few reforms from the tribal society towards the
oppression and exploitation, some of these were Kherwar movement, Birsa Munda
movement, Bhil Rebellion etc.

With all these atrocities towards the tribals over the years the situation has changed but with
this change emerged new problems for the tribal people. Post-independence the main issue
among the tribes were their alienation amongst the general society because of the prevalent
cast system in India, although the cast system is only limited to Hinduism but still out of the
9% tribal population 7of India more than 50% of it comes under Hinduism so it creates a huge
demographic with these persistent problem. The government has since been trying to uplift
the society and has made specific legislations for upliftment of the tribal societies. The
government also officially recognized various tribes in the constitution.8

6
Govt of India act 1913 .
7
Census 1991
8
Schedule 8 or 9 for tribs