Schooling ‘Truant’ Tribes: British Colonial Compulsions and Educational Evolution in

Chhotanagpur, 1870–1930 – Joseph Bara

The assumption, so far as the tribes are concerned, seems to be that the model of the plains was
uncritically extended to the tribal areas and a similar development followed. Even when ‘certain
peculiarities’ of the tribal situation are manifest, scholars continue to treat the inception and
development of education in tribal areas as simply the spilling over of policies from the plains.
Certain studies however hint that schemes of tribal education originated locally, based upon British
perception of the tribes. And this perception, the colonial idea of ‘tribe’, was a factor in the
educational growth of the tribal regions. This article argues that the cultural condition of the tribes
not only forced the British to devise and follow special policies, but also shaped an idiosyncratic
local pattern of growth and response to colonial action.

The lack of a policy for popular education apart, the ‘filteration’ theory’s shortcomings in practice
became a live public agenda, continually discussed and debated in official and non-official circles of
almost all parts of colonial India, but more so in Bengal. Such public engagements, perhaps, despite
the ‘filteration’ policy’s official enunciation, led the authorities in Bengal to institute a survey with a
view to exploring ways of educating the masses. The survey, conducted by William Adam, a
Calcutta-based former missionary and philanthropist, resulted in a detailed report on the state of the
indigenous system. The report did not, in any sense, provide grounds for action but supplied more
than enough data for discussion. Though public discourse on the matter carried on unabated at the
headquarter town of Calcutta, the decibel of the debate alone was not enough to inspire permeation
of policies into distant areas. Developments in popular education made in the Bengal mainland were
unable to tide over into Chhotanagpur, primarily due to their being sapped midway by middle class
interests. 1 The government therefore usually relied upon the services of missionaries. The missionary
denominations that answered the colonialists’ call were the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran (GEL)
Mission from Germany, the Society for the Propagation of Gospel (SPG) from Britain and the
Jesuits from Belgium. They all promised the government to be good educators of the tribals, and
indeed proved to be so. They did not merely educate but did so in the much in vogue social service
mode. Humanitarian approach won the missionaries a large following among the tribals and
Christian allegiance became a precursor to their joining the schools. The important thing to note
here is that the missionaries and colonial state concurred on the need for drastic reform through
means of Western education. But there were differences too. The colonial state would depend on a
set of well-defined laws, whereas the missionaries would repose faith on certain moral tenets drawn
from the gospel. In the domain of education, this implied, in case of the colonial state, priority of
Western liberal literary and scientific education, which was applied in the Kishenpur School in a
modest way. The missionaries’ urgency would be the profusion of Christian teaching and moral

1 Against this, the first Anglo-vernacular school was established at Kishenpur in Chhotanagpur in 1839. The
school was the personal initiative of T. Wilkinson, the first Political Agent to the Governor General of the
‘South-West Frontier Agency’.
training, more so when there was special need of consolidating a mass of new converts and of
raising local mission workers.

By 1870, the number of primary and mid- level schools in the area—the utterly slow growth of the
Kishenpur government school notwithstanding—proliferated into twenty-eight, with all save three
run by missionaries. The tribals, reluctant respondents earlier, now formed the pre-dominant
majority of the 1,178 students on the rolls. The popularity of the missionaries compelled the colonial
authorities to concede to the predominance of Christian curricula in the missionary-run schools,
although they did not normally approve of the practice.

The government schemes were first manifest in the region mainly after 1870 when, following a
heated debate on educational cess, the Government of Bengal took a major initiative in popular
education. The following year the ‘Campbell scheme’, named after the Lieutenant Governor of
Bengal (1871–74), was the first provincial popular education scheme to reach Chhotanagpur. The
Campbell scheme basically aimed at the re-activation and re-conditioning of the dispersed pathsalas
as government village schools. What distinguished the Campbell scheme was the direct role of the
state. Seemingly a great success, the scheme contained the seeds of its own undoing. The creation of
fresh schools taxed the government heavily. The scheme also suffered from the problem of
supervision owing to Campbell’s sweeping changes in the administrative set-up. With no other
choice save the missionaries, the government was thus compelled to resort to their services once
again. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Jesuits became the undisputed missionary leaders of
Chhotanagpur, with their ‘widespread influence’ covering even government.

The phenomenon of missionary ‘mass movement’ was responsible for the neglect of higher
education. The GEL missionaries who pursued large scale conversion in Biru and Barway parts of
Chhotanagpur in the wake of Jesuit advances never initiated higher education beyond the school
level. However, under conditions created by the Sardari Larai in 1889, there was talk of opening a
college. The case of the Jesuits’ was even more telling. Although established as a brand name in
higher education elsewhere, admirably conducting St Xavier’s College, Calcutta, where ironically the
missionary recruits of Chhotanagpur were trained, they were the last to act on the matter. This
willful neglect had its consequences. Immediately after the Sardari Larai there was equally aggressive
anti-British messianic Birsa movement (1895– 1900). Upon suppression of the movement, the
government in 1902 undertook a ‘thorough’ survey and settlement of agrarian matters of the district.
The said settlement was premised on the bhuinhari survey conducted earlier. On the basis of
preliminary findings, the government officially recognized the special land rights of tribals under the
Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908. The government however, for the first time, looked for educated
local tribals for appointment and a few were even employed. This indicated to the tribals how
education and employment could lead to a better quality of life. The Jesuits, led by J.B. Hoffmann,
an old champion of the bhuinhari rights of the Mundas and Uraons and an incognito architect of the
Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act, sought to rectify the prejudices and initiated a plan for tribal welfare.
The GEL Mission and the SPG had no such local introspection, but were touched by the Protestant
national programme of rural development and co-operatives. In this environment, the subject of
education received considerable impetus. The idea of development led to a ‘school campaign’ to
create a network of village schools. The Jesuit drive increased the number of students in just one
year in 1913 by 112 per cent. Meanwhile, the missionaries ministering education to the tribals made
the colonial state complacent; especially so when the mission schools began catering to non-tribals
as well. The government, therefore, provided missionaries with liberal aids and recognized their
experience and expertise in the education of the tribals. It, however, did not sacrifice its colonial
object at the altar of missionary interest. It still exercised control over the missionaries through the
regime of inspection. This was manifest in the manner in which the Education Commission, 1882,
recommended special allowances to the government for the tribal populations who had ‘not adopted
the civilizations or creeds of the higher races’. This reinforcement of the agenda of tribal
‘civilization’ did not however prompt any appropriate government measures for their intellectual
growth. The government was content with the lone Zila High School for decades.

The government’s indifference to the tribals’ needs of higher education was further highlighted in
the episode of the Patna University Bill (1913). The government sidetracked the core issue, denied
the claim of Ranchi during the debate on the Bill and tried to appease the tribals by offering a few
scholarships.125 Political pressure, spearheaded by S.C. Roy, however, forced the establishment of
an intermediate college (1926) in the town. The classes were to be experimental for three years, and
if successful, upgraded to the graduation level. This, however, took twenty years. The government
justified the delay by underplaying tribal aspirations and even tried to evade the responsibility by
suggesting that the missionaries raise one of their Ranchi ‘central’ schools to college level. The
government actually became a tool of the internal colonial forces. The priority of the Bihar elite was
development of higher education in north Bihar. Three decades later, an honest headmaster-
educator found himself surrounded by educational officials who ‘conceive[d] the aboriginals as a set
of brainless idiots not prone to education’.

Between mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the Mundas and Uraons moved a
long way from being reluctant recipients of colonial education. The tribals began responding
calculatingly and accepting the system selectively. Education became an expedient means to claim
and protect tribal agrarian rights, which the petitions to the government and other related activities
of the Sardari Larai reflected well since 1867. Alongside, the idea of education being a means for
new livelihood and increased social status also developed, though rather modestly. The tribal
valorization of education, however, continued, thanks mainly to their employment in the expanding
church establishments on the basis of limited education. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
the tribal mindset changed dramatically. The same events that stirred new missionary educational
thinking impinged upon the tribal mind as well. The failure of the Sardari Larai and suppression of
the Birsa movement had left the tribal masses in despair. The tribals realized that combative
confrontation with the authorities was futile. Further, the agrarian measures of the government
assured them that the agrarian question was now a settled matter. The tribals also observed educated
outsiders swarming Chhotanagpur, wresting away local white-collar jobs and enjoying good living
and social status. These developments opened the eyes of many to a future beyond land and
agriculture, in education, employment and community development. For this to materialize,
knowledge of English and higher education were considered crucial.

The enlightened tribals organized a pan-tribal association, initially Chotanagpore Charitable

Association (1912) and then Chota-Nagpur Unnati Samaj (1915). The Samaj was supposedly the
tribals’ ‘national’ platform. Though the Catholic Church officially boycotted it and formed its own
‘unnati samaj’, some individual Catholics joined the former. The tribal intellectual leaders prioritized
the area of higher education in their agenda of progress. Since college education was unaffordable to
aspiring tribal students, one of the first tasks of the leaders was to extract scholarships from the
government. Indifference of the government led the tribals to see the root-cause in the state of
internal colonialism.

After 1930, when the nationalists, led by Mahatma Gandhi, thought of ‘educational reconstruction’,
the small tribal intelligentsia of Chhotanagpur brought forth evils of colonial education from the
tribal point of view. The intelligentsia, however, also noted others reaping the benefit of middle class
status resulting from the British colonial education and using it as a path to power in the existing
polity. Thus, when the Gandhian concept of ‘basic’ education—addressing especially rural India—
was nationally approved (1937) and was adopted by the government, the tribal intelligentsia
remained neutral. Some even claimed that basic education meant ‘beseekh’ or un-education of the
tribals. As an alternative, in 1940, a tribal cultural leader devised the idea of ‘Dhumkuria School’,
which sought to make use of the tribal cultural edifice and language for a tribal-friendly Western
education. The ‘Dhumkuria’ concept was sponsored by tribal autonomy movement in the following
years, but it lacked wider moral and financial support. The managers of the school begged for help
from authorities, which was not forthcoming, since the idea was not appreciated. The School exists
even today, in most dilapidated condition at the same site where it was started, signifying mutely the
inadequacy of nationalist thinking on tribal education. The post-Independence educational
development showed the nationalist ‘basic schools’ and ‘ashram schools’ mushrooming in the
central Indian tribal belt, in many cases where church schools already existed. The era also witnessed
education being employed as an agent of ‘civilization’ of the ‘primitive’ and ‘backward Hindu’ tribals
and their ‘integration’ in the ‘national mainstream’. Such replay of the colonial idea and approach has
left a cesspool of educational woes for tribal India. Not surprisingly, today the tribes of India
comprise the largest rejects of Indian education from top to bottom.
‘Educational Experience of Scheduled Castes and Tribes’ – Krishna Kumar

That the school’s clientele consists of distinct groups is obvious. What is not so obvious is that the
differences among the groups can affect the character of the knowledge available at school. The
differences among the groups are socio-economic and cultural. The sharper these differences the
more significant will be the process of selection and representation of knowledge. A school or
system which carefully selects its students and accepts only those who belong to an identifiably
distinct socio-economic or cultural group does not face much difficulty in selecting and representing
the knowledge appropriate for the group. But a school or system which selects children from two or
more socio-economic and cultural groups, or else admits students on an unrestricted basis is likely to
encounter problems in selecting and representing knowledge in the curriculum. In short, highly
selective admission process makes representation of knowledge an easier task. Once the areas of
knowledge and data within them have been selected, the next problem the school faces is that of
representing these data. Finding, a language (vocabulary and images) to represent the data is of
course a major problem involved in the translation of knowledge into curriculum, but the more
immediate and crucial question is: ‘From whose point of view will the data be presented?’ A ‘point
of view represents not one person, but a structure of interests which include behavioral traits, styles
of thought and the overall worldview. All of these ingredients form a structure of interests of social
groups seeking dissemination and perpetuation of their culture through education. The extent to
which the curriculum of educational institutions will reflect the structure of interests of different
social groups that form the institution’s clientele will depend on the nature of relationships among
the groups. Those enjoying power over others are likely to get a larger share of curricular
representation; groups that lack power may either set only token representation.

If an examination of the curriculum and textual materials were to be made from the viewpoint of SC
and ST, it could provide answers to the following questions: Are the SC and ST represented? Does
the quantity of topics and materials representing SC and ST life, perspective, and problems
correspond to the proportion of SC and ST in the population? Which issues and symbols are chosen
to represent the SC and ST? How are relationships between SC/ST and non-SC/ST populations
portrayed? What roles are used to portray such relationships in language (including literature),
history, geography, civics, and science textbooks? To what extent do the structures of knowledge
embedded in the curriculum represent the knowledge produced and developed by the SC and ST?
Are the worldview, skills, and information which the SC has evolved featured in the curriculum?

Let us examine the symbolic structure of the two stories in the Madhya Pradesh textbooks which
have a tribal character in the central role. One of these is the famous Puranic myth of Eklavya, the
Bhil youth who has to sacrifice his thumb to satisfy a Brahmin whom he regards as his teacher. The
teacher requires this sacrifice to allay the jealously that his princely disciples feel towards Eklavya for
his self-acquired mastery of archery. The myth resolves the symbolic clash of caste backgrounds by
upholding a pedagogical ideal: the pupil’s obedience. In the other story, a tribal boy of Bastar saves a
forest officer and a brigadier from being killed by a wild buffalo. The boy’s courage and bravery are
shown in a context in which an army officer acts as the audience and ‘certifier’. In the structure of
symbolically portrayed relationships in both stories, tribal boys depend on members of the dominant
groups of non-tribal society for legitimating of their achievements.

Change in curriculum would remain incomplete unless patterns of teacher-student interaction also
change in the direction of coercion-free involvement of the SC and ST students. The knowledge of
social reality that teachers bring to the classroom, and their perception of the role of education are
among the key determinants of teachers’ behaviour. To a great extent, the norms of teacher-student
interaction are shaped by the training that teachers receive prior to employment. Knowledge of
‘social reality’ and the role of education under prevailing social conditions do form a part of present
training curricula, but like much else in teacher training, these segments receive a ritualistic
observance. Teachers cannot be oriented towards new types of classroom interactions without being
exposed to specific issues of .social reality and the functioning of the school. This is not happening
at present.

My argument in this paper has been that the experience of education, under prevailing curricular
norms, can serve to assist SC and ST children to internalize the symbols of ‘backward’ behaviour.
The claim that education introduces bourgeois values among the oppressed, and thereby curbs their
potential for radical expression, is per- haps based on the impact of education on an extremely small
minority perceived from the point of view of non-SC/ST educators; and both the tone and the
substance of the claim show a wrong choice. If it is true that education transforms a few SC and ST
individuals into bourgeois, such a phenomenon cannot be used as a means to berate the uselessness
of education to bring about change. In a society where bourgeois values have high prestige, the
acceptance of such values by a few members of oppressed groups can hardly be seen as a sign of
regression, unless we insist on ignoring the point of view from which the oppressed would look at
their own successful brethren. As Omvedt (1993) points out in her critique of Glass (1982), the new
dalit petite bourgeois “rarely forget their caste identity and its socio-economic basis”. Evidence
supporting this contention can be found in a study of the Harijan elite made by Sachchidananda
(1976), which also shows why it is wrong to criticise education for helping a few members of
oppressed groups to become ‘middle class’. What we should be worried about is not the fate of this
tiny minority, but that of the vast numbers of SC and ST children who stop going to school long
before the carrot of a middle class job can appear before them, and whose brief and demeaning
educational experience merely proves to them that they are what they were alleged to be.
‘Language and Schooling of Tribal Children: Issues Related to Medium of Instruction’ – Geetha B.
Nambissan

In 1956, the Indian Constitution through Article 350A recognised the need to provide facilities for
primary education in the mother tongue to linguistic minorities. However, today, almost four
decades later, education is being imparted primarily in the 15 ‘official’ languages that are listed in the
English Schedule of the Constitution as well as in English. Languages of communities such as the
Scheduled Tribes do not figure in the Schedule and remain outside the precincts of the school.
Information on the quality of education is limited largely to the physical facilities for schooling that
are available to children. Of critical importance to the learning process is the language of
communication in schools and the medium through which school knowledge is imparted. The
child’s access to subject areas in the curriculum depends on a minimal level of proficiency in the
language used for instruction within the school. The criticality of language as the medium of school
education becomes particularly relevant in pluri-cultural, multilingual societies. The singling out of
some languages as the ‘standard’ and appropriate media of education sets aside the rest as ‘non-
standard’ and inappropriate for schooling. The implications that follow are pertinent for pedagogy
and curriculum transaction, as well as for teacher attitudes and expectations that underlie the social
processes of schooling and influence educational outcomes.

In India, government policy and official documents had advocated as early as the 50s that primary
education be imparted to linguistic minorities in their mother tongues. Article 350A of the
Constitution states that “it shall be the endeavour of every state to provide adequate facilities for
instruction in the mother tongue to children belonging to linguistic minority groups”. In the early
60s, the Dhebar Commission highlighted the importance of language in the schooling of tribal
children. “It is experienced that tribal children pick up lessons easily when taught through tribal
dialects. It is felt that the tribal dialects should be developed and preserved”. With specific reference
to tribal communities, the Kothari Commission (1966) recommended that the “medium of
instruction in the first two years of the school should be the tribal language”. This was again echoed
by the 1986 policy on education. The revised Programme of Action of the NPE recommends that
“children from tribal communities be taught through the mother tongue in the earlier stages in
primary school”. Related recommendations also have been made regarding the preparation of
textbooks in tribal languages, recruitment of teachers familiar with the spoken tongues of children,
and so on. Policy statements have admittedly addressed issues relating to tribal languages as media in
education. However, these must be analysed within the larger context of the increasingly
marginalised position of tribal communities in India. Traditional economic and social institutions
that gave tribal communities a distinct way of life have practically disintegrated following extreme
exploitation from traders and moneylenders, penetration of urban industrial structures, and the
destruction of their habitat. Their diverse and rich cultures, of which languages are the essence, are
unable to withstand the onslaught of the market and media which blatantly project the cultural
standards of the urban elite as the norm. What is ‘tribal’ is popularly perceived as ‘backward’ and
‘inferior’. The increasing tendency for tribal people to retain the regional language as their mother
tongue is only one indicator of their growing vulnerability in the face of these larger social processes.
Policy-makers concerned with the development of tribal communities must necessarily be sensitive
to the vulnerable position they occupy in Indian society.

While the importance of mother tongues as media of education has often been emphasised, it is
significant that no tribal language is included in the Eighth Schedule and thereby given the status of
an ‘official’ language. Official languages are recognised as languages of power – they are used in
administration, the legislature, the courts and education. The fact that tribal languages, even those
with over 10-20 lakh speakers, remain outside the Schedule is a reflection of the relative
powerlessness of these communities. It must be mentioned that language and script have become
symbols of tribal identity and revitalisation of culture in tribal movements, especially in the last 50
years. If statements relating to tribal mother tongues as they appear in the Kothari Commission and
the NPE are critically viewed, it appears that they are mere ‘add-on’ cosmetic elements that tend to
devalue tribal languages rather than attempt to explore and exploit their pedagogic relevance. While
tribal languages are mentioned as appropriate media of instruction at the primary stage of education,
the overriding concern appears to be with the transition to regional languages within two years of
schooling. Education through ‘non-standard’ spoken languages appears to remain merely at the level
of official rhetoric. The most striking aspect that emerges from the scanty data on languages in
primary education is the almost total absence of tribal languages in schools. If, for the sake of
argument, tribal languages are made the media of instruction in areas where these communities
predominate, would the required number of teachers and textbooks be available? There is as yet no
information on the number of teachers who are conversant with tribal languages, though
government usually states that teachers knowing tribal languages are to be posted in tribal areas.
School-related data indicate that only 6 per cent of teachers who are in primary schools belong to
tribal communities.

If tribal mother tongues or spoken languages are to be given their rightful place in early education, it
is obvious that teaching strategies and classroom processes will have to undergo a sea change from
what obtains at present. Rather than assuming that children are passive learners and that their minds
are in the nature of ‘tabula rasa’, they will have to be seen as active participants in their own learning.
Scholars who have been involved with ethnic minority children emphasize the importance of
‘collaborative’ rather than ‘didactic’ methods of teaching and learning in classrooms. Language issues
hence must form an integral component of teacher training programmes. For mother tongue
education to become a reality for tribal children, concerted efforts both within and outside the
education system are necessary. The role of policy-makers, academics, researchers, educators and
teachers has already been highlighted. Tribal communities also will have to be involved in order to
understand the linguistic and cultural resources that children bring to school and to identify
languages that should initially be used as medium of instruction. It will also be necessary to elicit the
co-operation of speakers of these languages and to encourage parental and community support for
education. The demand for ‘quality’ education in mother tongues must become part of larger
movements for democratic rights in general and those of children in particular. It will then be
possible for schools to give tribal children back their mother tongues and enrich their experience of
education.
‘Tribes and higher education in India‘ in The Routledge Handbook of Education in India: Debates,
Practices, and Policies – Virginius Xaxa

Paradoxically enough, though the colonial government extracted enormous revenue by exploiting
resources in the tribal region and exacting taxes of various kinds, it did little to improve their lives
through extension of modern education and health services. It was left to the Christian missionaries
to do this work. The tribal society did not have the tradition of reading and writing. Knowledge and
values were passed from one generation to another orally. It was the Christian missionaries who
introduced reading and writing skills among them. The educational institutions introduced by the
Christian missionaries cannot be understood independent of their agenda and objectives. They were
historically tied to the larger objective of evangelisation, which has now almost become
autonomous. Thus, with the coming of the Christian missionaries a distinct and specialised
institution emerged in tribal society, which took upon itself the role of imparting knowledge, values,
and skills that were alien to them. It was directed primarily towards change and transformation in
society. Its emergence to a certain degree undermined the place of the traditional institution but did
not replace it. Thus both the traditional institution as well as the one introduced by the Christian
missionaries existed side by side. One was oriented to change and the other to maintaining
traditional social order, giving rise to much stress and strain in society. This being the case, the
missions did not generally go for education beyond primary or at best middle-school level. The
missionary agenda was just to equip tribes enough to read and write so that they could read and
understand religious texts. Hence, on the eve of Independence, tribes and tribal regions outside the
sphere of missionary activity still had no exposure to reading and writing.

Tribal literacy share keeps declining as they move from one level of education to another, and tends
to become miniscule by the time they reach secondary-level education. This has to do with dropouts,
the most serious problem confronting school education among tribes today. Dropout happens to be
a common problem facing all categories of school students. This is more evident in girls than boys,
indicating a male gender preference. However, girls who have moved to a higher level of school
education have been performing better than boys and moving to higher educational institutions. In
fact, in terms of eligibility they fare better than boys in higher educational institutions more so at the
postgraduate level.

There is considerable regional variation among tribes and their access to higher education due to
factors, such as the absence/presence of high/higher secondary schools, which in turn boost
enrolment and literacy level – this being the most important. Tribes and regions with higher literacy
rate have greater participation in higher education. The north-east participation in higher education
in comparison to peninsular India’s indicates this fairly well. In north-east India, those who aspire to
higher education have no option but to go to schools run by the Christian missions in Shillong. In
the tribal regions of what was once popularly known as Chhota Nagpur, aspirants either move to
Ranchi or Jabalpur for higher education. The point is that tribal regions even today suffer from lack
of access to higher education. In this respect, north-east India stands as an exception, for given its
size of tribal population, it has a higher density of higher educational institutions in comparison to
other parts of tribal India. The setting-up of the North-Eastern Hill University at Shillong in
Meghalaya in the 1970s, with campuses in Nagaland and Mizoram, acted as a catalyst for higher
education among tribes in north-east India. As it is, Shillong had been and still is the centre of
educational institutions, including some of the best colleges that attract students from different parts
of the region. Since the inception of North-Eastern Hill University, many new institutions have
arisen in different states. In the rest of the tribal regions, higher education is marked by an absence
of infrastructure facilities and poor literacy rates and it is only since the mid-2000s that there seems
to be some change taking place. The setting-up of the Indira Gandhi Tribal University at
Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh with a vision of campuses in other tribal regions has been an
important initiative.

Tribes moving to higher education may thus be located at two levels: in the state they are born in
and inhabit; and in other states that they move to. Students moving to other states either enroll in
central government-run institutions or private institutions, particularly run by Christian
organisations. Their entry into state-run institutions in states other than their own has an inherent
constraint. They are not eligible for reservation, which is meant only for tribes belonging to that
state, and can enter those institutions only as general candidates. At the same time, the state-run
institutions are inadequately equipped in terms of infrastructure and faculty. This is not to say there
are no exceptions.

Despite the spread of higher educational institutions in regions especially the north-east, there is a
wave of migration of students for higher education to other parts of India. The rush to central
institutions is for varied reasons. One that seems to stand out is the diversity they offer. They are
open to students and faculties from across the country and more sensitive in complying with the
reservation policy. Besides, they are also better than state institutions in terms of infrastructure
facilities, reputation, and the standard of higher education. The cleavage between tribes and non-
tribes (tacit and open) in various forms has been a part of the tribal situation throughout colonial
India and continues to this day. The general tendency among tribes is to avoid institutions where
groups/communities dominate. Most state institutions typify this, making tribal students feel
uncomfortable as they are generally discriminated against, looked down upon, and treated as
unwanted. It is also a fact that in state-level institutions of higher learning there is least interest in
implementing reservations and other provisions of affirmative action. But then, if there are no
options for the students due to a variety of constraints, which is the case with most, they do
continue with these institutions. And this remains true even for central universities or institutions
that disregard affirmative provisions, the Central University of Manipur being an example. The
participation of tribal students here is hardly noticeable even when they form nearly 30 per cent of
the total state population. At the same time, there has long been an exodus of tribal students from
Manipur to other parts of India. In fact, the scale of the movement of tribal students from the
north-east to metropolises is much greater compared to other tribal regions.

Other than region, religion is the other aspect of variation in access to higher education among
tribes. Tribes today belong to different religious groupings that have a bearing on their education.
That tribal Christians are far ahead in education is too obvious not only in the north-east but
elsewhere too. As for other religious groups such as those who adhere to their traditional religion or
to Hinduism, the picture is not very clear. What is evident, though, is that they lag far behind tribal
Christians. The answer to why north-east India has done better than other tribal regions in higher
education is rooted in its history. The region had an early exposure to modern education due to a
widespread presence of Christian missionaries. The early exposure to reading and writing made it
possible for tribes to enter new occupations in government and missionary organisations. These new
opportunities attracted others, leading to the spread of Christianity and literacy, which eventually
had a bearing on higher education. The difference among tribes with respect to modern education
and higher education is related to this historical advantage. Tribes and tribal areas that had an early
exposure to modern education have higher literacy rates, larger numbers of people with higher levels
of educational attainment, and hence a higher pool of students for higher education.

The enrolment of tribes in higher educational institutions, as has been noted earlier, has increased
substantially in recent years, but it has not been uniform across disciplines. A large bulk of students
enrolled in higher educational institutions is generally found in humanities and social sciences. This
is followed by medicine, engineering, commerce, etc. The lowest participation has been in sciences.
Within each of these broad disciplines, there have been variations. In the humanities, for instance,
one would find them mainly in languages and rarely in subjects such as philosophy or linguistics. In
the social sciences, disciplines such as economics find fewer takers. Professional streams such as
medicine and engineering are employment-oriented and hence have higher participation than
sciences. Of sciences, botany, agriculture, and zoology have better representation than sciences such
as physics, chemistry, and mathematics. This may be so due to their interest and aptitude for those
disciplines in view of their lived world in which plants and animals assume an important place.
However, in this respect one finds somewhat interesting and conflicting patterns between premier
institutions or central institutions and state-run institutions or institutions in the state of their
domicile. Even today, very few tribal students opt for basic sciences. Once they have entered higher
educational institutions, the lives of tribal students are far from smooth, both in academic and non-
academic terms. Although institutions provide hostels pre-scribed under government policy, these
facilities fall far short of the requirement, and a large chunk of students are forced to stay in rented
accommodation or as paying guests. Those who find the costs of these unaffordable decide to
withdraw from the institutions and go back to their homes to look for other opportunities.

To conclude, the participation of tribes in higher education has increased manifold. Yet enrolments
remain the lowest and the gap between tribes and other social categories continues. Academic
performance remains an issue of serious concern, whatever the discipline. At the root of it lie the
disadvantages with which tribal students join the higher education programme. This has largely to do
with the schools they come from, which suffer from lack of quality education on various counts.
The disparities among tribes that exist across regions, ethnicities, sizes of population, levels of
development, and geographical/ecological settings with regard to their participation in higher
education therefore are in need of urgent attention.