The Adivasi People
People from India’s indigenous communities are referred to as Adivasis. The word “Adivasi” was first used in the 1930s, largely as a result of a political movement to forge a sense of identity among the various indigenous peoples of India, and it is derived from the Hindi words ‘adi’, meaning from the earliest times or from the beginning, and ‘vasi,’ meaning inhabitant or resident. The Adivasis have a legal and constitutional designation as “scheduled tribes,” but this word does not apply to all indigenous peoples because it varies from state to state and region to region.
The Adivasi people are not a unified entity. There are about 200 different Adivasi groups, each with its own language and culture. But they share the same subjugated status in Indian culture and a similar manner of existence.
In the most recent count, taken in 2011, Adivasis made up 8.6% of the overall population of India, or around 104.3 million people. The true proportion of India’s population is likely to be far larger than the official estimates suggest. Although Adivasis may be found in all parts of India, they are concentrated in the country’s most inaccessible mountainous and hilly regions.
History Of The Adivasi People
Adivasis, whose name means “indigenous people,” are the earliest known residents of the Indian subcontinent and historically occupied far more land than they do today. It appears that many of them were forced into the hill areas during the invasions of the Indo-Aryan tribes around 3,000 years ago, but beyond that, very little is known about their history. While indigenous communities were not fully accepted into Hindu caste society, there were many opportunities for interaction.
Adivasis traded with established villages on the plains and often paid homage to Hindu monarchs, therefore, their religion has many Hindu elements (and vice versa). Some Adivasi kings and queens reigned over non-Adivasi peoples, while others settled down and became part of caste society.
In the late eighteenth century, when the British established unified political control, the government finally began to make deep inroads into Adivasi society. The invasion of non-indigenous peoples onto Adivasi territories may be traced back to the advent of money, government officials, and moneylenders during British administration. From the middle of the nineteenth century forward, the Adivasi population rose up in numerous regions of eastern India, forcing the government to acknowledge the people’s precarious condition and enact legislation to save their lands from encroachment.
Some of these rules (which are still in effect) prohibit the transfer of indigenous land to those who are not members of the Adivasi community and provide for the return of land that has been alienated. However, dishonest businesspeople and loan sharks developed methods to ignore these regulations in everyday life. Adivasis still face the same issues today, but instead of tiny merchants and moneylenders, their adversaries are more likely to be multinational corporations and government agencies.
Christian missions began proselytizing in some indigenous communities, where they had some success (in contrast to Hindu and Muslim areas) and where they also launched a process of education and political awareness, especially in the north-east. Only in the northeast did Adivasis have enough political consciousness to demand secession or autonomy in the lead-up to independence.
Constitutional Status Of The Adivasi People
Adivasis, along with other formerly marginalized groups, were granted more legal protections in the 1950 Constitution. Most native communities were placed on a list of “scheduled tribes.” To define “castes, races, or tribes which shall, for the purposes of this Constitution, be regarded as scheduled tribes,” Article 341 gives the President of India the authority to do so.
In 1951, voters approved Amendment 1, allowing the government to prioritize the economic and social development of “scheduled castes” and “scheduled tribes.” The government’s yearly report on the status of the nation’s scheduled castes and tribes may be found in the pages of a report put out by a special commission. These documents detail abuses committed against Adivasis and provide solutions to improve their lot.
Political Representation Of The Adivasi People
Reservations are made for members of the scheduled tribes in both Parliament and the state legislatures. Scheduled tribes have 7 percent of the seats in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha of Parliament designated for them, and they are similarly represented in the state assembly at the rate of their population share. However, favored legislation can be prevented by entrenched interests due to the fact that scheduled tribe voters are always a minority in the reserved seats and in the legislatures as a whole (save in the north-eastern states where they constitute a numerical majority).
Furthermore, the system does not promote scheduled tribal organizing by independent parties but rather restricts such activity to the big parties, particularly the Congress Party. To better manage the needs of scheduled tribes, governments often employ ministers and even cabinet members who are members of those tribes. It was indigenous MPs who initiated the formation of the Bhuria Committee to ensure that Articles 73 and 74 of the Constitution, which devolve jurisdiction to the Scheduled Areas, would be updated to reflect the current political climate. The group released their findings in January 1995.
Reactions to the Bhuria Committee report were not unanimous. Although many people believed the committee’s approach should be supported, it was condemned for excluding numerous indigenous communities from its recommendations and failing to take gender into account.
Except in the northeastern regions, there haven’t been many attempts to create separate political parties for scheduled tribes. Probably the most illustrative case is the Adivasi regionalist Jharkhand movement in eastern and southern Bihar, which has been active since independence.
An early indigenous uprising against land expropriation under British control began among the Santhal peoples in eastern Bihar and western Bengal. Some of this region is home to India’s largest mineral reserves and mining; consequent industrialization and deforestation have added to Adivasi discontent.
In 1950, the Santhal Praganas and Chotanagpur regions of West Bengal, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh became the focus of a new political movement called the Jharkhand Party. A dynamic Santhal leader who worked closely with and subsequently joined the Congress Party resurrected the party in 1973 by forming a new party called the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). This resulted in the JMM’s dissolution into many factions; however, in 1987, a new coordinating body, the Jharkhand Co-ordinating Committee, was founded, with over fifty component organizations.
They attempted to establish a parallel government and organized a series of bandhs (strikes) and large-scale protests in favor of their objectives. Despite an agreement made on September 2, 1992, in which the federal and state governments legally promised to offer some autonomy to the Jharkand area, neither the national nor the state governments ever really considered making any concessions towards the foundation of a Jharkhand state.
The Bihar state assembly enacted the Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council Act in December 1994, which called for the establishment of the Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council (JAAC) and its member districts. Jharkhand, however, emerged as its own state in the year 2000.
More generally, the Adivasis have seen almost little progress toward securing their land rights despite the formation of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (1999) and legislative action in the form of the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights Bill) 2005.
Resources Of The Adivasi People
Over ninety-five percent of scheduled tribes are still concentrated in rural regions, where economic exploitation is a major issue. Ten percent or less are nomadic hunter-gatherers, while the other 90 percent or so rely on forest products, most notably the tendu leaf, which is used to make the alcoholic beverage bidi (cigarettes). Laws governing forest ownership and usage date back to when the country was under British rule. These days, most forested property is virtually nationalized, with significant swaths leased to private economic interests.
This has resulted in the gradual erosion of Adivasi groups’ land rights; now, they face fines or jail time for engaging in activities like harvesting forest products that have historically been theirs. The state has stepped in to try to halt the ongoing degradation of forested areas that has occurred during this century.
Although the Adivasis are sometimes held responsible for deforestation because of their methods of shifting agriculture, deforestation is really the result of a variety of factors, including rising demand for firewood as a fuel source and the effects of commercial (and sometimes illegal) logging. Large dam construction, for irrigation and hydroelectricity, poses a significant risk to the Adivasi people.
Since India’s independence, several hydro projects have been implemented, and a heated constitutional and political debate has raged over whether or not to build the biggest of thirty dams on the Narmada. The dam was built regardless of the protests. The Sardar Sarovar dam, one of the world’s biggest, has reached its full capacity. At least 178 communities were either completely or partially drowned, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes, according to local indigenous activists.
Affirmative action measures in the Constitution that reserve spots in school, the civil service, and nationalized businesses for members of scheduled tribes also benefit scheduled castes. The number of Adivasis working for or attending public schools has risen dramatically as a result of affirmative action laws.
However, the benefits of the reservation policy have not been uniformly distributed; while there have been noticeable advancements at the entry level of government services, there is a lack of scheduled caste or scheduled tribe representation in the middle and upper levels of government.
To add insult to injury, the Adivasis’ chances have not improved thanks to the affirmative action rules, which are only applicable to the public sector. Isolation, poverty, and discrimination are just some of the problems that the Adivasi community often faces. Since few Adivasis complete secondary school, most are unable to take advantage of the quotas set aside for them in postsecondary institutions and the federal service.
In an effort to encourage self-governance in rural regions, the Panchayat Raj (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 was enacted in the late 1990s. Adivasis have been aided by this law in thinking about and acting upon a variety of community concerns, as well as in organizing themselves locally through the establishment of new political institutions. Adivasis in India’s different states want the Act to be enforced more strictly so that their rights and culture can be protected.
Conflict
Naxalites, or left-wing organizations in India, have organized some Adivasis to demand greater salaries and compensation for forest produce. From its roots in a student-led revolt in Bengal in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Naxalite movement eventually extended to parts of Bihar state, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh.
Therefore, Adivasis were vulnerable to attacks from both Naxalite extremists and government counterinsurgency efforts. It is common knowledge that police, forest guards, and other officials habitually swindle, bully, and threaten Adivasis, and that many of them are detained and sent to jail for minor offenses. Many Adivasis chose to bribe authorities to stop the harassment rather than just fleeing to the woods.
Current issues Of The Adivasi People
In today’s India, Adivasis still experience discrimination and even physical threats from non-Adivasi communities. They rank dead last on virtually every measure of social and economic well-being. They are looked down upon by the bulk of society, and government programs work to assimilate them into mainstream culture rather than encouraging them to continue their traditional ways of living.
However, many of the lesser Adivasi peoples may be wiped out culturally due to the devastation of their economic foundation and ecology, even while the bigger tribal groupings and languages would survive due to numbers. Despite being the recipients of India’s vast reservations, the Adivasi community has seen little change as a result of the quota system.
The quotas implemented in technical fields and higher education do not appear to have improved access. For example, Adivasi quotas in higher education have not been met. Most Dalit and Adivasi youths do not complete high school.
Land re-distribution rights, rights of marginal farmers and daily laborers, rights of the tillers of the soil, and rehabilitation rights have all been neglected for the Adivasi population. It’s important to note that, notwithstanding differences in political alignment between state administrations in India, Adivasis consistently make up the poorest segment of society across the country.
Despite a socialist administration being in power in West Bengal for 34 of the previous 43 years, the Adivasi districts of Birbhum, Bankura, and Purulia are among the poorest areas in India. The systematic uprooting of the Adivasi people from their land has been exacerbated by the nationalization movement of the 1970s to construct heavy industries near to the source of raw resources. The Adivasi community in the districts of several of the other non-left states, including Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Rajasthan, shows comparable socioeconomic indices.
The formation of the states of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and Uttaranchal was a baby step in reviving the Adivasis’ dignity and recognizing their right to exist. In 2000, the state of Jharkhand was established, mostly as a means of recognizing the Adivasi community’s right to political organization through the creation of a distinct state.
There is current discussion on providing state-level reservations for Adivasi people in areas such as employment and access to higher education. However, the extent to which the governments of these states implement changes to safeguard the rights of Adivasi groups remains to be seen.
The progressive removal of the Adivasi people from their traditional lands has been a key contributor to their economic and social hardships. As a result of being denied land ownership rights for the better part of a century and having to relocate, Adivasis are now engaged in a battle to maintain their economic and social identities.
The Adivasis have not only gotten a pitifully little compensation sum, but they have also received compensation for a vanishingly small percentage of their population. The law is not used to achieve justice for Adivasis because of the legal impediments that are constructed to prevent them from receiving compensation.
There is a process problem because compensation is often based on individual title deeds, but Adivasi land is usually owned by a group or in the name of a dead ancestor.
For the protection of Adivasi claims to their traditional woodlands and land, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was passed in 2006. The Bill acknowledges that the interests of the scheduled Tribes should be taken into account when making decisions on forest management. The bill seeks to protect local communities’ rights to culturally and ecologically significant forest products, grazing lands, dwellings, and traditional knowledge.
However, the FRA’s implementation has been painfully sluggish thus far, with group claims stuck in bureaucratic processes and fewer than 2% of prospective claims apparently handled. In addition, the fate of over a million Adivasis was further threatened by a judgment issued by the Indian Supreme Court in February 2019 over the execution of the FRA 2006. On or before July 24, 2019, the court ordered almost two dozen states to furnish information on claims resolved under the FRA and to remove applicants whose petitions were denied.
Strong opposition led to a brief stay of execution from the court. However, the Adivasi people who live in the forests continue to face a perilous existence as pressure mounts to clear more land for mining and other uses.
These tendencies further alienate the Adivasis from the federal government and point to broader institutional and legal flaws that contribute to the people’s mistrust of an Indian government that claims to protect them but does nothing of the sort in practice.
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