Tribal Peoples in India

In several regions of the country there are groups of people who live outside the mainstream of Indian civilization and are classified by demographers as "tribal peoples." While they differ greatly from group to group, these tribal peoples inhabit a more restricted world in a spatial as well as an interpersonal sense than other Indians, and their cultures lack the elaboration of the great Indian civilization. However, in many places where the tribal peoples speak the common language of the area, it is hard to draw a sharp line between them and the lowest castes of the Indian population.

According to the 1991 census, the tribal peoples number nearly 68 million. This figure includes diverse groups of a few thousand or even a few hundred as well as large tribes numbering 2 or 3 million.

Tribal Peoples of Assam

Assam is the homeland of more than 2 million tribal peoples who inhabit chiefly the hilly regions of the state. Here the line between the tribal peoples and the rest of the population can be more sharply drawn than in most other parts of India. Although a few tribes practice terraced agriculture, most of them still cultivate by cutting down and burning the jungle growth and sowing seed in the ashes. Every year or so they move on to a new patch of forest. (This method is practiced also by some of the tribal groups in central India.)

The tribes of Assam speak a number of different languages, none of which were reduced to writing until Christian missionaries undertook the task in the 19th century. One large group, the Khasis, are organized in 25 small states, each with its own chief. Descent is in the female line, and women play important roles in social, economic, and religious life. A number of distinct tribes, the members of which speak Tibeto-Burmese languages and are known collectively as the Nagas, constitute the majority of the population in the Naga Hills. Formerly they were warlike, and the practice of headhunting, which was chiefly for magical purposes, has not entirely died out. Although the Nagas differ from tribe to tribe in language and also in economic, social, and religious customs, they combined in the 1950s under a single leadership to demand autonomy, and in 1963 a separate state called Nagaland was inaugurated.

Tribes of Central India

A number of other tribal peoples are scattered in a wide belt across central India. The western end of the belt is the home of the largest single group, the Bhils. Some Bhils live in small communities more or less isolated in the hills, while others are attached as watchmen, menials, or agricultural laborers to villages occupied by members of the general Hindu population. All the Bhils speak the language common to the area, or a dialectal variation of it.

Farther east, in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the Gonds, who speak a Dravidian language, form a bloc of about 3 million tribal peoples. Another Dravidian-speaking group, the Oraon, are found on the Chota Nagpur Plateau in Bihar along with a number of Munda-speaking tribes, the most important of which are the Santal, Ho, Munda, and Kharia. Other tribal peoples, some of them at least linguistically related to the speakers of Munda languages, extend throughout the hill country of Orissa.

A prominent feature of the village life of many of these peoples is the dormitory for young people. Among the Muria, one of the Gond tribes, both sexes share a single sleeping house, and where what appears to be the original form of the institution persists, each boy and girl is paired off in a more or less permanent relationship that is rarely broken until marriage to other partners is arranged by the parents. With their own leaders and their own rules and regulations, the young people form a semi-independent society of their own. Some of the tribes, however, segregate the sexes, and have two sleeping houses, one for bachelors and one for young girls.

In the central belt the tribal peoples are concentrated in the hilly sections, while the more fertile and easily accessible plains are occupied by Hindu castes. Where the two groups have come into contact, the distinguishing features of tribal life tend to give way, and the tribal peoples maintain a distinctive way of life.

Tribes of South India

This is also the pattern in South India. In the heavily forested hills of Kerala, in Tamil Nadu, and in Andhra Pradesh are small, scattered tribal groups who speak the language of the area but live a primitive life. Their economy is based on food gathering and on the sale of forest products. The Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, who number in all about 12,000, include a small group of several hundred who live a very primitive, seminomadic life in the hills of Amrabad. Their principal diet of wild tubers and fruits is supplemented by grain, which they cultivate in small patches; they have not adopted the plow, and their implements are the digging stick, ax, bow and arrow, and knife.

The Todas, 765 in number, present another contrast to the typical South Indian way of life. They are found in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. In physical appearance and in dress, they stand out from the surrounding population, and the architectural style of their temples and dwellings is distinctive and probably archaic. Their economic and religious activities, closely interwoven, center around their herds of buffalo. They are one of several matrilineal peoples in south India and practice polyandry.