We talk a lot about caste in India. It would not be wrong to say that a large stock of our researches in sociology and social anthropology belongs to caste study. Sometimes caste and tribe are used synonymously in India.
It is to put an end to this myth of putting caste and tribe together that the Constitution of India created a unified Commission for Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. Theoretically, caste is different; it is a part of the hierarchical caste system.
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On the other hand, tribe is never a part of caste system. For the 461 tribal groups in the country we cannot prepare any hierarchical scale. For instance, we cannot say that Gonds are at the top of the tribal hierarchy. Each tribal group is endogamous. There is no hierarchy among them.
Actually, the notion of tribe does not have its origin in India. It is, in all respects, a colonial construct. The term ‘tribe’ is used in a different context in Europe. It is associated with a territory, a language or a common name.
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Nihar Ranjan Ray (1972), who was a historian of great repute, argues: with the rise and growth of nationalism in Europe, the term ‘tribe’ came to be used in denotation of a particular state of socio-political evolution of a community of people within a given territory and language area. Class, tribe, nation, etc., thus came to denote the various successive stages in the progressive march of a people aspiring towards nationhood.
What Ray wants to stress is that in Europe tribals were those who lived in a particular territory with a specific language and had to be brought in the web of European nations.
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The notion of tribe which the foreign anthropologists had in mind was that of Europe. When Risely, Hutton, Blunt, Russell and O’Malley worked in India, they had the idea of the European tribal situation.
They had a feeling that if the British had to settle in India, they had to bring the Indian tribals living in remote corners within the fold of British Raj.
In other words, just like the European nations, the British colonial lists in India also had an objective to bring the tribals within their arena or territory. Ray, therefore, compares the Indian and European situations. Thus, what is common to Europe and India is that tribals have to be incorporated in the national mainstream.
One more important point which helps us understand the Indian tribals is that they have to be viewed as a group of people passing through a period of socio-economic evolution. The groups which inhabited the plains went higher in the evolutionary scale.
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They developed a culture, a particular way of life and above all, a literature. On the other hand, those who lived in the interior parts, lagged behind in the evolutionary ladder.
Physical hurdles and an unfriendly environment kept them backward. The tribals, therefore, constitute a type of society which is characterized by a special kind of social-economic evolution.
There are, therefore, a large number of factors which impinge on us to study the tribals with all seriousness. We have to pool all our resources to bring the tribals on -par with the lifestyle of the average Indian citizen.
Second, the historical and ethnic differences between the tribal society and caste society have to be bridged. Third, the tribals have to be adequately compensated for the discrimination, injustices and exploitation which they have suffered in the past.