Tribal Policy: Pulling Back from the Brink?

The outcome of the long process of subjugation of tribal people and regions, the coming of the British, internal colonisation and resource emasculation is the fact that in the 167 districts, ‘with a tribal percentage which is at least as high as the national average, 94 per cent of tribals live in an area which is either dry, forested or hilly’ (Shah et al 1998: 147-148).

The relative isolation of aboriginal tribals in ‘refuge zones’ (Raza and Ahmed 1990) was the cumulative result of centuries of subjugation of the aboriginal original inhabitants of India by successive waves of more powerful and endowed communities.⁵ However, Shah et al point out that

Over time, in the refuge zones, the tribals came to develop a relationship of organic totality and symbiosis with their immediate environment…. today their existence in even these areas is coming under threat. This process was greatly accelerated after the advent of colonial rule, especially over the last century. However, the coming of independence has only meant the aggravation of this unequal equation, through the development of what can best be described as a process of ‘internal colonialism’ (Shah et al 1998: 151).

During colonial times, the dominant policy of British administrators with regard to tribal areas was to safeguard their isolation in officially declared excluded or partially excluded areas.⁶ In practice, however, the policy of isolation was seriously compromised by the dominant concern of the colonial State for maximising revenue extraction, because regions of tribal concentration were typically the richest in terms of endowments of forest and mineral wealth. The policy of isolation translated itself into a general policy of non-interference with tribal customs and traditions, except where these became barriers to the extractive objectives of the colonial State. Therefore, the policy of non-interference did not constrain the colonial State from imposing on tribal communities the entirely alien and fundamentally destructive concepts of State ownership of forests and private property of land, which as we have noted laid the foundation for the expropriation of tribal wealth which continues until the present day.⁷ At the same time, the colonial administrators encouraged Christian missionaries, whose main ideology was of ‘assimilation’, albeit into Christianity, rather than the caste Hindu mainstream. Missionaries contributed very significantly by providing educational and health services in difficult and remote tribal regions.⁸

In the initial years after Independence, there was at senior policy levels a degree of sensitivity to the central but chronically unresolved dilemma of tribal development policy. The most common metaphor to illustrate this dilemma is that of road construction: are these roads for development, to enable doctors, drinking water rigs and agricultural scientists to reach the difficult and remote regions of tribal habitation? Or are roads built actually to enable the predatory combine of traders, forest contractors, moneylenders, liquor manufacturers, politicians and government functionaries to access these regions to expropriate their forest and mineral wealth, agricultural land, produce and women?

After Independence, the senior political leadership in India particularly Prime Minister Nehru, sought to define the contours of a progressive and sensitive tribal policy that steered clear of the excesses of both ‘isolationism’ and the implied civilisational arrogance of `assimilation’. Nehru maintained that tribal people ‘possess a variety of cultures and are in many ways certainly not backward. There is no point in trying to make them a second rate of copy of ourselves’. In seeking to bring to these communities the benefits of health education and communication, he said that ‘one must always remember, however, that we do not mean to interfere with their way of life but want to help them to live it. The tribal people should be helped to grow according to their genius and tradition’ (Mann 1980: 27).

This unusual sensitivity derived partly from the influence that anthropologists like Verrier Elwin had on the design of India’s strategies of tribal development. Elwin stressed that in designing development programmes for tribals, their special cultural strengths must be respected and nurtured.

Here is a section of humanity simple, tough and hardy, convinced of the wholesomeness of its own life. Their existence has depended during the centuries of their forest mountain, existence, upon the principles of challenge and response. Rigours of climate have not driven them away from their homelands nor obliged them to abandon their way of life. But they do not suffer from the obstinacy of adherence to the beliefs. They are open, frank and willing to change when faith and reason convince them that change is necessary (quoted in Ratha 1990: 111).

Elwin however was himself attacked, such as during a debate on Excluded Areas in the Legislative Assembly in 1936, for his alleged primitivism, for attempting to freeze the tribal people ‘in a state of barbarism’ and perpetuating their ‘uncivilised conditions’. Decades later, he clarified that he had, no doubt, advocated a policy of temporary isolation for certain small tribes when India was under British rule. Elwin pointed that this was not to keep them as they were

But because at that time the only contacts they had with the outside world were debasing contacts, leading to economic exploitation and cultural destruction. Nothing positive was being done for their welfare; national workers were not admitted into their hills; but merchants, moneylenders, landlords and liquor-vendors were working havoc with their economy and missionaries were destroying their art, their dances, their weaving and their whole culture (quoted in Ratha 1990: 106).

The search for an appropriate middle path of integration, falling between the two extremes of isolation and assimilation, was concretised in Nehru’s landmark Panchsheel (or five-fold path, a term derived from Buddhist philosophy which stresses the appropriateness of avoidance of extremes, always seeking the golden mean). The five principles that he advocated for tribal development and integration were the following:

People should develop along the lines of their own genius and we would avoid imposing anything on them. We should try to encourage in every way their own traditional arts and culture.

Tribal rights in land and forest should be respected.

We should try to train and built up a team of their own people to do the work of administration and development. Some technical personnel from outside will, no doubt, be needed, especially in the beginning. But we should avoid introducing too many outsiders into tribal territory.

We should not over-administer these areas or overwhelm them with a multiplicity of schemes. We should rather work through, and not in rivalry to their own social and cultural institutions.

We should judge results, not by statistics or the amount of money spent, but by the quality of human character that is evolved (quoted in Mann 1980: 28).

The Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes Commission, headed by U.N. Dhebar (1960) later endorsed and elaborated this policy of integration as attempting

Not to disturb the harmony of tribal life and simultaneously work for its advance, not to impose anything upon the tribals and simultaneously work for their integration as members and part of Indian family (quoted in Ratha 1990 140).

Despite such progressive policy rhetoric, with the singular exception of the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), the policy of integration was not implemented with any notable success in tribal India. For the opening up of the hitherto isolated, and strategically sensitive, tribal highlands of NEFA, a committed and trained group of exceptional officers were grouped into what was designated as the Indian Frontier Administrative Service. They closely interacted on a day-to-day basis with Nehru and Elwin. Elwin advised them, `Integration can only take place on the basis of equality: moral and political equality’. Guha explains Elwin’s philosophy

They must know the people, he said, know what stirred them, moved them and energised them. When on tour they must drink with the tribals… drink, he added significantly, from the same collective bowl (Guha 1999: 258).

It is significant that NEFA, now designated Arunachal Pradesh, remains the only state in the Northeast, which is not convulsed with militancy. Its ‘tribesmen now are able to interact with the outside world with confidence and ease. Incidentally this is the only state in India where certain tribes have attained a hundred per cent level of literacy ’ (Ratha 1990: 106-107).

However for the rest, tribal policy failed to extend protection to tribal communities from exploitation and expropriation, nor did it create conditions for their development according to their `own genius’. In the next sections, we will observe the main elements of tribal development policy in India, and the actual performance with regard to each of these.

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