India Tribal Belt - Tribes in India

Tribes in India

Generally speaking by the term “tribe” we mean a group of people living at a particular place from time immemorial. Anthropologically the tribe is a system of social organisation which includes several local groups- villages, districts on lineage and normally includes a comman territory, a common language and a common culture, a common name, political system, simple economy, religion and belief, primitive law and own education system. Constitutionally a tribe is he who has been mentioned in the scheduled list of Indian constitution under Article 342(i) and 342(ii) .

“Tribals” are found in almost all the states of country. Currently there are between 258 and 540 scheduled tribe communities exists. The strength of these communities varies from 31 people of jarwa tribe to over 7 million gonds. Thus the gonds are big tribal community. Whereas the small communities comprising less than 1000 people include the andamanese, onge, oraon, munda, mina,khond, saora. According to resent study there are mainly 6 tribes in chhatisgarh they are gond, baiga, halba, kamar, bhunjia, korwa.

The quality of life of tribal people during pre-independence period was more deplorable and their main occupation was hunting, gathering of wood and forest products and primitive shifiting cultivation. Due to destruction of forest and non availability of proper facilities, tribal were forced to lead a miserable life. After independence with the adoptation of Indian constitution in 1950 special attention was given for the upliftment of the tribal people under the ‘’article 48’’,it was mandatory on the part of the state government to make all the efforts to improve economic, social, and educational standard of the tribal people.

Due to the welfare programmes tribal communities also made themselves conscious about their own clans upliftment. Now tribles are engaged in struggle for survival. They seek identity, autonomy equality and empowerment. They became more vibrant with new expectation, they are moving out of their isolation to participate in all struggles in all institution as equals. In context of trible study, we know that they are very rich in their art and culture and the study of tribes and their culture has always been a fascinating one for all researchers. The fascinating things are their folk dances, folk songs, their own typical kind of language. The existence of such things must be preserved to understand the ancient culture of human being.

India is home to a large number of tribes with population of about 70 million. In terms of geographical distribution about 55% of tribals lived in central India, 28% inwest, 12% in North-East India, 4% in South India and 1% elsewhere. Each tribal communities are rich in there culture, folk tales, folk songs and folk stories. They have an institution called GOTUL where the trible children and youth were imparted training in there culture. The objectives of GOTUL is to train the tribles to become sincere, productive and useful member of their community. Each villages have GOTUL where male & female of the village assemble to sing and dance together. Dance and songs are not only the source of entertainment in trible people, but associated with their religion, custom and above all with their culture. Dancing has played important role in tribal societies,It retains their spontaneous and spirited exuberance of joy of life. The folk songs are supplementary of folk dances, presently folk dances and songs are greatly influenced by the advent of television and cinema. The mingling of folk song with western songs which is called remix songs influenced more than purely folk one. These dances and songs need to be studied scientifically. The systematic and scientific study of culture of tribes whether it is folk dances, movement pattern, folk song, dress design shows that all western dances and songs have been derived or taken from the tribal folk dances, folk songs. The ancient culture and tradition are yet not researched to a great extent. In order to preserve the Indian culture we must have a systematic, scientific, anthropological study of tribal culture. The preservation of such things preserves the ancient and primitive culture of India too. Although the preservation of culture doesn’t mean that they should not be educate. They must educate to know the importance of this rich and old culture and the importance of contribution in evolution and development of new world with their own culture and tradition.

Nowadays educated trible youth not taking interest in their own folk dances and culture due to which the gradual decline in number of such institutions causes grate harm to tribal society and also the Indian culture and tradition, because the chief aim of such institutions is to impart knowledge and gate their children educated and over all enriched the trible culture and tradition. The government should promote such tribal institutions for development and preservation of tribal culture. The government should make plans and programme to connect these isolated societies with the national mainstream.Tribals constitute 8.14% of the total population of the country, numbering 84.51 million (2001 Census) and cover about 15% of the country’s area. The fact that tribal people need special attention can be observed from their low social, economic and participatory indicators. Whether it is maternal and child mortality, size of agricultural holdings or access to drinking water and electricity, tribal communities lag far behind the general population. 52% of Tribal population is Below Poverty Line and what is staggering is that 54% tribals have no access to economic assets such as communication and transport.