Tribe What is a tribe? What exactly are the criteria for considering a human group, a tribe? What are the indices of the tribal life? Interestingly but sadly the anthropologists, sociologists, social workers, administrators and such people who have been involved with the tribes and their problems either on theoretical plane or on practical grounds are still not on the same wave length regarding the concept and the definition of their subject. Arthur Wilke et al. (1979) puts the problem in proper perspective by stating that for years ambiguity has stalked India’s official portrait of tribal people. From 1917 through the 1931 census, for instance, the nomenclature referring to tribes underwent successive modifications, involving primarily changes in the descriptive adjectives such as “aboriginal” or “depressed classes”. By the 1941 Census, these qualifying adjectives were dropped, a practice continued after independence with the adoption of the notion of scheduled tribes or as they are commonly called, Adivasi. Such standardization did not, however, remove all ambiguity.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 09:57:04 +0000
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