Briefly describe the meaning and characteristics of tribe.

 The community with distinct culture, which is continuing since the evolutionary phases, are assumed to be “Adivasi” or tribe in India. These communities vary across the cultural platform with diverse features and also these diversities say a lot on their pattern of adaptation to the varieties of climatic conditions and geography. The characteristic features of a tribe are:

a) Particular geography

b) Specific cultural practices

c) Language/dialect

d) Egalitarian in nature

e) No hierarchy

f) Endogamous group

g) Lack of occupational specialization

h) Traditional technology in economic pursuits

i) Social networking based on kinship

These are some of the accepted features of a tribe in general in India. But if we analyse the individual tribe, we may not find all these, for example, the Saoras of south Odisha have the hierarchy like Gomango, Mandal, Bhunya, and Raita. Again these are based on the occupation of the group, which is a caste like structure. Among the Paraja of Koraput and Nabarangpur district, the divisions found like Bada Paraja and Sana Paraja. The social hierarchy exists to the extent of social status including purity and pollution which is also a caste like structure, but found among Saora.

We can better understand the tribe from the following as it is discussed by different scholars. S.C. Dube (1990) has listed the following characteristics of the tribal groups in India:

a) Tribals are not the original inhabitants but the oldest inhabitants of the land. Being the earlier settlers of the soil, tribals are considered as the indigenous population.

b) In India, tribal populations are continuing since centuries along with the non-tribals.

c) Most probably these populations were forced to live in remote areas or in isolation though originally it is not always that they were the forest dwellers.

d) Mythology says about their history which is not beyond three/four generations. Oral history is the significant source to reconstruct the history of the preliterate communities.

e) The traditional techno-economic features are of subsistence level.

f) Except some tribes having leaders as rulers or land owners (Gonds, Ahoms, Cheros), most of the communities are non-hierarchic and undifferentiated.

g) The cultural attributes are distinct to the community, such as language, beliefs, worldviews, customs, and the like

T.B. Naik has discussed some of the features to declare the community as a ‘Tribe’ such as common dialect, customary laws, geographical isolation, community panchayats, and traditional technology for economic pursuits.

Coming to the specific features of the tribe, we can get the matrilineal and patrilineal communities where inheritance and other descent rules are traced through mother’s line or father’s line respectively. Considering linguistic families, more than one tribe can be considered under the respective classifications. On the basis of social organisations, physical characteristics, occupations/economy, again tribes can be defined within Indian context.

The concept of tribe is in use for the official clarifications and the necessary strategies for the welfare/administration of the concerned communities. But the community doesn’t say anything about the term “Tribe”. Only the members can specify the mythology, customary laws, and dialect they speak, among other distinctions they have from other tribal and non-tribal communities.

In India the academics related to tribal studies has been nourished by Anthropology, through continuous addition by empirical studies. Both foreign and Indian scholars contributed to tribal studies and tried to clarify the concept of “Tribe”.

The distribution of tribal population is more in eastern, central, and western parts of the country. The following is the available data for the state and the union territories of India. Starting with Madhya Pradesh with 14.69% of tribal population, the highest of all, followed by Maharashtra with 10.08%, Odisha with 9.02%, Rajasthan with 8.86%, Gujarat with 8.55%, Jharkhand with 8.29%, Chhattisgarh with 7.5%, Andhra Pradesh with 5.7% and the like. Mizoram is the state with highest tribal population of 94.5% and Lakshadweep is the union territory with the highest tribal population of 94.8%. The north-eastern states constitute about 12% of the tribal population followed by the southern region with 5% and Northern region with 3% of their population. Odisha is having sixty two tribes (Census 2011).

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