Current General Studies Magazine: "Roots of India’s Tribal Policy" January 2015


Current General Studies Magazine (January 2015)


General Studies - I: Social Issue Based Article (Roots of India’s Tribal Policy)

There were two major approaches regarding the place to be accorded to tribals in Indian society. One approach was to leave the tribal people alone, uncontaminated by modern influences operating outside their world and to let them stay more or less as iliey were. The second approach was that of assimilating them completely and as quickly as possible into the Indian society all around them. The disappearance of the tribal way of life was not to be regretted; it was to be welcomed for that would represent their ‘upliftment’.

Jawaharlal Nehru rejected both these approaches. The first approach, of treating the tribal people ‘as museum specimens to be observed and written about’, was, he said, ‘to insult them’. The tribal people, he wrote, ‘could not be left cut off from the world as they were’. Isolation was in any case impossible at this stage, for the process of penetration by the outside world had already gone too far and ‘it was not possible or desirable to isolate them’. The second approach of allowing them ‘to be engulfed by the masses of Indian humanity’, or of their assimilation through the operation of normal outside forces was also wrong, according to Nehru. This would lead to the loss of the tribals’ social and cultural identity and of the many virtues they possessed. [n fact, he pointed out, ‘if normal factors were allowed to operate, unscrupulous people from outside would take possession of tribal lands . . . and forests and interfere with the life of the tribal people’. This would also ‘upset their whole life and culture, which had so much of good in them’.

Instead of these two approaches, Nehru favoured the policy of integrating the tribal people in Indian society, of making them an integral part of the Indian nation, even while maintaining their distinct identity and culture. There were two basic parameters of the Nehruvian approach: ‘the tribal areas have to progress’ and ‘they have to progress in their own way’. Progress did not mean ‘an attempt merely to duplicate what we have got in other parts of India’. Whatever was good in the rest of India would ‘be adopted by them gradually’. Moreover, whatever changes were needed would be ‘worked out by the tribals themselves’.

The problem was how to combine these two seemingly contradictory approaches. Nehru stood for economic and social development of the tribal people in multifarious ways, especially in the fields of communication, modern medical facilities, agriculture and education. In this regard, he laid down certain broad guidelines for government policy.

First, the tribals should develop along the lines of their own genius; there should be no imposition or compulsion from outside. The non-tribals should not approach them with a superiority complex. Rather, the understanding should be that they had an equal contribution to make to the evolution of the common culture and social and political life of the country.

Second, tribal rights in land and forests should be respected and no outsider should be able to take possession of tribal lands. The incursion of the market economy into tribal areas had to be strictly controlled and regulated.

Third, it was necessary to encourage the tribal languages which ‘must be given all possible support and the conditions in which they can flourish must be safeguarded’.

Fourth, for administration, reliance should be placed on the tribal people themselves, and administrators should be recruited from amongst them and trained. As few as possible outsiders should be introduced as administrators in tribal areas and they should be carefully chosen. They should have a sympathetic and understanding approach, and should not consider themselves superior to or apart from the tribal people. They should be prepared to share their life with the tribal people among whom they work.

Fifth, there should be no over-administration of tribal areas. The effort should be to administer and develop the tribals’ through them own social and cultural institutions.

Questions:-

  1. Why did J L Nehru rejected both the approaches?
     

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