Tribal Politics in the Assam: 1933-1947 (original) (raw)
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Tribal Politics in Assam, 1933-47
Handbook of Tribal Politics in India, 2021
S u r y a s i k h a P a t h a k * This chapter was previously published in Economic and Political Weekly, 45(10), 2010, 61-69. 1 The word tribe is used with the understanding that its definition is contested and it does not necessarily denote a fixed social identity. 2 The British encountered two categories of tribes in northeast India: those who lived in hills and those in plains. The concept of plain tribe was coined to sharpen the differentiation. The earliest possible reference was by Ethnographer Endle (1911). The phrase continued to be used in the post-colonial period.
Tribal Politics in Assam:1933–1947*
2021
The term "Plains Tribal" was first used by the colonial rulers in Assam to lump together a diverse set of people defined in semi-geographical and semi-sociological terms. It was taken up and crafted into an identity in the competitive politics of late colonial Assam by representatives of tribal groups who successfully welded this diverse set into a unified political and social category. This article traces the emergence of the "Plains Tribal" in the political map of Assam and shows how it came to be defined partly in opposition to other competing social categories and partly in terms of internal markers of identity.
Through a critical appraisal of old, new, and emergent scholarship on the ‘tribe’, this entry traces and places the invention, institutionalization, and the later local infatuation with the colonial category of the ‘tribe’ in Northeast India. Further tracking the social life of the tribal category in Northeast India, the entry then relates how in the postcolonial epoch the ‘tribe’ revealed both as an affective source of embodied and emplaced identity and as a compelling, competitive, and conflictual principle of political mobilization, recognition, and claim-making.
De-Constructing the term " Tribe/Tribal " in India: A Post-Colonial Reading
The word " Tribe/Tribal " brings to one's mind a general picture of half naked people, arrows and spears in their hands, feathers in their heads, unintelligible language often combined with myths of savagery and cannibalism. They are projected as savage, animistic, uncivilized or headhunters and their life as nasty, brutish and short. Their art as crude, their religion as a medley of superstitions and they are dirty with dark complexion, hideously wild, diseased and ugly visages. 1 All the early explorers and administrators including professionals like anthropologists, historians, academicians as well as different religious leaders and Missionaries in general have piled over one another in their use of uncomplimentary adjectives to describe the " tribals ". 2 Even many of us today adopt either of these views in their entirety in Indian " tribals " while narrating and speaking on them. Whatever sample history and literature has been produced on them till the date is from outsiders and it makes sometimes confusion and controversy in the matters of so called tribals' age old oral history, tradition, concepts, interpretation and values. Hardly one can find references on them in most social Abstract The British colonial administrator-ethnographers in India were pioneers who surveyed and carried out expeditions on tribes but often their methods were doubtful. Their survey reports and papers became the source of precious information about such province and at the same time a tool for their continuous development of colonial administration. However by using official machinery and tour for collecting data they bypassed the ethical consideration of research. Their writings in many ways ended up contorting tribes as being synonymous with being backward, uncivilized and barbarous. This study critically analyzes the notion of tribes in India as perceived and studied by anthropologists. It also interrogates the Ontology and Epistemic premises of their Knowledge Production on tribes in India. The paper concludes by discussing the various issues on tribal discourse in India.
Srijani Bhattacharjee International Journal of Research in Social Sciences November 22
The article investigates into the tribal indigenous opposition towards colonial attempts of intrusion in the hill forests of British Assam in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Several tribal communities resided in the hills bordering the Assam plains andfunctionedas autonomous administrative units. Establishment of British political and administrative control over Assamin the first half of the nineteenth century led to the initiation of colonial contact with the tribes neighbouring the region. The areas inhabited by the tribes were incorporated within the territory and thus the map of Assam was expanded underthe colonial administrative ambit. The establishment of British administration in the region was perceived by sometribesas encroachment over their lands and forests, especially when the British government tried to implement its forest policies and management mechanisms in their areas and attempted to commercially exploited their natural resources. The article examines certain tribal reactions against such colonial approaches and the modes of retaliation employed by the British authorities to counter them. Though most of such resistances were brought to submission by the British but they certainly hinted the latter with the idea that colonial admission into the hills would not be free accesses without indigenous opposition.
International Journal of Research in Social Sciences, 2018
The history of Northeast India is the history of ethnic self-determination whose seeds have been rooted by the crown and the company. The demands for separate geographical space for the native Ethnic community are the outcome of British administrative arrangement which created a exclusive-geographical boundary among the ethnically different communities of northeast India. It was the background on which the entire northeastern states were seen bifurcated in different homelands in post independent period. The demands have created a vicious cycle among almost all the communities who started demanding for a unique geo-political arrangement which is often an outcome of the reference point they made in terms of other. The state however has recognized the inherent differences among the communities to an extent which resultsinto the creation of northeast that one noticed today. It was again a fact that ethnic contestation often led to a mass violence involving two distinctly different communities which completely jeopardize the process of coexistence among the communities. Therefore, the present paper tries to highlight the demands for autonomy among the hill tribes and plain tribes and their trajectory in different forms and ends. The paper adopted a methodology which is analytical and the necessary references to the resources have been made from secondary sources.
Changing Nature of Tribal Movements in Ranchi District, India: 1830-1925
The International Journal Of Humanities & Social Studies (ISSN 2321 - 9203), 2016
Ranchi district the core of Chotanagpur witnessed the saga of tribal movements from 1830-1925. In these socio-political uprisings, Oraon and Munda, the two major tribal communities of Ranchi district played a pivotal role. By taking the case of Oraon and Munda, the paper will highlight the transition of tribal movements from pro-colonial to anti-colonial. Alongside, the paper will try to bring out the heterogeneous character of the tribal movements by reflecting on the multiple layers of movements.