INDIAN tribes can also be classified according to their cultural distance from the rural-urban groups. Majumdar (1976) opines that this comparartive approach is the most useful in evolving a plan of rehabilitation because it focusses our attention on those problems of tribal India which are the outcome of haphazard contact with, or the isolation of these tribes from the rural-urban groups.
IN THE fifties Varrier Elwin floated a well demarcated classification. He described four type of aboriginals:
- (i) those who are most primitive, lives a joint communal life and cultivate with axes;
- (ii ) those who, though equally attached to their solitude and ancient traditions, are more individualistic, less occupied with axe cultivation, more used to outside life and generally less simple and honest than the first category;
- (iii) those, the most numerous, who under external influence are already the way out by the loss of their tribal culture, religion, and social organization; and
- (iv ) the tribes like the Bhil and the Naga who are said to be representatives of the old aristocracy of the country, who retain much of their original tribal life and who have won the battle of cultural contact.
MAJUMDAR’ has aptly termed Elwin’s classification as a ‘crusader’s ‘manifesto. He further maintains that though Elwin’s classification helps in presenting the contempory picture of the culture crisis in tribal India but as a basis for a programme of rehabilitation, it is unaccptable. He moves on to present his own scheme of classification.
According to him, the tribal cultures fall into three groups:
- (i) Those who are culturally most distant from the rural-urban groups; that is, more or less out of contact;
- (ii ) those who are under the influence of the culture of rural-urban groups and have developed discomforts and problems consequently;
- (iii ) those who, though in contact with rural-urban groups, have not suffered thereof or have have turned corner and do not suffer anymore though they may in the the past, because they have have now got acculturated into rural or urban culture.
Majumdar disagrees with Elwin that every contact with civilized would brings misery to the tribals. He takes the stand that our goal should be to take ahead all these three types of tribal communities and establish, under planned conditions, healthy and creative contacts between them and the rural-urban
groups.”
Tribal and non-tribal communities in India have co-existed for centuries, influencing each other in different ways in varying degrees. This was also another way of classifying the tribal population of India based on the degree of incorporation into the non-tribal caste-based Hindu society. This could be studied
from the perspective of either the tribal society or the Hindu society.
The Tribal Welfare Committee constituted by the Indian Conference of Social Work in 1952 classified the tribes of India into four main divisions which are the following:
- I) Tribal communities : This category includes those tribal communities who confine themselves to their original habitats and still maintain their distinct traditional pattern of life. For example, the hunting and gathering tribes and hill cultivating tribes.
- II) Semi-tribal communities: This category includes those tribal communities who have, more or less, settled down in the rural areas taking to agriculture and other allied occupations. For example, the agriculturist tribes.
- III) Acculturated tribal communities: This category includes those tribal communities who have migrated to the urban or semi-urban areas and are engaged in the industrial sector and have adopted the cultural traits of the rest of the population, for example industrial labourers like the Santhals and the Hos.
- IV) Totally assimilated tribal communities: This category includes those tribal communities who have been totally assimilated into the new social order such as the Bhumjis, the Majhis, the Raj Gonds, etc.
B.K.Roy Burman in 1971 divided the tribal population into those who are;
- I) Fully incorporated into the Hindu social order such as, the Bhils who have adopted the Hindu way of life including the ethos of the caste system and can hardly be differentiated from the neighbouring Hindu peasantry.
- II) Positively oriented towards the Hindu social order : This category includes tribes like the Santhals, Oraons, Mundas and the Gonds who have not been incorporated totally into the caste structure but have to a large extent adopted the symbols and world views of their Hindu neighbours.
- III) Negatively oriented towards the Hindu social order: This category includes tribes like the Mizos and the Nagas who are negatively oriented towards the Hindu social order and reject the caste structure.IV) Indifferent towards the Hindu social order This category includes tribes like those of Arunachal Pradesh who are totally indifferent to the Hindu order.
G.S. Ghurye in “The Scheduled Tribes” proposed a similar classification which includes;
- Tribes who attain a high status within the Hindu society
- Partially Hinduised tribes
- Tribes inhabiting remote hill areas and who exhibited great resistance to Hinduism as an alien culture