In the context of India as a whole. identification of indigenous peoples is indeed problematic. The problem emanates from the fact that the population movements and experiences in India have been different from those of the new world. It is true that the movement of population even in the new world has been, like in India, of different race, language, region. religion. culture, etc. In the new world however, these groups did not come to establish or have special relations with a given territory or region in the course of their movement. In India, the movement of the population was somewhat different. Here different communities came to develop distinct and definite association with certain territories in the course of the history of their movement.
Whether those especially associated with a given territory are indigenous to the territory or area they live in is a question that will always be contested.
What however has come to be accepted that they have developed special relations with the territory in question. These territories, the communities in question have considered as their own as against those of other communities. They considered themselves to have prior and preferential if nor exclusive rights over the territory where they lived either on account of their prior historical settlement or numerical and other dominance. Following this they aspired to promote and protect the interests and welfare of their community and confer on the members of their community special rights and privileges. It was aspirations such as this among the members of the community that led to the desire to have a state of their own And after having realised this, they tend to promote the interests of their members by means of state patronage of various kinds.
The people living in their respective territories have thus come to see the states to which they belong as the culmination of the yearning of the members of a particular territory to have a homeland of their own. The Bengalis for example have a very strong sense of attachment to Bengal as Tamilians to Tamil Nadu.
There is in this an indication of the recognition, implicit though it may be. that certain people have prior right over others in the territory that they occupy. This is almost like saying that they are the original inhabitants of the territory that they inhabit. It is therefore not a coincidence that the dominant communities hardly feel the need to articulate issues in terms of rights of indigenous people. They have states of their own and therefore territories too. It surfaces only when they feel threatened from the movement of the population from outside the community. The threat is felt either on account of fear in the rise of number of members from outside the community or loss of control of power. economic and political. Nowhere is this identity with land or territory more crudely manifested than in the son-of-the-soil theory that has been raised from time to time by the dominant regional communities in India. In short, people of India representing different languages, physical features, cultures, mode of social organisations, etc, identify and relate themselves in a special way with a given territory or region in the country. Attempts have been made to provide theoretical understanding to such developments in India. In doing so scholars have invariably made use of such concepts such as nation and nationality. In the context of India, the two concepts refer essentially to the internal political arrangement of the Indian union comprising a number of linguistic-territorial state units and components with a variety of regional pressures. At the same time there has always been some kind of checklist of the objective criteria whereby a motion or nationality could be defined. And in both of these conceptions the element of territoriality assumes a central place.
The paradox is that whereas such privileges and rights are freely recognised in respect of the dominant communities in India, the same is denied to tribal communities. In the process they are progressively getting dispossessed of their control over land. forest, water, minerals and other resources in their own territory and are increasingly subjected to inhuman misery, injustice and exploitation. If their status as indigenous people of India are problematic, and the problem indeed is both empirical and conceptual, the least the dominant regional communities could do is to recognise the priorities of rights and privileges of these people in the territories and regions they inhabit. It is the non-recognition of these rights and privileges by the dominant sections of the Indian society that has led to increasing articulation of the idea of indigenous people by the tribal people. It is in the absence of such powers and rights that a new form of identity, viz, identity of Adivasis or indigenous people is crystallising among the tribes of different parts of India. The term that was initiated mainly a point of reference or description has become an important marker of identity articulation and assertion today. The designation or description of tribes as indigenous people had not emerged from self-identification or description by tribals themselves. It was not a pan of positive identification and evaluation by the tribes. Rather the outsiders had imposed it on the tribes. The identity that was forced from outside has now been internalised among the tribes. Today, it is an important mark of identity and consciousness of the people, an identity that evokes a sense of self-esteem and pride rather than a sense of lowly and inferior society that often goes with terms like tribe or tribal. The people now use it to identify and define themselves. It is in relation to the identity of Adivasi that tribes are increasingly differentiating themselves from the non-tribal population at least at the grass roots level. The declaration of the year 1993 as the international year of the indigenous people has only sharpened this identity for identity, since then carries certain rights and privileges with it.
Further, the identity being expressed now by the term adivasi is indeed an expanded identity cutting across tribes bearing different names, speaking different languages or dialects. 11 also goes beyond groups and communities or parts thereof that are listed in the Constitution. It is to be noted that there is an important gap in the sense in which the term tribe is used and understood by the tribals and in the sense in which it is understood by others, especially the administrators, lawyers and academicians. For the latter, communities are tribes only if they are so listed in the Constitution. Tribes on the other hand do not view tribes in the sense af politico-administrative category. Rather they view them in the sense of belonging to the same community irrespective of whether a group or segment of it is listed or not listed in the Constitution. And by virtue of this bond of emotion they are also Adivasis or the indigenous people though the Constitution does not recognise them as the tribes.
In many parts, the category has even taken political overtones. ln Chotanagpur, for example, as early as 1939 it assumed the form of a demand for a separate state of their own for the adivasis. Even the organisation formed to spearhead this movement, viz, Adivasi Mahasabha. drew its inspiration from
being described as the original people. Such a political overtone is not confined to Chotanagpur alone. It is catching up in other parts of India as well but more prominently in the tribal regions of central and western India such as Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan. It has already given rise to a number of organisations at local and regional levels that have been articulating the issues of the tribes in terms of the status of the indigenous people. There are org-an isations which are actively articulating the issue of the indigenous people at the national and the international levels,
The adivasi consciousness and the articulation of indigenous people status is not so much about whether they are the original inhabitants of India as about the fact that they have no power whatsoever over anything (land, forest, river. resources) that lies in the territory they inhabit. This is despite being the original inhabitants of India in relation to the others. The consciousness and the articulation are basically an expression of the yearning to have or to establish a special relation with the territory in which they live. It is the same kind of yearning that the various dominant communities of India articulated in the period before independence or after independence. That this is so becomes obvious if one maps the tribes or regions where such sentiment is strongly articulated. It is a fact that the issue of this identity is more strongly articulated in central, western and southern India than in north-east India. This is because in the north-east people exercise some power over their territory. The scenario is just the opposite in other parts of tribal India. What this indicates is that the assertion of such identity is stronger where there is greater degree of marginalisation and powerlessness. There are however differences in the way this new identity is being conceptualised at different levels. The social workers, administrators, scholars and social scientists have generally used the term in the sense of only the original inhabitants. The adivasi ideologues too primarily use this term in the sense of the original settlement, as this was the sense in which the outsiders described the tribal people. The aspect of the marginalised status that evolved in course of historical development has been added into it now. There are others, especially the radical scholars, who conceive it only in relation to particular historical development, viz, that of the subjugation during the 19th century of a wide variety of communities which before the colonial period had remained free, or at least relatively free from the control of outside states. This process, it is argued, was accompanied by an influx of traders, moneylenders and landlords who established themselves under the protection of the colonial authorities and took advantage of the new judicial system to deprive the adivasis of large tract of their land. Adivasi is hence defined as groups, which have shared a common fate in the past century and from this, has evolved a collective identity of being adivasis. It is not meant to imply that adivasis are the original inhabitants. The use of the term ‘adivasi’ in the sense in which it is used by radical scholars hardly takes note of the sense in which people, either outsiders or the tribal themselves, use it. Not all who shared a common fate in the past century. in fact, identify themselves as the adivasis. The caste Hindu population howsoever deprived it may be invariably avoided being called adivasi for it was tied to the loss of status.