Adivasi
The Adivasi are the heterogeneous tribal groups across the Indian subcontinent. The term Adivasi, a 20th-century construct meaning "ancient inhabitants", is now widely used as a self-designation by many of the communities who are officially recognized as "Scheduled Tribes" in India and as "Ethnic minorities" in Bangladesh. They constitute approximately 8.6% of India's population and about 1.1% of Bangladesh's population.
File:Women of Paniya community in Kerala.jpg|thumb|Paniya women in Kerala
File:Women in adivasi village, Umaria district, India.jpg|thumb|Gondi women in Umaria district, India
Claiming to be among the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, many present-day Adivasi communities formed during the flourishing period of the Indus Valley Civilization or after the decline of the IVC, harboring various degrees of ancestry from ancient Dravidians, Indo-Aryan, Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman language speakers.
Adivasi studies is a new scholarly field, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, agrarian history, environmental history, subaltern studies, indigenous studies, aboriginal studies, and developmental economics. It adds debates that are specific to the Indian context.
Definition and etymology
Adivasi is the collective term for the tribes of the Indian subcontinent, who are claimed to be the indigenous people of India. It refers to "any of various ethnic groups considered to be the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent". Although "Tribe" and "Adivasi" are often used interchangeably, they have distinct meanings. "Tribe" refers to a social unit, whereas "Adivasi" means ancient inhabitants. The former is an anthropological term primarily associated with the social characteristics, while the latter is a socio-political term associated with the autochthonous identity, specifically used in the Indian subcontinent. The use of the term Adivasi, as a socio-political construct, often overlooks the historical complexities of indigeneity, including migration, linguistics, anthropology, and archaeology—something Hardiman views as "the idea that Adivasis are autochthonous, or original, inhabitants is by the fact that many such groups are known to have migrated in recorded history into the areas in which they are now found, often displacing existing inhabitants in the process... There have been so many migrations in and out of this region in past centuries that no particular jati can have genuine grounds for making such a claim."The term Adivasi, in fact, is a Sanskrit word specifically coined in 1930s by the tribal political activists to give a distinct and collective indigenous identity to the tribals, alleging that Indo-Aryan and Dravidian ethnolinguistic groups are not indigenous to the land. The term was initially popularized by tribal activist organizations in present-day Jharkhand. Later, Thakkar Bapa used the word to advocate for a pan-Indian reference to the inhabitants of forests, a usage that was later adopted, although not popularly by Gandhi. Post-independence, Jaipal Singh Munda, president of the Jharkhand-based organization 'Adivasi Mahasabha', was elected as an independent member representing tribals in the Constituent Assembly. He advocated for the term 'Adivasi' in place of 'Scheduled Tribe'. However, due to the need for legal connotation, Ambedkar rejected the use of such general socio-political terms in the Constitution by adopting 'Scheduled Tribe' for tribals and 'Scheduled Caste' for untouchables, although he advocated for Dalits. Ambedkar, responding to Munda's advocacy for 'Adivasi', clarified: "why I substituted the word "scheduled" for the word "aboriginal" the explanation is... the word 'scheduled tribe' has a fixed meaning, because it enumerates the tribes... the word 'Adibasi' is really a general term which has no specific legal de jure connotation, something like the Untouchables . Anybody may include anybody in the term 'untouchable' ....by this Constitution, we are conferring certain privileges, certain rights on these Adibasis. In order that, if the matter was taken to a court of law there should be a precise definition as to who are these Adibasis, it was decided to invent, so to say, another category or another term to be called 'Scheduled tribes' and to enumerate the Adibasis under that head."
In most Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi and Bengali, Adivasi means "Original Inhabitants," Sanskritic derivation from ādi 'beginning, origin'; and vāsin 'dweller', thus literally meaning 'beginning inhabitant'. Although terms such as atavika, vanavāsi, or girijan are also used for the tribes of India, adivāsi carries the specific meaning of being the original and autochthonous inhabitants of a given region, and the self-designation of those tribal groups. However, the use and acceptance of the term Adivasi vary across places, communities, and contexts and do not always carry its original connotation. For instance tribals of North East India don't use the term Adivasi for themselves, rather prefer the word "Indigenous" or "Tribe". The term Adivāsi applies only to the immigrated Tea-tribes of Central India origin. In Bangladesh, Adivasi term is also used to refer tribals of Central India affiliation, although not popularly as India, wherein the tribals have designated as "Ethnic minorities". Similarly the term Adivasi Janjati used in Nepal for hierarchically lowly-status ethnic groups in Nepal's caste system, having own socio-cultural institutions, although the political context differed historically under the Shah and Rana dynasties. In Sri Lanka, the Vedda people are referred as Adivasi.
The Constitution of India doesn't use the word Adivasi, and directs government officials to not use the word in official work. The notified tribals are designated as Scheduled Tribes in the Constitution. The constitution of India grouped these ethnic groups together "as targets for social and economic development". Since that time the tribe of India have been known officially as Scheduled Tribes. Article 366 defined scheduled tribes as "such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of this constitution". But, due to the political leverage associated with tribals in the Constitution of India, the term Adivasi serves as a unifying factor both politically and socio-culturally, maintaining its influence in public discourse as a status quo, challenging the legally designated, state-specific administrative term Scheduled Tribes.
Judicially it remarked that "India is a country of old immigrants in which people have been coming in over the last ten thousand years or so... who came mainly from the North-West, and to a lesser extent from the North-East... At one time it was believed that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants. However, this view has been considerably modified subsequently, and now the generally accepted belief is that the original inhabitants of India were the pre-Dravidian aborigines, i.e. the ancestors of the present tribals or Adivasis."
But India does not exclusively recognise Adivasis Tribes Scheduled Tribes as indigenous people of India, rather considers all Indians as indigenous to the land. Thus, India has disagreed or refused at various international forums, when there is uncertain in the concepts of indigeneity and considered same yardstick across countries for identification. For instance, although India initially ratified the International Labour Organization Convention 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957, in 1989, India refused to sign the ILO Convention 169. In 2007, considering all Indians as indigenous, India voted for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations General Assembly.
Demographics
A substantial number of Adivasi tribal communities are recognised as Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution of India. Those Scheduled Tribes constitute 8.6% of India's population, while in Bangladesh they are designated as "Ethnic minority" and constitute around 1.1% of Bangladesh's population.One concentration lies in a belt along the northwest Himalayas: consisting of Jammu and Kashmir, where are found many semi-nomadic groups, to Ladakh and northern Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where are found Tibeto-Burman groups.
In the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland, more than 90% of the population is tribal. However, in the remaining northeast states of Assam, Manipur, Sikkim, and Tripura, tribal peoples form between 20 and 30% of the population.
The largest population of tribals lives in a belt stretching from eastern Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west all the way to western West Bengal, a region known as the tribal belt. These tribes correspond roughly to three regions. The western region, in eastern Gujarat, southeastern Rajasthan, northwestern Maharashtra as well as western Madhya Pradesh, is dominated by Indo-Aryan speaking tribes like the Bhils. The central region, covering eastern Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, western and southern Chhattisgarh, northern and eastern Telangana, northern Andhra Pradesh and western Odisha is dominated by Dravidian tribes like the Gonds and Khonds. The eastern belt, centred on the Chhota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand and adjacent areas of Chhattisgarh, Odisha and West Bengal, is dominated by Munda tribes like the Bhumijs, Hos and Santals. Roughly 75% of the total tribal population live in this belt, although the tribal population there accounts for only around 10% of the region's total population.
Further south, the region near Bellary in Karnataka has a large concentration of tribals, mostly Boyas/ Valmikis. Small pockets can be found throughout the rest of South India. By far the largest of these pockets is in found in the region containing the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, Wayanad district of Kerala and nearby hill ranges of Chamarajanagar and Mysore districts of southern Karnataka. Further south, only small pockets of tribal settlement remain in the Western and Eastern Ghats.
The scheduled tribe population in Jharkhand constitutes 26.2% of the state. Tribals in Jharkhand mainly follow Sarnaism, an animistic religion. Chhattisgarh has also over 80 lakh scheduled tribe population. Assam has over 40 lakh Adivasis primarily as tea workers. Adivasis in India mainly follow Animism, Hinduism and Christianity.
In the case of Bangladesh, most Adivasi groups are found in the Chittagong hill tracks along the border with Myanmar, in Sylhet and in the Northwest of Bangladesh. In Sylhet and in the north west you can find groups such as the Sauria Paharia, Kurukh, Santal, Munda and more, and other groups such as the Pnar, Garo, Meitei, Bishnupriya Manipuri and more. In the Chittagong Hill Tracts you can find variouse Tibeto-Burman groups such as the Marma, Chakma, Bawm, Tripuri, Mizo, Mru, Rakhine and more. In Bangladesh most Adivasis are Buddhists who follow the Theravada school of Buddhism, Animism and Christianity are also followed in fact Buddhism has affected Adivasis so much that it has influenced local Animistic beliefs of other Adivasis.