The Ideology of Tribal Economy and Society: Politics in the Jharkhand, 1950–1980

Abstract

In this paper I want to explore the implications of the rise and fall of Jharkhandi ethnoregionalism from the point of view of tribal policy and tribal politics in Independent India. More especially I want to examine an ideology of tribal economy and society which informs most existing accounts of Jharkhandi politics and which makes the case for a specifically ‘tribal’ policy. The main propositions of this ideology are recounted in Section One of this paper. They are (1) that the concept of a tribe is given and uproblematical; (2) that the tribals of South Bihar are the original inhaitants of the Jharkhand, where they still predominate (see Figure I); and (3) that tribal politics and tribal policies are effective because individual tribes are themselves undifferentiated, united and geographically concentrated. (A corollary of this third proposition is that any decline in Jharkhandi ethnoregionalism since the mid-1960s must be due to factional disputes within the tribal leadership and/or to inter-tribal clashes, perhaps along denominational lines). These three propositions are examined in Sections Two, Three and Four of the paper, where they are measured against the recent historical experience of India's Jharkhand. The implications of any shortcomings in the ideology of tribal economy and society are taken up in the concluding section of the paper where comments are offered, too, on an alternative ‘model’ of tribal policy and politics in the Jharkhand.

Deadwood and paternalism: rationalizing casual labour in an Indian company town

“…However, whilst the state has a tribal population of 26.3 per cent, there is a pronounced lack of integration between the state's urban industrial region's and poorer rural communities. The 2001 Census of India records an official city population of 1,104,713: of that number, barely 12 per cent are members of Scheduled Tribes (see Corbridge ; ; ; Devalle ; Weiner ).…”

Affirmative action and political economic transformations

“…Of the four schools, three served an adivasi-only student body. Adivasis comprised at that time about two-thirds of the Jharkhand population (Corbridge 1988). At the beginning of the twentieth century, we conclude that adivasis gained better access than nontribals to secondary schools in Jharkhand, and that several of these schools had come to be regarded as among the best in the region.…”

‘Keeping the state away’: democracy, politics, and the state in India's Jharkhand

“…Jharkhand's people have historically been treated by colonial administrators as tribals, different from castes with societies based on equality rather than hierarchy and with remote habitations and a ‘primitive’ way of life in tune with nature (Mandelbaum 1970: 275; Weiner 1988 [1978]: 168). This ‘ideology of tribal economy and society’ (Corbridge 1988) has been criticized by many. Some argue against the isolation of tribals, marking them as just ‘Backward Hindus’ (Ghurye 1995 [1943]: 20), focusing instead on their similarities with other peasants (Beteille 1974: 62), and on their long history of migration (Dube 1977: 2), while others question tribal life as inherently nature‐protecting (Baviskar 1997: 222; Prasad 2003; Shah 2006 c ).…”