Indian tribal belt

About the tribes and their situations.

1. INDIAN TRIBAL BELT - i.e VAN GUJJARS

2. INTRODUCTION The India’s tribal belts refer to contiguous areas of settlement of tribal people of India which is to say groups or tribes that remained genetically homogenous as opposed to other population groups that mixed widely within the Indian subcontinent . The tribal belt includes Northwest India and Central and Eastern India.

3. Northwest India The Tribal Belt of Northwest India includes the states of Rajasthan , Gujarat , and Maharashtra . The tribal people of this region have origins which precede the ANI (Ancestral North Indian) and the ASI (Ancestral South India). In fact, the origins of these people are thought to stem back to the Harappa civilization of the Indus Valley Civilization , the oldest traceable civilization of the Indian sub-continent which flourished between 3500BC and 2500BC .

4. Central & Eastern Tribal Belt India The Central India Tribal Belt stretches from Gujarat in the west up to Assam in the east across the states of Madhya Pradesh , Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand . It is among the poorest regions of the country. Over 90% of the Belt's tribal population is rural, with primitive agriculture .  

5. INDIAN TRIBES India is the home to large number of indigenous people, who are still untouched by the lifestyle of the modern world. With more than 84.4 million, India has the largest population of the tribal people in the world. These tribal people also known as the adivasi's are the poorest in the country, who are still dependent on haunting , agriculture and fishing. Some of the major tribal groups in India include:

6. Santhals Munda Khasi Angami Bhils Bhutia

7. VAN GUJJARS Another sphere of Indian tribes includes van gujjars. The Gujjars are a diverse minority group who are indigenous to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Customarily, the Van Gujjars are a distinct population of Gujjars who live and travel within the northern forests of India’s Himalayas and nearby plains.  The community’s unique identity is encased within its name, Van meaning ‘forest’ in Hindi and Gujjar meaning ‘the-way-we-are’. 

8. The Van Gujjars’ traditional livelihoods depend upon the forests, revolving around semi-nomadic buffalo husbandry and the trade of milk.  Furthermore, the community’s livelihoods are actualised through transhumance, the seasonal migration of people and buffalo between the highland and lowland forests.  The Van Gujjars have carried out their customary livelihoods within the Himalayan forests for centuries.  However, to sustain their livelihoods they face numerous socio-political challenges.

9. CHALLENGES VAN GUJJARS Some of the issues, both past and present, faced by the Van Gujjars in order to continue their livelihoods. The Forests Primary challenges to the Van Gujjars’ sustainable forest practices hinge upon their limited legal claims to the forests and the states' Forest Departments’ perception of the community. The Van Gujjars’ restricted legal claims to the forests manifest in the form of forest permits.  Issued bi-annually by the Forest Departments, the permits confine the Van Gujjars to limited areas and stipulate the number of buffalo allowed within the forest.  The permits have not been updated since 1937 and are held by individual families.   

10. To survive, these families’ herd sizes must be larger than allowed, whilst remaining within their minimal area of forest.  The increased number of buffalo and people within permit areas intensifies pressure on the environment and decreases the availability of buffalo fodder.  Moreover, exceeding the permits affords forest officials the power to exploit the community by demanding heavy dairy and monetary bribes for their use of and access to the forest. 

11. Nomadism The Van Gujjars’ practice of transhumance is essential to the survival of their herds and the rejuvenation of the forests.  The month long walk either up or down the Himalayas has always been hazardous to both people and buffalo.  However, this practice has become increasingly dangerous due to the heightened volume of traffic where the Van Gujjars use the roads.  Additionally, forest officials may barricade the routes, only permitting entry upon dairy or monetary payments.  Currently, several family members abstain from transhumance, opting to safeguard their huts, grasses and fodder trees in the lowlands instead.

12. Buffalo Husbandry One facet of the Van Gujjars’ livelihoods concerns the sale of buffalo milk.  In the recent past, middlemen heavily exploited the Van Gujjars, providing pittance for their products.  As the price of milk was insufficient for survival, the middlemen were able to offer loans with high interest rates, pushing the Van Gujjars further into poverty. Whilst the sale of milk is no longer an issue, the reduction of available fodder has meant a decrease in the quality of milk and an increase in the susceptibility of the herds to infections and diseases.

13. Domicile Rights As nomadic people, the Van Gujjars generally occupy a state for the maximum of six-months and are without an address.  In the past, the states the community inhabits denied them citizenship and their domicile rights.  Due to their position as a non-voting cohort, the community’s needs were unimportant to politicians.  Furthermore, the lack of citizenship inhibited the Van Gujjars’ access to social welfare .  However , the state’s provision of education to the Van Gujjars is largely outstanding .  The Van Gujjars’ illiteracy makes them vulnerable to exploitation, as it inhibits their access to information and problematises their verification of written texts.

14. MAIN PROBLEMS They possess small and uneconomical landholdings because of which their crop yield is less and hence they remain chronically indebted. Only a small percentage of the population participates in occupa­tional activities in the secondary and tertiary sectors. Literacy rate among tribals is very low. While in 1961, it was 18.53 per cent, in 1991 it increased to 29.60 per cent which compared to general literacy rate of 52.21 per cent in the country is very lo-w, be­cause while the growth of literacy rate in the past three decades in the country was 28.21 per cent, among the STs it was only 11.7 per cent {The Hindustan Times, July 11, 1995). Though tribal literacy rate in Mizoram is 82.71 per cent and in Nagaland, Sikkim and Kerala it is between 57 per cent and 61 per cent, lack of literacy among tribal people has been identified as a major development problem.

15. The unemployed and the underemployed want help in finding secon­dary sources of earning by developing animal husbandry, poultry farming, handloom weaving, and the handicrafts sector. Most of the tribals live in sparsely populated hills and communications in the tribal areas remain tough. The tribals, therefore, need to be protected against leading isolated life, away from towns and cities, through a network of new roads. The tribals are exploited by Christian missionaries. In several tribal areas, mass conversion to Christianity had taken place during the British period. While the missionaries have been pioneers in educa­tion and opened hospitals in tribal areas, they have also been responsible for alienating the tribals from their culture. Christian missionaries are said to have many a time instigated the tribals to revolt against the Indian government.

16. A good portion of the land in tribal areas has been legally transferred to non-tribals. Tribals demand that this land should be returned to them. In fact, tribals had earlier enjoyed considerable freedom to use forests and hunt animals. Forests not only provide them materials to build their homes but also give them fuel, herbal medicines for curing diseases, fruits, wild game, etc. Their religion makes them believe that many of their spirits live in trees and forests. Their folk-tales often speak of the relations of human beings and the spirits. Because of such physical and emotional attachment to forests, tribals have re­acted sharply to restrictions imposed by the government on their traditional rights. Tribal government programmes have not significantly helped the tribals in raising their economic status. The British policy had led to ruthless exploitation of the tribals in various ways as it favoured the zamindars, landlords, moneylenders, forest contractors, and excise, revenue and police officials. Banking facilities in the tribal areas are so inadequate that the tribals have to depend mainly on moneylenders. Being miserably bogged down in indebtedness, tribals demand that Agricultural Indebtedness Relief Acts should be enacted so that they may get back their mort­gaged land. About 90 per cent of the tribals are engaged in cultivation and most of them are landless and practise shifting cultivation. They need to be helped in adopting new methods of cultivation.

17. In short, the main problems of the tribals are poverty, indebtedness, illiteracy, bondage, exploitation, disease and unemployment. After independence, tribal problems and tribal unrest have become politicised. An articulate and effective political elite have emerged in sev­eral tribal areas. These elite are conscious of tribal rights and are capable of making calculated moves to gain their acceptance.

18. PRESENTED BY : Roopanshi Virang Navya Airachia Anirudh Pratap Singh Shraddha Chauhan