ABSTRACT
The new generation of sociologists—Indian as well as those coming from the west—thought that the best way to know Indian society and culture was through field studies of village communities. Village studies provided a new view of Indian society, correcting earlier conceptions of many structures and institutions, such as family, kinship, marriage, caste, religion, economy and polity. The rule of lineage exogamy made it virtually impossible to marry within most villages, and the rule of village exogamy added to the complexity in many parts of north India. In 1950, when the Constitution of independent India designated three categories of ‘backward classes’, namely, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes, the term ‘tribe’ aquired a new significance. The colonial rulers and their ideologues added one more complication to the tribal problem when they considered the tribals as the aboriginal people of India, implying thereby that the rest of the people were aliens.
