ABSTRACT
An individual's uneasy emersion in the caste hierarchy and a precarious existence within dehumanizing traditions have been themes in uncountable novels, stories, plays, films, scholarly works, reform movements and other forms of discursive expression. This has happened not only to upper caste Indians. The 'generic autobiography' of escape-and-return has also been the lot of those who have been victims of the oppressive caste system. There is a widespread misconception that the tribes of India are racially different from the castes of India. There have been other non-caste and non-tribe instances of communities also, particularly in the north-east and in western Himalayan region. However, in the colonial social cartography, any community in India had to be either a caste or a tribe. Where large groups of communities without any claim to a single caste and having varied skills existed, the colonial ethnographers posited caste categories such as Marathas and Rajputs.
