ABSTRACT
The comparison is between that of the Madras Presidency government before the 1940s and the ‘proto’-nationalist government after this period. Key to understanding this difference is a grasp of the central goals of two forms of state—the existent colonial state and the national state to come—and how they differed. Corroborative evidence regarding the colonial perception of specific tribal communities as rebellious is available in the work of several students of tribal history. The most striking difference in the perception of the new government is with respect to the tribal himself—the Malayappan Report sees the tribal as impoverished. The self-ascribed reason for this difference in moral tone is that the nationalists had the good of the tribals at heart, sincerely wanted to develop the nation and thus fought the colonial rulers whose only desire was to exploit India. When the colonial rulers planned and executed their improvement programmes, they did so with the serene unconcern of gods on Mount Olympus.
