ABSTRACT
Tribal people are the most oppressed traditional cultural communities in India. Deforestation, land grabbing, linguistic discrimination in schools and government ofces, lack of medical facilities, religious conversions, enforcement of modern agricultural practices, drastic change of food patterns, lack of political representation, spread of genetic diseases, sexual violence on women, sand and rock mining, and acute poverty are central to tribal oppression and social exclusion. There have been sporadic issue-based reports on tribal people in the media and studies by academics, such as newspaper articles on the bauxite mining in Andhra Pradesh (Sudhir 2015), low literacy rates and poverty among tribal people (“Low Literacy” 2014), tribal development and prostitution (“Tribal Women” 2013) and diseases of tribal people in Andaman Island (Vidal 2009), to mention a few. However, detailed ethnographic studies focusing on eroding tribal life-ways have not been adequately done in India. Even as this chapter is being written, India’s aggressive neoliberal developmental schemes are particularly threatening to Indigenous tribal communities, pushing them off their subsistence and communal lands. The passing of the recent Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill 2015 is one such example of developmental policy in India. The bill does not have any provisions for safeguarding the rights of the original owners of the land (Karat 2015). However, this issue of environmental justice has not been adequately discussed in the media or among academics. Therefore, any cultural documentation of the people gains immense social and political relevance. Such documentation can play a vital role in revising centuries of feudal, colonial, and now neocolonial power dynamics that discriminate against Indigenous communities and their ways of knowing and living.
