Encountering The Adivasi Question

Book excerpt: The main problem facing most Adivasi groups in the country is displacement and loss of their own original habitats and livelihood through ‘development’ projects like dams, tourism and wildlife sanctuaries. By generally categorising them as girijan (mountain dwellers), vanavasis (forest dwellers), or tribal (with its connotations of primitive and backward), or even the popular jangli (wild), in official parlance and in the mass media, they are robbed of their identity, dignity and rights as among the first peoples of this subcontinent, who earlier enjoyed economic and political freedom and autonomy in the form of self-rule. All over India the process of uprooting indigenous people from their rich culture is on – the disruption of a way of life, fundamental to which is the belief that it is not the earth which belongs to man, but man who belongs to the earth.