About  Seminar

Tribal communities made a significant contribution to the country's struggle for independence, yet their efforts have often been unsung and unheard. The tribal freedom fighters like Tilak Manjhi, Tirot Singh, Veer Surendra Sai, Govind Guru, Jatra Bhagat and Birsa Munda played a crucial role in India's fight for freedom, challenging the British oppression, exploitation, and cultural domination. The most prominent figure among them is Birsa Munda who sacrificed his life at the tender age of 25 for protecting the cultural values, religious uniqueness and customary laws of the tribal people. British government under its policy of divide and rule created a class of Zamindars who were assigned the duty of over taking the land of tribes and collecting the revenue. Simultaneously, Christian Missionaries also started executing their aggressive religious agendas forcing tribal people to leave their customary laws and cultural uniqueness. In such a situation, Birsa Munda awaked and united the tribes to raise a voice against the mighty Britishers for their unjust and exploitative policies of tax collection through the Zamindari system and restrictive religious pursuit by the Christian Missionaries. This is the reason that the tribes, who are basically the indigenous people known as Adivasi, established their identity at the national arena. However, it had been very unfortunate on the part of the early post-independence governments of India that they did not recognize them as the indigenous people. Recognising them formally as Adivasi i.e. indigenous people was considered as a move against the concept of “we the people of India”. In other words, it was thought upon as an action which was “divisive, undermining the unity of the Indian nation” (Ghurye in Chopra 1988). The subsistence economy of tribes relies on the entire habitats-water, forest and land. The habitat is accepted as a common heritage of the community and individual has a rationale and limited right of using the same. In this way, they have not only been a great supporter of forest preservation but also of the rational use of natural resources keeping in view the welfare of the future generation. Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that it was the tribals who espoused the concept of sustainable development without being aware of its formal formal framework. Advent of informational technology and introduction of Liberalized policies have made a serious attack on their life and livelihood. This has been done by the corporate houses and the emerging private agents in the quest of exploiting the natural resource endowed regions. This has resulted into two outcomes: poverty-induced migration among tribal communities and development-induced displacement. To deal with their displacement, government has designed resettlement and rehabilitation policies which address the economic issues faced by them however, their psychological reframing remains a bigger challenge. They have their own customary laws which seems like a distinct religion and they are not accustomed to the new world they are all of sudden exposed to. Therefore, it raises some critical questions like shall the development projects be not initiated? If initiated, what provisions be made for protecting the rights of tribals? What sort of training be imparted to the tribals so that they can cop up with the new world and its new customs? How to make them realise the material importance of resources and to be in mainstream?

All these critical issues need an academic discourse then only a reasonable and viable solution can be reached upon. Present central government has introduced a number of schemes and made provisions to provide the tribal population a safeguard against their exposure insecurities. An academic discussion will advance these schemes to the tribal communities through the dissemination of knowledge. In this backdrop, the proposed seminar aims at exploring: the contribution of tribal heroes in the freedom struggle; challenges faced by the tribals in the post-independence era and provisions made by the government to address those challenges.

The discussion will spread over the following subthemes which are aligned with the main theme of the seminar:

 

Sub themes:

1. Tribal Freedom Fighters and Tribal Resistance Movements: Historical relevance and importance of those movements.

2. Tribal Contributions in realizing sustainable development: Sustainable practices in agriculture, forest management, and water conservation. Role of tribal communities in protecting biodiversity.

3. Contemporary Challenges: challenges posed by Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) policies for Tribals:

• Displacement and loss of land due to development projects.

• Impact of globalization and climate change on tribal livelihoods.

• Repercussions of the poverty induced migration on the lives of tribals.

• Psychological challenges of facing a new world with novel customs, culture and socio-religious practices.

 4.    Recent policy initiatives  taken by the Government of India for the tribal population:

• Schemes introduced by the government for the tribals.

• Significance of the recent policy interventions for tribals: Tribal Health Initiative, Tribal Cultural Conservation, Tribal Unorganized Workers’ Empowerment, Declaration of Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas.

• Policy interventions and the role of civil society in tribal empowerment.