Panel Organizers:

Erik de Maaker - Department of Anthropology, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Ellen Bal - Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract

   
Contemporary debates about caste and race criticise the presumed fixed and essentialising makeup of both concepts (e.g. Bayly 1999, Dirks 2001). In Castes of Mind, Dirks argues that current conceptualizations of caste are in important respects a product of the British Raj. Whereas the caste discourse has increasingly been assessed as distorting and exceptionalising South Asian realities, perceptions of South Asian tribes have remained remarkably uncontested. However, recent studies (Van Schendel 1992, Karlsson 2000) suggest that South Asian notions of ‘tribe' are, similarly, by and large the product of colonial classification.
In this panel we will explore whether the questions raised by the critics of caste are of relevance to notions of tribe and tribal category in South Asia. In particular, we would like to address the following topics:

- Discourse of tribe: What debates have emerged in local arenas regarding tribal categorization?; In what ways have people asserted, challenged or refuted notions of tribe?

- Ethnic boundaries: By what specific emic and etic criteria have boundaries between tribes and others been (re-)defined?; What happens if people move across ethnic boundaries (e.g, as a result of marriage, migration or conversion)?; To what extent do language, kinship, religious ideas, ritual practices etc., coincide with ethnic boundaries?

- Identity politics: Is ethnic awareness equally shared by all members of a community or group?; Whose purpose and ambitions are served by tribal labelling (e.g, local entrepreneurs, interest groups, state governments, etc.)?
Participants are expected to combine locally grounded research with attention to these aforementioned conceptual questions. As it is an aim of the panel to consider these issues from a comparative perspective, we invite papers that relate to any of the tribal communities of South Asia.

Farid Ahamed, University of Chittagong, Chittagong, Bangladesh
Dynamics of Identity Politics in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh
 
In contemporary ethno-political discourse, the relationship between the ethnic peoples of CHT and the state of Bangladesh has largely been orchestrated as an opposition of Pahari vs. Bengali respectively. The notion of a Pahari identity is central to the construction of collective identity among the diverse ethnic groups of CHT. Within this political discourse, there are some other parallel categories, such as Jhumma, Adivashis, which are also used in different contexts.
 
This paper examines the way in which these categories are constructed by the people themselves and also by dominant ‘Others'-the way in which the people of CHT represent themselves and are represented by others. The aim of this paper is primarily to discuss the political dynamics of identity formation within the present context of the ‘state-tribal' or "Bengali-Pahari' relationships in Bangladesh.
 
In doing so, the paper raises some specific questions related to the ongoing process of ethnic mobilisation and collective identity formation in the CHT: Why do people choose these new constructions and reject the stereotyped official categorisation? Where is collective and shared identity expressed? 
 
In order to answer these questions, the paper highlights different meanings, forms and expression of collective idioms used in the discourse of identity formation and collective mobilisation in the CHT. It argues that politics of identity in the CHT can be seen at different levels of everyday interaction between the Bengali and diverse ethnic groups in general, but more importantly that it exists in situational context, in relation to Bengali and the Bangladesh state. It only comes into being through practice.
 
Markus Schleiter, University of Heidelberg, Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Darmstadt, Germany
‘Shy, Happy and Innocent People': Do Colonial Representations Matter for Postcolonial Birhor ‘Tribe'?
 
Although in the first British reports on Birhor ‘Tribe' they were accused of eating their deceased kin, for 130 years ethnographers have repeatedly mentioned ‘shyness', ‘happiness' or ‘innocence' as essentialising character traits of Birhor people. Similarly, ethnographic writing delivers constant cultural traits such as the worship of clan gods or monkey-hunting using nets. Does this mean ethnography and categorisation in the British Raj has fixed a former contested and fluid identity (see Dirks 1992, 1999, 2001) in order to demarcate ‘innocent' from ‘revolting tribes' and that present-day ethnographers can be dismissed as repeating colonial representations until now? The case of Birhor is more complex and draws attention to contested views and to the agency of ethnographers even in colonial times. Whereas almost all present-day ethnographers do not question a common and homogenous Birhor culture, in 1925 the Indian ethnographer Sarat Chandra Roy argued explicitly against the applicability of the concept of a ‘tribe' for Birhor and their imagined ‘aboriginality'. Furthermore, sound criticism against the Empire was part of constituting Birhor as an ‘innocent' and ‘shy' ‘tribe' which was constantly endangered and subaltern through no fault of their own. Here I also see the constitution of Birhor ‘Tribe' in connection with an anti-colonial stance, which has persisted and also turned into government criticism of postcolonial ethnographers until now.
On the basis of my one-year field studies at settlements of Birhor in Orissa, India and the preterrain around these settlements, I furthermore aim to show that an enactment of these colonial representations is specific and ambivalent in postcolonial contexts, when Birhor are under special care of a governmental programme for ‘Primitive Tribal Groups'. In this case representations are, then, part of acquiring access to development aid for some members of Birhor. At the same time, state officials name the cultural inability of ‘innocent' and ‘shy' Birhor to cope with their present ‘nasty' surroundings as an excuse for their own corruption and negligence. When countering their ‘innocence' by staging public tribal drinking or by shouting at government officials, members of Birhor can again demand their share of development welfare. The latter, in connection to everyday statehood, works on the grounds of state officials' constant need to prove their control of the situation and to reinforce representations of ‘happy' Birhor. Hence, the impacts of enacted as well as contested colonial representations about ‘shy', ‘happy' and ‘innocent' Birhor in the present can be highly decisive as well as ambivalent. However, these representations of Birhor then can not be considered exclusively as straight-line continuity from a colonial representation which was contested even in its time.
 
Luisa Steur, Central European University, Heeswijk-Dinther, The Netherlands
"Aren't We Idiots?": The Self-Perpetuating Myth of the Innocent Tribal
 
More intellectual input into the contestation of tribe is an urgent political necessity. This my research proved on the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha, a social movement in the South Indian state of Kerala that emerged in the 90's from the acute problems, mainly in terms of landlessness, of certain adivasis and the increasing neo-liberal detachment of political elites. The movement sought to operate without any political party alliances, lead merely by adivasis and sympathetic (mainly dalit) activists and supported by befriended NGOs. In the process of organizing such a struggle, the movement was however pushed to fit the hegemonic discourse of ‘tribe'. It could only retain the necessary, though paternalist, sympathy from civil society if it complied with notions of ‘tribe' that have been hegemonic ever since the British Raj, epitomized in myth of the ‘innocent tribal'. Evidence to the immense power of hegemonic notions of tribe, even the movement's leaders equated being adivasi with the state-imposed identity of Scheduled Tribe. However, as I discuss in detail, the complex lived reality and ethnic consciousness of the movement's different participants was far from the hegemonic discourse of tribe and they were hardly able to live up to the myth. Precisely this then provided the opening for opponents of the movement to organize its brutal suppression by claiming these were not 'real' adivasis. The need to employ the discourse of tribe, combined with its immense hegemonic and distorting power, leaves the movement's participants embittered and with a sense of complete powerlessness. The myth of the innocent tribal thus becomes self-perpetuating as many participants, looking back, say they simply cannot understand what the leaders of the movement were trying to do and why they followed them, apart from being utterly desperate. "Aren't we idiots?", exclaims one of the participants.
 
Vibha Arora, Alaknanda, India
(De)Constructing the Tribes of Sikkim, India: Lho-mon-tsong (Bhutias, Lepchas, Limbus)
 
This paper treats tribal identities and interests, indigeneity and their cultural representations as not being given, but as the emergent products of history, cultural politics and economic development of the Himalayan region in the last two hundred years. The argument is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Sikkim and the Darjeeling Hills and archival research in India and England.
I argue that tribal identities are not merely post-colonial constructions reflecting identity-politics and ethnic-nationalist aspirations since they have historic roots in native and colonial policies that classified communities and ethnic groups, privileged some while discriminated against other groups. In Sikkim, if colonial policies protected and transformed the Lepchas and the Bhutias into the indigenous groups of Sikkim, then other policies discriminated against the Limbus who were indigenous to Sikkim while treating them as Nepali immigrants into Sikkim. Between 1947-1975, the Namgyal dynasty privileged the indigenous status of the Lepchas and the Bhutias while recognizing the special position of the Limbus as Nepali of Sikkimese origin and discriminated against the immigrant Nepalis. After the incorporation of Sikkim into India in 1975, the Scheduled Tribe Order of 1978 recognized the Lepchas and the Bhutias (this includes the Tibetans, Dokpas, Sherpas, Kagatey, Dopthapas, and Chumbiapas) as Scheduled Tribes in Sikkim while recently the Scheduled Tribe order of 2002 recognized the Limbus and Tamangs as Scheduled Tribes. The transformation of a ‘tribe' into a ‘Scheduled Tribe' confers special privileges to a group that include reservation of seats in the Legislative Assembly, government employment (and sometimes the private sector) and educational institutions, and various other preferential treatment and concessions. The paper emphasizes the role of the state in structuring identities, entitlements, and responding to ethnic-nationalist assertions in contemporary Sikkim. The cultural politics transforming a group into a tribe and a ‘Scheduled Tribe' indicates its political strength and power to influence the regime of representation in order to appropriate entitlements and resources. Being tribal does not necessarily indicate indigeneity, oppression or subaltern status but signifies political assertion and empowerment.
 
Marianne Keppens, University of Ghent, Onderzoekscentrum Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent, Belgium           
The Tribes of India as the ‘Tribes of Israel'? The Christian Notion of ‘Tribe' and Colonial Understanding of India
 
Today nobody would accept the claim that Brahmins are a tribe. In fact, if there is one group that is very clearly not a tribe it would be this caste. Brahmins definitely do not characterize themselves as a tribe and there is a clear distinction, accepted by social scientists and politicians alike, between the classifications of Indian social groups into castes on the one hand and into tribes on the other hand. However, in the colonial writings of the beginning of the nineteenth century Brahmins were explicitly described as a tribe comparable to the Levitical tribe of the Jews. We also find that the terms ‘caste' and ‘tribe' were used interchangeably at that time.  Moreover, we find that descriptions of the Brahmins and other tribes correspond to the Christian image of the tribes of Israel.
 
How to account for this change in the perception of ‘tribes'? In this paper I will argue that the South Asian notions of ‘tribe' of today are indeed a product of a ‘colonial classification' and that this classification was transformed accordingly as certain elements within the colonial culture changed. If we want to understand and contest the notions of ‘tribe' in contemporary India, we cannot but trace the characteristics and origins of the concept of ‘tribe' in the history of the Christian West. That is, we need to understand how and why notions of ‘tribe' changed as they did: how could the Brahmins first be regarded as a typical tribe later to become the opposite of what constitutes a tribe? Several scholars have argued that a Christian framework determined the colonial understanding of India. I will examine to what extent Christian notions of the relation between ‘tribe', language and religion structured the colonial descriptions of the Indian society, which still prevail today.
 
Georg Pfeffer, Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Ethnologie, Berlin, Germany
Anthropologies of Mind: On the Ethnocentric Removal of Tribal Meaning
 
Significantly, the panel organizers offer proper references to academic positions they favour while choosing to level anonymous allegations against anthropological approaches other than their own under the label of "current conceptionalizations" with the apparent intention to offer - not surprisingly - an exercise of deconstructing the concept of "tribe" (with special reference to South Asia). In some form of "contestation" the panel is to discover the British Raj - perhaps personalized by substantial colonial or "postcolonial" individuals - as having invented the particular entity "tribe". However, beyond arguments over substances, the issue of a particular tribal socio-cultural logic is not taken up, as if such different modes of classification did not exist.
The advantages of such efforts of "deconstruction" are apparent: their anthropological adherents can avoid tribal languages, major health hazards, or the discomforts of spending years in a mud hut. Following prominent examples, they could liberate themselves from the conventions of scholarship regarding references or basic acknowledgments of academic reasoning and traditions. However, if the "contestation" stuck to the work of named and live authors and their complex arguments, it would soon become evident that the given materialist approach is bound to require physical "boundaries" of concepts which - in turn - are bound to be unavailable for most social categories so that - in turn - their non-existence can easily be branded. Similarly, the ethnocentric bias offering pre-eminence to the political economy is bound to exclude the view towards non-Western value ideas. On the other hand, long-term participant observation in tribal villages will offer ample evidence of a particular combination of tribal ideology, morphology and group action that is fundamentally different from the Indian caste pattern, the feudal relations of non-tribal Pakistan, or the simplistic European dichotomies of exploiters and exploited.
 
Sangeeta Dasgupta, Visva Bharati University, Oxford, UK
From 'Description' to 'Definition': Mapping the Oraons and the 'Tribe' in Nineteenth Century Chotanagpur, Jharkhand
 
This paper will historically analyse the perception of the ‘tribe' and the Oraons of Chotanagpur, Jharkhand, India, in nineteenth century colonial records. British officials, writing on Chotanagpur in the early nineteenth century, ´described' the ‘tribe' and the Oraons; from the second half of the nineteenth century, the ‘descriptive' category of the tribe became transformed into a ‘definitional' category, the culmination of this process being reflected in the census report of 1901.The image of the ´tribe' now came to be produced at two sites: the first, contoured in Europe, was largely academic and governed by institutions and disciplines functioning in the West; the second was constituted in a colonial context, often under the aegis of the colonial state. Thus, while academic institutions in Europe discussed racial theories in a global and Indian context, collected artifacts and opened museum galleries, the Indian colonial state mapped Indian society and sponsored ethnographic surveys. As the two images often converged and yet were distinct, the ´tribe' came to be ´defined' in different ways. Moreover, as theories from the West were analysed, and often discarded, and the colonial state defined its changing agenda, the markers of tribal identity underwent transformations. At this presentation, I will refer to visual representations to elaborate the argument made in the paper. It needs to be pointed out that following the debunking of colonial stereotypes by African and Pacific specialists, debates around the conceptual category of ‘tribe' have emerged: some find distinct ‘markers' in the ‘tribe' (Choudhury); others see it as a colonial construct, born out of the emergence of anthropology as a discipline in the west (Devalle); yet others argue for a more nuanced historicisation of the category (Van Schendel, Nandini Sundar, Sumit Guha, Ajay Skaria, Meena Radhakrishna and Archana Prasad). My paper will interact with these broad arguments.
 
Sara Shneiderman, Cornell University, Department of Anthropology, Ithaca, United States
Transnational 'Tribes'? The Cross-Border Politics of Reservations, Identity and Cultural Practice in India and Nepal
 
In this paper, I consider how Indian ethnic activists of Nepalese ancestry in Darjeeling and Sikkim relate to their homeland counterparts in Nepal. This cross-border communication process develops in a complex political context that is shaped by the divergent notions of 'tribe', 'ethnicity' and 'indigeneity' as promoted by Indian and Nepali state policies.
 
Since the early 1990s, when the Mandal Commission report prompted the Indian government to introduce a new schedule of benefits for Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backwards Classes, ethnic groups of Nepalese ancestry in India's northeast have been struggling for recognition as distinct tribes. With little 'traditional' cultural or linguistic knowledge of their own, ethno-activists from Darjeeling and Sikkim have been compelled to turn to Nepal for the cultural content needed to compile strong applications for Scheduled Tribe status. Embarking upon 'cultural study tours' to the homeland, such activists and their organisations have exported a particularly Indian discourse of 'tribal identity' to Nepal, while at the same time importing useful aspects of the markedly different Nepali discourse of 'ethnic nationality' (janajati) to India. Indian activists have also appropriated contemporary Nepalese cultural practices and repackaged them in politically salient ways that both impress and distress their Nepali colleagues.
 
I consider these dynamics through a case study of the Thami ethnic group, with whom I have been conducting ethnographic research in both Nepal and India since 1999. I discuss how the Indian tribal discourse functions to encourage certain kinds of identities in a cross-border situation, and is simultaneously transformed when it comes in contact with competing discourses of ethnicity from neighbouring countries like Nepal. This case study addresses both the South Asia-specific concerns at the heart of this panel, and contributes to broader discussions of ethnic identity in transnational contexts.
 
Tanka Subba, North Eastern Hill University, Department of Anthropology Shillong, Meghalaya State, India
From Caste to Tribe: An Autobiographical Essay
 
While the autobiographical turn in Anthropology is no new thing even in India, with M. N. Srinivas advocating for a transition from
"self-in-the-other" studies to the study of the "self" itself quite early (1996) the transition from caste to tribe is something out of tune from
mainstream Anthropology. All anthropological (and sociological, in India) studies speak about the other way around - from tribe to caste - for the
latter is considered more complex and culturally more evolved than the simple, segmental tribal society. It is also possible that the caste Hindus,
who most early anthropologists (and again sociologists, in India) were, could not imagine that they could be less evolved than the tribes they
studied. While most anthropologists and sociologists have viewed caste and tribe as societies at different levels of cultural evolution others have considered the distinctions between the two rather superfluous (Ghurye 1943, Misra 1977).
 
Alpa Shah, University of London, Department of Anthropology, London, United Kingdom
Wild Elephants Destroying ‘Nature-Loving' Tribal Communities in India's Jharkhand.
 
This paper critically analyses the notion of nature-loving tribal communities in the context of India's Jharkhand. It explores how and why different groups of people, who could all claim to be either ‘the tribal community' or its representatives - Mundas, village elites and activists, have radically different responses to marauding wild elephants in contemporary Jharkhand. In this process the paper unveils the politics of cultural representations of the nature-loving tribe, raising questions about the degree to which there is an indigenous or tribal community in the sense talked of by well-meaning developmentalists and environmentalists.
 
Vishvajit Pandya, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information &communication Technology, Gujarat, India
Are You a Naked Primitive?
 
Combining anthropological fieldwork among the hunter-gatherers of the Andaman Islands, together with historical records, this paper  seeks to interrogate the categorization of Andamanese tribes as  ‘Primitive Tribal Groups'. This construct of a monolithic  "primitiveness" it is argued, is a colonial inheritance that remains uncontested in post-colonial discourses of tribal development. The peculiar positioning of the Andamanese in relation to the concerns of the modern Indian nation state reveals the attempt to signify such tribes in blatantly a-historical terms.  This paper however seeks to bring together perspectives from the tribes themselves through an extended period of ground level research. It tries to show how the Andamanese tribes themselves have a  distinctive view of the world and perceive themselves as "differentiated" within their own communities in terms of ‘degrees of otherness' and ‘civility'. This self-representation of the tribe on their terms, and the representation of them by the state and its agencies unfolds an arena of  contention which is further accentuated by the settlers and tourists for whom such tribes continue to remain objects of both wonder and pity. This paper seeks to foreground such convergences of the "settler and tourist" imagination through a study of a range of popular visual material available in the Islands. In sum, this paper intends to present the drama of modernization, in which the state, the non-tribals and tribals themselves  play out different strategies to articulate their ideas of a Tribe in response to the shifts in their relation to the regional political economy.
 
Erik de Maaker, Leiden University, Department CA/OS, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The Dynamics of Garo Death Rituals
 
The one-sided focus among scholars of South Asian ritual on text-based rituals has resulted in a comparative neglect of the study of the ritual life of more marginal communities of the subcontinent. The rituals of these non-literate traditions tend to be far less formalized. Given the flexibility intrinsic to these performances, their analysis can contribute to new perspectives for the interpretation of more mainstream ritual forms.
In my paper I analyze the efficacy of the funerals of the Garo, a matrilineal hill society of the Indian State of Meghalaya. Garo funerals serve to dispose of the corpse, and to guide the soul of the deceased to the afterworld. In addition, the rituals allow for the reorganization of social relationships among people and their Houses. Rituals of death are instrumental in the transformation of the dead from social persons into anonymous ancestors. Particularly in the latter sense, the dead are a source of authority and prestige, and play an important role in structuring social relationships among people. I argue that Garo mortuary rituals derive much of their significance from the transfer of gifts between representatives of the deceased and the people who attend a mortuary ritual. The acceptance and rejection of these gifts is decided in processes of negotiation. Analyzing the practice of mortuary rituals, I show that people's participation in rituals of death is of structural importance to Garo society and allows them to reconstruct life in the context of death.
Garo death rituals cannot be understood detached from social relationships, economic interests and politics. Hence, it is unavoidable that changes in society reflect in the rituals, since the performances will always reflect current religious and social concerns.
 
Arkoteng Longkumer, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
‘Who am I to you?: Zeme constructions of ethnic boundaries and identity'
 
The Nagas in India represent an interesting case in relation to ‘discourse of tribe, ethnic boundaries, and identity politics'.  In fact, one can argue that these factors overlap to present a complex, yet pertinent debate about Naga society and its position in India.  With the current politicisation of identity in the peace talks between the Government of India and the Naga ‘rebel' groups, the question of identity is a growing, though often unrepresented, debate that is being wrestled with in the public arena, inside and outside of the Naga areas.  While it is true that the Naga tribes in India are ‘scheduled' and kept isolated from the rest of India, it is equally true that the word ‘tribe' is used consciously as opposed to ‘indigenous or adivasi', to react against the dominant ‘Hindu' society. This paper will examine the idea that although the word ‘tribe' is a construct by colonial powers to classify and subjugate, it has gone on to take a life of its own, in terms of the Naga tribes and their place in India.  
While this ‘construction' from colonialism is being debated on the surface, inside Naga society there are again counter claims as to which identity is more authentic.  The Zeme Nagas in North Cachar Hills, Assam, are a useful example to understand this process: the separation of Christian and Heraka (a reformed religious practice) into two bounded groups of the same ethnicity represents an ongoing dialogue on ‘ethnic boundaries' which emerges from ‘identity politics'.
The Zeme Heraka practice further complicates the matter as they have adopted some ‘Hindu' elements and are receiving organisational support from Kalyan Ashram and VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad).  These internal complications have wider implications, as they result in the interaction and clash of ideas, which nevertheless are adapted into convenient, albeit provisional, wholes.