Tribes are people who don't belong to any jatis or caste: Professor G Devy

'The moment we reduce our spaces or we reduce the understanding of history, we become less Indians to that extent, it is the death of memory and diminishing of this civilization'

Arunima Purohit, Laksmi Prasad | NT

Bengaluru: In a recent podcast, Bangalore International Centre (BIC) discussed Indian culture with Ganesh N Devy. In this talk, the speaker shared his opinions based on his experience founding an indigenous peoples' network around the world and the Adivasi academy in Tejgadh.

The talk presents a viewpoint on the fast-vanishing cultural content of the planet's indigenous people. It delves into issues like Indians as a caste based society and what distinguishes Adivasis from tribal people, what are their cultural traditions, and philosophy of life, what caused some of them to be referred to as "criminal tribes", what is the Adivasi culture's outlook for the twenty-first century.

“Today, I shall move into another pitch and think of how Indians can live in many spaces. To begin with, at least in the Sanskrit language, we have a very fascinating opening or getting into this idea of many spaces. And that opening comes from the notion of no space,” says Devy. People frequently want to escape their perception of time and space. Language serves as a conduit between one's consciousness and the phenomenal world outside.

“I would say that this bridge works within the framework of time and space we construct through our idea of time and the idea of space, what is out there, India, is constructed by Indians in terms of their understanding of times and their understanding of spaces”, Devy explained.

 “When this understanding changes, when cultural amnesia possesses us, in a way, it transforms us and displaces us, the effects are felt socially, as well as politically, he added. He explained with examples how the idea of this many spaces got contracted socially and is getting contracted politically.

“First about society and then about politics, because it is society, that is the foundation of polity, not an ideology, but society itself what it is and what it is not as well,” he added.  He concluded the session by talking about the great diversity of the country. He talked about how Adivasis are treated in most parts of the country even now. Starting from the time when India got freedom, the Adivasis were looked up on as criminals and weren't allowed to come near normal civilians.

“The nation looks at them with suspicion. They are seen even today as the kanjaars, the Sansis of Punjab, and the Banjaras. Even today they are thought of as a potential danger. This has happened because the idea of citizenship was designed way back in England that teaches you to suspect only the nomads and value only the sedentary people.

“A space in our society is wiped out because this society had the provision of belonging to land as well as freeing oneself from land and wandering around. Releasing yourself from the burdens of the material life was a vision of life,” says Ganesh. Tribes are the people who don't belong to any jatis or caste.

While talking about whether the Adivasis or tribes are ethnically different from the people who belong to jatis, Ganesh says, “In absolute senses, no, they are not different. Genetics tells us that the entire south Asian population is of the same source. If all of us go for a genetic test, we all understand that we are brothers and sisters”.

According to him, this identity of a tribe comes from the times of the Indus Civilization. From the Harappa, the categorization happened according to the works done by the people. However, the jatis during the Harappan times did not have any hierarchy. It started pretty late with another language and civilization.

Thus, the people who refused to accept the hierarchy were kept out of the caste system and were termed tribes. Ganesh N Devy concluded by saying, “The moment we reduce our spaces or we reduce the understanding of history we become less Indians to that extent it is the death of memory and diminishing of this civilization.”