Adivasi is the collective term for the indigenous peoples of mainland South Asia. Adivasi make up 8.6% of India’s population, or 104 million people, according to the 2011 census, and a large percentage of the Nepalese population. They comprise a substantial indigenous minority of the population of India and Nepal. The same term Adivasi is used for the ethnic minorities of Bangladesh and the native Tharu people of Nepal. The word is also used in the same sense in Nepal, as is another word, janajati, although the political context differed historically under the Shah and Rana dynasties. Adivasi societies are particularly prominent in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and some north-eastern states, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Many smaller tribal groups are quite sensitive to ecological degradation caused by modernisation. Both commercial forestry and intensive agriculture have proved destructive to the forests that had endured swidden agriculture for many centuries. Population complexities, and the controversies surrounding ethnicity and language in India, sometimes make the official recognition of groups as adivasis political and contentious. Unlike castes, which form part of a complex and interrelated local economic exchange system, tribes tend to form self-sufficient economic units. For most tribal people, land-use rights traditionally derive simply from tribal membership. Tribal society tends to the egalitarian, with its leadership based on ties of kinship and personality rather than on hereditary status. The present book will be a convenient resource for the casual reader, the researcher, and the teacher and the student alike.
Introduction — Tribal Ethnography, Customary Law and Change — The Adivasi of South India — Tribal Peoples of Eastern India — Historical Background of Scheduled Tribes of Assam — Bibliography — Index —
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