Tribal multiculturalism

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Tribal multiculturalism refers to the caste heterogeneity of within some tribes in South Asia. While scholarship and popular images of Indian tribes have often emphasized the 'primitiveness' of their social organization (called 'backwards' in Indian government language)[1] or their social egalitarianism,[2] researchers have long been pointing to processes of tribalization and the partial integration of Dalit and low-caste groups within tribal society.[3][4]

Overview[edit]

The recent boom of tribalism studies is the USA and other western countries defines modern tribalism as political partisanship and in-group xenophobia.[5] These discourses build off of colonial sources and outmoded anthropological accounts of tribes as representing primitiveness, simplicity, savagery, and closed social structure.[6][7] However, for many decades Indian sociologists have neutrally described tribalizing practices as the incorporation of peripheral caste groups into tribal formations. Recently, grassroots and indigenous activist-scholars in India have put forward Scheduled Tribe Dalit (STD) to indicate an intersectional identity of low-caste groups (called Dalits or Scheduled Castes) within tribes or petitioning to be reclassified as tribal.[8] These STDs often face structural discriminations and casteism; however, tracking their social precarity as tribal or tribal aspirants opens up a new perspective on Indian tribes as heterogeneous, multicultural and flexibly integrating Dalits in some circumstances. Because of a lack of scholarship, it is unknown how many of over 700 tribes in India are undergoing tribal redefinition or have integrated outside castes. Moreover, there are over 2,000 communities petitioning the Indian state for Scheduled Tribe status. It is unknown how the process of tribalizing to meet state categories and criteria for affirmative action inclusion is reshaping tribal social organization and making news spaces for tribal multiculturalism. For examples of this in scholarship, see the caste study of the Gorkhas in Darjeeling[9] or the Gaddis in Himachal Pradesh.[10]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Bora, P. 2010. "Between the human, the citizen and the tribal: Reading feminist politics in India's Northeast." International Feminist Journal of Politics 12 (341–360).
  2. ^ Asad, Talal. 1978. "Equality in nomadic social systems? Notes towards the dissolution of an anthropological category." Critique of Anthropology 3(2): 57–65.
  3. ^ Kalia, S.L. 1961. "Sanskritization and Tribalization" In Changing Tribes, edited by T.B. Naik. Chhindwara: Tribal Research Institute.
  4. ^ Chauhan, B.R. 1978. "Tribalization" In Rajasthan Bhils, edited by N. N. Vyas, R.S. Mann and N.D. Chaudhary, 29-40. Udaipur: Tribal Research Institute.
  5. ^ Reiljan, Andres, and Alexander Ryan. "Ideological tripolarization, partisan tribalism and institutional trust: The foundations of affective polarization in the Swedish multiparty system." Scandinavian political studies 44, no. 2 (2021): 195–219.
  6. ^ Yapp, M. (1983). "Tribes and states in the Khyber 1838–42." In R. Tapper (Ed.), The conflict of tribe and state in Iran and Afghanistan (pp. 150–191). Croom Helm.
  7. ^ Morgan, L. H. (1877). Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilisation. Holt.
  8. ^ Dhissa, L. C. (2011). Samvidhān ke Sāmājik Anyāy.
  9. ^ Middleton, Townsend. 2016. The Demands of Recognition: State Anthropology and Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  10. ^ Christopher, Stephen. 2020. "'Scheduled Tribal Dalit' and the Emergence of a Contested Intersectional Identity." Journal of Social Inclusion Studies: The Journal of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies 6(1): 1–17.

Further reading[edit]

  • Aggarwal, R. (2004). Beyond lines of control: Performance and Politics on the Disputed Borders of Ladakh, India. Duke University Press.
  • Bhattacharya, H. (2017). Narrating Love and Violence: Women Contesting Caste, Tribe and State in Lahaul, India. Rutgers University Press.
  • Christopher, Stephen. "Exceptional Aryans: State Misrecognition of Himachali Dalits." In Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia. Edited by Stephen Christopher and Sanghmitra S. Acharya. Delhi: Springer. 2022, pp. 13–38.
  • Christopher, Stephen. 2022. "Critique of the Spirit: Vernacular Christianity in the Dalit-Tribal Margins." Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts (Spring 2022).
  • Christopher, Stephen. "A State, a Union Territory and Three Political Classifications: The Gaddi Sippis of J&K and Himachal Pradesh." International Journal of South Asian Studies (Under Review).
  • Christopher, Stephen. 2020. "Divergent Refugee and Tribal Cosmopolitanism in Dharamshala." Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 38(1):31–54.
  • Christopher, Stephen. 2020. "'Scheduled Tribal Dalit' and the Emergence of a Contested Intersectional Identity." Journal of Social Inclusion Studies: The Journal of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies 6(1): 1–17.
  • Middleton, T. (2011). "Across the interface of state ethnography: Rethinking ethnology and its subjects in multicultural India." American Ethnologist, 38(2), 249–266.
  • Middleton, T. (2016). The Demands of Recognition: State Anthropology and Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling. Stanford University Press.
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