INTERPRETATION OF TRIBALISM OF NORTH EAST INDIA :

COLONIAL VS. INDIGENOUS VIEWPOINTS

The British colonial administrator-ethnographers in India were pioneers

who surveyed and carried out expeditions on tribes but often their methods were
questionable. Their survey reports and documents became the source of
invaluable information about such region and at the same time a tool for their
continuous expansion of colonial administration. However by using official
machinery and tour for collecting data they bypassed the ethical consideration
of research. Their writings in many ways ended up contorting tribes as being
synonymous with being backward, uncivilized and barbarous. There is very
little ethnographic contribution of tribes by indigenous scholars during the
colonial period from mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century. Even now a lot
of reliance is based on the colonial knowledge production.

Unity in diversity is a boon and a bane for India. An inclusive society

having cultural pluralism adds colour and dynamism to Indian society but at the
same time it is also a stumbling block to economic integration and societal co-
habitation. India is a geographically vast country with the Himalayas in the
north and Indian Ocean in its southern boundaries. Due to the varied
geographical topography and social formations that inhabit India, no two social
groups would have a comprehensive knowledge about the other. There seems to
be confusion and misunderstanding of concept of „tribes‟ in India whose history
for long has been documented and interpreted by others. For a community that
constitute 8.2% of India‟s population the label of barbaric, savages, uncivilised,
backward, criminals etc. thrust upon them by the Britishers anthropologists and
Indian administrators alike has been slow to erode and continues to colour the
perception of the general populace on tribes in India.

As Smith notes, „They continue to frame the discourses on indigenous

issues of a particular society and account in part for the very specific use of
language, including terms of abuse, the sorts of issues which are selected for
debate and even the types of resistance being mounted by indigenous peoples‟
(Smith 1999:79) Misra (2012) further adds, one cannot deny the fact that
colonialism was the cause of large scale dissemination, displacement,
pauperization and creation of a deep sense of inferiority among indigenous
population the world over. This paper critically analyses the nuances of various
tribes in India as perceived through the writings of colonial administrators-cum
-ethnographers with special reference to the tribes of North East India.
Hierachies and Categories of Tribes in India

The Indian Constitution has given concessions to various tribes in India

as far as opportunities for education, livelihood and advancement of careers are
concerned. „Tribe‟ is one of the most contested terms particularly in India, no
official definition exists till date. „There has been more concern with the
identification of tribes than with their definition. These criteria ranged from
such features as geographical isolation, simple technology and condition of
living, general backwardness to the practice of animism, tribal language,
physical features, etc. The problem however lay in the fact that they were
neither clearly formulated nor systematically applied‟). Essentially the word
tribe is a relic of the colonial writers that referred to certain groups of people
who were largely cut off from the rest of the larger society and mainly resided
in the forest or its vicinity or in other remote areas. „Colonial administrators
used the term tribe to describe people who were heterogeneous in physical and
linguistic traits, demographic size, ecological conditions of living, regions
inhabited, stages of social formation, and levels of acculturation and
development‟ (Xaxa 2005, 2008: 2). The term is synonymous with being
primitive and with savagery and hence is derogatory in many ways. „Tribes are
primarily seen as a stage and type of society. They represent a society that lacks
positive traits of the modern society and thus constitute simple, illiterate and
backward society‟ (Xaxa 1999).

The Indian Constitution recognizes this particular category of people as

Scheduled tribe (ST); these tribes are spread across the country, they are highly
concentrated in the central and peninsular and north eastern of the country. ST
are generally grouped as: i) Tribals ii) Adivasis and iii) Indigenous People. The
tribals in the Central, Western and Southern part of India prefer calling
themselves Adivasis rather than Tribals. However, the term Adivasi has little
acceptance amongst the tribals in the North eastern part of the country where
tribes are generally considered as those who work in the tea Gardens in Assam.
“The term „Adivasi‟ therefore, remains a generic name in East and North-East
India for identifying the migrant tribal labourers and small peasants from central
India. The local tribes in these States find it humiliating to identify themselves
as „Adivasi‟ ” (Burman, 2009). The history of the tribal studies or documenting
and writing monographs on tribal can dates back to 1774 when the Asiatic
Society of Bengal was founded by Sir William Jones. Anthropologists have
divided cultural studies of tribes in India into four chronological phases of
development namely, (i) The Formative Phase (1774-1919), (ii) The
Constructive Phase (1920-1949), (iii) The Analytical Phase (1950 -1989), and
(iv)The Evaluative Phase (1990-present).

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 This section highlights the categories of „tribes‟ as described by
anthropologists in India. The British colonial administrators were the pioneers
in documenting and preparing monographs on tribes in India. This was with the
motive of promoting British interest in India and obtaining their strangehold of
power over the Indian subcontinent. The works of J.H. Hutton, a British
administrator-cum-anthropologist on the Nagas particularly the Sema‟s and
Angami, Christoph von-Fuhrer Haimendorf on the Gonds of Adilabad are two
notable examples of such endeavours. As far as anthropologists in India are
concerned, Verrier Elwin remains one of the most influential anthropologists on
tribal policy in India. Elwin initially came to India as a Christian preacher but
later abandoned it and went to write extensively on tribes in India starting with
the Baiga tribe and later on the tribals of North East India particularly on tribes
of present day Arunachal Pradesh then known as North Eastern Frontier Agency
(NEFA). V. Elwin was a fervent advocate of the „isolationist‟ framework for
tribes which basically argued for tribes to be left alone and be kept separate
from mainstream Indian society. Each tribe have their own nuances and have to
be treated differently.

Just opposite to Elwin‟s „isolationist‟ framework was G.S. Ghuyre, who

advocated the “policy of assimilation of tribal with Hindu society”. Ghuyre
opined that „almost all the so-called aboriginal tribes of the region have a
Hindu-ized section, small or large, that they have been in fairly intimate contact
with the Hindus for a long time, and that they have common interest with the
Hindus in matters of religion and gainful occupation‟ (Ghurye: 1963:18). For
Ghuyre tribals were nothing more than Backward Hindus. Some of the notable
categorization of tribes by anthropologist in India includes tribes as
„nationalities‟ by Burman, „ethnic group‟ by Doshi, „Aborigines‟ by Pathy,
„ethnic minority‟ by BK Roy Burman, „Nation and Nationalities‟, „primitive to
post primitive‟, vulnerable by Oomen, „culturo-political entities‟, adivasis by
Devalle and „indigenous people‟ by Xaxa. To summarize Vidyarthi (1977)
notes that as far as tribes in India are concerned, they have been categorized on
the basis of i) region, (ii) language, (iii) race, (iv) their level of integration with
rural folk to which they are connected, (v) their economy, (vi) their cultural
pattern as a whole, and (vi) their level of education.

It will now be prudent to delve into the writings of British colonial

administrators on the tribes of the North East India. Recording, decoding and
labelling tribes in india are skewed as they are seen as a lesser people and
civilization

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Distinct Tribes of Northeast India

North East India comprises of the eight states of Arunachal Pradesh,

Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim. What
distinguishes these states from the rest of country is the sensitive geopolitical
location with the existence of diverse ethnic groups with different historical
backgrounds. Predominantly there are two views of the North East viz.
outsider‟s and insider‟s view. Outsiders see the region as a relatively unitary
entity, delimited by India‟s boundaries with other countries and insiders views it
as an extreme case of diversity of tribes, communities, languages, religions,
customs, traditions and histories (Miri 2007). The fact remains that the North
East India as a whole is not a single entity with a common political destiny;
rather it comprises of eight diverse states. The region covers a geographical area
of 2.55 laks sq.km, which is just 7% of the total country‟s area. It is connected
to India just by a narrow corridor known as the „chicken neck‟ between Nepal
and Bangladesh. The region is a gateway to South East Asia as it is bordered by
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and China. The North East Region
(NER) of India is perhaps one of the most vibrant and complex areas to
administer; of the 600 odd ethnic communities that inhabit India, well over 200
ethnic groups are found in this region.
The extent of diversity of the tribes of North Eastern Indian states is
given in the table below :

„Tribal communities in Northeast India are living on the fringe of three

great political communities-India, China and Burma. Historically, some of them
played roles of buffer communities, and others the roles of bridge communities
in between these three great political communities‟ (Toppo 2000: 73). Asssam

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is one of the area-wise largest state of North East India. After East India
Company extended help to Ahom Kingdom (of Assam region) to defeat the
invasion of Burma, they signed the Treaty of Yandaboo, by which the Ahom
King ceded a part of his territory to the British East India Company as a reward.
Thereafter British continuously expanded their administration in the region.

„The history of the North East until independence in 1947 is a history of

the expansion of British rule and of social, economic and political changes in
the region‟ (Inoue nd: 17). According to Elwin (1960), the British Government
was inclined, on the whole to leave the tribesmen alone, partly because the task
of administration, especially in the border areas, was difficult and unrewarding.
Until 1874, Assam was part of the Bengal Province. The two princely states of
Manipur and Tripura after British conquest in 1891 came under the British
paramountcy. The expansion of colonial rule into the hill region took shape in
reorganization and demarcation of geographical area as Gangmumei Kamei
points out, “another aspect of the British expansion was the conquest of the hill
tribes and establishment of their areas into various districts. For example, the
Naga areas were constituted into Naga Hills District and the Mizo (Lushai)
areas into Lushai Hills District. The tribes living in the southern slopes of
eastern Himalayas were brought under political control and later on brought
under the North-Eastern Frontier Agency

The British rule in India followed the policy of non-interference when it

came to the hill communities particularly in North East. Moreover, „the policy
of non-interference was followed by area expeditions that were resorted to in
order to quell opposition of the hill communities to the colonial extension of
commercial activities in and through their land ‟(Shimray 2001:3674).
Subsequently, tribal communities who predominantly inhabited the hills area
were forcefully merged with the princely state and into different districts for so
called „administrative convenience‟. Eventually the hill communities in North
East India were brought under different territorial administrative authorities and
hence the concept of territorial politics was thus introduced, hitherto unknown
to the hill communities (ibid.)

Colonial Rule and Administration of Tribals of North East India

The British were keen to survey the tribal area to know about its material
wealth, which could eventually be siphoned off to build industries back home
(Majumdar 1994 as cited in Saksena et al. 2006: xv). „The British were also
interested in studying tribal people and their institutions, not only for making an
academic contribution to the understanding of the other, but also for

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administering these societies better, so that peace could prevail in them and they
remain subservient to the colonial rule‟ (Saksena et al. 2006: xv).

Colonial ethnographers were deeply embedded with positivist approach

and as such they considered social facts as things as propounded by Durkheim.
For them „reality is out there‟ and one has to just merely collect it rather than
unravelling reality within the society. Elwin elaborates as to how the colonial
ethnographers collected their monographs and also the limitations of their
approach. As per Elwin, “the men who wrote these extracts found it difficult to
get information. The Naga languages in those days, before English or even
Assamese had become popular, were some of the most complex and difficult in
the world. Visitors to the Naga Hills nearly always had to go under escort and
Dr. J.H. Hutton points out how difficult this made inquiries even in his own
case as late as 1923. He and his party could go nowhere, he says, during a tour
in what is now called Tuesang without armed sentries standing over us like
warders guarding a recaptured convict. Captain W.B. Shakespear, who
commanded his escort and who should at least have had a sort of family feeling
for ethnology was sympathetic but took no risk” (Elwin 1969: 2).

British methods of data collection were not clearly mentioned in their

monographs, nevertheless one can conclude that participant observation would
not have been the case as they did not speak or understand local language which
they themselves admitted. Their methods of data collection were solely based
on ethnographic survey and non-participant observation. Overall there is a lack
of clarity as to how did the British know what they documented in their
monographs. The discourse generated by colonial ethnographers needs to be
critically revisited to examine the authenticity and interpretation of data by
comparing against the lived experiences of the North Eastern Tribes. As there is
very little written history of this region, it is essential to understand the meaning
attached to specific practices such as head hunting, various rituals and rites etc.
to capture the multiple epistemologies and position it against the interpretations
of these ethnographers.

Interpretation of Colonial Knowledge Production

There is a need to analyse some fundamental questions on the nature of

colonial administrator-ethnographers projection of social formations of North
East India.? What exist in the world of such tribals according to them etc?

For the administrator-cum-ethnographers, the socio-cultural life was a

field of study. Along with their official tours, they collected data with the help

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of interpreters and wrote extensively on what they observed in the field. Well
known colonial ethnographers who made an extensive documentation about
North East India include--- J.P. Mills, wrote on The Lhota Nagas (1922), The
Ao Nagas (1926) and The Rengma Nagas (1937), Minutes of Lord Cornwallis
(October 3, 1792) cited in Bhuyan, S.K. (1949). Anglo-Assamese Relation,
1771-1826. Guwahati, Alexander Mackenzie work on “History of the
Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal”
published in 1884.

These writings provided an account of physiological traits, village

economy, village administration, social organisation, customary laws and
practices, religious beliefs, rites of passages, folklore, domestic life, food habits,
dress, ornamentation, housing styles etc. These ethnographic accounts till date
remains widely quoted. In the absence of any other authentic written
documentation on the tribes either by the tribesmen themselves or by other
Indian writers these accounts are taken as an authoritative description of the
tribes. So influential are these accounts that they continue to be widely quoted
and referred to by academics across the North East.

Even though such accounts are fairly comprehensive documentation of

tribes and are invaluable, their writings in many ways are reflective of their
biasness and skewed valuation of people and societies, so much so that it out
rightly racist in many cases. One cannot but notice the air of cultural supremacy
in many of the colonial writings. As argued by Bhabha „The objective of
colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate
types based on racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems
of administration and instruction‟ (Bhabha 1994: 66).

To quote an example, the literature on Nagas by colonial ethnographers is

frequently flooded with terrifying stereotypes as „savages‟, „wild‟,
„untameable‟, „witch doctor‟, „heathen tribes‟, „barbaric‟, „uncivilised‟ etc.
These characterizations are best exemplified by their accounts of the head
hunting practices, physical beauty and personal character of the Nagas. “The
general perception of the British about the people in the Naga hills and beyond
was that they were all wild savages, continuously at war with each other,
seeking all the „heads‟ of their enemies as trophies” (Misra 2012: 63).

A holistic approach to understand multiple realities was ignored in

totality by colonial ethnographers as they objectified facts and undermined
contextualised generalisation. Identification of practices, issues and
understanding of meanings from the perspective of tribes is not reflected at all
throughout their ethnographic work, as the Colonial ethnographers observed as
a third party and solely relied on interpreters for their descriptive ethnography.

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Moreover, their description contains many negative connotations about the
people under observation and many a times they smack of deep prejudice and
disdain of their world view. To be able to capture the reality of social and
cultural practices of tribes or be it any society, one needs to be embedded
deeply into the field, take the position of tribal epistemology rather than just
treating the subjects as things.

Conclusion

What makes research different from a work of fiction or everyday

knowledge is its methodology. No research would be considered as good
research without its methodology or the logic of inquiry. It is natural that the
debate on different approach of research will emerge as we are dealing with
human society with all its complexities. While engaging on knowledge
production and discourse, neither methodologies nor methods are constructed or
chosen in isolation from ontological and epistemological positions. Thus, the
way we get at knowledge and the techniques we use to collect evidence are
directly related to our image of reality and the way we think we can know it
(Jayaram 1989, 2006). Smith (2005) argued that „the notion of research as an
objective, value-free and scientific process for observing and making sense of
human realities is taken for granted by many social scientist‟. It is also true
when it come to research on tribes by various scholars; often their
epistemological position tends to be of researchers and not on the standpoint of
researched.

While researching on tribes by anthropology, the very term tribe becomes

synonymous with problem or backwardness in the eyes of researcher.
Accordingly research questions are framed around the problem, and tribals are
blamed for their backwardness, being disinclined to modernity, etc. For us, the
issue is not just that we are blamed for our own failures but that it is also
communicated to us, explicitly or implicitly, that we ourselves have no
solutions to our own problem (Smith 2005). It remains a challenge to confront
the popular tribal discourse as postulated by anthropologist or any other
researchers who do not as yet give credence to the world view of the
„researched‟. Another crucial area of contestation on the methodology of
anthropologists is attachment of meanings and interpretation of tribal folklore,
folk tales, narratives etc. as the vocabularies of tribals cannot be truly presented
in third language and vice versa. The essence of meanings diverts it away from
the original concept when it get translated in the process of research. This is
also due to the fact that the vocabularies of researchers and researched are
limited and cannot be replaced. So given the situation of tribal oral history and

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non availability of tribal script, how do anthropology comes to know what they
know and claimed to know in totality? To unravel this aspect, one need to be
culturally sensitive and comes out from within.

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