Tribe: Definition

TRIBE

Tribal India lives in the forest hills and naturally isolated regions known as a rule by different names, meaning either the people of forest and hill, the original inhabitants, and so on. The popular names are Vanyajati (caste of forest), Vanvasi (inhabitants of forest), Pahadi (hill dwellers), Adimjati (original communities),  Adivasi (first settlers), Janjati (folk people), Adimjati (primitive people), Anusuchit Janjati (Scheduled tribe) and so on. Among all these terms, Adivasi is known most extensively, and Anusuchit Janjati Scheduled Tribe (ST) is the constitutional name covering all of them. The terms of references for the study of tribes in India should be the same terms used by the tribal people to identify themselves and by which they are known and addressed by other people. Till today some of the tribes have, more or less, retained their separate social identity and, on the whole, can be regarded as comparatively isolated and economically backward, they have been placed under the category of Scheduled Tribes.

DEFINITION OF TRIBE

1. According to the Imperial Gazetteer, “A tribe is a collection of families bearing a common name speaking a common dialect, occupying or professing to occupy a common territory and is not usually endogamous though originally it might have been so.”

2. According to Gillin and Gillin, “A tribe is a group of local communities, which lives in a common area, speaks a common dialect and follows a common culture.”

3. As Ralph Linton says, “In its simplest form the tribe is a group of bands occupying a continuous territory and having a feeling of unity deriving from numerous similarities in culture and certain community of interests.”

4. According to Rivers, “A tribe is a social group of simple kind, the members of which speaks a common dialect and act together in such common purpose as warfare.”

5. According to D.N. Majumdar, “A tribe is a collection of families, bearing a common name, members to which occupy the same territory, speak the same language and observe certain taboos regarding marriage profession or occupation and have developed a well assessed system of reciprocity and mutuality of obligation.”

(Any one definition)