TRIBAL TRANSFORMATION
Sociologists and anthropologists tend to see it as the end result of social change in tribal India. The tribal transformation is the transformation of any given tribe into a caste or just another socially stratified group, or the merging of the tribe in the peasantry. Some of the contacts of tribes with wider society are given below –
Acculturation:
When the culture of a tribe is engulfed by the culture of another tribe and thus, influenced to adopt certain changes. Under this process, the change is wider and deeper. For example, Hindu culture has engulfed the tribal culture to such an extent that most of the tribes have become Hindu in their reflection. Gond tribe presents the first example of this type of cultural change.
Assimilation:
Assimilation occurs when a culture, besides adapting to a particular change, assimilate with the adopting culture and thereby becomes an integral part of it. For example, Santhals of Bengal have experienced this type of cultural change.
Isolation:
Isolation among the tribes is to maintain a minimum contact with outsiders. Inside this area, administration should allow tribesmen to live their life with utmost possible happiness and freedom. To maintain their old tribal council and authority of village headman would be established. No non-tribal settling and no missionaries of any religion would be permitted to break up tribal life. To restore and maintain tribal culture, economic development would be given topmost priority.
It becomes difficult to question the assumption of loss of tribal identity in the study of tribes not as communities in their own right but in terms of affinity or non-affinity with mainstream communities.
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