India's tribal belt refers to contiguous areas of settlement of

Tribal people The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...

of India, that is, groups or tribes that remained genetically homogenous as opposed to other population groups that mixed widely within the Indian subcontinent. The tribal population in India, although a small minority, represents an enormous diversity of groups. They vary in language and linguistic traits, ecological settings in which they live, physical features, size of the population, the extent of acculturation, dominant modes of making a livelihood, level of development and

social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...

. They are also spread over the length and breadth of the country though their geographical distribution is far from uniform. A majority of the Scheduled Tribe population is concentrated in the eastern, central and western belt covering the nine States of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh,

Chhattisgarh Chhattisgarh (, ) is a landlocked state in Central India. It is the ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the seventeenth most populous. It borders seven states – Uttar Pradesh to the north, Madhya Prade ...

, Jharkhand,

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. About 12 percent inhabit the North-eastern region, about five percent in the Southern region and about three percent in the Northern States.

Northwest India

The Tribal Belt of Northwest and east India includes the state of Rajasthan. The tribal people of this region have origins which precede the arrival of the

Ancestral North Indians The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...

and are linked to the

Ancestral South Indians The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...

. These people are thought to stem back to the Harappan civilization of the

Indus Valley The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, ...

, the oldest traceable civilization of the Indian subcontinent which flourished between 3500BC and 2500BC. The tribes of north-west India were once strongly matrilineal societies. The changing fates and fortunes of these people has caused a gradual evolution to a more patriarchal code of living. These days the tribal societies generally follow the rule of

patriliny Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...

, but there remain many examples of organised matriarchy in existence in the tribal zones to this day. It is the women who organise matters such as relationships and marriages, the inheritance of land, and the distribution of wealth.

South Gujarat Tribal Belt

The Southern Tribal Belt, popularly known as Dang, a forbidden territory covered with thick forests in the region of the South Gujarat. Located on the foothills of the Sahyadri range of mountains, it has green pastures, narrow roads, deep valleys, and wild animals. During the monsoon one can see water springs and a green carpet of diverse flora/fauna. Spread across the lush green region of South Gujarat Tribal Belt said to be Kashmir of Gujarat. live the tribes of Bhil, Kholcha, Bhel, Nayaka, Koknas, Vedch, Gamits, Warlis, and Chaudaris. Dakshin Gujarat Adivasi Nanivahial Ashram

Dakshin Gujarat Adivasi Nanivahial Ashram

Dakshin Gujarat Adivasi Sevamandal Daksin Gujarat Adivasi Sevamandal is an Indian non-profit educational organization founded to serve tribes in Dakshin Gujarat tribal belt of Dang District, located in South Gujarat, India, on the foothills of the Sahyadri Range. History Jus ...

is an NGO founded by the Gandhian philosopher Premshankar Bhatt and his daughter Urmillaben Bhatt in 1948 to spread education in the deep forest of the South Gujarat Tribal Belt. It is registered as a trust under the

Bombay Trust Act Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

. It provides education to South Gujarat Tribals through a resident school (Ashramshalla) which offers free education, lodging and boarding. The Tribal Belt of Gujarat today has the highest literate tribal population in India.

Central & Eastern Tribal Belt India

The Central India Tribal Belt stretches from Gujarat in the west up to Assam in the east across the states of Madhya Pradesh,

and Jharkhand. It is among the poorest regions of the country. Over 90% of the Belt's tribal population is rural, with primitive agriculture.

Hinduization and Rajputization

Bhangya Bhukya Bhangya Bhukya is an Indian historian who has made a significant contribution to the study of Banjara and Gond tribes of India. He is the author of several books including ''Subjugated Nomads: The Lambadas Under the Rule of the Nizams'' (2010) ...

notes that during the final years of British rule in India, while colonial education efforts led to the westernization of the hilly areas of central India, the regions also parallelly underwent the Hinduization and Rajputization processes. The

Gond people The Gondi (Gōndi) or Gond or Koitur are a Dravidian ethno-linguistic group. They are one of the largest tribal groups in India. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Prad ...

and their chiefs started doing the "caste–Hindu practices" and frequently claimed the " Rajput, and thus kshatriya status". The British colonial government, for their part, supported these claims as they viewed the adivasi society to be less "civilized" than the caste society and believed that association of the adivasi with the castes would make the adivasis "more civilized and sober" and "easier for the ritishstate to control". Bhukya also points out that central India's "Raj Gond families" had already adopted the religious and social traditions of the Rajputs before the period of the British colonial rule, and there were "matrimonial relations" between a number of Gond and Rajput Rajas. However, the colonial government's policies of offering "'' zamindari'' rights, village headships and ''patelships''" fueled the process. According to Patit Paban Mishra, "the 'ksatriyaization' of tribal rulers and their surroundings, resulted in the Hinduization of tribal areas".

Sources

References

External links

Article at Naturecamps.co.inPrograms at Centre for Environmental Protection & Cultural Exchange (CEPCE)
{{DEFAULTSORT:India Tribal Belt Ethnic groups in India Scheduled Tribes of India Lands inhabited by indigenous peoples Belt regions