Explain how the tribues of the north east region were brought into the mainstream of the country by our first prime minister pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
Answers
INTEGRATING TRIBAL PEOPLE INTO INDIAN MAINSTREAM
(With special reference to Nehru’s approach and the formation of a hill states in North East India)
The task of integrating tribal people into the mainstream of Indian society was extremely complex. It is due to the fact that they lived in different parts of India, speaking different languages with distinct cultures. According to 2001 Census, the tribal population reached 84,326,240 (constituting 8.2% of the total population) from different tribal communities. They were spread over different parts of India and the greatest concentration was in Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra, Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka. These states were having larger number of scheduled tribes accounting 83.2% of the total Scheduled Tribe population of the country. The north eastern states like Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and others like Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar and Tamil Nadu account for another 15.3% of the total Scheduled Tribe population.
Except the north eastern states, the tribal peoples are minority in their own states, but in the north eastern states, they lived mostly in the hilly areas while the non-tribal peoples were concentrated in the plain area.
During the colonial period, a number of merchants, money-lender, landlords, petty officials etc. coming from the non-tribal community disrupted the life of tribal people by acquiring their land, disrupting their traditional way of life, exploiting them in their own business at a lower cost etc. In this particular sense, Verrier Elwin comments that ‘…they(tribal people) suffered oppression and exploitation, for there soon came merchants and liquor-venders, cajoling, tricking, swindling them in their ignorance and simplicity until bit by bit their broad acres dwindled and they sank into the poverty in which many of them still live today..’ (See Bipan Chandra et.al India after Independence, p106)
From the above comments, it clearly shows that the tribal people suffered a lot from the non-tribal community. Therefore, the sufferings of tribal people particularly from the non-tribal led a number of uprisings and rebellion during the 19th and 20th century AD. For example, Santhal uprising, Munda uprising etc.
The Independence India laid a great emphasis on the preservation of the rich and distinct culture of the tribal people living in various parts of India. In this relations, what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru thought was that the capable of accommodating the uniqueness of tribal people into the mainstream of India. He also proposed to inspire them with confidence and to make them feel at one with India, and to make them realize that they are part of India and have an honoured place in it.
He never thinks about the assimilation and liquidation of distinct tribal culture into the India’s mainstream. Some of the thinker observed that there may be two approaches regarding the place to be accorded to tribal in Indian culture – firstly, the tribal people were to leave alone and let them stay as they were; secondly, assimilating them completely into India culture.
But Nehru completely disagrees and rejected the two approaches of isolating and assimilating the tribal people. To him, it was ‘one kind of insulting’ when they were left alone and isolated from the outside world. It was not possible and desirable to isolate them. The second approach as Nehru believes was, a path leading to the loss of social and cultural identity of the tribal people.
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