Showing posts with label adivasi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adivasi. Show all posts

Monday, January 17, 2011

Adivasi or 'tribal'?

The Lonely Planet guide to Northeast India (2nd edition, 2009) features a pathetic 50 pages (!) on the seven main Northeast States of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh. The remaining 330 pages are devoted to Kolkata, West Bengal, Sikkim and Orissa, with a section on Bangladesh and Nepal too. But the book really is disappointing if you're looking for information on travel in what I think of what I think of 'Northeast India'.

But that's not the only reason I'm disappointed with the book. Throughout the book, the editors have decided to use the term Adivasi to mean 'tribal person' (as defined in their glossary). Now, in other parts of India, the term Adivasi is used to refer to all tribal people, but in the Northeast (which the guide claims to be about), the term is used exclusively to refer to the descendants of people who were brought to Assam by the British to work in the tea plantations. They are treated as a separate 'tea-tribe' ethnic group, as demonstrated by this 'traditional Adivashi house' (like in Nepali, sh and s have merged into one sound) at the Kohora ethnic village.


If you're looking for an umbrella term for the other ethnic groups of the region, the term tribal is used more commonly, even if it does sound terribly political incorrect and colonial to Western ears. There is still sadly the connotation of people who are backward and primitive and unfortunately, it's a view that doesn't look set to change in the near future.