As millions celebrated Vimukta Diwas on the 70th year of the enactment of Denotified Tribes Act of 1952 on August 31, I want to take us through the following thematic and conceptual issues around the same.
The colonial British Indian government had enacted a highly discriminatory law, the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) in the year 1871 to criminalise and label certain sections of the Indian subcontinent as ‘hereditary criminals’. According to Renke Commission 2008, among 1,500 nomadic communities, a total 191 groups were labelled as criminal tribes by this legislation. The said legislation was primarily composed of two parts. While Part I of the CTA aimed at criminalising various nomadic tribes and communities, Part II advocated for the extermination of the Indian transgender community who were referred to as Hijras. The law had branded generations of nomadic tribes (NTs) as ‘criminals by birth,’ which came to an end only after the enactment of the Denotified Tribes Act in 1952 on August 31. However, the criminalisation of LGBTQIA+ communities by the law continued until the revocation of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code recently. Yet, these sections (both NTs and trans* groups) are the target of a great amount of societal stigma.
According to the renowned French philosopher Michel Foucault, the criminalisation of homosexuality or what is called ‘unnatural sex’ was an implicit aspect of the Victorian era morality. The same is reflected through the criminalisation of the hijra community by the provisions of the CTA 1871. Victorian morality had also been a harbinger of stigmatising life in mobility. However, it is a tendency of every settled society to treat nomads, itinerants, peripatetics and vagrants with suspicion, as their loyalties, vested interests come under constant scrutiny by the sedentary societies.
Yet, it is important to recognise that the state-led criminalisation of nomadic tribes is an outcome of the Victorian age. The European colonisation which set out during this era was also accompanied by such sedentarisation of mobile groups as happened in the case of ‘Roma Gypsies’ of both Western and Eastern parts of Europe. The colonialist had set up Salvation armies in their own dominions for a perpetrated integration project of itinerant and mobile social groups. The same could stand as an important reason in the case of the Indian subcontinent, however, not in its entirety.
The criminal tribe label of various nomadic groups is of older vintage in the subcontinent, predating many centuries before the dawn of British colonialism. An Ukrainian-born Britain-based anthropologist, Anastasia Piliavasky has recently argued that even though many nomadic groups were systematically registered as criminals during the period between 1871 and 1950 while the colonial state was in power in India, and despite these communities being forcibly settled into labour colonies, what we now know as Cantonment areas, where they were subjected to various punitive and surveillance measures, the idea of criminal tribes or the stigma attached to the identities of itinerant communities stretches far beyond the colonial archives.
The stigma of criminality attached to nomadic tribes is as old as the Indian caste system, possibly an implicit structure and trait of the caste system itself. Caste prescribes and sanctions different customs and moral practices to people from different social groups. Its inhumane practices such as untouchability, discrimination, exploitation and otherisation is divinely ordained through the religious texts. The several thousand years old caste-Hindu civilization has strictly followed and observed the codes and dictates of such texts. Even though the Victorian age moral was consolidated into legislations such as CTA 1871, it was the shastras and relevant texts that prescribed the nature of treatment of NTs in the case of the Indian subcontinent, particularly in the pre-colonial past. The institution of caste is the real evil that prescribes the ordering of these groups in the society.
Piliavasky in her works also stresses on the vast array of writings, from ancient legal treatises and mediaeval epics to early modern travel accounts. She suggests that the Brahmins' brigands such as "wilderness books" (Aranyakas), the mythological epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, the corpus of ancient and mediaeval stories (Kathas), the dramas, and Jataka, in many ways provide references to organised banditry and thieving on a communitarian level and further criminalisation of those groups. Therefore, the otherisation and placing of Nomadic Tribes outside the caste order by also restricting interactions with them on an economic level such as in haats and bazaars has been a major feature of the caste system.
This also reflects the suspicions of sedentary caste-Hindu society, especially those in the higher rungs of the hierarchy, against mobile communities. While abolition of the caste system both through Law and practice was supposed to be of paramount importance to the post-colonial state building project, the state through its integration project of NTs has only managed to bring them on the peripheries of and at the bottom of the caste pyramid as I see it.
It is difficult to classify Nomadic groups in India into a uniform category of tribes. A great many nomadic groups possess features and traits that are either identical or equivalent to that of the tribes and indigenous-Adivasi communities. Yet, they have heterogeneous groups of communities with diverse cultural features. The existing classification of nomads uses the following nomenclatures:
1. Mainland Tribes
2. Nomadic Tribes and Denotified Tribes (NT/DNTs)
3. Nomadic Social Groups or Communities
4. Semi-Nomadic Groups
5. Gypsies
6. Itinerant Communities
7. Vagrants
8. Pastoralists
9. Mobile Artisan and Performer Groups
10. Peripatetic Traders
11. Caravanis, and so on.
It is imperative for the academic community to perhaps avoid a uniform categorisation of these groups and embrace heterogeneity as the defining feature.
Itinerancy, pastoralism, caravan trade for erstwhile-nomads were not merely a source of life but had a totemic importance. The colonial market economy for sure hobbled these activities of the nomads resulting in their sedentarisation. However, for forest dwelling nomadic tribes and other mobile performing groups such as snake charmers, the post-colonial laws have been the real oppressors. Laws such as the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 displaced many of them from their occupations. While it was also important for them to opt for better yielding economic activities which are unharming to the natural environment, their integration into the labour market remained vague.
Being the target of stigma of criminality and upholding the identity of caste outsiders, they always suffer discrimination in opportunity, and at times, fail to receive any access to the labour market since the market is not ignorant of social identities. The centuries long criminalisation has adversely affected these groups in livelihood opportunities by forcing some to opt for a sex-work tradition. This has enabled the conception of the sex-work tradition as a caste-based occupation such as in the case of Prernas in the outskirts of Delhi, the Bedias, Nats, Bawarias and others in the rest of India. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to argue that the sedentarised-nomadic tribes or the Denotified Tribes and communities, thus, stand at the rear end of social hierarchies in both rural and urban spaces today. A few studies have pointed out that the stigma attached to their identity in which ‘criminality is perceived as a hereditary virtue' also remains intact with the legislations such as 'Habitual Offender Act' in several states of India.
Professor Ajay Dandekar in one of his works argues that the history of policy initiatives on the issues of Nomadic and Denotified Tribes (DNTs) is basically the history of non-action on the recommendations of the expert committees in post Independence India, resulting from a mindset that is a throwback to the colonial logic and its acceptance. Professor Meena Radha Krishna sees it differently. For her, the post-colonial Indian state saw these social groups as sufficiently underdeveloped and deprived, and considered the possibility of covering them under its welfare schemes by providing them access to reservations in education and employment. Since the Affirmative Action Policy was already in place at the time of de-notifying these communities that are labelled criminals under the colonial state policy, they were gradually accommodated within the reservation policy. As a result, there is no uniform listing of these groups. They are in some states listed in the Scheduled Castes (SCs) category, and in others as Scheduled Tribes (STs), and in Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in some cases. However, these reflections of Meena Radha Krishna fail to accommodate a vast majority of social groups that are left beyond the ambit of state policy. Many such communities are still struggling to access citizenship rights in the country.
August 31 marked the 70th year of the enactment of the Denotified Tribes Act. The idea of liberation has been relegated to this day by scholars, activists and DNTs themselves. Vimukta in Vimukta Diwas refers to liberation. Despite continued marginalisation of nomadic, denotified tribes and communities, it is important to celebrate this day since it marks an important juncture in the history of these groups. However, the road to their emancipation from the clutches of inequalities and societal stigma still lies ahead.
Manohar Boda is a research scholar in the Centre for the Study of Law & Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
This piece was first published in 'Here's the Thing', an exclusive newsletter for TNM members.