Superiority is an illusion

By Richa Ekka

Richa Ekka is from Jamshedpur, India and is currently studying in the twelfth grade at Woodstock School, Mussoorie, India. She has written this research paper for her English class in which the students were supposed to write about a controversial topic that they are passionate about. Richa is interested in knowing about Adivasi growth and development.

Not being allowed to enter temples, to go to the church where everyone goes, to go to school, to get a promotion and to get a job. Not being able to drink water at the common well or dwell in the main city. To be denied admission to educational institutions, clubs and other public places. Being in a situation where you are forced to live a life of slavery and are treated like animals or even worse like objects. Not being allowed to stand up for your rights, not being allowed to marry the one you love. Not given an opportunity to progress in life and show people that you are not inferior to them. Not given a chance to voice your opinions or represent yourself. Not being able to follow your dreams and forced to continue the family business. Pulled down, stopped from development and made to feel lesser because of caste, color, or sex. These are cases of discrimination that people all over the world face on a daily basis. Every one of us at some point in our lives has been discriminated against. All of us face discrimination on the basis of race, caste, sex, color and nationality; and we don’t like it. Discrimination not only affects a country’s economic and political status but being discriminated against harms individuals as it obstructs growth, mentally and socially. Decades of discrimination has led to the underdevelopment of the indigenous people of India. The reservation provided by the Indian Government is not efficient enough to stop this discrimination and to help these “backward” people achieve social status that they deserve. It is the change in the attitude and perception of academics, educationalists and the general people of India that can stop discrimination and facilitate the economic and social growth of the people of the land.

When I was in third grade, I remember my mom pushing me to study hard because I am a tribal and was apparently not as smart as the other children in my class. I also remember being moved back to the third row from the first row for a singing performance and not being chosen for dance performances, even though I was better than the ones that got chosen. In ninth grade I was not selected for the school play because I am dark. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was afraid and insecure when people spoke about Scheduled Tribes or about me being a tribal. I thought that if people found out that I was tribal, they would not want to be my friend. I was scared that they would be mean to me. I was not proud of being a tribal because it brought me a lot of pain to be discriminated against. Being a tribal in India is equivalent to being Black or Native American in America or an Aboriginal in Australia. So many opportunities to discover myself were taken away from me because of bigotry.

In India, people who belong to scheduled tribes are made to feel inferior because of their economic status. Scheduled Tribes are communities of India that are recognized by the Indian constitution as requiring special support to overcome centuries of discrimination by mainstream Hindu society. Most of the Hindu society thinks that the people who belong to scheduled tribes are Shudras, who form the lowest strata of the caste system. Shudras were the manual workers who performed menial jobs. They lived outside the main village or city and were not allowed to drink water from public wells or to enter temples. They were not even allowed to accept anything from the Brahmins who belonged to the highest caste. And it was impossible for someone from the higher castes to marry a Shudra. Shudras were subject to social boycott as they were thought to be unclean for the work they did. This is a major misconception. Scheduled tribes were not part of the Shudra caste.

Tribals also known as “Adivasis”, literally means original inhabitants. Adivasis consist of the indigenous people of India. They are the people of the land. They lived in India even before the Aryans invaded around 1500 BC and long before the caste system started. The Adivasis were always geographically and socially isolated after the invasion of the Aryans, followed by the Muslims and then the British. They co- existed with nature in wild forests.

Tribals are an egalitarian society and to them land was a common resource free for anyone to use who needed it. In the beginning of 20th century the Government opened many regions for people to own in return for cultivating them. This has led to many non tribal people occupying large areas of land. By the time the tribal people formally got titles to own land they had lost a lot of land that was rightfully theirs. This further led many Tribals into become landless laborers for Zamindars (land lords) and thus becoming slaves. And this made a lot of Hindus believe that they were Shudras.
Now, the Tribals are spread across central, northeast and southern parts of India. There are a lot of tribal people in the states of Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Mizoram and Nagaland. The scheduled tribes constitute of more than fifty tribes.

Due to economic interest, voting blocs, and provision of privileges the determination of groups and individuals being tribal is controversial and complex. Many non tribal groups claim to be Adivasis. Despite all these controversies, Adivasis have specific traits that distinguish them from Indian communities. These traits ascertain Tribal rather than caste identities. These include language; every tribe has its own language. They are also religiously diverse as they have their own tribal religions such as animism, nature worship, tantric Shivaism. During the 19th century a significant number of tribal people converted to Christianity and Buddhism. But even after conversion they don’t lose their tribal identity. Other things that separate them from mainstream Indian society is their social organization, economic patterns, self identification and geographic locations. Tribes that are recognized as Scheduled Tribes live in mountainous regions away from caste settlements and usually speak a language which is recognized as tribal.

Tribal people are discriminated against relying on the belief that they are Shudras. They are also discriminated against as they are considered to be dumb, this is because for decades they have lived in forests and have had no access to educational institutions. Tribals in central India have darker complexion compared to other Indians and thus they are discriminated against because of their skin color.

After three years of Independence, in 1950 the Government of India, the category of Scheduled Tribes was established. The modern status of caste system in India consists of the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Other Backward classes and the General. There is a list of scheduled Tribes recognized as tribal under the constitution of India. Tribals constitute 8.3% of India’s total population, which is more than 84 million people according to 2001 census. But these numbers are shaky as there are huge fluctuations in the population of Tribals as they live in remote areas and have no proper access to health facilities and other amenities. The Scheduled Tribes are provided with privileges and safeguards generic cialis cheap in order to protect their ethnicity and to help them develop.

The framers of the constitution understood that there are communities that were suffering from backwardness due to age old practices and decades of discrimination. Thus they made special provisions for Scheduled Tribes to protect and promote their social, economic, cultural and educational interests. When tribal people wanted to take a step towards development they were socially unable to get government jobs, share in elected offices and educational institutions. Therefore it was necessary to have a policy for reservations to ensure the participation of the weaker sections in the government as well as the society.

Constitutional safeguards consist of social, economic, political, cultural and educational safeguards. The social safeguards prohibit traffic in human beings and forms of similar forced labor and provide that anybody breaching this provision will be subject to punishment in accordance with law. This is because many Tribal people are landless labors who have owners and are sold to other landlords. Article 24 of social safeguards also provides that children below the age of fourteen should not be employed to work. As tribal children are poor they do jobs in factories and have to work long hours and are paid meager wages; this harms their mental growth and future.

Economic safeguards for Scheduled Tribes include grants from the consolidated fund which promotes the welfare of the Scheduled Tribes. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs provides funds for the development projects undertaken by State Governments for raising the level of administration of Scheduled areas. These grants are also used for up gradation of crucial infrastructure needed to join the tribal areas with the rest of the country. The most important aim is to create opportunities of employment, income generations and health facilities.
Under article 330 of political safeguards there are reservation of seats for people of the Scheduled Tribes in the House of the People. Political safeguards also include reservation of seats for Scheduled Tribes in the Legislative Assemblies of the States, Lok Sabha, State Vidhan Sabhas, and in Panchayats. Provisions can also be made for reservations in posts in favor of a Scheduled Tribe citizens which in the opinion of the state is inadequately represented in the services in the State.
Educational and cultural safeguards provide that any sections of citizens residing in India have a distinct language, culture or script of its own has the right to conserve it. Every state and local authority within a state should attempt to provide instructions in the tribal language at the primary stage of education to children belonging to scheduled tribes. The educational safeguards empower the State to make special provisions for the advancement of scheduled tribes. This has led to the reservation of seats in engineering, technical, medical, scientific and specialized educational institutes for Tribal people.

These constitutional safeguards have been around for fifty eight years now, but there has been no improvement in the status of Scheduled tribes in India. The social safeguards have not made a difference as landlords continue to sell laborers to other landlords in remote areas where these transactions cannot be traced and stopped. They do this because they believe that these tribal laborers are inferior and have no rights as they are owned by landlords. Economic provisions have not worked because the money from the funds go into the pockets of greedy politicians and local authorities. Less than half of the money reaches to start projects. Therefore the projects are not very successful and often die before they are even established. People in government offices fill the seats that should be given to Tribal people by giving it to people of their own caste. Political safeguards seem to work as the Government needs to be transparent about the representation of Scheduled Tribes to all of India. But in local governments Tribal people inadequately represented. The cultural safeguards are difficult to keep up with as it is hard to find teachers who know the tribal language as well as the national language.
The educational provisions for Scheduled Tribes have aroused many protests in the past few years in India when the Indian Government decided to raise the reservation of Scheduled Tribes to 7%. This too has not been very efficient to increase the advancement process of Scheduled tribes. This is because high ranking institutes prefer not to have any Tribals in their institution rather than having mediocre ones. These seats reserved for Tribal people are not filled in many educational institutions. They do this because they think that these students are not smart enough and will ruin the name of the respected institution. In the process of admissions, educational institutes have to increase Tribal students’ marks by 15%. Many Universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University when increasing the marks of Tribal students, increase the marks of non tribal students too by 15% which completely neutralizes the impact that the increase in marks is suppose to have. This increases the chances of admission a mediocre non tribal student more than the chances of admission of a tribal student. The admissions department cheats the reservation system and ends up taking less than the provided number of tribal students. They do all this to prevent this backward class to progress because they think they are inferior and dumb.

The failure of these constitutional safeguards show that reservations does not help the Tribal people of India till the time general people, academics and educationalist are willing to give tribal people a chance to advance in life. The ways of doing this can be by awareness about the Scheduled Tribes. People need to know that Tribal people are not Shudras but the original inhabitants of India. They need to understand about the concern of the framers of the constitutions for the backward classes. They need to know that Tribal people have special provisions and violations of these provisions are punishable in accordance with the law. They also need to understand that these people need to develop for India to become a developed nation. To stop discrimination people need to realize that everyone deserves a chance to grow. They need to comprehend that no one is inferior or superior; we all equal human beings who deserve human rights. The so called majority of India is scared to lose its authority and power, its majority- ness. Therefore it is trying to block people who are trying to advance.

If Mahatma Gandhi took almost seventy years to realize that Tribal people deserve equal rights and opportunities then the general people of India will probably take more time to realize this. While discriminating prescription medicine against Tribal people, the general people of India should consider that they will not be a majority everywhere they go. Once they move out of their country or even their region they will be a minority and be discriminated against. In the tribal language of Oraon, there is a concept of “Diku” which means the others or the enemies. This concept suggests that anybody who does not belong to your tribe is an outsider and will discriminate against you. In real life this concept is not only true for the scheduled tribes but can also be associated with the general people of India. As once they are out of their majority zone they will be discriminated against.

I now understand why my mother pushed me to study hard when I was young. She is a woman who has faced discrimination patiently. She had to go for promotion interviews for three years consecutively to get a promotion to the next level. It has been so hard for her to climb the industrial ladder of success that she wants me to prove that Tribal people are not dumb. She made me strong to face discrimination. Now after being discriminated against for eighteen years, I do not even care about what people think about my skin color or my scholastic aptitude. I just do my best and prove to them that I am an intelligent Tribal person. Now that I understand my Tribal identity, I am not scared of it anymore. I am proud of it. And I am waiting with all my hope for the people of India to appreciate the identity of indigenous people, the right of Tribals to develop in India’s present economic strata and to realize that we are all equal human beings.

Source:
M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pg 479
www.planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/10th/volume2/v2_ch4_2.pdf

http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2004/05/thomas-sowell-on-caste-reservations.html