Exploring the Many Meanings of Being an Educated Tribal

Jayashree Doley | pp. 30-50

Abstract:
Scholarly literature on tribes, for a long time, has been reeling under a pervasive colonial and caste gaze, that has resulted in the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes about tribes among non-tribes and epistemological distortion in the way tribes themselves construct their existential concerns. Two kinds of concerns have generally seen tribes being accommodated in problematic ways – firstly, the discourse on modernity and change, which saw education as bringing tribes closer to the mainstream or towards secular values, and secondly, the theme of inequality, which tends to subsume tribal concerns within caste issues. It is therefore not surprising that whenever the term “tribal” is used colloquially, the notion of an “educated tribal” feels like an oxymoron to the general public, as if the process of education is inconsistent with the retainment of a tribal identity. This paper is an exploratory attempt to answer the question of what it means to be a tribal in Indian educational institutions. Tribes, I argue, are to be seen as a group of people who, while occupying a wide gamut of spaces and social locations, also have a distinct kind of social, political, economic and educational journey or movement, owing to their identity as tribes.

Keywords: Tribes, inequality, social change, higher education, tribal identity