Chapter 1, Introduction

The adivasi world figured in official perceptions as the backdrop of the counter-insurgency measures of the colonial state and the adivasi was portrayed as a savage, whether ‘criminal’ and wreaking terror in the countryside, or ‘noble’ and living a life of Arcadian simplicity in an egalitarian society. Through such models, British administrators sought to justify their presence and portray themselves as the protectors of life and security in the region. In course of the nineteenth century, colonial ethnographers came to rely largely on the ‘scientific’ criteria of ethnology—‘physical character’, ‘language’, ‘civilization’ and ‘religion’. Nonetheless, there was no fixed colonial ‘tribal’ policy, nor was there a single set of ideas concerning tribes, generated either by the colonial power itself or arising out of a process of interaction and adaptation. Instead, we find that several, often contradictory policies towards the indigenous people emerged in course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These are illustrated in the contributions to this volume.