The concept of ‘tribe’ in India is a beleaguered one, and shares overlapping definitions with a number of nomenclatures-‘adivasis’, ‘indigenous people’, and even ‘Scheduled Tribes’. For centuries, over widely dispersed territories, groups of communities were subjected to very similar inimical processes that led to their destitution. First Citizens engages with the political and historical processes which go into the ...
Dishonoured by History: ‘Criminal Tribes’ and British Colonial Policies
In this path-breaking study, Meena Radhakrishna traces the history and implications of a piece of colonial legislation 'the Criminal Tribes Act. She examines the changing notions of crime and criminality over a period of time, and shows how traditional prejudice against gypsies combined with realpolitik on the one hand, and with science on the other, to feed into the category 'hereditary criminal'. Focussing on the itinerant trading community of ...
