Changing Tribal Life in British Orissa

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The book traces the British Government’s policy towards the aboriginal people of Orissa, particularly the Kandhs, and the reaction it caused in the people. The British effort to "tame" the tribals by armed measures was followed by their effort to "civilise the savages" by education and widen the scope and scale of their acculturation with "civilised" people in the neighbouring tracts. This caused a great change in tribal life, society and polity. Tribal reaction to this externally-induced change varied between stubborn resistance and grudging acquiescence, depending on the pace and extent of the change. The policy of "civilising the savages" was later changed to the policy of conseving "tribalism", the Government realising the damage done to tribal tradition and psyche. The study of the British tribal policy is worthwhile because the main problem faced by the administrators then persists even today–the problem of how to improve tribal life without causing, as an inevitable outcome, progressive detribalisation; how to modernise tribal life without detroying in the process the distinctive features of tribal tradition and culture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kanchanmoy Mojumdar

Kanchanmoy Mojumdar has given lectures and seminars at Australian and American universities under the Commonwealth Universities Interchange Programme and Fulbright (indo-American Cultural Exchange) Fellowship scheme respectively. In 1996 and 2000 he taught a course on the history of Modern India at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. He was a Reader at Behrampur University, Orissa and later Professor and Head of the Department of History, Nagpur University. His publications include: Indo-Nepalese Relations in the Nineteenth Century (Calcutta, 1973), Political Relations between India and Nepal, 1877-1923 (New Delhi, 1973), Nepal and the Indian Nationalist Movement (Calcutta, 1975, Changing Tribal Life in British Orissa (New Delhi, 1998).