A research student visits a hill village in central India. Elders tell her that their community once practised shifting cultivation on slopes it held in common. Over the generations, some families came to be counted within caste Hindu society at a low level of the hierarchy. More recently, a large reservoir for a power station flooded their best fields, and mines opened nearby, drawing workers mainly from distant towns. The student wants to understand both the older history of the community and its recent changes.
A scholar studying this community concentrates on the exploitative and political nature of its incorporation into caste Hindu society. Whose emphasis does her approach follow?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The later writers on the subject
Option (1) The early school of anthropologists — Incorrect. The early school of anthropologists stressed the cultural side of tribal absorption into the mainstream. A focus on exploitation and politics is the other emphasis, so her approach does not follow them.
Option (2) The later writers on the subject — Correct. The later writers concentrated on the exploitative and political nature of the incorporation of tribes into caste Hindu society. The scholar studies this same side of the community's absorption, so she follows the later writers.
Option (3) The 1960s advocates of a tribe-caste continuum — Incorrect. In the 1960s, those who argued for a continuum saw tribes as one end of a line with caste-based peasant society, only less stratified. Their debate asked whether tribes differ from castes, and it did not study exploitation in absorption.
Option (4) The 1960s defenders of a tribe-caste distinction — Incorrect. The 1960s opponents held that tribes were wholly different from castes because they had no notion of purity and pollution. They argued about cultural difference and did not study the politics of absorption.
NCERT (2026-27): “Tribe – The Career of a Concept … |