India's Constitution avoids the word Adivasi, though millions call themselves by it
Adivasi means roughly 'beginning inhabitant', a name tribal activists coined in the 1930s to claim a shared indigenous identity. When India's Constitution was drafted, B. R. Ambedkar chose the legal label Scheduled Tribe instead, arguing that courts needed a precise list rather than an open-ended political word.
The word joins the Sanskrit roots adi, origin, and vasin, dweller. Other names exist, such as vanavasi for forest dwellers or girijan for mountain people, but Adivasi specifically asserts that its bearers were a region's first inhabitants. Activist groups in what is now Jharkhand popularised it, Thakkar Bapa pushed it as an all-India term, and Jaipal Singh Munda of the Adivasi Mahasabha argued for it in the Constituent Assembly. Ambedkar replied that a general term let anyone include anyone, whereas an enumerated schedule gave rights a firm legal footing.
Numbers are large. The 2011 Census put Scheduled Tribes at about 104.2 million people, around 8.6% of India, and a 2010 estimate gave Bangladesh roughly 2 million, about 1.1% of its population. About three quarters of India's tribal population lives in a belt running from eastern Gujarat and Rajasthan to western West Bengal: Bhils dominate the west, Gonds and Khonds the centre, and Munda-speaking groups such as the Santals and Hos the Chota Nagpur Plateau. Four northeastern states, including Mizoram and Nagaland, are over 90% tribal.
Usage is patchy. Many northeastern communities prefer 'Indigenous' or 'Tribe', in Assam the word mainly covers tea workers of central Indian origin, and in Sri Lanka it refers to the Vedda. India itself treats all its citizens as indigenous, which is why it declined ILO Convention 169 in 1989 yet voted for the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The claim of original habitation is contested. Historian David Hardiman noted that many such groups migrated into their present lands within recorded history. Genetic evidence suggests many communities formed during or after the Indus Valley Civilisation, mixing ancestry from several language families; only Andaman Islanders stayed isolated for over 25,000 years. Religion varies too, with animism, Hinduism and Christianity common, and Sarnaism widespread in Jharkhand.
Source: Adivasi
