Model answer & approach
- How did Colonial Policies for the tribes affected their socio-economic conditions in India ? Discuss. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
By turning land, forest and chiefship into property and revenue, colonial policy broke the basis of tribal subsistence.
Body
1. The main lines of policy: Revenue settlements extended saleable title into tribal tracts; the Forest Acts of 1865, 1878 and 1927 made the state owner of the forests; and tribal areas were administratively segregated as excluded areas.
2. What they did to tribal economic life: Land passed to outsiders as moneylenders and traders foreclosed on debt, and khuntkatti tenure in Chotanagpur gave way to tenancy and bondage. Forest reservation criminalised shifting cultivation, and the displaced went to Assam's tea gardens and the mines as indentured labour.
3. What they did to social and political life: Chiefs became revenue agents, hollowing out tribal councils, while mission schooling produced new divisions. The result was insurrection, from the Santhal hul of 1855 to Birsa Munda's ulgulan, which forced the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908.
Conclusion
Protection came late, after the economy it protected had been broken open.
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