Political organization in tribals of Chhatisgarh State

Political organization in tribals of Chhatisgarh State : An
observation
By
Dr.Alok Chantia
Risley, as early as 1915, observed that all over India the tribes were gradually and
insensibly being transformed into castes (1915 : 72). According to him the stages of this
operation were difficult to trace because of the prevailing myth that things found today
did not come into existence yesterday but had been so from the beginning of time. In
spite of that scholars dealing with the Indian material struggled over the years to
understand this process. Many of them, however, were interested in establishing the line
that maintains the boundary between the tribes and castes and come out with various
arguments. Risley, in his analysis was not as much interested in delineating the boundary
between tribes and castes as he was in describing the various mechanisms of this process.
He did not develop any concept, though from an examination of his citations (1915 : 72-
75) one can very well appreciate the key factors like incorporation, substitution, rejection
and absorption through conversion that individually or in combination were made
responsible for regulating the transformation mechanism of tribes. Substitution, whether
immediate or delayed, seems to be the most fundamental factor here as the processes of
incorporation, rejection and absorption, in all practical situation, are intimate aided by the
mechanism of substitution, either latent or manifest.
The major concern of the present discussion is not to high light the intricacy of the
mechanism of transformations of tribals to the caste fold. The purpose of this paper, in
comparison, is restricted in the sense that it would examine only one half of the process,
that is differentiation of tribals, that too, with primary reference to the development of
authority structure only. In order to measure the degree of differentiation of various tribal
groups we would largely depend upon the conceptual tools like differentiation of
institution, dispersal of power, diversification of professions and distribution of roles that
have been partly or as a whole borrowed from Durkheim(1960). The phrase
differentiation of institution has been used more or less in the same sense in this paper as
that of Durkheim. Dispersal of power stands for expanse of offices holding powerr,
diversification of professions implies their amount of specialization, and distribution of
roles means discreteness of them. In addition, we would also examine sources of power,
tenure of office, transmission of power, functions of authority and interrelationships of
various power structures and endeavour to understand whether and how far these could
provide any corroborating evidence. Examples will be cited exclusively from a
synchronic study of seven tribal groups of Chhatisgarh State ( a new State, separated
from Bihar State). It is also a well known fact that after the independence, political
Structure of the villages across the country has been changed and tribal villages are not
an exception. Their original political structures are still maintained, while panchayati raj
is influencing its structure. The present paper is the study of present situation of political
system of following seven tribes of Chhatisgarh State.