Understanding Marginalisation

What Marginalisation Means

To be marginalised is to be forced to the fringes rather than the centre of social, economic and political life. It is never a single-axis problem: a group is excluded because it speaks a different language, follows different customs or religion, or is seen as poor and of 'low' status — and these strands reinforce one another. The result is denial of resources and opportunities and an inability to assert one's rights, producing lasting powerlessness relative to dominant sections that own land, wealth, education and political influence.

• Multi-dimensional: economic, social, cultural and political factors act together (ESCaPe).
• Markers of exclusion: language, customs, religion, poverty, 'low' social status, being seen as 'less human'.
• Often accompanied by hostility, fear and stereotyping of the group.
• The chapter studies two socially marginalised communities: Adivasis and Muslims.

Who Are the Adivasis

Adivasi literally means 'original inhabitants' — communities historically living in close association with forests. They form about 8% of India's population but are strikingly diverse, with over 500 distinct groups (Odisha alone has more than 60). Crucially, Adivasi societies typically have very little internal hierarchy, which makes them radically different from communities organised around jati-varna (caste) or ruled by kings.

• ~8% of India's population; 500+ groups; not a homogeneous community.
• Concentrated in the central-eastern belt (Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, MP, Odisha) and the North-East.
• Government term = Scheduled Tribes (ST), based on an official list; often clubbed with SCs.
• Mineral-rich Adivasi belts host Jamshedpur, Rourkela, Bokaro and Bhilai.

Culture, Religion and Language

Adivasi belief systems centre on the worship of ancestors and village and nature spirits — mountain-, river- and animal-spirits — with village spirits often venerated at sacred groves inside the village. Far from being isolated, Adivasi religions both absorbed and shaped dominant faiths: influenced by Shakta, Buddhist, Vaishnav, Bhakti and Christian traditions, while themselves shaping the Jagannath cult of Odisha and the Shakti-Tantric traditions of Bengal and Assam. Adivasis have their own languages, possibly as old as Sanskrit, and Santhali has the largest number of speakers.

• Sacred grove = community-protected forest patch of high biodiversity and ecological value.
• The 19th century saw substantial Adivasi conversion to Christianity.
• Santhali: largest speaker base, with magazines and e-zines.

Stereotyping of Adivasis

Mainstream India typically 'showcases' Adivasis only through colourful costumes, headgear and dance at functions and in films, while knowing little of their actual lives. This flattens rich, diverse communities into an image of the 'exotic, primitive and backward'. Such stereotyping wrongly blames Adivasis for being resistant to change and legitimises discrimination against them.

Forests, Development and Dispossession

Forests were the engine of every Indian empire — sources of iron, copper, gold, coal, diamonds, timber, medicinal herbs and even war-elephants — and until the mid-19th century Adivasis had knowledge of, access to and control over these vast tracts, so empires depended on them rather than ruling them. Over the last ~200 years, economic change, colonial forest policy and force by the State and private industry have pushed Adivasis off the forests into wage labour on plantations, construction sites and in industry, losing control of forest territory for the first time in history. From the 1830s, Adivasis from Jharkhand were moved in huge numbers to plantations across India and the world (Mauritius, the Caribbean, Australia); their labour built Assam's tea industry.

• Pre-colonial Adivasis: hunter-gatherers, nomads, shifting and settled cultivators — not powerless.
• 70 lakh Adivasis live in Assam today; ~5 lakh perished in 19th-century migrations.
• Adivasis use ~10,000 plant species (~8,000 medicinal) — knowledge lost with their land.

Displacement, Eviction and the Poverty Cycle

Adivasi homelands, rich in minerals, are repeatedly taken over — often forcibly and without due procedure — for mines, industry and dams, and their forests are turned into protected areas from which they are evicted. Official data show over 50% of those displaced by mining are tribals, rising to 79% across Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand; when they stay on in newly notified parks and sanctuaries they are branded 'encroachers'. Stripped of land, livelihood and food security, many migrate to cities for low-wage work and fall into a cycle of poverty, malnutrition and low literacy.

• WII (Nov 2023): 106 national parks (44,402.9 sq km) and 573 wildlife sanctuaries (123,762.56 sq km).
• 45% of rural and 35% of urban tribal groups live below the poverty line.
• Niyamgiri Hill (Kalahandi, Odisha): Dongria Kondh resist a bauxite-aluminium mine on their sacred mountain.
• Displacement costs more than income — it erases traditions, customs and knowledge systems.

Constitutional and Legal Safeguards (Static Scaffolding)

Though the NCERT chapter focuses on lived experience, UPSC expects you to anchor it in the constitutional-legal framework for Scheduled Tribes. STs are notified under Article 342 (defined in Article 366(25)); their areas are administered under the Fifth Schedule (Scheduled Areas) and the Sixth Schedule (Autonomous District Councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram) via Article 244. Self-governance and forest rights flow from PESA, 1996 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006, while the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 protects dignity — with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (1999) as nodal agency.

• FRA 2006 vests individual and community forest rights and Gram Sabha consent — central to the Niyamgiri verdict (SC, 2013).
• PESA 1996 extends Panchayati Raj to Scheduled Areas, empowering the Gram Sabha.
• Fifth vs Sixth Schedule: Sixth = NE Autonomous District Councils; Fifth = other Scheduled Areas.