In stinging observations on the “total neglect” of the tribal population, mainly spread over the Maoist-infested areas of the country, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said their marginalisation for thousands of years has resulted in reduction of their population to mere 8 per cent though they were the real “original inhabitants” of India.
Referring to their continuous “oppression and neglect” even after 60 year of independence, a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra reminded the government of its “constitutional obligations” to provide equal opportunities to all its citizens irrespective of their caste and creed.
“A special protection is required to be given to historically disadvantaged groups so that they can be uplifted from their poverty and low social status,” the Supreme Court observed while dealing with a case of “violation” of the right of a tribal woman by some accused from the upper castes in Maharashtra and the state government not even bothering to file an appeal in the case in the Supreme Court.
“As a group of most marginalised and vulnerable communities in India, they are characterised by high level of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, disease and landlessness,” the top court said.
The court cited several international research papers on India’s demography to suggest that the 8 per cent population of Gond, Bhil, Santhal and others confined mostly to the areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan were the “original inhabitants” of India.
“India is a country of old immigrants in which people have been coming in over the last ten thousand years or so. Probably about 92 per cent people living in India today are descendants of immigrants, who came mainly from north-west, and to a lesser extent from the Northeast,” the judges observed.
“Who are the original inhabitants of India? At one time it was believed that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants. However, this view has been considerably modified subsequently, and now the generally accepted belief is that the original inhabitants of India were the pre-Dravidian aborigines i.e. ancestors of present tribals or adivasis,” the Supreme Court said quoting extensively from The Cambridge History of Ancient India.