One of the important projects launched by the British government in the late 19th century was the preparation of a detailed census of the demographic profile of the Indian population across the country. Unable to understand the cultural pluralism that characterizes Indian unity in variety, the census was riddled with problems of definition and categories. This book is a comprehensive ethnographic account of seven tribes in Punjab, classified as ‘criminal’ by the British administration, in order to make some sense of their alleged criminality: Bauria, Bazigar Banjara, Bangala, Barad, Gandhila, Nat and Sansi. The problem of definition of tribe and the issue of criminality are discussed critically. More importantly, the book shows that, contrary to the claims of the Punjab government, these ‘ex-criminal’ tribes still exist and constitute the poorest of the poor in an otherwise prosperous state. It also addresses to a significant current development of various Denotified Tribes’ Associations in Punjab (and other states as well) that have already started raking their long pending demand of Scheduled Tribe status. It is suggested that if their demands are not suitably addressed to they may take recourse to the Gujjar way of resolving conflict as in Rajasthan. As tribes the world over are slowly facing extinction, this important book will serve to archive the ethnographies of these ‘ex-criminal’ tribes. An unusual feature of the book is the voices of a few of the elderly in these tribes whose reminiscences about their traditions, beliefs and practices have been documented. The book will be valuable for those in the fields of sociology, anthropology, social history, tribal and ethnic studies, cultural and folk studies.

One of the important projects launched by the British government in the late 19th century was the preparation of a detailed census of the demographic profile of the Indian population across the country. Unable to understand the cultural pluralism that characterizes Indian unity in variety, the census was riddled with problems of definition and categories. This book is a comprehensive ethnographic account of seven tribes in Punjab, classified as ‘criminal’ by the British administration, in order to make some sense of their alleged criminality: Bauria, Bazigar Banjara, Bangala, Barad, Gandhila, Nat and Sansi. The problem of definition of tribe and the issue of criminality are discussed critically. More importantly, the book shows that, contrary to the claims of the Punjab government, these ‘ex-criminal’ tribes still exist and constitute the poorest of the poor in an otherwise prosperous state. It also addresses to a significant current development of various Denotified Tribes’ Associations in Punjab (and other states as well) that have already started raking their long pending demand of Scheduled Tribe status. It is suggested that if their demands are not suitably addressed to they may take recourse to the Gujjar way of resolving conflict as in Rajasthan. As tribes the world over are slowly facing extinction, this important book will serve to archive the ethnographies of these ‘ex-criminal’ tribes. An unusual feature of the book is the voices of a few of the elderly in these tribes whose reminiscences about their traditions, beliefs and practices have been documented. The book will be valuable for those in the fields of sociology, anthropology, social history, tribal and ethnic studies, cultural and folk studies.

This book is about the presence of the absent— the tribes of Punjab, India, many of them still nomadic, constituting the poorest of the poor in the state. Drawing on exhaustive fieldwork and ethnographic accounts of more than 750 respondents, it explores the occupational change across generations to prove their presence in the state before the Criminal Tribes Act was implemented in 1871. The archival reports reveal the atrocities unleashed by the colonial government on these people. The volume shows how the post-colonial government too has proved no different; it has done little to bring them into the mainstream society by not exploiting their traditional expertise or equipping them with modern skills. This book will be of great interest to scholars of sociology, social anthropology, social history, public policy, development studies, tribal communities and South Asian studies.

This book explores how colonial policies converted itinerant groups on the one hand into a source of cheap labour and on the other into a category known as criminal tribes . It also examines missionary activity especially the Salvation Army, in the Madras Presidency in the nineteenth century.

A provocative examination of how the British colonial experience in India was shaped by chronic unease, anxiety, and insecurity.

When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.