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The terms “Caste” and “Tribe” in Western India In Western India, the dividing line between tribes and castes tends to be blurred. This was clearly so during the colonial period, when several settled peasant groups, such as the Koli and the Kathi, tended to be seen as tribes. This fuzziness stems not just from colonial perceptions but also from certain characteristics of the region, which we may approach through a center-periphery perspective.The plains of mainland Gujarat were among the first regions in India to experience a stable political regime and a high degre…

This article is based on extensive fieldwork conducted during 1982–1983 among the Rathwa tribe of the Panchmahal and Vadodara districts of Gujarat, particularly in the villages in and around the Chhota Udaipur tālukā (administrative subdivision), in Vadodara district, and centers on the elaborate wall paintings of the Rathwa community, which are dedicated to their deity Pithoro and broadly pertain to their myth of creation, preserved both in their oral tradition and in the form of ritual wall paintings.The Rathwas, who speak a Rathwi-Bhili dialect of Gujarati, were large…

The Pashtuns (or Pakhtuns, Pukhtuns, Pathans) are an ethnic group of about 50 million peoples mainly inhabiting a large area extending from eastern Afghanistan – from Kabul to Kandahar – to western Pakistan – from Swat district to Peshawar, Kalat, and Quetta. They are also found in other areas of Pakistan, such as Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Karachi, as well as in other countries, that is, India, Malaysia, Dubai, and more. Their economy is mainly based on agriculture, commerce, and pastor…

The Mina are the largest group of indigenous people in Rajasthan, with a population of 4,345,528 according to the 2011 census. They live mainly in the southern and eastern part of the state, southeast of the Aravalli range, where the largest Mina populations are found in the districts of Jaipur, Sawai Madhopur, and Udaipur. They are also numerous in the Alwar, Chittorgarh, and Kota districts. There is also a certain number of Mina in adjoining areas of Madhya Pradesh, but there they do not figur…

Newar I. The Indigenous Background of Newar Religion – II. Buddhism and Ethnicity among the NewarsNewar (or Nevāḥ, in Newari). Population: 1.3 million in Nepal according to the 2011 census, representing 5% of the total population of Nepal. They are concentrated mostly in the Kathmandu valley, which has been their homeland for many centuries. A large Newar diaspora lives in various Nepalese urban market centers (hills and Tarai plains) and increasingly abroad, particularly in India, the United Kingdom, the Un…

The Wannilaeto, also known as Vedda (or Veddah), is an indigenous community in Sri Lanka, now displaced into permanent settlements located between the sea in the Eastern Province and the eastern slopes of the central mountain massif in Uva province – a subtropical landscape with mountains, rivers, and ponds. It is, technically speaking, a dry-zone or a dry evergreen forest, meaning that there are long periods of drought with occasional wet periods. Archaeological investigations have yielded evid…

Ladakh (Tib. La-dwags , “Open Place among High Passes”) is located in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The region, which in 1979 was divided into two districts, Leh and Kargil, currently covers about 58,000 km2 at altitudes ranging from about 2,500 to the highest peaks of about 7,100 m above sea level and has a population of 274,289 according to the 2011 census. Lying in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, it is a high-altitude desert. Owing to the immense area occupied by barren mountains and high plat…

Swat valley is situated in the Malakand division of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It now extends across three civil administrative units, encompassing the whole of Swat district, a part of the Lower Dir district, and a part of the Malakand Protected Area, or Malakand agency/Malakand district as it is now generally referred to. The vast majority of the people inhabiting Swat valley belong to four ethnicities, namely Kohistani, Gujjar, Pashtun (or Pukhtun; arriving from Afghanistan …

The word Sherpa is derived from Sharwa, which literally means “Easterners” in the Sherpa language. It is established that Sherpas came from the Kham region in Tibet around 1500. The Khumbu valley in the Solukhumbu district is considered to be the original settlement area of Sherpas in Nepal, from where they migrated into the adjacent mountain districts of Taplejung, Sankhuwasabha, Dolakha, Sindhupalchowk, and Ramechhap. Today, Sherpas live throughout the world. The Sherpas are one of the 59 comm…

The Chakma live in Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar. The Chittagong Hill Tracts region of Bangladesh is known as their homeland; from there, they have migrated to the Indian states of Mizoram, Tripura, and Assam, and later resettled in Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal. Chakmas are also habitants of the Rakhine state of Myanmar, where they are called Daingnet. The Chakma language is subcategorized under the Bengali language, but its script evolved from the Burmese script. Chakmas traditionally practice farming with  jhum (slash-and-burn) cultivation. Kinship is patrilineal, …

The origin of the ethnonym Kond has been much discussed in anthropology, but its meaning remains vague. The best hypothesis is that it derives from the Dravidian root  kod (hill)/ kondi (mountain), and, in fact, these indigenous communities have always mainly inhabited jungle hill tracts (Singh, 2001, 590). The Konds are a major Scheduled Tribe of Odisha. According to the latest census of India (2011), the total population exceeds 1,628,501 and has many subsections, some of which live in the neighboring states of Chhattisga…

Saora I. Shamanism and Modernity: Dynamics of Resistance to Social Transformation – II. Embodying Spirits from Paintings to Script: Ritual Change among the SaoraThe Saora are a small ethnic group with a distinctive culture of great relevance, most of whom live in the central-eastern Indian states of Odisha and northern Andhra Pradesh. Despite a certain tendency in India to consider them as part of the larger ethnic minority of Savara (spelled alternatively as Sabara, Sora, Sabar, etc.; Singh, 2001), who also live in …

The Lotha Naga (formerly spelled Lhota, Lotah, Latoo) are an indigenous tribe of the state of Nagaland and one of the many Naga tribes. The Lotha Nagas live in the Wokha district, which, with a population of 166,343 according to the 2011 census, is strategically located, sharing borders with Assam in the west and north, Kohima and Dimapur districts in the south, Zunheboto district in the east, and Mokokchung district in the northeast. It covers a geographical area of 1,628 km2, accounting for 9.82% of the total area of the state. Wokha district is comprised of three rang…

The Paudi Bhuiyan represent a small section of the larger Bhuiyan (“Earth People”) community. Other names commonly used for them are Hill Bhuiyan, just Bhuiyan, Bhuiya, and Bhuyan. Paudi Bhuiyans are classified by the government of India as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Community (PVTG). As one of 12 such communities in Odisha and 75 in India, they are entitled to additional annual development programs for the fields of education (the average literacy rate among Paudi Bhuiyans in Bonai subdiv…

Siddi is how most Indians of African descent are named and call themselves today in India. The term has various spellings: Sidi, Siddhi, Sidhi, and Sheedi. Another designation, Habshi, is used less frequently nowadays. According to H. Basu, Sidi was a name given indiscriminately to African slaves and sailors working on ships and in the Indian Ocean. It became a generic term for all people of African origin in South Asia (Basu, 2008, 161). There are also people of African descent in Pakistan, whe…

Nayaka The name of the ethnic group is Nayaka but this has also been written as Nayak, Naick, Naik, Naique, Naiken, Naicken, Naikr, Jenu Kurumba (“Honey Kurumba”), Kadu Nayaka, Kattu Nayaka, Sola Nayaka, and Shola Naika (the latter four terms meaning “Forest Nayaka”). The word Nayaka can be variously understood as warrior, guard, and guide and relates to the Sanskrit nāyaka, guide, leader, chief. Because of their remote location, the size of the group is uncertain. The official census of 1971 put them at 1,260; that of 1981 counted 1,400; that of 2001 n…

The Bhutia, Lepcha, and, to a lesser extent, Limbu are generally, but not exclusively, members of Buddhist institutions in Sikkim. The Lepcha and Limbu are indigenous inhabitants of Sikkim. The Lepcha in Sikkim numbered 45,239 in the 2006 census. Most Lepcha practice Buddhism side by side with their shamanic traditional religion (Plaisier, 2015), though some converted to Christianity (12% according to the 2006 census). In 2006, there were 56,650 Limbu in Sikkim. While most of them follow Limbu t…

Poraja (Porajā; or Porja or Paroja) is an umbrella category (Odi.  prajā, peasant subjects of a king) that includes various social subgroups (Pengo, Jodia, Barong Jodia, Chhelia, Kond, Sodia, and Solia) living in south Odisha and the Chhattisgarh area. They are 247,000 in number according to the 1981 census of India. Among them, the Jodia (or Joria or Jhodia) Poraja live mostly on the Koraput plateau, close to the Gadaba and Parenga tribes (see Berger, 2002). They originally spoke a Dravidian language, but…

AAe Anthropology and Aesthetics AAION Anglistica AION AAAG Annals of the Association of American Geographers AaM Anthropology and Medicine AAn Anthropologischer Anzeiger AA nth Asian Anthropology AAS African and Asian Studies ABORI Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute AD African Diaspora Adibasi Adibasi Adivasi       Adivasi Ādilok Ādilok AE American Ethnologist AES Archives Européennes de Sociologie AÉSC Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations Aesthetics Aesthetics AEth Asian Ethnicity AFF Annales de la Fondation Fyssen Africa Africa: Journal of th…

The Pnar (also known as Jaintia or Synteng), who numbered 395,124 in the 2011 census of India, are a matrilineal society and form part of five groups, the Khynriam, Pnar, War, Bhoi, and Lyngngam, which are subsumed under the generic term Khasi. Belonging to the Austroasiatic linguistic group and having apparently migrated from the southeastern Asian region, the Pnar settled in northeastern India in prehistoric times, practicing agriculture and trading products, such as limestone and fruit, with …