THE CONCEPT OF EX-CRIMINAL TRIBE- Denotified Tribe -The Laman Banjara

THE CONCEPT OF EX-CRIMINAL

TRIBE- Denotified Tribe- The Laman Banjara

                   (Published in 2010)
  This book is dedicated to The Laman Banjara Scholar/Author- Bhimniputra, Mohan Ganuji Naik & Prof. Motiraj Rathod Especially the author of this book, Dr.J.J.Roy Burman stayed for 10 days at Chichkhed Tanda and wrote a book with the help/guidelines of Bhimniputra Bapu.
             Mostly Banjara's glorious history and tradition has been originally focused/written by abroad English authors. Here this book is most crucial to know in details about the denotified tribe-The Laman Banjara

       I will gradually highlight the selected and important aspects of this book,  in my website. Hoping, to read this book to be more acquainted about Banjaras

   
                               PART-1

   In India there are certain communities who were branded as criminal by the state during the British ruie. They were mostly nomadic nature. The concept of criminal tribes or the perception of a community was not only a concept in India, but a concept which was also prevalent in the West. "The gypsies were a vagabond race whose tribes coming originally from India entered Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries and are now scattered over Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Spain, England and America... living by thefts, horse jockeying, fortune telling, tinkering and the like. The Magyar race was one of the dominant people of Hungary and was allied to the Turks and the Finns. Those were wandering tribes (Sullvan J. Mathew: referred by A. Upadhyay, 2006). The criminal tribes hardly ever stayed with the general population. They used to travel in gangs of varying strength with their household article and livestock. They never put in towns and villages and put up their caravans one or two miles away from them. They usually lived on the boundary of two villages, or near the hills and forests. Whenever they found new criminal activities as upcoming opportunity in a different place, they used to migrate to that place for better living. Before independence

they were also given shelter by the petty kings who made use of them in harassing their neighbouring kingdoms (Upadhyay:

ibid).
   The criminal tribes were denotified a few years after the independence."The Denotified and Nomadic Tribes is a social category in India which covers a population of approximately six crores. Some of them are included in the list of Scheduled Castes, some others in the Schedule of Tribes, and quite a few of them in the categcryof Other Backward Classes. But there are many of these tribes, which find place in none of the above. What is common to all of the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) is the fate of being branded as 'born criminals" (Devy: 2006). Some of the ex-criminal tribes even belonged to Hindu high castes. The history of the criminal tribes in India can be traced back to the British days when any group that took to arms and opposed their rule were branded as criminal. For instance, the Bhils who had fought the British rule in Khandesh and on the banks of bn 110 of the Indian Penal Code and were recognized as criminal tribes. The British conceptualization of a Criminal Tribe was based on the belief about crime and society in relation to their own society (Yang: 1985, as quoted by Surbhi,2006). In the Victorian thought, the idea of the "dangerous class"composed of the unemployed, vagrants, the poor, the criminals, drunkards and prostitutes. They were even identified on the basis of physical characteristics, habits and locale. The theory says that Narmada were convicted under certain people in society had an inborn tendency for crime.

    The nomadic ways of life too was regarded as suspicious and since they were difficult to be controlled, they were often termed as inals. Accordingly a group of tribes in India were branded as Criminal Tribes during the British times. Even now the notion of it survives. Members of these groups are treated both by the government and the people as born criminals. People try to avoid them; the government always keeps a vigilant watch over their movements. These groups were branded by the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which was modified in 1897 and in 1911. Following the

precepts of the caste system, the criminal tribes were put under such a system and criminal traits were attributed to them as something of a hereditary occupation. The CT Acts were passed from time to time in the years 1871, 1896, 1898, 1901-2, 1909, 1911, 1913-14, 1919, 1923 and 1924. According to the CT Act, 1871, before a gang, a tribe or class of persons could be declared as criminal, the local government had to report their case to the Governor-General in Council, giving in their report reasons for regarding the gang, tribe or class of persons as criminal, the nature of crimes which they were suspected of committing, and if the tribe was a wandering tribe, the reasons showing that the lawful occupation which it was following was merely a pretence for the purpose of committing crimes. The report had also to state the arrangement made for enabling the tribe to earn its living when it was settled in any fixed place of residence (Shashi and Varma:1991).
    lt would be wrong to presume that all the 'criminal tribes' were nomadic in nature. Some gangs of the sedentary Bhils were branded as "Criminal Tribes" by the British. The Bangals in Punjab were listed as "Criminal Tribe" (Ayyangar: 1950). The Lodhas in Bengal were originaly employed as 'Paik of Hindu zamindars. When Zamindari system was abolished, the Lodhas became compelled to take to thefts. Similarly the Malla boatmen who transported commodities across Yamuna in Delhi, were rendered out of job with the construction of Yamuna bridge and were forced into criminality. Meena Radhakrishna (2001) makes a scathing attack on the anthropometric and anthropological studies which tried to vilif certain tribes and nomadic groups based on physical features, "ln the popular ethnographic literature of the period, a sketch was drawn of a criminal who possessed not just bizarre social customs, but a strange body and psyche as well, 'which had criminality written all over'." Radhakrishna (ibid.) further writes, "The CT Act had its conceptual origins in local systems and structures and arose out for escalating crime. In the late nineteenth century, there was a renewed interest in, and admiration for the Indian caste system in British administrative and intellectual circles: the criminal tribes seemed to belong to a definable caste of hereditary criminals within the Hindu social system. Though neither the concerned communities, nor 'the Hindus' thought of the matter in these terms, the British nevertheless transfixed these communities into an existing hierarchy.

   By an extension of the same logic, the communities in question also came to be perceived by the British through the yardstick of of policies of political control rather than social conditions both Brahminical and notions and norms". Ranajit Guha makes a cogent remark with regard to the Criminal Tribes. He writes, "There are regions of chronic poverty- where for hundreds of years peasant youths have been slipping out of desolate villages and starvation and bonded labour i order to take to dacoity as a profession". David Arnold observes a bit more pointedly that the CT Act was used against wandering'

groups, nomadic petty traders and pastoralists, gypsy types, hill and forest dwelling tribes, in short, against a wide variety of marginals who did not conform to the colonial pattern of settled agricultural and wage labour (1999). Meena Radhakrishna (op. cit.) argues that the nomadic tribes did not wander aimlessly and that they had fixed and cyclic routes to follow. The British government made two assumptions (Kapadia:1952): "First, all persons in a particular group, or caste, are criminals by birth and second, once a criminal always a criminal. The Act therefore provided for registering all or any member of the tribe or tribes declared as criminal tribes. It further required such registered members to report to the police authority at fixed intervals, and/or 'to notify his place of residence and any change or intended change of residence', authorized the authority to restrict any criminal tribe or any part or member of such a tribe in its or his movements to any specified area or to ask it or him to settle in the place of residence specified, enjoined upon the limits of the piace in which he was settled or confined, or the area to which his movements were restricted even if it be for a few hours, and/or for a laudable or an innocent purpose. He who contravened these rules was liable to imprisonment for one year on a first conviction, for two years on a second conviction, and for three years or to a fine extending to Rs. 500 or both, on any subsequent registered member to take a pass whenever he cro conviction". The CTAct, 1871 was enacted to treat the groups as a distinct category with the following assumptions: All persons born in a particular caste or group become criminal since birth, as they take up their fathers profession. Once the people learn criminal activities, they continue to act as criminal because they believe it to be a legitimate professic.They continue to be criminals, as a result of continuous criminal practice, they become hardened criminais. The provisions of the Act were such drastic that even members of nomadic tribe who had not undertaken any criminal activity were branded as criminal. This implied a social and legal stigma attached both criminal and non-criminal within a group. Thus crime was seen as a profession of the group as a whole (Simhadri: 1976). There were many stringent penal measures to punish the Criminal Tribes' to protect the general population and these ultimately turned them into hardened criminals.

Note - To be continued in next part -2

         Ref- Ethnography  Of A Denotified Tribe -The Laman Banjara- 

 By-  J.J.Roy Burman