Spatial distribution & Social Groups in India – UGC NET Geography – Notes

Social Groups

• A social group consists of two or more people who interact with one another and recognize themselves as a distinct social unit. While this definition appears simple, it carries important implications for understanding how individuals relate to one another and how societies function. Regular interaction among members encourages the sharing of common values, beliefs, norms, and attitudes. Over time, this shared outlook strengthens a sense of belonging, leading individuals to identify with one another as part of the same group.
• This process of identification and attachment further deepens interaction. As members feel more connected, they tend to communicate more frequently, cooperate more closely, and reinforce shared expectations. In this way, interaction and identification create a continuous cycle that strengthens group cohesion. At the same time, each group maintains a degree of solidarity both within itself and in relation to other groups and social systems, contributing to the broader structure of society.
• Social groups are among the most stable and enduring social units. They play a crucial role not only in the lives of their members but also in the functioning of society as a whole. By encouraging regular, predictable, and organized patterns of behavior, groups help establish social order and continuity. In this sense, they form a foundational framework upon which society rests.
• Examples of social groups include families, villages, political parties, and trade unions. These groups possess structure, defined membership, shared goals, and a collective identity. It is important to distinguish them from other social formations such as social classes, status groups, or crowds. Unlike organized social groups, these categories often lack formal structure, and their members may be only loosely connected or even unaware of belonging to a collective entity.
• Such loosely connected formations are often referred to as quasi-groups or groupings. However, the boundary between social groups and quasi-groups is not fixed. In many cases, quasi-groups can evolve into fully developed social groups. For example, a social class may eventually organize into a political party, transforming from a loosely defined category into a structured and self-aware social group. This fluidity highlights how social organization can change over time as interaction, awareness, and collective identity grow stronger.

The Geographical Distribution Of Tribes In India

The Concept of Tribe

• The Constitution of India recognizes a distinct category of people known as the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and makes special provisions for their political representation as well as their economic and social welfare. This constitutional recognition reflects the unique historical, social, and cultural position of tribal communities within Indian society. However, despite their importance, anthropological debates on the concept of the tribe have often paid limited attention to the specific realities of tribal communities in India.
• From the nineteenth century onward, scholars approached tribal societies largely through the lens of evolutionary theory. Anthropologists such as Lewis Henry Morgan viewed tribes as representing an early stage in social evolution. By comparing contemporary so-called “primitive” societies, Morgan sought to reconstruct the stages through which human societies were believed to have evolved. A similar approach was adopted by historians like Fustel de Coulanges, who traced the transformation of Greek and Roman societies from primitive forms to more complex and advanced ones. In this framework, the tribe was seen both as a type of social organization and as a stage in the evolutionary progression of society.
• This evolutionary perspective did not disappear with the decline of classical evolutionism. It was later revived, though in more sophisticated forms, in the writings of Marshall Sahlins, and further examined in the critique offered by Maurice Godelier. Godelier returned to Morgan’s ideas to argue that the tribe can be understood as a type of social organization only when it is also seen as a stage in social evolution. However, he pointed out a major flaw in nineteenth-century evolutionist thinking: the assumption that the emergence of more complex societies would automatically lead to the disappearance of tribal forms. While it is generally accepted that tribes historically preceded states and civilizations, tribal forms have not simply vanished with social complexity.
• In his early work, Sahlins emphasized the segmentary structure as a defining feature of tribal society. The importance of segmentary political systems was highlighted by British social anthropologists working in Africa, particularly through studies that distinguished between centralized and non-centralized societies. The publication of African Political Systems by Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard drew attention to differences between societies with centralized authority and those organized through segmentary lineages. Initially, this distinction appeared sharp, but further research showed that the difference between tribes organized as segmentary systems and those organized as chiefdoms was more relative than absolute.
• This argument was reinforced by Max Gluckman, who demonstrated that the distinction between tribes with chiefs and those without chiefs was not as significant as it first appeared. Anthropologists have since learned to distinguish analytically between different forms of tribal organization—such as the band, the segmentary system, and the chiefdom—yet they have continued, for the most part, to apply the single term “tribe” to all three.
• The Scheduled Tribes of India encompass several hundred distinct communities and represent all these modes of tribal organization, ranging from small hunting-and-gathering bands to more complex chiefdoms. This diversity can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when tribal areas were systematically opened up under colonial administration. At the beginning of that century, bands of hunters and gatherers were more widespread than they are today, as seen among the Andaman Islanders and groups such as the Birhors on the mainland. Segmentary forms of tribal organization were also more common in regions such as Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar, alongside the presence of chiefdoms.
• Tribal society in India faces several conceptual and practical problems. One major issue is the difficulty of clearly distinguishing between related and overlapping modes of tribal organization. Another challenge lies in drawing firm boundaries between tribal and non-tribal societies. In India, encounters between tribe and civilization have occurred under historically distinctive conditions. The coexistence and interaction of tribal communities and civilization date back to the earliest periods of recorded history and even earlier. Tribes have long existed on the margins of Hindu civilization, but these margins have always been fluid, uncertain, and constantly shifting.
• Traditional Hindu social thought recognized a distinction between two kinds of communities: jana, referring to tribal communities often associated with forests and hills, and jati, referring to caste-based communities settled in villages and towns with a more elaborate division of labour. Over time, the transformation of tribes into castes has been documented by numerous anthropologists and historians, further illustrating the dynamic and historically interconnected relationship between tribal and non-tribal forms of social organization in India.
• The tribe as a mode of social organization has historically been distinct from the caste-based mode of organization, yet in practice the two are not always easy to differentiate, especially at the margins where they come into contact. In the Indian context, the most distinctive condition shaping tribal society has been relative isolation, primarily in interior hills and forested regions, and in some frontier areas. Tribal communities were either left behind in these ecological niches or gradually pushed into them during the expansion of states, agrarian systems, and civilization. However, this isolation has never been absolute. Some tribes have remained more isolated than others, but particularly in interior regions where the majority of the tribal population lives, no group has been entirely free from the influence of surrounding civilizations.
• This relative isolation, whether self-imposed or externally enforced, has had mixed consequences. On the one hand, it limited the growth of material culture and economic development; on the other, it enabled tribal communities to preserve distinctive cultural traits, especially their modes of speech. Today, language is often considered the single most important indicator distinguishing tribes from castes. Caste groups generally speak one of the major regional or literary languages, whereas each tribe typically has its own distinct dialect, sometimes fundamentally different from the dominant regional language. However, even this criterion is not universally applicable. In western India, for example, several tribes, including the Bhils, do not have a separate tribal language and have adopted the language of the surrounding region, blurring the linguistic boundary between tribe and caste.
• In official and administrative terms, the notion of the tribe—referred to as the Scheduled Tribe—is defined largely by political and developmental considerations. The classification aims to uplift sections of the population that have historically lived in remote and difficult terrains and that lag behind on commonly used indicators of development. Scheduled Tribes in India are widely regarded as the indigenous peoples of the country. They belong to diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups and are typically concentrated in hilly and forested areas marked by varying degrees of isolation.
• Certain broad socio-economic characteristics are frequently associated with the Scheduled Tribes population. These include a relatively lower standard of living, higher birth and population growth rates, low literacy levels, and widespread malnutrition. Traditionally, many tribal communities have depended on hunting and gathering, fishing, animal husbandry, settled agriculture, and shifting cultivation. In administrative practice, Scheduled Tribes have been identified mainly on the basis of two interrelated parameters: relative isolation and backwardness in socio-economic development.
• A comprehensive survey carried out by the Anthropological Survey of India under the People of India Project identified 461 tribal communities across the country, including 174 sub-groups. According to the 2011 Census of India (the most recent completed census), the Scheduled Tribe population numbered approximately 104.3 million, constituting about 8.6 per cent of India’s total population. In some states, particularly in the North-East, the proportion of Scheduled Tribes is much higher, reflecting the regional concentration of tribal populations.
• The variation among Indian tribes is extremely complex and nuanced. Because of this diversity, it is not possible to classify them accurately using cultural characteristics alone. While differences exist in language, economy, social organization, and religious practices, many tribes share overlapping features due to long histories of interaction with neighboring communities. Since a large proportion of Indian tribes are non-nomadic and tend to live either in forest regions or in villages close to forests, scholars often attempt regional or zonal classifications based on geographical distribution rather than purely cultural criteria. Such classifications, though imperfect, help in understanding the broad patterns of tribal life in India while acknowledging the deep internal diversity that characterizes tribal society.

Guha’s Classification

• Nadeem Hasnain, in his book Tribal India, discusses the geographical distribution of tribes in India by drawing upon the observations and classification proposed by the anthropologist B. S. Guha. Guha developed a theoretical framework for understanding tribal diversity in India based primarily on geography. According to him, the tribes of India can be broadly classified into three major geographical zones: the north and north-eastern zone, the central zone, and the southern zone. This classification highlights how ecological settings and physical environments have shaped tribal life, economy, and social organization.
• The north and north-eastern zone consists of the sub-Himalayan region and the hill ranges along India’s eastern frontier. This zone includes tribal populations from the eastern Himalayan belt as well as the north-eastern states. Tribal communities inhabiting Tripura, Assam, and Manipur fall within the eastern section of this zone, while those living in eastern Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, northern Uttar Pradesh, and eastern Punjab are part of its northern stretch. A wide variety of tribes inhabit this region, including several sub-groups of the Naga tribes in present-day Nagaland, the Tharu of Uttar Pradesh, and the Lepchas of Sikkim. Despite the large geographical spread of this zone, population density remains relatively low due to difficult terrain. Most tribal communities here practice terrace cultivation or shifting cultivation, and economic backwardness remains a common characteristic because of limited access to infrastructure and markets.
• The central zone, also referred to as the middle zone, comprises a broad belt of hills and plateaus extending from the Gangetic plains in the north to the Krishna River in the south. It is geographically separated from the north-eastern zone by the gap between the Garo Hills and the Rajmahal Hills. This zone includes a substantial tribal population drawn mainly from present-day Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, with extensions into Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, northern Maharashtra, and southern Rajasthan. Some of the major tribal groups in this region include the Gond, Bhil, Khond, Bhumij, Baiga, Santhal, and Munda. Shifting cultivation has traditionally been widespread in this zone, but interaction with neighbouring rural and agrarian populations has led some tribes—such as the Santhal, Gond, Munda, and Oraon—to adopt plough-based settled agriculture. This zone represents one of the largest concentrations of tribal populations in India.
• The southern zone lies to the south of the Krishna River and extends from the Wynaad region to Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari). Tribal communities in this zone are found across parts of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala (formerly Travancore and Cochin), Karnataka (including Coorg), and Tamil Nadu. Notable tribal groups in this region include the Toda, Yeruva, Chenchu, Paniyan, Irula, and Kurumba. Some particularly isolated and economically backward communities, such as the Kadar, Malavedan, Kanikkar, and Malakuravan, live in dense forest areas along the hill ranges of Kerala. With the exception of a few groups like the Kota, Badaga, and Toda, many tribes in this zone have traditionally depended on hunting, fishing, and food gathering alongside limited forms of cultivation.
• Hasnain also points out that Guha’s original classification did not include the tribes living in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. To address this omission, Hasnain proposes the inclusion of a fourth zone, consisting of island-based tribal communities such as the Jarawa, Onge, Great Andamanese, Nicobarese, and Sentinelese. These groups are among the most isolated tribal populations in the world and have distinct social and cultural systems shaped by insular environments.
• Apart from geographical classification, tribes in India can also be grouped using other criteria such as linguistic characteristics, racial features, economic or occupational patterns, degree of cultural distance from rural and urban populations, and religious beliefs. However, such classifications often overlap and create ambiguities, making clear-cut demarcation difficult. As a result, while geographical classification provides a useful broad framework, it does not fully capture the immense diversity and complexity of tribal life in India.