Accepted Panels

The research theme is concerns with one of the important legislative measures, The Criminal Tribe ACT 1871, in British social policy in India which dealt with the ‘predatory castes’ mentioned by W.W. Hunter, a senior civil servant of British Government. The question of ‘tribe’ and ‘criminality’ have long and contested contextual discourses in the Indian subcontinent. The ever-evolving understandings and application of ‘tribe’ and ‘criminality’ built on colonial developments and were determined by a confluence of colonial and indigenous ideas about community, religion and society, as well as ongoing interactions between communities and the state. My research focus is on the one of the Criminal Tribe in India and Lodha in particular. The Lodhas, a gathering and hunting tribe, lived in the jungle covered rugged terrain of Orissa, Bengal and Bihar. The land and forest had always played an important role to provide protection and sources of livelihood of the many tribal communities in this region. Their desire to feel in control of this ‘floating’ population and resources encouraged the production of official typologies like criminal cults and criminal tribes. The British categorized them as ‘criminal tribes’ who were such tribal groups of people in India who have traditionally committed criminal activities as their way of life.  The research is to highlight those processes of criminalization, and politicization, and the relative meanings of ‘tribe’ and criminality for each, were to a great extent determined by changing jurisdictions, shifting boundaries of ethnic politics, and considerations of population and territory