Tribal Research Institute, Pune Maharastra.
Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj settled phase Pardhis in villages like Mulshingi near Kolhapur town of Maharashtra in 1917 for helping him in hunting. These villages gradually got engulfed in the expanding township. Pardhis have undergone a process of enculturation and development that was expected to be positively accelerated by the impact of education. Formal education's structure as well as content, however, has been very different from Pardhis’ indigenous knowledge and traditional patterns of its assimilation. The cultures of the school as well as the surrounding urbanized environment have also been different from the cultural ethos of the tribe. The inherent qualities, skills and knowledge inherited from their forefathers, over time, were considered apparently of not much relevance in the urban milieu and the prevalent value system deciding the percepts of stratification based on formal learning kept them at the lowest rung and priority in the society which has definitely imposed inherent limits on their social mobility. The heavy quantum of drop outs, dislike for manual work, unfair and unjust competition with the urban populace for livelihoods, non availability of jobs related to their traditional competencies, clamor for Government jobs, and overall massive unemployment and related frustrations are just some of the symptoms of the cultural divide. The need is to reevaluate the complex question of trade-off between loss of indigenous knowledge of Pardhis and their exposure to formal education and ensure that the Pardhis become functional in there ‘niche’ that is invaluable for the society at large.
