Associate Professor,
The concept of modernity is founded on exclusions. It makes its advent with a powerful discourse that strongly advocates the idea that whatever that is non modern is backward and primitive and therefore it needs to be abandoned.
Accordingly, with the entry of the modernity-approved sedentary lifestyle, nomadism gets outdated and nomads turn out to be the ‘other’ of the modern people. The fact that nomadism is a way of life that has been successfully pursed for centuries is conveniently ignored. When what modernity posits gets the consent of the state, those who do not subscribe to it become the enemies of both modernity and the state.
Associating nomadism with backwardness, the British government in India notifies many nomadic tribes as criminals through the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Although initially the Act covers regions mostly in North India, gradually it incorporates the entire country. Independent India repeals it in 1952 placing them under the category of Habitual Offenders Acts. These Acts are as repressive as the replaced one and as a result, nomads continue to be haunted even in independent India.
The intervention of many organisations and individuals has succeeded in drawing the attention of the rulers to the pathetic condition of the tribes. The efforts of G. N. Devi, Mahasweta Devi and Laxman Gaikwad deserve to be acknowledged.
Certainly it would be wrong to idealise nomadic life and privilege it over sedentarism. But the paper argues that nomads have a right to organise their life as they deem fit and they should no longer be treated as habitual offenders.
