Indian independence movement including Khajya Naik, Bhima Naik, Jantya Bhil and Rehma Vasave

Religion
Main article: Tribal religions in India
The majority of Adivasi practice Hinduism and Christianity. During the
last two decades Adivasi from Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand have
converted to Protestant groups. Adivasi beliefs vary by tribe, and are
usually different from the historical Vedic religion, with its
monistic underpinnings, Indo-European deities (who are often cognates
of ancient Iranian, Greek and Roman deities, e.g. Mitra/Mithra/
Mithras), lack of idol worship and lack of a concept of reincarnation.
[75] The "centre of Rig Vedic religion was the Yajna, the sacrificial
fire" and there was "no Atma, no Brahma, no Moksha, no idol worship in
the Rig Veda."[76] Two specific rituals held great importance and it
is known that, "when the Indo-Aryans and the Persians formed a single
people, they performed sacrifices (Vedic yajna: Avestan yasna), and
that they already had a sacred drink (Vedic soma: Avestan haoma)."[77]

 Hinduism
Adivasi roots of modern Hinduism
Most important deities added to the Hindu pantheon after the Vedic
period were dark-skinned, such as Vishnu (who has been described as
meghavarnam, or dark as a cloud), Rama, Krishna, Shiva and Kali, which
may reflect adivasi origins.[78] Today, these deities constitute the
main divinities worshiped by most caste Hindus.[79] In a marked
departure from the Indo-Aryan religion (although not directly
contradicted by it), idol worship has also become firmly established
for most Hindus, though exceptions such as the Arya Samaj school do
exist.[80] Some historians and anthropologists assert that much of
what constitutes popular Hinduism today is actually descended from an
amalgamation of adivasi faiths, idol worship practices and deities,
rather than the original Indo-Aryan faith.[76][81][82] This also
includes the sacred status of certain animals and plants, such as
monkeys, cows, peacocks, cobras (nagas), elephants, peepul, tulsi
(holy basil) and neem, which may once have held totemic importance for
certain adivasi tribes.[81]

Adivasi Saints
Saint Buddhu Bhagat, led the Kol Insurrection (1831-1832) aimed
against tax imposed on Mundas by Muslim rulers.
Saint Dhira or Kannappa Nayanar[10], one of 63 Nayanar Shaivite
saints, a hunter from whom Lord Shiva gladly accepted food offerings.
It is said that he poured water from his mouth on the Shivlingam and
offered the Lord swine flesh.[11]
Saint Dhudhalinath, Koli, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th century devotee (P.
4, The Story of Historic People of India-The Kolis)
Saint Ganga Narain, led the Bhumij Revolt (1832-1833) aimed against
missionaries and British colonialists.
Saint Girnari Velnathji, Koli, Gujarati of Junagadh, a 17th or 18th
century devotee [83]
Saint Gurudev Kalicharan Brahma or Guru Brahma, a Bodo whose founded
the Brahma Dharma aimed against missionaries and colonialists. The
Brahma Dharma movement sought to unite peoples of all religions to
worship God together and survives even today.
Saint Jatra Oraon, Oraon, led the Tana Bhagat Movement (1914-1919)
aimed against the missionaries and British colonialists
Saint Sri Koya Bhagat, Koli, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th century devotee
[83]
Saint Tantya Mama (Bhil), a Bhil after whom a movement is named after
- the "Jananayak Tantya Bhil"
Saint Tirumangai Alvar, Kallar, composed the six Vedangas in beautiful
Tamil verse[12]
[edit] Sages
Bhaktaraj Bhadurdas, Koli, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th century devotee
[83]
Bhakta Shabari, a Bhil woman that offered Shri Rama and Shri Laxmana
her half-eaten ber fruit, which they gratefully accepted when they
were searching for Shri Sita Devi in the forest.
Madan Bhagat, Koli, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th century devotee [83]
Sany Kanji Swami, Koli, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th century devotee [83]
Bhaktaraj Valram, Koli, Gujarati, a 17th or 18th century devotee [83]
[edit] Maharishis
Maharshi Matanga[84], Matanga Bhil, Guru of Bhakta Shabari. In fact,
Chandalas are often addressed as ‘Matanga ’in passages like Varaha
Purana 1.139.91
Maharshi Valmiki, Kirata Bhil, composed the Ramayana.[36] He is
considered to be an avatar in the Balmiki community.
[edit] Avatars
Birsa Bhagwan or Birsa Munda, considered an avatar of Khasra Kora.
People approached him as Singbonga, the supreme spirit. He converted
even Christians to his own sect.[13] He was against conversions by
missionaries. He wanted not only political, but religious freedom as
well![14] He and his clan, the Mundas, were connected with Vaishnavite
traditions as they were influenced by Sri Chaitanya.[15] Birsa was
very close to the Panre brothers Vaishnavites.
Kirata - the form of Lord Shiva as a hunter. It is mentioned in the
Mahabharata. The Karppillikkavu Sree Mahadeva Temple, Kerala adores
Lord Shiva in this avatar and is known to be one of the oldest
surviving temples in Bharat.
Vettakkorumakan, the son of Lord Kirata.
Kaladutaka or 'Vaikunthanatha', Kallar (robber), avatar of Lord Vishnu.
[16]
[edit] Other Tribals and Hinduism
Some Hindus believe that Indian tribals are close to the romantic
ideal of the ancient silvan culture[85] of the Vedic people. Madhav
Sadashiv Golwalkar said:

"The tribals "can be given yajñopavîta (…) They should be given equal
rights and footings in the matter of religious rights, in temple
worship, in the study of Vedas, and in general, in all our social and
religious affairs. This is the only right solution for all the
problems of casteism found nowadays in our Hindu society.”[86]

At the Lingaraja temple in Bhubaneswar (11th century), there are
Brahmin and Badu (tribal) priests. The Badus have the most intimate
contact with the deity of the temple, and only they can bathe and
adorn it.

The Bhil tribe is mentioned in the Mahabharata. The Bhil boy Eklavya's
teacher was Drona, and he had the honour to be invited to
Yudhisthira's Rajasuya Yajna at Indraprastha.[88] Indian tribals were
also part of royal armies in the Ramayana and in the Arthasastra.[89]

Bhakta Shabari was a Bhil woman that offered Shri Rama and Shri
Laxmana 'ber' when they were searching for Shri Sita in the forest.
Maharishi Matanga, a Bhil became a Brahmana.

Sarna
Some western authors and Indian sociologists refer to adivasi beliefs
as animism and spirit worship, and hold them to be distinct from
Hinduism, Christianity or Islam. In Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Orissa
states, their religion is sometimes called Sarna. The Jharkhand
movement gave the Santals an opportunity to create a ‘great tradition’
of their own. [90] As Orans reported, “The movement is spoken of in
the following terms ‘we should not leave our religion; we should
continue to use rice-beer; we should have our worship at the sacred
grove; also we shuld not stop eating beef. We will call our religion
Sarna Dhorom.’ [91] Sarna is the Munda word for ‘Sacred Grove’ while
Dhorom is the Oriya word meaning ‘religion’. [92]

Sarna involves belief in a great spirit called the Sing Bonga. Santhal
belief holds the world to be inhabited by numerous spiritual beings of
different kinds. Santhals consider themselves as living and doing
everything in close association with these spirits. Rituals are
performed under groves of Sal trees called Jaher (or sacred grove),
where Bonga is believed to appear or express himself. Often, Jaher are
found in the forests.

According to the mythology of the Santhal community, the genesis of
the ‘Sarna’ religion occurred when the ‘Santhal tribals had gone to
the forest for hunting and they started the discussion about their
‘Creator and Savior’ while they were taking rest under a tree. They
questioned themselves that who is their God? Whether the Sun, the Wind
or the Cloud? Finally, they came to a conclusion that they would leave
an arrow in the sky and wherever the arrow would target that will be
the God’s house. They left an arrow in the sky; it fell down under a
Sal tree. Then, they started worshiping the Sal tree and named their
religion as ‘Sarna’ because it is derived from a Sal tree.[citation
needed]4 Thus, Sarna religion came into existence. There are priests
and an assistant priests called "Naikey" and "Kudam Naike" in every
Santhal village.

Tribals want separate religion code
Tribal groups from several states across the country held a protest in
Delhi, demanding they be listed under a distinct 'religion code' in
the 2011 population census. Union Minister of Food Processing
Industries Subodh Kant Sahay, who visited the protest-site, promised
to take their demands to the government.Nearly 150 people of various
tribal groups from states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal,
Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh took part in the protest at Jantar
Mantar.The protesters said that unlike other religions of the country,
which have been provided specific allocations, the tribal groups which
form 8.2 percent of the country's population, have been deprived of
their religious identity.They appealed to the government to bring
about changes in the 2011 population census table and work towards
betterment of their living conditions.[93]

Tribal system
Tribals are not part of the caste system. This is an egalitarianism
society. Christian tribals do not automatically lose their traditional
tribal rules.

When in 1891 a missionary asked 150 Munda Christians to "inter-dine"
with people of different rank, only 20 Christians did so, and many
converts lost their new faith. Father Haghenbeek concluded on this
episode that these rules are not "pagan", but a sign of "national
sentiment and pride", and wrote:

“On the contrary, while proclaiming the equality of all men before
God, we now tell them: preserve your race pure, keep your customs,
refrain from eating with Lohars (blacksmiths), Turis (bamboo workers)
and other people of lower rank. To become good Christians, it (inter-
dining) is not required.”[94]

However, many scholars argue that the claim that tribals are an
egalitarian society in contrast to a caste-based society is a part of
a larger political agenda by some to maximize any differences from
tribal and urban societies. According to scholar Koenraad Elst, caste
practices and social taboos among Indian tribals date back to
antiquity:

"The Munda tribals not only practise tribal endogamy and commensality,
but also observe a jâti division within the tribe, buttressed by
notions of social pollution, a mythological explanation and harsh
punishments. A Munda Catholic theologian testifies: The tribals of
Chhotanagpur are an endogamous tribe. They usually do not marry
outside the tribal community, because to them the tribe is sacred. The
way to salvation is the tribe. Among the Santals, it is tabooed to
marry outside the tribe or inside ones clan, just as Hindus marry
inside their caste and outside their gotra. More precisely: To protect
their tribal solidarity, the Santals have very stringent marriage
laws. A Santal cannot marry a non-Santal or a member of his own clan.
The former is considered as a threat to the tribe's integrity, while
the latter is considered incestuous. Among the Ho of Chhotanagpur, the
trespasses which occasion the exclusion from the tribe without chance
of appeal, are essentially those concerning endogamy and exogamy."

Inter-dining has also been prohibited by many Indian tribal peoples.

Education
Extending the system of primary education into tribal areas and
reserving places for tribal children in middle and high schools and
higher education institutions are central to government policy, but
efforts to improve a tribe's educational status have had mixed
results. Recruitment of qualified teachers and determination of the
appropriate language of instruction also remain troublesome.
Commission after commission on the "language question" has called for
instruction, at least at the primary level, in the students' native
tongue. In some regions, tribal children entering school must begin by
learning the official regional language, often one completely
unrelated to their tribal tongue.

Many tribal schools are plagued by high dropout rates. Children attend
for the first three to four years of primary school and gain a
smattering of knowledge, only to lapse into illiteracy later. Few who
enter continue up to the tenth grade; of those who do, few manage to
finish high school. Therefore, very few are eligible to attend
institutions of higher education, where the high rate of attrition
continues. Members of agrarian tribes like the Gonds often are
reluctant to send their children to school, needing them, they say, to
work in the fields. On the other hand, in those parts of the northeast
where tribes have generally been spared the wholesale onslaught of
outsiders, schooling has helped tribal people to secure political and
economic benefits. The education system there has provided a corps of
highly trained tribal members in the professions and high-ranking
administrative posts.

An academy for teaching and preserving Adivasi languages and culture
was established in 1999 by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre.
The Adivasi Academy is located at Tejgadh in Gujarat.

Economy
Most tribes are concentrated in heavily forested areas that combine
inaccessibility with limited political or economic significance.
Historically, the economy of most tribes was subsistence agriculture
or hunting and gathering. Tribal members traded with outsiders for the
few necessities they lacked, such as salt and iron. A few local Hindu
craftsmen might provide such items as cooking utensils.

In the early 20th century, however, large areas fell into the hands of
non-tribals, on account of improved transportation and communications.
Around 1900, many regions were opened by the government to settlement
through a scheme by which inward migrants received ownership of land
free in return for cultivating it. For tribal people, however, land
was often viewed as a common resource, free to whoever needed it. By
the time tribals accepted the necessity of obtaining formal land
titles, they had lost the opportunity to lay claim to lands that might
rightfully have been considered theirs. The colonial and post-
independence regimes belatedly realized the necessity of protecting
tribals from the predations of outsiders and prohibited the sale of
tribal lands. Although an important loophole in the form of land
leases was left open, tribes made some gains in the mid-twentieth
century, and some land was returned to tribal peoples despite
obstruction by local police and land officials.

In the 1970s, tribal peoples came again under intense land pressure,
especially in central India. Migration into tribal lands increased
dramatically, as tribal people lost title to their lands in many ways
– lease, forfeiture from debts, or bribery of land registry officials.
Other non-tribals simply squatted, or even lobbied governments to
classify them as tribal to allow them to compete with the formerly
established tribes. In any case, many tribal members became landless
labourers in the 1960s and 1970s, and regions that a few years earlier
had been the exclusive domain of tribes had an increasingly mixed
population of tribals and non-tribals. Government efforts to evict
nontribal members from illegal occupation have proceeded slowly; when
evictions occur at all, those ejected are usually members of poor,
lower castes.

Improved communications, roads with motorized traffic, and more
frequent government intervention figured in the increased contact that
tribal peoples had with outsiders. Commercial highways and cash crops
frequently drew non-tribal people into remote areas. By the 1960s and
1970s, the resident nontribal shopkeeper was a permanent feature of
many tribal villages. Since shopkeepers often sell goods on credit
(demanding high interest), many tribal members have been drawn deeply
into debt or mortgaged their land. Merchants also encourage tribals to
grow cash crops (such as cotton or castor-oil plants), which increases
tribal dependence on the market for basic necessities. Indebtedness is
so extensive that although such transactions are illegal, traders
sometimes 'sell' their debtors to other merchants, much like
indentured peons.

The final blow for some tribes has come when nontribals, through
political jockeying, have managed to gain legal tribal status, that
is, to be listed as a Scheduled Tribe.

Tribes in the Himalayan foothills have not been as hard-pressed by the
intrusions of non-tribal. Historically, their political status was
always distinct from the rest of India. Until the British colonial
period, there was little effective control by any of the empires
centered in peninsular India; the region was populated by autonomous
feuding tribes. The British, in efforts to protect the sensitive
northeast frontier, followed a policy dubbed the "Inner Line"; non
tribal people were allowed into the areas only with special
permission. Postindependence governments have continued the policy,
protecting the Himalayan tribes as part of the strategy to secure the
border with China.

Government policies on forest reserves have affected tribal peoples
profoundly. Government efforts to reserve forests have precipitated
armed (if futile) resistance on the part of the tribal peoples
involved. Intensive exploitation of forests has often meant allowing
outsiders to cut large areas of trees (while the original tribal
inhabitants were restricted from cutting), and ultimately replacing
mixed forests capable of sustaining tribal life with single-product
plantations. Nontribals have frequently bribed local officials to
secure effective use of reserved forest lands.

The northern tribes have thus been sheltered from the kind of
exploitation that those elsewhere in South Asia have suffered. In
Arunachal Pradesh (formerly part of the North-East Frontier Agency),
for example, tribal members control commerce and most lower-level
administrative posts. Government construction projects in the region
have provided tribes with a significant source of cash. Some tribes
have made rapid progress through the education system (the role of
early missionaries was significant in this regard). Instruction was
begun in Assamese but was eventually changed to Hindi; by the early
1980s, English was taught at most levels. Northeastern tribal people
have thus enjoyed a certain measure of social mobility.

Exploitation
There had been a "systematic failure" to give
tribal people a stake in India's modern economy. Also said that this
this was fomenting discontent, making them vulnerable to Maoists. Mr
Singh said indigenous groups, who live mainly in forests, were not
taken into account when considering the development of these
areas."There has been a systematic failure in giving the tribals a
stake in the modern economic processes that inexorably intrude into
their living spaces," he told the conference of chief ministers and
state ministers of tribal affairs."The alienation built over decades
is now taking a dangerous turn in some parts of our country. The
systematic exploitation and social and economic abuse of our tribal
communities can no longer be tolerated.Also said 'We must change our
ways of dealing with tribals - we have to win the battle for their
hearts'
Participation in Indian independence movement
There were tribal reform and rebellion movements during the period of
the British Empire, some of which also participated in the Indian
freedom struggle or attacked mission posts.[100] There were several
Adivasis in the Indian independence movement including Khajya Naik,
Bhima Naik, Jantya Bhil and Rehma Vasave.

[edit] List of rebellions against British rule
During the period of British rule, India saw the rebellions of several
backward-castes, mainly tribals that revolted against British rule.
These were:[101].

Halba rebellion (1774-79)
Chamka rebellion (1776-1787)[102]
Chuar rebellion in Bengal (1795-1800)[103]
Bhopalpatnam Struggle (1795)
Khurda Rebellion in Orissa (1817)[104]
Bhil rebellion (1822-1857)[105]
Paralkot rebellion (1825)
Tarapur rebellion (1842-54)
Maria rebellion (1842-63)
First Freedom Struggle (1856-57)
Bhil rebellion, begun by Tantya Tope in Banswara (1858)[106]
Koi revolt (1859)
Gond rebellion, begun by Ramji Gond in Adilabad (1860)[107]
Muria rebellion (1876)
Rani rebellion (1878-82)
Bhumkal (1910)
The Kuki Uprising (1917-1919)in Manipur

The Adivasis are the original inhabitants
of India. That is what Adivasi means: the original inhabitant. They
were the people who were there before the Dravidians. The tribals are
the Gonds, the Bhils, the Murias, the Nagas and a hundred more. ..."


Major tribal religions

One of the most studied tribal religions is that of the Santhal of
Orissa, Bihar, and West Bengal, one of the largest tribes in India,
having a population estimated at 4.2 million. According to the 1991
census, however, only 23,645 people listed Santal as their religious