Question
In the storyboard you read about how Helan hopes to make a movie on the Adivasi story. Can you help her by developing a short story on Adivasis?
Solution
(i)Adivasis – the term literally means ‘original inhabitants’ – are communities who lived, and often continue to live, in close association with forests. They are fond of colourful costumes, headgear and dance.
(ii)Adivasis have their own languages (most of them radically different from and possibly as old as Sanskrit), which have often deeply influenced the formation of ‘mainstream’ Indian languages, like Bengali.
(iii)Forests covered the major part of our country till the nineteenth century and the Adivasis had a deep knowledge of, access to, as well as control over most of these vast tracts at least till the middle of the nineteenth century.
(iv)In the precolonial world, they were traditionally ranged huntergatherers and nomads and lived by shifting agriculture and also cultivating in one place.
(v)Although these remain, for the past 200 years Adivasis have been increasingly forced – through economic changes, forest policies and political force applied by the State and private industry – to migrate to lives as workers in plantations, at construction sites, in industries and as domestic workers.
