16/02/2020
The talk organized by CSPH is an attempt to understand the tribal communities in Goa. The talk was delivered by Ramkrishna Jhalmi, a well-known tribal leader and social activist on the above topic. The extract of his speech is as follows.
The tribal communities in Goa basically comprise of 4 different communities-Gauda ,Kunbi, Velip and Dhangar .Many tribals believe that they were also early settlers who might have migrated from the chota Nagpur plateau in the central India. Their life was deeply connected with nature and was therefore nature worshippers .they did not follow the vedic /sanatan religion as they had their own set of religious and cultural practices. The tribals have evolved a unique set of practices in the field of agriculture, sociology, animal rearing etc.
During the medieval period, many of the local gods of the tribals such as Sateri, etc were sanskritised or merged with the Vedic religion. The tribal being original settlers and cultivators owned large tracts of land .they did not consider themselves as hindus.they were also subjected to caste and social atrocities by the upper caste Hindus. During the Portuguese regime, high caste hindus in connivance with the rulers usurped their lands and they were made into tenents and landless labors.
It was during the rule of Bhausaheb Bandodkar that they were granted legal land tenancy status and Mundkarial rights based on the land to the tiller principle. Despite being from the Adivasi community, they had to engage in various agitations to get themselves recognized as a schedules tribes community by the central governments.it was after years of such agitations that they were granted the ST status in 2003. However the Dhangars are still deprived of this status even today.
The conferment of ST status helped the communities take benefits of various governments’ schemes and reservation’s facilities. This has benefited them financially .in recent times, are well represented in government jobs and educational institutions. However, increased financial position has not helped them in rise through the ladder of social mobility.
The community today faces a cultural crisis as a large section of the population is ignoring their past religious cultures and is moving towards the adoption of hindu religious cultures and celebrations. The recent legislation of Citizenship amendment act CAA and the upcoming exercise of National Citizens Register NRC is an existential threat to the community. An overwhelming majority of the community faces deficiencies in the legal documents due to due to lack of awareness amongst their ancestors.They view the whole CAA-NRC episode as an exercise to deprive the community of their resources and sn**ch away constitutional rights accorded to them.
