These articles are created by group of IAS officers for the Indian government and many social experts that problems and the Anti-Freedom struggle by Current 2017 year of DNT communities in North Indian states like punjab,haryana,maharashtra,bihar,rajasthan etc.

https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2016/08/denotified-tribes-discrimination-and-violence/

69 Years After Independence, There Are Still Tribes That Are Considered ‘Born Criminal’

Posted on August 10, 2016 in Society, Stories by YKA

By Varsha Torgalkar for Youth Ki Awaaz:

On June 20, Raosaheb Jadhav, a 42-year-old jeweler was killed in police custody in Karad in Satara district, 70 kilometers from Pune. He had been picked up in a case of burglary. Jadhav was a member of a Denotified Tribe of Maharashtra – the Vadars.

Jadhav owned a jewelry shop in the Karnala block of Solapur district. He was arrested after a jeweler from Mumbai lodged a complaint with the Khandala Police that gold and cash worth Rs. 77 lakh had been stolen from him when he was traveling from Kolhapur to Mumbai.

Following the death of Jadhav in police custody, the Satara superintendent of police suspended 12 policemen. By July 18, only one constable out of the 12 suspects had been arrested.

The action came even as over 500 people of the Vadar tribe took out a rally demanding an inquiry into the death of Jadhav.

“The police illegally arrested Jadhav. He was beaten to death in police custody. The police could not stomach the fact that a Vadar could own a gold shop. They should have produced him in court instead of killing him,” Bharat Vidkar, a social-worker who works for the Vadar community, said to YKA.

How the State Sees Its People As Criminals

The Denotified Tribes are communities that were listed or notified as ‘born criminal‘ by the British under a number of laws. This process began with the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which gave the police wide powers to arrest members of such communities and to control and monitor their movements. The Act was repealed post-independence and the communities were ‘denotified’.

There were various reasons as to why these communities were labelled ‘criminal’. The National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNST), constituted in 2005, notes in its 2008 report that the forest laws that came into force from the mid-nineteenth century onwards “deprived a large number of communities of their traditional rights of grazing, hunting and gathering and shifting cultivation in specific areas.” The new laws, of which these communities were unaware, criminalised their very source of livelihood and they “frequently found themselves on the wrong side of the law.”When the forests were cleared by the British for commercial use and forest communities asked to contribute to labour, some communities resisted and were declared ‘criminal’.

Nomadic communities, the Commission further observed, traded with settled communities and lost their livelihood with the arrival of road and railway networks. The British thought that “once such communities had lost their legitimate means of livelihood, they must have been living by indulging in criminal activities. There is ample evidence to show that a very large number of communities that were formerly nomadic fell in the net of the Criminal Tribes Act because of such an argument.” On the pretext of ‘law and order’, anybody who resisted the British or any “‘respectable’ people of the village (landlords, high castes or those who paid taxes to the British)” was notified as ‘criminal’.

The fallout of this period of labelling has been that, that stigma and suspicion against entire communities has persisted, as noted by as many as six committees and commissions before the NCDNST was formed.

Balak Ram Sansi from Patiala in Punjab, who belongs to the Sansi community, which is one such denotified tribe, says that he has had to live a life in hiding for decades. “People see through a different eye when they get to know that we are denotified tribes,” Sansi says.

As the NCDNST report says, “In fact, the state was the biggest enemy of the nomads, for it represented the interests of the dominant classes, for whom peregrinating communities were both a threat and a nuisance.” Although denotified in 1952, members of denotified tribes often find themselves restricted by the Habitual Offenders Act, 1959, which has similar provisions as the 1871 Act for restricting movement of those found to be ‘habitual offenders’.

This has also manifested in what Kiran Bedi, a well-known former police officer and now Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry, tweeted this month:

Tribal, Not Criminal

The fact is that the stigma of belonging to a ‘criminal tribe’ at one time continues to dog the members of these tribes. To this day, the discriminatory practice that nomadic tribes have to verbally inform the Sarpanch (head of a village panchayat) on arrival at a village continues.

“Today most tribal communities are settled in one or the other village where they work as labourers. But a few groups still move from village to village, and they have to verbally inform the Sarpanch on arrival,” says Santosh Jadhav of Nirman, an organisation that serves denotified communities in Pune.

“The blot of belonging to a ‘criminal tribe’ still exists and police pick one or the other whenever a crime is reported and they are found in the vicinity. That makes it difficult for these people to get work and they have to live on begging. Sometimes with no option left, they turn to criminal activities for a livelihood,” Jadhav said.

A couple of months ago, a woman of the Nandiwale tribe, which sells utensils and cutlery for a living, was stripped and beaten up in Indapur block of Pune district for allegedly stealing silver spoons from a household.

After being accused of the crime, she was stripped and beaten up. They did not even ask if she had committed the crime. That she belonged to a once criminally notified tribe was considered proof enough.

32-year-old Yuvraj Kale complains of police suspecting him of burglary in his locality.

Yuvraj Kale and his wife. Image Courtesy: 101 Reporters.

“The police of Baramati are behind me. I have been accused of committing more than 20 crimes that happened around me. The first time the police picked me up was in 2001, in a burglary case. I was just 16,” says Kale.

“Since then whenever a burglary is reported, I’m at risk of being picked up. I don’t stay in my house for more than 3-4 days at a time for fear of being picked up. I have two kids and I’ve to rely on neighbours and relatives to look after them,” he said.

Kale said it is very difficult for him to get a job and to hold on to one if he lands one. His wife, Sarika, too, is in the same boat.

Where This Needs Fixing

Suresh Khopade, a retired IPS officer, who has studied these communities all through his career as a police officer, told YKA that the kind of training the police get is to blame in part for the plight of the likes of Kale.

“The police are trained in such a way that they look down on people from denotified tribes. The police cannot be blamed. There is a need to change the syllabus and the training,”Khopade said. “Even after so many years of Independence, denotified tribes are still listed as criminal tribes in police training manuals of the state.”

Inspector Santosh Girigosavi of Pune Rural Police, Chakan, agreed. “The problem still exists in rural areas. However, the chances of police picking up a denotified tribal has diminished as they have now integrated well within other communities,” he said.

A police inspector at Indapur, where members of many denotified tribes have settled for good, does not agree. “We do not necessarily pick up people just because they belong to a denotified tribe. We pick up people with a criminal background. It just happens that lots of criminals belong to these tribes because of their socio-economic background,” he told YKA.

“There is a wrong tendancy of people linking crimes with caste or community. For a cop, a criminal is a criminal,” says Rahul Gopal, former Director General of Police of Maharashtra. He probably hasn’t heard of the tribal woman who was stripped and beaten up after being falsely accused of stealing silver spoons by a household.

Varsha is a Pune-based independent journalist and a member of101Reporters.com. She has earlier worked with Pune Mirror (Times of India). She primarily writes on human rights.

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This article is a part of our content of Integrated UPSC /IAS General Studies - Target 2018 membership programme.

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Issues around Denotified & Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) of India

First Published: March 17, 2014 | Last Updated:November 20, 2017

Crime was never absent in human society and our country is no exception to this. Right since the Vedic period, we find ample references about crimes and anti-social behaviors. The Vedic literature mentions thieves as Taskars and Stayus. The degeneration of the early religion and morals is recorded in later Vedic literature. According to Manusmriti, there was an age when Dharma prevailed in perfection but gradually Adharma made its headway giving rise to theft, falsehood and fraud. An ancient sage called Kamandaka wrote about the need of danda(punishment). He advocated that King should uphold the Dharma by means of danda for men of criminal tendencies.

Going ahead; Megasthenes while writing about the Maurya Empire says that theft was rare occurrence in India. However, even that period was not devoid of crimes. Kautilya has said that thieves and robbers are the pests of the society and suggested various steps to contain such criminal elements. The Sanskrit dramas Mrichhkatika (of Sudraka), Charudatta (of Bhasa) and Dashkumarcharita (of Dandin) mention professional thieves called Sharvilaks. Similarly, Chauryashashtra (Art of Thievery) was assigned a place among the 18 Vidyas and 64 Kalas!

There were people who excelled in this Chauryashashtra and adopted it as passion. Similarly, The word “Thug” is derived from “Sthag” of Sanskrit, which means “sly”. The ancient Indian society was tolerating towards the petty crimes and there were regimes to punish the professional criminals in ancient India. However, by the time of colonial rule, the menace of professional crimes was costing too much to the society.

Contents

Hereditary Crimes

It is not clearly documented if some particular communities were habitually engaged in crimes. However, as we have been told, the Thugs in medieval / early modern India were the groups of (hereditary?) assassins whose profession was to deceive people and strangle them to death with their Pugree or scarf.

These thugs used to travel in Gangs, disguised as merchants or pilgrims. They were bound together by an oath on the rites of their deity goddess Kali. Rather than ordinary thieves, they were the bands of the people who were first recorded by Barni, when he mentions that Firoz Shah Tughlaq captured the Thugs. But none of them was killed and Sultan put them in boats and sent them to Lakhnauti where they were set free, so that they don’t trouble the elite “Delhites”.

The thugs were brutally suppressed in British India. In suppression of Thugs, along with Lord William Bentinck, one more name cherished is William Henry Sleeman. Sleeman was initially a soldier and later became the administrator. In 1835, the ‘Thugee and Dacoity Dept’ was created by William Bentinck and William Henry Sleeman was made its superintendent. He was later promoted as its Commissioner in 1839. The rigorous operations under Sleeman led to capture of 1400 Thugs who were hanged by the government or transported for life. A special prison was established at Jabalpur for Thugs. The reason of this success was the awareness creation by the Government. The department started disseminating information about the Thugee and at every Police Station or Thana, the information about the new techniques by the Thugs would be sent. The travelers were warned.

Since, Thugs could be recognized only by evidence, the department started “King’s Evidence Programme”. In this programme the Thugs, who turned evidences of the and provided into about the Gang members & peers would be provided protection and incentives. This was used by the government to break the code of silence, which kept the members of the gang silent.

Apart from Thugs, multi-ethinic bands of robbers, dacoits such as Pendharis, Uchale, Ghantichor etc. prevailed in India. These were multi-ethinc and not always people by birth took up crimes. But a fallacious British understanding of the Indian society particularly the caste system led to what may be called a dark chapter for the tribes of India.

The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871

After the revolt of 1857, the British needed to take a number of preventive steps to keep India in their clutches. A foolish officer of Law and Order Commission recommended that certain communities in India were professionally criminal and their occupation as well as religion was to commit crimes. On such recommendations, the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 was enacted.

This extremely oppressive act notified certain communities as criminal tribes. Once a tribe became “notified” as criminal, here is what it meant for its members:

Every member of the notified community was forced to register himself/herself at the local police station and had to give ‘Hazri’ (attendance) at a specified time of the day.
Their movements were curtailed. They could not shift their residence at will and had to take proper permission before any travel or movement.
Severe punishments were put in place for breaking these rules.
The local police could easily round up any member of the community upon mere suspicion.

First tribe that was notified under this act was Hur of Sindh. Gradually, as many as 198 tribes were brought in its ambit.

The act was amended in 1897 and more stringent penalties were brought in. The act was draconian and slowly started getting criticism from all around. With idea of their rehabilitation gaining ground, the British Government passed the Criminal Tribes Settlement Act, 1908. This act made provisions for settlements of these communities so that they could be reformed.

This was followed by a modification of the act in 1911 and a major modification in 1923-24 with objective to integrate the criminal tribes with the mainstream society. But these acts did not change the ground realities. The notified tribes became more and more oppressed by local administration and village officials / police etc.

In 1937, the Governor of Bombay Province appointed K M Munshi committee to review the act. The Munshi Committee thoroughly and comprehensively reviewed the situation and made a number of suggestions. The most notable contribution was that the committee, for the first time, defined various terms like tribe, gang, class, habitual offender, criminal and so on.

The act started getting repealed by the provincial governments. After independence, the Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1952. After the repeal, the tribal were denotified and thus were known as Denotified Tribes.

Habitual Offenders Act 1952

But revoking the CTA act did not end the misery of those who were affected by this act. The CTA act was replaced by Habitual Offenders Act 1952. The major difference between the previous act and new act was that the later targeted individuals and not communities. But on ground, the same procedure kept following. The whole communities kept branded or stigmatized on the colonial model. Whenever a crime took place, the police round up all the male members of the community in the vicinity and apply third degree to extract information. It is being followed even till date. Such communities include Pardhis, Kanjars, Kanjarbhats etc. The problem is complicated because some members of these communities are still involved in crimes.

The act has attracted criticism from civil society as well as United Nations on the ground that it negates the principle of the criminal justice system – innocent until. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) had asked India to repeal the Habitual Offenders Act (1952) and effectively rehabilitate the denotified and nomadic tribes. proven guilty.

National Commission for De-notified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic tribes

There are 1500 Nomadic / Semi-Nomadic Tribes and around 150 Denotified Tribes, which make about 11 Crore of India’s population. Traditionally the tribes wander and therefore could not integrate into Indian society. These tribes also don’t have livelihood means. As mentioned above, some members of these tribes are still involved in a crime, which makes the problem more complicated.

The constitution of India identifies only scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and backwards. It does not make any special provision for denotified tribes as such. Some of the denotified and nomadic tribes got status of SCs in some states while others got status of STs. But many of them are neither SCs nor STs. In 2005, the Government of India established the National Commission for De-notified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Tribes (NCDNT) to study various developmental aspects of these Tribes. The Commission made several recommendations, enumerated as follows:

Reservations as available to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes should be extended to denotified, nomadic or semi-nomadic tribe categories.
Extension of Prevention of Atrocities Act to them. The Act currently applies to only SCs and STs.
Government should get a “tent to tent” survey done within the next six months and also a community-wise census so as to gather specific data about 1,500 nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and 150 denotified tribes.
Initiation of a special housing scheme to ensure that families are provided with “small pucca houses” in the next five years. Provide permanent shelter by helping them settle down as villages. The Government should be facilitating the settlement of such tribes as villages by acquiring land for the purpose.
A Minimum Land Holding Act should be put in place to guarantee land to these tribes in case they want to settle down and engage in agriculture.
Suitable training should be provided to these tribals to develop their existing skills and develop livelihood options.

Conclusion

The DNTs being a transient and mobile group have always remained at the periphery of Indian society and have not received due attention. There is a need make efforts on a wider scale to bring them back to social mainstream.

தென்பாண்டி சிங்கங்கள்

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Modern Day Anti-Freedom slavery under DNT reservation