Adivasi | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

The Adivasi refers to heterogeneous tribal groups across the Indian subcontinent. The term is a Sanskrit word coined in the 1930s by political activists to give the tribal people an indigenous identity by claiming an indigenous origin. The term is also used for ethnic minorities, such as Chakmas of Bangladesh, Bhumiputara Khasas of Nepal, and Vedda of Sri Lanka. The Constitution of India does not use the word Adivasi, instead referring to Scheduled Tribes and Janjati. The government of India does not officially recognise tribes as indigenous people. The country ratified the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the United Nations (1957) and refused to sign the ILO Convention 169. Most of these groups are included in the Scheduled Tribe category under constitutional provisions in India. They comprise a substantial minority population of India and Bangladesh, making up 8.6% of India's population and 1.1% of Bangladesh's, or 104.2 million people in India, according to the 2011 census, and 2 million people in Bangladesh according to the 2010 estimate. Adivasi societies are particularly prominent in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, West Bengal, and Northeast India, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India, and Feni, Khagrachari, Bandarban, Rangamati, and Cox's Bazar. Though claimed to be one of the original inhabitants of India, many present-day Adivasi communities formed after the decline of the Indus Valley civilisation, harboring various degrees of ancestry from ancient hunter-gatherers, Indus Valley civilisation, Indo-Aryan, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman language speakers. Ancestors of Munda peoples in India were migrant from South-east Asia around 4000-3500 year ago. Tribal languages can be categorised into seven linguistic groupings, namely Andamanese; Austro-Asiatic; Dravidian; Indo-Aryan; Nihali; Sino-Tibetan; and Kra-Dai.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (101)

Boro people

Boro (बर'/बड़ो bɔɽo), also called Bodo, is the largest ethnolinguistic group in the state of Assam, India. They are a part of the greater Bodo-Kachari family of ethnolinguistic groups and are spread across northeastern India. They are concentrated mainly in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam, though Boros inhabit all other districts of Assam and Meghalaya. Boros were listed under both "Boro" and "Borokachari" in The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950, and are continued to be so called in Census of India documents.

Dravidian peoples

The Dravidian peoples, Dravidian-speakers or Dravidians, are a linguistic and cultural group living primarily in Southern Asia and speaking any of the Dravidian languages. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of South India and are natively found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.

Adivasi