Or, the DNT's, aka 'criminal' tribes. [Google search]
Indian blogger Dilip D'Souza has written a book about them: Branded By Law: Looking at India's Denotified Tribes.
An American anthropology blogger Kerim Friedman (who writes in the group blog Savage Minds that has made quite a few appearances here on nanopolitan) announced recently the release of
Kerim says in his post:
We are releasing the film as a free BitTorrent download for all those tech-savvy people (the less tech-savvy can get a DVD for a $50 donation to our next project). I hope that this short piece will help raise awareness about DNTs and maybe even encourage some grad students who are still thinking about what they might like to research for their dissertation. If you think you might like to do such research, please contact me and I can help arrange some introductions.
I was hoping to see the documentary before writing a post about it, but I haven't had the time to download the necessary software. I hope to see it soon. In the meantime, I am linking it here to let you know about it.
We all need to be aware of how some of our own brothers and sisters have been branded, en masse, as criminals. I am sure this documentary will be an eye-opener for me, and probably for you as well.
3 Comments:
Dilip's book is an eye-opener too. I read it early this year. I would strongly recommend it, if you haven't read it already.
There's an excellent short film by KP Jayasankar called Tanda: A document on the denotified tribes in Maharashtra.
Incidentally, on a trip to the rural parts of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra - I came across many Tandas - Isolated groups - with complete lack of access to facilities. And a very similar trend in Andhra Pradesh as well.
The interesting thing however is that the Tandas are very receptive to healthcare and education because women are seen as crucial to the community, and not treated the same way dominant communities threat their women. However, the culture waves are such that it threatens to reverse - Where communities are taught to keep their women in homes because that is what the honourable ones do...
Anand, Neha: Thanks for your comments.
Have you had a chance to see the documentary by Kerim and Shashwati? I am yet to get into the innards of my machine here to figure out how to see a BitTorrent thing.
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