CUHP plans research on tribes labelled criminal by the British

Lalit Mohan

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, October 8

Central University Himachal Pradesh (CUHP) is planning to launch a research on Indian tribes that were labelled as criminal by the British.

Vice-Chancellor of CUHP Kuldeep Agnihotri, in an exclusive interview with The Tribune, said many tribes of India that resisted the British were labelled as criminal tribes.

In Punjab the Sansi Tribe was labelled as criminal tribe by the British in IPC. The Sansi tribe once ruled over old Punjab. The British failed to control the Sansi tribe even after the Anglo Sikh war in 1847. The Sansi continued to give tough resistance to British in Punjab area. Due to it the British labelled them as a criminal tribe in the IPC. By labelling them as a criminal tribe the British deprived the Sansis of Punjab from owning land or educating their children.

Ironically, the criminal status given to the Sansis by the British continued for decades even in free India, the VC said.

He further said that in the North East also some tribes were labelled as head hunters by the British. The tribes were labelled as head hunters as they resisted the efforts of the British to convert them to Christianity and killed a few priests who spoke against their traditional beliefs.

The tribe labelled as head hunters were deprived of education and rights to own lands and ultimately forced to give up their traditional culture and lifestyle.

In Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh also some tribes were labelled as criminal tribes. These tribes were still living in abject poverty and have not got the opportunity to progress as most of time the perceptions created by the British regarding them were still being carried along by our society, he said.