(a) Assess the contribution of colonial scholars in studying the tribal populations of North-East India. (20 marks) (b) Does…

How this answer will be evaluated

Evaluation rubric

Each sub-part is marked on its own, against the marks and word limit printed on the paper.

1. (a) 'Assess' requires both an account of what colonial scholars produced on the tribes of North-East India - named authors and named monographs - and a judgement on the value and the limitations of that body of work. A list of book titles without assessment, or a critique without the ethnography, will not score. 20 marks

   Must cover

   • J. H. Hutton, 'The Angami Nagas' and 'The Sema Nagas' (1921)
   • J. P. Mills, 'The Lhota Nagas', 'The Ao Nagas', 'The Rengma Nagas'
   • P. R. T. Gurdon, 'The Khasis' (1907)
   • A. Playfair, 'The Garos' (1909)
   • T. C. Hodson, 'The Meitheis' / 'The Naga Tribes of Manipur'
   • J. Shakespear, 'The Lushei Kuki Clans' (1912)
   • N. E. Parry, 'The Lakhers' (1932)
   • morung, feasts of merit, head-hunting, genna
   • Inner Line, Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation 1873; Excluded Areas, Government of India Act 1935
   • Fuerer-Haimendorf, 'The Naked Nagas' (1939); Ursula Graham Bower
   • colonial construction of bounded tribal identities

   Loses marks

   • Naming no monograph at all - at 20 marks the examiner expects at least five author-title pairs.
   • Attributing 'The Angami Nagas' or 'The Sema Nagas' to Mills and 'The Ao Nagas' to Hutton; Hutton wrote on the Angami and Sema, Mills on the Lhota, Ao and Rengma.
   • Including Verrier Elwin's NEFA work as colonial scholarship; his North-East role was post-independence, as Nehru's adviser.
   • Writing about central Indian tribes - Baiga, Gond, Santal - in a question restricted to the North-East.
   • Offering only praise or only condemnation; 'assess' requires the salvage value and the colonial complicity to be weighed together.
   • Ignoring the missionary contribution to script, grammar and dictionary, which is one of the most enduring effects.

   Earns more

   • Knowledge in the service of administration: the same officers' ethnography underwrote the Inner Line under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, the Scheduled Districts Act, 1874, the 'Backward Tracts' of the Government of India Act, 1919 and the 'Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas' of the Government of India Act, 1935, the suppression of head-hunting, the punitive expedition, the regulation of trade and of tea-garden labour recruitment, and finally the proposal in the 1940s associated with Robert Reid and Hutton for a separate Crown Colony of the north-eastern hill areas; Hutton's appointment as Census Commissioner for 1931 carried the same classificatory apparatus into the all-India census
   • Critical assessment: the colonial ethnographic state converted fluid, overlapping and situational identities into bounded, named, counted and mapped 'tribes' - Naga, Kuki, Lushai and their sub-divisions - with consequences that persist in today's boundary and ethnic disputes; the idiom was racial, with Mongoloid typologies and Hutton's now-discarded scheme of successive migration layers, and often exoticising, as the titles 'The Naked Nagas' and 'Himalayan Barbary' show; the observers were simultaneously agents of conquest and pacification, so the ethnography cannot be separated from the expedition; indigenous voices reach us only through interpreters and dobashis and women's perspectives are almost absent, Ursula Graham Bower being a partial exception; yet the salvage value is genuine, since Christian conversion transformed much of what was recorded within a generation, which is why contemporary scholars such as Sanjib Baruah, Bodhisattva Kar, Arkotong Longkumer and Dolly Kikon continue to mine this archive while interrogating it

   Extra mark

   • Edward Gait's 'A History of Assam' (1906) or Hutton's 1931 Census as linked colonial projects
   • Recent critical scholarship such as Arkotong Longkumer's 'The Greater India Experiment' (2020) or Bodhisattva Kar
2. (b) Take a clear position on whether caste exists as a social category among India's non-Hindu communities, ground it in the theoretical debate, and then illustrate it with named groups among Muslims, Christians and Sikhs at least. The instruction 'illustrate with suitable examples' makes named communities mandatory. 15 marks

   Must cover

   • Ashraf, Ajlaf, Arzal
   • Sayyid, Sheikh, Mughal, Pathan; Ansari/Julaha; Qureshi; Halalkhor
   • Ghaus Ansari (1960); Imtiaz Ahmad (1973); Zarina Bhatty; Susan Bayly
   • Louis Dumont, 'Homo Hierarchicus' - the contrary position
   • Syrian Christians and the Knanaya/Southist division; Dalit Christians
   • Duncan Forrester, 'Caste and Christianity' (1980); Rowena Robinson
   • Jat, Khatri, Ramgarhia, Mazhabi, Ravidasia Sikhs; separate gurdwaras and deras
   • Surinder Jodhka; Ronki Ram
   • Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, paragraph 3; Sikhism 1956; Buddhism 1990
   • Sachar Committee (2006); Ranganath Misra Commission (2007)

   Loses marks

   • Answering yes or no without any theoretical grounding, so the Dumont versus stratification debate never appears.
   • Naming no specific community - 'caste exists among Muslims too' without Ashraf, Ajlaf, Arzal or a named biradari earns very little when the question demands examples.
   • Covering only Muslims and ignoring Christians and Sikhs, when the question says non-Hindu communities in the plural.
   • Asserting that because Islam, Christianity and Sikhism are doctrinally egalitarian, caste cannot exist among their followers - this confuses doctrine with social practice.
   • Claiming Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims have Scheduled Caste status; paragraph 3 of the 1950 Order excludes them, which is precisely the live controversy.
   • Treating Ashraf-Ajlaf-Arzal as identical to varna, rather than as an analogous but differently constituted ranking based on descent and occupation.

   Earns more

   • Other cases that complete the picture: the endogamous, ranked Jain communities such as Oswal, Porwal, Agrawal and Khandelwal; Ambedkarite Navayana Buddhists, who retain Scheduled Caste status and continue to experience caste discrimination; and caste-like ranking emerging among tribal societies drawn into regional hierarchies - N. K. Bose's 'Hindu method of tribal absorption' (1941) among the Juang, Surajit Sinha on Bhumij Kshatriyisation, F. G. Bailey's Bisipara, and the presence of ranked service groups such as the Dom, Ghasi and Lohar living within tribal areas
   • The legal and policy consequence, which shows the question is not merely academic: paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 confines Scheduled Caste status to persons professing Hinduism, extended to Sikhism in 1956 and to Buddhism in 1990, so Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians are excluded from Scheduled Caste benefits although they claim the same social origin and disabilities; the Ranganath Misra Commission (2007) recommended de-linking Scheduled Caste status from religion, the Sachar Committee documented the deprivation, the issue is pending before the Supreme Court, and the Justice K. G. Balakrishnan Commission was constituted in 2022 to examine it

   Extra mark

   • Zarina Bhatty's study of Muslims in Kasauli, or Osella and Osella on Kerala
   • Pasmanda Muslim mobilisation as contemporary caste politics among Muslims
3. (c) Give an account of DAPST: what it is, the Tribal Sub-Plan lineage from which it descends, how the earmarking and monitoring mechanism works, what it finances, and how well it has performed. An account of tribal welfare schemes in general, without the DAPST mechanism, misses the question. 15 marks

   Must cover

   • Development Action Plan for Scheduled Tribes; in force from 2017-18
   • Tribal Sub-Plan, Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79); Scheduled Tribe Component
   • Shilu Ao Study Team (1969); S. C. Dube Task Force (1972)
   • earmarked share of ministry scheme budgets; non-divertible and non-lapsable
   • around 40 ministries and departments; Ministry of Tribal Affairs as nodal
   • ITDP/ITDA, MADA pockets, clusters, PVTG projects
   • Article 275(1) grants; Eklavya Model Residential Schools; MSP for Minor Forest Produce; Van Dhan Vikas Kendras; TRIFED
   • PM-JANMAN and DAJGUA
   • Xaxa Committee (2014) and the demand for a statutory basis
   • Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and Karnataka sub-plan Acts

   Loses marks

   • Listing tribal welfare schemes without ever explaining the earmarking mechanism that DAPST actually is.
   • Confusing DAPST with a single scheme; it is a budgeting and earmarking framework across many ministries, not a scheme.
   • Getting the lineage wrong - the Tribal Sub-Plan dates from the Fifth Plan (1974-79), not from the First Plan or from 1991.
   • Confusing DAPST with the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan / Development Action Plan for Scheduled Castes, or with Article 275(1) grants, which are one component within it.
   • Offering no critical assessment of notional allocation, under-spending and the absence of a statutory mandate.
   • Quoting wildly wrong allocation figures; if unsure, describe the trend rather than invent a number.

   Earns more

   • Critical assessment and reform: much of the reported DAPST outlay is notional, general-sector expenditure on roads, power or housing being attributed to Scheduled Tribes pro rata rather than designed around tribal needs, so the accounting exaggerates tribal-specific spending; non-divertibility and non-lapsability are weakly enforced and several ministries lack a distinct accounting head, producing under-spending and year-end surrenders; the Xaxa Committee (2014) criticised the absence of any legal mandate and recommended a statutory basis, which only a few states such as Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka have enacted while there is still no central legislation; planning is rarely routed through the Gram Sabha as PESA, 1996 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006 would require, the Tribes Advisory Councils of the Fifth Schedule are barely involved, and outcome indicators disaggregated by Scheduled Tribe status remain thin - as the persisting deficits documented by the Xaxa Committee and by the Expert Committee on Tribal Health (2018) show

   Extra mark

   • Allocation trend: about Rs 21,525 crore (2013-14) to about Rs 1.25 lakh crore (2024-25) across some 41 ministries
   • The NITI Aayog-set earmarking range of about 4.3 to 17.45 per cent of ministry scheme budgets

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