The term "criminal tribes" was concocted by the British rulers, and entered the public vocabulary for the first time when a piece of legislation called the Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871. With the repeal of this Act (which was condemned by Pandit Nehru as a blot on the legal books of free India, and a shame to all civilised societies) these communities were officially "denotified" in 1952.
Intensive research on the issue shows that about 150 years ago, a large number of tribal communities were still nomadic, and were considered useful, honourable people by members of the settled societies with whom they came into regular contact. A number of them were small itinerant traders who used to carry their wares on the backs of their cattle, and bartered their goods in the villages through which they passed. They would bring interesting items to which people of a particular village and a little further away - spices, honey, grain of different varieties, medicinal herbs, different kinds of fruit or vegetables which the region did not grow, and so on.
Dr. Meena Radhakrishna THE HINDU (India) folio Sunday Magazine JULY 16, 2000________________________
Budhan is named after Budhan Savar, who died in police custody in February 1998. The Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group was formed in March 1998 to lead a nation-wide campaign for advocacy of the human rights of DNTs. The newsletter publicizes our activities and makes available, for the first time, a systematic archive of legislation and scholarly inquiry concerning DNTs.
Budhan________________________
In the early 1990s, the Australian writer Robyn Davidson lived for a year with the Rabari, camel-raising nomads of northern India, whose centuries-old way of life � thanks to the impact of drought, inter-Indian politics, regional military activity, population explosion and plain old economic irrelevance � will likely be snuffed out by the millennium's end. But as Davidson points out with the kind of searing self-reflection undergirding this unsentimental, beautifully written travelogue: "there are new kinds of nomads, not people who are at home everywhere, but who are at home nowhere. I was one of them."
Megan Harlan Salon
