Marginalization Across Diverse Groups

Inequality affects different groups and communities by exclusion from the mainstream. three groups, namely the Adivasis, Muslims and Women. These three groups have been chosen because the causes that contribute to each group’s marginalization are different, and they sometimes experience marginalization in different ways.

Marginalization: Understanding Its Definition and Factors

• Meaning: In a social environment, groups of people or communities may have the experience of being excluded. This is referred to as marginalization.
• Marginalization Factors: Their marginalization can be because of linguistic or cultural differences or it can be because of their poor social status. 
• Sometimes, marginalized groups are viewed with hostility and fear. 

Marginalization As a Social Evil: Unmasking Marginalization

• Sense of Difference: Marginalization creates a sense of difference and exclusion among the backward communities. 
• Resource Inaccessibility: This further leads to communities not having access to resources and opportunities and increases their inability to assert their rights. 
• Disadvantage and Powerlessness: They experience a sense of disadvantage and powerlessness compared to those who are powerful, dominant sections of society having their own land, enough wealth, better educated and politically powerful.
• Economic and Social Imbalance: This economic, social, cultural and political powerlessness further makes these groups feel marginalized leading to a vicious cycle of impoverishment.

Adivasis and their Marginalization: Layers of Marginalization and Egalitarian Traditions

• Meaning of Adivasis: Tribal or Adivasis (the term literally means ‘original inhabitants’) are communities who lived, and often continue to live, in close association with forests.
• Population: Around 8 percent of India’s population is Adivasi.
• Heterogeneous Population: Adivasis are not a homogeneous population and there are over 500 different Adivasi groups in India.
• Location: Many of India’s most important mining and industrial centers are located in Adivasi areas like Jamshedpur, Rourkela, Bokaro, and Bhilai among others.
• Major population in State: Adivasis are particularly numerous in major states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and in the north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.
  • A state like Odisha is home to more than 60 different tribal groups.
• Egalitarian Society: Adivasi societies are also most distinctive because there is often very little hierarchy among them. 
  • This makes them radically different from communities organised around principles of jati-varna (caste) or those ruled by kings.
• The Lokur Committee (1965): It was set up to look into criteria for defining Schedule Tribes. 
• Criteria of Committee: The Committee recommended 5 criteria for identification, namely, primitive traits, distinct culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and backwardness.

 Tribals Relationship with Forest: Symbiosis and Spirituality                                                          

• Tribals share a unique relationship with forests because forests not only ensure their livelihood, but they also worship forests as sacred entities: