The Scheduled Tribes of India are generally forest-dwelling, living comparatively isolated from the rest of the population. They have developed distinct skills of their own, based on knowledge systems they have built up. The article describes some of these, from Scheduled Tribe communities in South India.
Many communities belonging to Scheduled Tribes (ST) in South India have been forest dwelling from time immemorial. Development of "civilization" elsewhere in the region resulted in permanent destruction of the forest, replacement of forest-based eco-system with an agro-based one, and elimination of many and domestication of some species of animals and birds. But ST people established equilibrium with nature such that forest, humans, and animals co-existed for millennia in stable and sustainable harmony. It was only after introduction of "modern" systems of administration and aggrandizement of forest that these equilibriums broke down. This paper seeks to outline elements of the knowledge systems that ST people developed. These systems integrate satisfaction of basic human needs with preservation of sustainable forest eco-systems, and associated regimes of moisture and soil conservation for the benefit of all. This paper limits itself to a survey of conditions among selected ST communities of South India.
All humans, millennia ago, were forest-dwellers. They had to contend with predators and survive on prey. But being Homo sapiens (thinking animals), they developed societal and technological systems that enabled them to ultimately establish mastery over both physical and biotic components of their environs. Development of agriculture, control of fire, formation of societies, refinement of linguistic abilities, cognitive skills, and transmission of knowledge systems were the common human achievements. But once humankind developed these basic capabilities, communities differentiated based on the technologies they chose.
"Technology" is learned behaviour that individuals acquire through observation leading to "discovery", experimentation leading to "invention" and ratiocination leading to "development". In basic human communities at the beginning of the evolutionary process, it encompassed observation of successful elders at work, and imbibing a folk lore of accumulated wisdom. The community integrates it into its collective consciousness thereby enriching itself. Generally, Technology represents the process by which a community equates the totality of the circumstances in which it lives with the production of those items that it considers necessary or worthwhile to have and/or to exchange. For the non-tribal world "at large", the range of operation of Technology encompasses the totality of the global endowment of resources, whereas for isolated tribal populations, the choice is restricted, often confined to the immediate environment of its habitat. In an abstract sense, the extent of the limitation on access to resources is the key to the "tribality" of any given community in comparison to the ‘general population' of either the Nation-State in which they live, or the "world at large".
Technology is an option: - a community chooses a set of processes that enables it to satisfy a set of needs from a set of given endowments of nature and artifice. If items perceived as needed for satisfactory living include elements requiring a great deal of sophistication of methods for transforming a set of given endowments, then the technology required for that purpose will be different from that required where needs are simple and readily satisfied by minimum transformation of things given in nature. Technology is cumulative: one technological advance facilitates many more. The options that a community has determine the sacrifices that it is willing to make in order to develop one technique rather than another in a set of technologies to which it has access.
Thus, given lands full of trees through which rivers flow, and in which many species of wild life live, a human community has many choices. It may integrate under a strong leader, who imposes his will on others through force of arms, and compels them to build dams and dig channels. He encourages invention and popularisation of weapons and their use to eliminate wild animals perceived as threats to the community. He may institute "Private Property" through a process of the strong grabbing from the weak, or, as Proudhon put it long ago, simply "Theft". He may develop military skills, tools adequate for keeping out other human communities from intruding into his ‘own' or set forth to "conquer" other territories and communities. Out of such acts of violence and selfishness are great "Civilizations" created by "Conquerors the Great"! And as grasp and greed increase, nuclear bombs and means of unleashing them unerringly on distant populations become hallmarks of the most advanced "Civilizations" of warmongers.
In South India, communities who chose these megalomanias became enshrined in myth, and history e.g., Chera, Chola, Pandya. Epics Silappadikaram and Manimekalai show that development differed based on geography as well as human options even then. Chola and Pandya lands had already developed agriculture, while Chera areas were only in the process of occupation, main centres of population being isolated communities of hill-men. Manimekalai shows that such development was subject to ever-present dangers of drought and famine, forcing people into distress, and migrations. The epics also show that militarists had already started exploiting hill-folk; Chenguttuvan exacted tribute of valuable hill produce, which he exported to Rome and other places in exchange for gold, Greek wine and women, etc. The people who chose simple equations and opted for technology appropriate for that objective gradually withdrew into forest areas. This process of persistent aggrandizement and repeated withdrawal continues to this day.
