Tribal Integration in India: Northeast and Beyond provides a critical insight to understand the regional concerns on tribal issues in India. Tribal population in India is heterogeneous, representing multiple cultures, languages, religious beliefs with myriad regional diversity spread from North to South and East to West, including the Northeast. Then, if this is the reality, would it be possible to think about their integration? What does integration mean in the context of tribes in India? Is it cultural integration, religious integration, ethnic integration, economic integration, social integration or political integration?
In the context of analysing tribal issues in India, ‘region’ is always a robust term. The region influences the livelihood, culture, ethnicity, religious practices, language, health, development etc. The region would always impact the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of the people. Region, apart from other variables, constitutes a primary variable that differentiates the Northeast India and rest of the Northeast.
Part-I of the volume discusses the tribal issues of the Northeast region, and Part-II covers the tribal issues of non-Northeast region. Reflecting on the observations and discussions brought by each author in their respective chapters, it appears majorly that the tribes in Northeast region need state support and the tribes in the rest of Northeast regions need societal support to streamline their never-ending issues. The central issue of the tribes in India is not ‘integration’ as intends by the state, but to address their primary problems about social, cultural, economic, ecological, administrative and political issues.
The state and the society are expected to perform their roles to address diverse tribal issues in the Northeast and rest of the Northeast regions, instead of promulgating the integration of tribes merely for political reasons.