The Baiga: Survival strategies and local economy in the Central Provinces

Studies in History

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 325-348

  Prasad, Archana ^a  

^a Indian Institute of Public Administration New Delhi   (India)

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EID: 61049085208     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764309801400209     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India's Central Provinces, 1860–1914, Delhi, 1996.
2. For a detailed analysis of this in the Central Indian context see Archana Prasad, Forests and Subsistence in Colonial India: A Study of the Central Provinces, 1830–1945, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 1994.
3. I have re-evaluated the proposition that the forest communities were dependant on forests and swiddening from times immemorial in my ‘Military Conflict and Forests in the Gondwana’, Environment and History, forthcoming.
4. For Elwin's defence of tribal values see Verrier Elwin, Aboriginals, London, 1940.
5. For Elwin's defence of bewar and its role in the Baiga psyche see his introduction in The Baiga, Delhi, 1939.
6. Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest, p. 102.
7. Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India, Delhi, 1992, p. 150.
8. For this point see Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest;
9. Forsyth, The Highlands of Central India: Notes on their Forests and Wild Tribes, Natural History and Sport, London, 1889;
10. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Vol. 1–4, Nagpur, 1910.
11. Verrier Elwin Papers, Number 165, Notes on the Khonds, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, p. 89 (hereafter Khond Notes). Here, Elwin uses some valuable nineteenth century monographs to make his case. He makes a similar case using his anthropological experience in The Baiga. Since the connections in that monograph are ambiguous, I use the Khond experience to show the dynamic nature of the swiddening cycles.
12. Elwin, The Baiga, p. 87.
13. Khond Notes, p. 109.
14. Elwin, The Baiga, p. 129.
15. R.C. Ostmarton, ‘Sal and its Regeneration’, in Indian Forester (henceforth IF), Vol. 54, 1928, pp. 230–74 and pp. 639–54; see especially pp. 569–70, 554.
16. Anon, ‘The Most Suitable Treatment Applicable to Sal’, IF, 1898, p. 451.
17. Mandla District Gazetteer (henceforth Mandla DG), 1909, Nagpur.
18. John Nisbet, ‘On Mixed Forests and Their Advantages over Pure Forests’, Appendix in IF, 1894, p. 5.
19. H.C.E. Ward, ‘Notes on Baigas’, in Mandla Settlement Report, 1869, p. 35.
20. Also see the early inspection reports of Colonels Pearson and Hill in the Forest Administration Reports of 1864–90. This view is consistently upheld by the British; see also Forsyth, Highlands of Central India, p. 304
21. Fuller quoted in Elwin, The Baiga, p. 129.
22. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol. 2, p. 91.
23. Elwin, The Baiga, pp. 78–79, 275. Also see p. 273. In his text, Elwin argues that the Baiga society is morally and socially superior to the modern one because of the freedom it provides to its women. As he wrote: ‘In Baiga society, the women enjoyed an excellent position. Theoretically, in so patriarchal and priestly a tribe, man should be in the ascendant: actually, women have great freedom and no little authority. She may go about on her alone; she generally chooses her own husband, and changes him at will; she may dance in public; she may take her wares to a bazaar and open her own shop there, she may own property and she may drink and smoke in her husband's presence.’
24. But his evidence does not bear out this conclusion on the Baiga women. In fact, the precarious survival strategies of the Baigas were held together in a loosely structured system of survival by collective male authority that denied the women many rights on property and land. For this argument see Archana Prasad, ‘The Political Ecology of Swidden Cultivation’, Tools and Tillage, Vol. 7: 4, 1995, pp. 206–30.
25. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol: 2, p. 91. Also see settlement reports of various districts for evidence of the employment of lower class Gond and Baiga labour by richer peasants of the same or other upper caste communities.
26. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol. 3, p. 105.
27. Central Provinces Secretariat Records, Nagpur (henceforth CPSR), Forest Department, Case File No. 22, ‘B' Progs, April 1919, (henceforth Lac, 1919), p. 3.
28. Also See CPSR, Forest Department, Compilation 50 (6), 1875 (henceforth Lac, 1875), pp. 85–86.
29. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol. 3, p. 106.
30. For this paragraph the material has been taken from Russell, Monograph on Dyeing in Central Provinces, Nagpur, 1910
31. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vols 2 and 3, and
32. Low's, Preliminary Notes on Cottage Industries in Central Provinces and Berar, Bombay, 1908.
33. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol. 2, p. 24.
34. Edward Balfour, ‘On Migratory Tribes of the Natives in Central India’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1844, pp. 2–3.
35. For the Banjaras see N.F. Cumberledge, Monograph on the Banjara Clan, Nagpur, 1882, rpt.
36. Also see Col. Mackenzie, ‘Notes on the Banjaras’, in Berar Census Report, 1881, and
37. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol. 2, pp. 163–92.
38. See Mandla DG, pp. 179–80. Also see the Settlement Reports of the Bilaspur zamindaris.
39. Russell and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes, Vol. 2, p. 79.
40. Report of Forest Administration, Central Provinces, 1863–64, Calcutta, p. 84.
41. Forsyth, Highlands of Central India, pp. 304–5.
42. Madhya Pradesh Secretariat Records, Bhopal, Forest Compilation No. 178, 1878, p. 18.
43. Forsyth, Highlands of Central India, p. 309.
44. Annual Report of the Forest Department, Central Provinces, 1862–63.
45. Ward, ‘Notes on Baigas’, p. 160.
46. CPSR, Forest Department, Compilation 178, 1878, p. 47.
47. Annual Review of the Forest Department, Central Provinces, 1867–68, p. 9.
48. Ward, ‘Notes on Baigas’, p. 160.
49. CPSR, Forest Department, Compilation 178, 1878, pp. 4–5, 47–48, 36.
50. CPSR, Forest Department, Compilation 178, 1881, p. 7, 3, 11–16.
51. Compilation 178, 1880, p. 61, 22.
52. Also see Compilation 178, 1878, pp. 63–79.
53. Mandla District Records, Mandla Collectorate, Mandla, Forests File No. 37, 1937, p. 105.
54. CPSR, Forest Department, Compilation 178, 1890–92, pp. 11–12, 22–23.
55. Elwin, The Baiga, pp. 106–7.