Impact of Religions on Tribal Societies: Hinduization, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism

Anthropology Optional › Paper II › Unit 08: Religions, Tribes and the Nation-State

8.1 Impact of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity Islam and other religions on tribal societies.

Official Syllabus: Paper II, Unit 8.1

This article covers what world religions have done to tribal societies, and how tribes responded. The impact of the same religions on Indian society in general is in 3.4; Sanskritization and the tribe-caste continuum in 3.2b and 5.3a; the nature-man-spirit complex and sacred groves in 3.3; and the Bhagat, Heraka and Seng Khasi movements as social movements in 7.4.

1. Tribal Religion and the Meeting of Faiths

Example first: Oraon villages with three faiths. In many villages of Gumla district, Jharkhand, one finds Sarna households who worship at the sacred grove under the village priest (pahan), Christian households who attend a Lutheran or Catholic church, and Hindu or Bhagat households who keep vegetarian rules and worship Hindu gods. All three remain Oraon: they share clans, language and the Karam and Sarhul festivals, yet they marry, vote and argue along religious lines. The Census of 2011 recorded Jharkhand’s tribal population as about 46% “other religions” (mostly Sarna), 38% Hindu and 15% Christian.

1.1 Bases of tribal religion

What is religion? Anthropologists define it in three classic ways. E.B. Tylor, the British founder of the anthropology of religion, gave a minimal definition: “belief in spiritual beings“. Émile Durkheim, the French sociologist, defined it by its social function: a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things that unites its followers into one moral community (1912). Clifford Geertz, the American interpretive anthropologist, called it a cultural system of symbols that gives people a sense of order and meaning (1966). Tribal religion fits all three: spirits, a moral community of clan and village, and symbols tied to land.

Tribal religions share some common building blocks. The table gives the main ones, with the scholar who named them and an Indian case.

Element	Meaning	Scholar or case
Animism	Belief in souls and spirits in persons and nature	E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871)
Animatism / mana	An impersonal sacred power in things	R.R. Marett (1909)
Bongaism	Belief in bonga, a diffuse spirit-power	D.N. Majumdar on the Ho
Naturism	Worship of sun, earth, hills and rivers	Singbonga (sun) of the Munda; Dharmes of the Oraon
Ancestor cult	Dead kin as guardians of the house and clan	Munda memorial stones (sasandiri)
Totemism	Clans linked to animals or plants, with taboos	Oraon and Munda clan names
Magic and shamanism	Specialists who heal, divine and fight witches	ojha or deonra (shaman)
Sacred geography	Groves and hills as abodes of deities	Sarna grove; jaher of the Santal; Niyamgiri

The Indian anthropologist L.P. Vidyarthi summed up these links as a nature-man-spirit complex among the Maler (3.3). These religions are this-worldly, tied to land and community, and have no written scripture, no church and no conversion: this is why world religions could enter them so easily, and why religious change so often became a question of land and identity.

1.2 Religious composition of Scheduled Tribes

The table shows how the Scheduled Tribes of India were distributed by religion in Census 2011 (total about 10.45 crore).

Religion	ST population	Share	Where concentrated
Hindu	8.42 crore	80.5%	Western, central and southern India
Christian	1.03 crore	9.9%	North-East, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh
Other religions (Sarna and others)	71 lakh	6.8%	Jharkhand, Odisha, Bengal, Meghalaya, Arunachal
Muslim	18.6 lakh	1.8%	Jammu and Kashmir, Lakshadweep
Buddhist	8.7 lakh	0.8%	Bengal hills, Sikkim, Tripura, Ladakh, Arunachal, Mizoram

Three points stand out. Most tribes are counted as Hindu, though many practise their own religion and the census category is contested. Christianity is concentrated: STs in Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya are 84–98% Christian, and the number of Christian STs rose by about 63% between 2001 and 2011. The “other religions” column, about 89% of whose members are tribal, includes Sarna (about 49 lakh), Gondi (10 lakh), Sari Dharam of the Santals (5 lakh), Donyi-Polo (3.3 lakh) and Khasi (1.4 lakh).

1.3 How religious change happens

Religious change among tribes has followed four broad processes.

• Absorption (Hinduization): gradual, without a single act of conversion; tribes adopt Hindu gods, priests and customs while keeping much of their own.
• Conversion: a decisive change of affiliation, by individuals or by whole kin groups and villages (the “mass movements” described by the missionary-sociologist J. Waskom Pickett in 1933).
• Syncretism: old and new beliefs combined, as when Buddhist Monpas keep their pre-Buddhist priests.
• Revitalization: reform or revival of the tribal religion itself, often in reaction to the others (Sarna, Seng Khasi, Heraka, Donyi-Polo).

Why convert? An anthropological explanation. The American historian Richard Eaton (“Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876–1971”, 1984) found that most Naga conversion happened after 1947, when foreign missionaries had left, and among groups least exposed to them. Following the anthropologist Robin Horton‘s work on African religions, he argued that tribal religions had two tiers: many local spirits and a distant high god. When colonial rule, war and schooling widened people’s world, attention shifted to the high god who ruled the larger world, and the Christian God was identified with him. Conversion was thus less a surrender to missionaries than a reorganisation of tribal cosmology.

2. Impact of Hinduism

Example first: the Juang and the Bhumij. The Indian anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose, in “The Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption” (1941), described how the Juang of Odisha moved toward caste society: they took Brahmin priests for some rites and Hindu deities, while keeping their own customs, because caste offered a secure place in a wider economy. Surajit Sinha showed the Bhumij of Manbhum chiefs claiming Rajput descent through Brahmin-written genealogies, while commoners stayed closer to tribal life (3.2b).

2.1 Routes of Hinduization

• Absorption through economy: Bose’s point that caste gave a hereditary occupational niche and security, so absorption was gradual and non-coercive, though tribes entered low in the hierarchy.
• State formation and Rajputization: tribal chiefs became Kshatriyas (Bhumij, Raj Gond, Chero), building temples and employing Brahmins (Sinha).
• Bhakti sects and reform movements: Kabirpanthis among the Oraons; Bhagat movements among Oraons (Tana Bhagats) and Bhils (Govind Guru) with vegetarianism and abstinence (7.4); the Gandhian movement of Rajmohini Devi, a tribal woman of Surguja (from the early 1950s), against liquor, sacrifice and superstition; Vaishnavism among the Noctes and Akas of Arunachal.
• Temple and pilgrimage: tribal deities taken into Hindu shrines, as in the Savara origin story of Jagannath at Puri (1.1c); tribal pilgrims at regional temples.
• Organised work after 1950: the Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (Jashpur, 1952) runs schools, hostels and health work and promotes the view that tribes are part of Hindu society; ghar wapsi (“homecoming”) campaigns seek to reconvert Christian tribals.

Scholars disagree about what this means. G.S. Ghurye, the Indian sociologist, called tribes “backward Hindus“; Verrier Elwin and later Virginius Xaxa insisted that tribes have distinct religions and that classifying them as Hindu is a colonial and census construction. The current Sarna and Bhil assertions (“we are not Hindus”) show that the debate is still alive (§6). Field studies show the process as partial and plural: Sachchidananda (Culture Change in Tribal Bihar, 1964) found Hinduised sections of Munda and Oraon villages, with Hindu festivals and purity rules, living beside Christian and traditional sections of the same tribe.

2.2 Impact on tribal society

Area	Change through Hinduization
Religion and ritual	Hindu gods beside tribal ones; Brahmin priests for marriage and death rites; costlier, more complex rituals
Food and conduct	Vegetarianism and abstinence among Bhagats; decline of animal sacrifice
Social organisation	Clan names turned into gotras while clan exogamy and totemic ideas persist; ranking of sections, as among the Bhumij and Gonds
Status	Upward claims (Kshatriya) for chiefs; a low caste rank for many commoners; some disabilities copied from caste society
Marriage	Bride-price giving way to dowry; earlier marriage; less freedom of choice
Youth and festivals	Decline of youth dormitories and mixed dancing, seen as immoral by Hindu neighbours
Economy	Peasantization: plough agriculture learnt from Hindu peasant neighbours

The table shows a trade-off. Hinduization offered status and integration in regional society, but often at the cost of egalitarian features of tribal life, especially for women.

2.3 Impact on the status of tribal women in Central India

Tribal women in central India traditionally enjoyed more freedom than upper-caste Hindu women, though they were excluded from priesthood and, in many tribes, from inheriting land. Hinduization changed this balance.

Point	Traditional tribal practice	After Hinduization
Marriage payment	Bride-price: the groom’s side compensates the bride’s family	Dowry: the bride’s family pays, lowering her value
Choice of spouse	Courtship, elopement, dormitory friendships (Muria ghotul)	Arranged, earlier marriage
Divorce and remarriage	Relatively easy; widow remarriage accepted	Restrictions modelled on high castes
Mobility	Women in markets, fields and dances	Seclusion among Sanskritized, landed households
Ritual	Women in festivals, though barred from priesthood	Ideas of pollution around menstruation and childbirth strengthened
Economy	Major role in farming and forest gathering	Withdrawal from field work as a status symbol among the better-off

Hinduization thus tended to reduce women’s autonomy even as it raised the family’s status. The effect was strongest among upwardly mobile, landed sections and weakest among poor households, where women’s labour remained essential.

3. Impact of Christianity

Example first: four Oraons in Ranchi. Four German Lutheran missionaries sent by Johannes Gossner of Berlin arrived in Ranchi on 2 November 1845. For five years nobody converted. On 9 June 1850, four Oraon seekers, earlier followers of the Kabir sect, were baptised. Within decades the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church had spread among the Oraon, Munda and Kharia, and Christian tribals became the region’s first educated leaders.

3.1 Christianity in Jharkhand

• Missions: Gossner Lutherans (1845); an Anglican mission formed after a split in the late 1860s; Belgian Jesuits from Chaibasa (1869), whose growth came after Constant Lievens (from 1885), remembered as the “Apostle of Chotanagpur“.
• Land and law: Lievens defended Munda and Oraon tenants in court against landlords, which drew thousands into the Catholic Church in the 1880s. The Jesuit John-Baptist Hoffmann helped draft the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, which protects khuntkatti land, and founded a Catholic cooperative credit society to free tribals from moneylenders.
• Language and scholarship: Hoffmann’s Encyclopaedia Mundarica (with Arthur van Emelen, 15 volumes) and the Norwegian missionary P.O. Bodding‘s work on Santali produced the first grammars, dictionaries and printed literatures in tribal languages.
• Education and health: mission schools, colleges and hospitals made Christian tribals the most literate tribal section and produced teachers, nurses, clerks and officers.
• Politics: educated Christians founded the Chota Nagpur Unnati Samaj (1915) and the Catholic Sabha; Jaipal Singh Munda, schooled at St. Paul’s, Ranchi, led the Adivasi Mahasabha and the Jharkhand Party (7.4).
• Scale: in 2011 Christians were 4.3% of Jharkhand’s population and about 15.5% of its STs, concentrated in Gumla, Simdega, Khunti and Ranchi.

Why tribes in Jharkhand converted:

• Land and law: the failure of the Sardari larai petitions and the missions’ readiness to fight cases made the church an ally against dikus.
• Dignity: converts escaped begar and the contempt of landlords; a Christian identity carried self-respect.
• Services: schools, hospitals, famine relief and credit reached villages where the state did not.
• Faith and community: the first converts were religious seekers, and later conversions came by kin groups and villages, so that social life continued inside the new faith.

Effects on tribal society in Jharkhand:

• Empowerment: schooling, salaried jobs and legal knowledge gave converts the means to resist dikus; the Oraon and Munda middle class is largely Christian. Joseph Bara, a historian of the region, argues that Mundas and Oraons took Western and Christian elements selectively to strengthen themselves.
• Change in institutions: early missions discouraged the dhumkuria (youth dormitory), dancing, rice-beer and sacrifices; Christians stopped village sacrifices to spirits, weakening the pahan‘s ritual role.
• Division: villages split into Christian and Sarna sections, and Christians into denominations. Sarna leaders object that Christians marry within the clan and have abandoned the parha (inter-village council). In 2008, an Oraon Bible translation (Nemha Bible) that used the word “sarna” led to protests and burning of copies.
• Inculturation: churches now use tribal music, dress and drums, and some celebrate Karam and Sarhul; Sarna groups have objected even to this, as an appropriation.
• Status and politics: the demand to delist converted tribals from the ST list, first raised by Kartik Oraon, has been revived by the Janjati Suraksha Manch; the state passed a Freedom of Religion Act (2017) against conversion by force or inducement.

3.2 Christianity in North-East India

The North-East is where Christianity transformed tribal society most completely. A short summary is in 3.4; the anthropological picture is fuller.

• Missions: Welsh Presbyterians in the Khasi Hills (Thomas Jones, 1841), American Baptists among the Ao Nagas (E.W. Clark, 1872), Welsh and English missionaries among the Mizo (from 1894).
• Growth after 1947: most conversion came after Independence, carried by Naga, Mizo and Khasi evangelists, not foreigners; Eaton’s “high god” explanation (§1.3) fits this pattern. In Arunachal Pradesh, Christians rose from about 14% of STs in 1991 to 41% in 2011.
• Why so complete: no Brahmanical caste order to hold the hills; missions as the only schools and clinics in Excluded Areas; and a written, modern religion that distinguished hill peoples from the Hindu and Muslim plains.
• Social impacts: high literacy and written languages in Roman script; the end of head-hunting and village warfare; decline of the Naga morung and Garo nokpante (bachelors’ dormitories) and of many festivals; the church as civil society (the Young Mizo Association, 1935); prohibition of liquor in Nagaland (1989).
• Continuity: Khasi Christians kept matrilineal descent and inheritance; Mizo churches developed their own hymns, revivals and drums, an indigenous Christianity.
• Identity and politics: Christianity became part of Naga and Mizo nationhood; churches mediated in insurgencies (the Naga peace mission of the 1960s) and accords.
• Reaction: Seng Khasi (1899), Heraka (1920s–30s) and Donyi-Polo revival; in Arunachal, rules under the Freedom of Religion Act, 1978 are being framed after a Gauhati High Court direction (2024), with a committee set up in 2025.

3.3 Processes of conversion: ethnographic examples

The table brings together cases that show how conversion happened, not only why.

People and place	Process	What it shows
Oraon, Munda (Chotanagpur)	Kin-group conversion in the 1880s through Jesuit legal help	Conversion as an agrarian strategy as well as faith
Nagas (Eaton, 1984)	Mass conversion after 1947 by Naga evangelists	High-god identification; literacy and war widened the world
Adi, Nyishi (Arunachal)	Rapid growth from the 1990s; healing prayer, schools	Answered by the Donyi-Polo revival and the 1978 Act
Juang, Bhumij (Odisha, Manbhum)	Gradual Hinduization without a single act of conversion	Bose’s absorption; Sinha’s Rajputization
Tadvi Bhils (Khandesh)	Islam under medieval rulers	Conversion through the state, with syncretic practice
Monpa (Tawang)	Whole community, through Tibetan monastic influence	Communal adoption that kept old priests

The table shows that conversion runs along a range: from individual decisions to collective moves by clans and villages, and from sudden baptism to centuries-long absorption. The type of religion shapes the process: missionary religions convert, non-missionary traditions absorb.

3.4 Assessment: converted and non-converted tribes

The table weighs the main effects of Christianity on tribal culture and identity.

Gains	Losses and tensions
Literacy, health care, written languages	Loss of festivals, songs, dances and dormitories
Legal defence of land; cooperatives against moneylenders	Weakening of village priests and councils
A confident educated elite; political leadership	Stratification between Christian and non-Christian sections
Decline of witch-hunting, feuds and costly sacrifices	Denominational rivalries
A pan-tribal identity (Jharkhandi, Naga, Mizo)	Conflict with Hindu and Sarna organisations; delisting demands

The Jesuit scholar Joseph Marianus Kujur describes tribal Christians as holding a double identity, tribal and Christian, which is the source both of their confidence and of the suspicion they face.

Non-converted tribes have been affected too: they have organised to defend their religion (Sarna, Seng Khasi, Heraka), borrowed church-like forms (prayer halls, written creeds, Sunday worship in Donyi-Polo), and competed with Christians for jobs and reservation. The Patna High Court captured the continuity when it held, in a 1960s election case, that Christian Oraons were “Oraons first and Christians next“, since they kept their clans and customs.

4. Impact of Islam

Example first: Lakshadweep. Almost all of the islands’ Scheduled Tribes (about 61,000 in 2011) are Muslim. The anthropologist Leela Dube (Matriliny and Islam, 1969) showed that these devout Muslims still live in matrilineal households, where ancestral property passes through women while Islamic law governs self-acquired property (3.4). Island society kept a ranking of Koya (landowners), Malmi (sailors) and Melacheri (tree-climbers), a hierarchy that Islam’s egalitarian creed did not dissolve.

4.1 Muslim tribes

• Gujjars and Bakarwals (Jammu and Kashmir): pastoral, transhumant Muslims with strong Sufi devotion; granted ST status in 1991; in 2024 they protested the addition of the Paharis to the ST list, fearing dilution of their reservation.
• Siddis (Gujarat, Karnataka): people of African descent; in Gujarat they are Sufi Muslims devoted to the saint Bava Gor (Ratanpur), whose shrine mixes Sufi, Hindu and Bhil elements; Karnataka Siddis are Hindu, Muslim and Christian.
• Tadvi Bhils (Khandesh, Maharashtra–Gujarat–Madhya Pradesh): a section of Bhils who became Muslim under medieval sultanates; they offer namaz but keep Bhil dress, language and many Hindu customs.
• Others: small Muslim sections among tribes of Bengal, Assam and Tripura.

4.2 Impact

• Belief: monotheism, prayer and fasting displace spirit worship and sacrifice to spirits, though saint shrines often absorb older ideas of power and healing.
• Law and kinship: Islamic law of marriage, divorce and inheritance meets tribal custom; some groups shift toward patrilineal norms and cousin marriage, but matriliny persisted in Lakshadweep.
• Women: greater seclusion and modest dress in some groups, though pastoral women among the Bakarwals remain active in herding and migration.
• Reform: purist movements (such as the Tablighi Jamaat) push converts to drop “Hindu” and tribal practices, a process the sociologist Yogendra Singh called Islamization; syncretic practice survives among Tadvi Bhils and Siddis.
• Why limited: Islam spread through rulers, traders and Sufis, not through organised missions in tribal areas, and its legal code demands a larger break with custom than Hindu absorption did.

5. Impact of Buddhism

Example first: the Monpa of Tawang. The Monpa of western Arunachal follow Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism centred on the Tawang monastery, the largest in India. Every Monpa village has a gompa and a lama, families traditionally sent a son to the monastery, and festivals such as Losar and the masked dances of Torgya are Buddhist. Yet the Austrian anthropologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf found that Monpas and Sherdukpens still honour pre-Buddhist deities through their own priests, distinct from the lamas: Buddhism was added to tribal religion rather than replacing it.

5.1 Buddhist tribes of India

The table lists the main Buddhist tribes by region and school.

Region	Tribes	School
Arunachal Pradesh (west)	Monpa, Sherdukpen, Memba, Khamba	Tibetan Mahayana
Arunachal Pradesh (east)	Khamti, many Singpho, Tikhak Tangsa	Theravada (Tai-Shan tradition)
Sikkim and Darjeeling hills	Bhutia, Lepcha (partly), Sherpa, Tamang	Tibetan Mahayana
Ladakh	Bot (Boto), Changpa, Mon, Buddhist Brokpa	Tibetan Mahayana
Himachal Pradesh	Lahaula, Spiti Bhot, part of the Kinnaura	Tibetan Mahayana
Tripura and Mizoram	Chakma, Mog (Marma)	Theravada

In 2011, Buddhist STs numbered about 8.7 lakh, largest in West Bengal (Darjeeling hills), Sikkim, Tripura, Ladakh, Arunachal and Mizoram. The Arunachal Freedom of Religion Act, 1978 itself names Buddhism “as practised among the Monpas, Membas, Sherdukpens, Khambas, Khamptis and Singphos” as an indigenous faith of the state.

5.2 Impact

• Monastery as institution: the gompa became the centre of learning, art and ritual; sending a son to the monastery was a duty and a form of status.
• Literacy and script: Tibetan (Bhoti) script in the Himalaya and the Tai-Khamti script in the east gave written traditions to otherwise oral societies.
• Art and festival: thangka painting, masked cham dances, prayer flags and stupas; Losar and Torgya are tribal and Buddhist at once.
• Family and land: in Ladakh, fraternal polyandry and the sending of younger sons to monasteries kept land holdings undivided; the Buddhists’ Polyandrous Marriages Prohibition Act, 1941 of Jammu and Kashmir, pressed for by Ladakhi Buddhist reformers themselves, banned it, and the practice has largely disappeared.
• Ethics: Buddhist teaching reduced animal sacrifice and encouraged non-violence, though sacrifice survives in some non-Buddhist rites.
• Syncretism: Bon and shamanic elements coexist with Buddhism among Monpas and Lepchas (the Lepcha bongthing and mun priests).
• Identity and politics: Buddhism underpins Ladakhi and Chakma identity (the Chakma Autonomous District Council in Mizoram dates from 1972); Chakmas displaced in the 1960s by the Kaptai dam in East Pakistan were resettled in Arunachal, where their citizenship and rights remain contested.

Buddhism’s impact thus differs from Christianity’s: it rarely divided a tribe, because whole communities adopted it centuries ago and it allowed older rites to continue.

6. Other Religions and the Revival of Indigenous Faiths

• Sikhism and Jainism: almost no tribal followers (about 13,500 and 12,400 STs in 2011).
• Sarna (Jharkhand, Odisha, Bengal, Chhattisgarh): worship of the supreme being (Dharmes, Singbonga) and village spirits at the sarna grove; Sarhul and Karam as central festivals; organised by the Kendriya Sarna Samiti and others.
• Sari Dharam of the Santals, Gondi Punem of the Gonds, Songsarek of the Garos and Bathou of the Bodos.
• Seng Khasi (from 1899): protects Niam Khasi, matrilineal custom and festivals.
• Heraka (Zeliangrong Nagas): reformed faith of Jadonang and Gaidinliu (7.4).
• Donyi-Polo (Adi, Galo and other Tani groups of Arunachal): worship of the sun (Donyi) and moon (Polo); a revival begun at a 1968 meeting at Along and led by Talom Rukbo, whose Donyi-Polo Yelam Kebang (founded 31 December 1986) printed prayers, gave the deities icons and built prayer halls (gangging).

The Sarna code demand. Colonial censuses counted tribal religions under separate labels such as “Animist” (1891–1911) and “Tribal Religion” (1921); after Independence the separate category disappeared, so tribals had to choose a listed religion or write their faith under “others”. Tribal organisations want a separate religion column for Sarna and other tribal faiths in the Census, instead of being listed under “Hindu” or “other”. The Jharkhand Assembly unanimously passed a resolution for a Sarna Adivasi Dharma Code on 11 November 2020. In March 2026 the Union Home Ministry told Parliament that in Census 2027 enumerators will record religion as stated by the respondent, without a separate printed code.

The revival movements are not simple returns to the past. They systematise tribal religion on the model of the world religions (a creed, a calendar, a priesthood, prayer halls), so that it can stand beside them in census, law and politics.

7. Consequences of Contact and Overall Assessment

7.1 Social and religious consequences of tribal and non-tribal contact

Consequence	Example
Syncretism	Monpa Buddhism with Bon priests; Siddi worship of Bava Gor
Stratification within tribes	Bhumij chiefs vs commoners; Christian vs Sarna Oraons
New status claims	Kshatriya genealogies; Christian educated elite
Revival and reform	Seng Khasi, Heraka, Donyi-Polo, Sarna
Communal conflict	Attacks on Christians in the Dangs (1998) and Kandhamal (2008); killing of the missionary Graham Staines (Odisha, 1999)
Law and the state	Anti-conversion laws (Odisha 1967, Madhya Pradesh 1968, Arunachal 1978, Jharkhand 2017); census categories; ST status

The table shows that religious change in tribal India is never only spiritual: it is tied to land, schooling, status and political power.

7.2 Religion and Scheduled Tribe status

• The law: the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 has no religion clause, unlike the Scheduled Castes Order, which limits SC status to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.
• Chinthada Anand v. State of Andhra Pradesh (24 March 2026): the Supreme Court held that conversion alone does not end ST status; what matters is whether the person keeps the attributes of tribal identity (custom, social organisation, community life) and is accepted by the tribe. ST status is lost only where conversion leads to a complete break with tribal life (3.2b, 7.1).
• Delisting debate: the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 1967 amendment Bill recommended (1969) excluding Christian and Muslim converts from ST lists; Parliament never adopted it. The Janjati Suraksha Manch revived the demand, with a rally in New Delhi on 24 May 2026, while Sarna and Christian Adivasi groups held counter-rallies.

7.3 The four religions compared

Point	Hinduism	Christianity	Islam	Buddhism
Mode	Gradual absorption	Missions, schools, conversion	Rulers, traders, Sufis	Monasteries, whole communities
Area	West, centre, south	North-East, Chotanagpur, Odisha	J&K, Lakshadweep, Khandesh	Himalaya, Arunachal, Tripura
Break with old faith	Small	Large	Large in law, small in practice	Small
Main gains	Status, integration	Literacy, leadership	New community, Sufi devotion	Learning, art
Main costs	Caste rank, dowry	Divided villages	Loss of custom	Few

The comparison shows why Hinduism spread widely but shallowly, Christianity deeply but unevenly, and Islam and Buddhism only in particular regions. It also explains the different reactions: Christianity provoked organised revival and opposition, while Hinduization provoked assertion of distinctness only recently.

7.4 Anthropological perspectives

• Absorption (N.K. Bose, Surajit Sinha): tribes entered Hindu society through economy and state formation, gradually.
• Isolation, assimilation, integration (Elwin, Ghurye, Nehru’s Panchsheel): the policy debate over whether tribes should be protected from world religions (7.2).
• Identification (Eaton, after Horton): conversion as a shift within tribal cosmology toward a high god.
• Selective acculturation (Joseph Bara): tribes took what empowered them from missions.
• Indigeneity (Xaxa): religion as a key marker of tribal identity, distinct from caste Hindu society.

Read together, these views show that tribes were not passive recipients of world religions. They chose, mixed and resisted according to their needs for land, dignity and identity.

7.5 The way ahead

• Freedom of conscience: Article 25 protects the right to profess and propagate religion; laws against forced or induced conversion must not become tools to harass believers.
• Tribal identity before religion: ST status should turn on tribal attributes and community acceptance, as Chinthada Anand holds, not on church or temple membership.
• Protect institutions, not only beliefs: support village councils, dormitories, languages and sacred groves, which all faiths have weakened.
• Dialogue and inculturation: churches, Hindu organisations and Sarna bodies working on shared ground (land, schooling, health) reduce conflict.
• Nehru’s Panchsheel: let tribes develop “along the lines of their own genius”, including in religion (7.2).

Key Terms

Term	Meaning in simple words
Animism	Belief that spirits live in people and nature
Bonga	Spirit-power in Munda and Ho belief
Sarna	Sacred grove; also the name of the Jharkhand tribal faith
Hinduization	Tribes adopting Hindu gods, priests and customs
Hindu method of absorption	Bose’s idea of tribes entering caste society through economic security
Rajputization	Tribal chiefs claiming Rajput (Kshatriya) descent
Mass movement	Conversion of whole kin groups or villages together
Inculturation	Expressing Christianity through local culture
Islamization	Converts moving toward stricter Islamic practice
Gompa	Buddhist monastery or temple
Syncretism	Mixing of beliefs from different religions
Revitalization	Reform and revival of a tribe’s own religion
Donyi-Polo	Sun-moon faith of the Tani tribes of Arunachal
Delisting	Demand to remove converts from the ST list
Ghar wapsi	Campaigns to reconvert tribals to Hinduism

Contemporary Developments

• Chinthada Anand (24 March 2026): conversion alone does not end ST status; tribal attributes and community acceptance decide.
• Census 2027: religion to be recorded as stated by the respondent (MHA, March 2026); the Sarna code demand continues.
• Delisting rally: Janjati Suraksha Manch rally in New Delhi (24 May 2026) and Sarna–Christian counter-rally in Jashpur.
• Arunachal: a high-powered committee (November 2025) is reviewing draft rules under the Freedom of Religion Act, 1978; the High Court extended the deadline in February 2026.
• Jammu and Kashmir: the Pahari ethnic group and others were added to the ST list (February 2024) amid Gujjar–Bakarwal protests.

Diagrams to Master

• Topic map: tribal religion → Hinduization, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism → revival → consequences.
• Census composition: India 80.5 / 9.9 / 6.8 / 1.8 / 0.8; Jharkhand STs 46 / 38 / 15.
• Christianity’s impact: missions (1841, 1845) → reasons → gains → costs → reactions.
• Buddhist tribes: Mahayana west and north, Theravada east; monastery, script, art, syncretism.
• Comparison table: mode, area, break with old faith, gains and costs for the four religions.

Revision Grid

Scholar	Work (year)	Key idea
E.B. Tylor	Primitive Culture (1871)	Animism
D.N. Majumdar	Studies of the Ho	Bongaism
L.P. Vidyarthi	The Maler (1963)	Nature-man-spirit complex
N.K. Bose	“The Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption” (1941)	Absorption through economic security
Surajit Sinha	Bhumij studies (1960s)	Rajputization, state formation
J. Waskom Pickett	Christian Mass Movements in India (1933)	Group conversion
Richard Eaton	“Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas” (1984)	High-god identification
Leela Dube	Matriliny and Islam (1969)	Islam and matriliny coexist
C. von Fürer-Haimendorf	Arunachal studies	Buddhism beside tribal priests
Yogendra Singh	Modernization of Indian Tradition (1973)	Islamization
Virginius Xaxa	“Tribes as Indigenous People of India” (1999)	Tribes distinct from caste Hindus

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