KNOW ABOUT ‘VIMUKTA JATIS’ OR ‘DENOTIFIED TRIBES’

‘Vimukta Jatis’ are the former Criminal Tribes of India, so notified by the British colonial powers. The label includes the Bhatkya Jatis or nomadic tribes. In 1871, a large section of tribes was labelled criminal by birth under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871

The Act impacted 13 million people by 1911 and its scope was expanded throughout the 1920s to cover 313 nomadic tribes and 198 denotified tribes, a total of 60 million people National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Tribes, constituted in 2005, noted that forest laws played a role in displacing the tribes, causing many to be so labelled for protesting eviction from forests and foraging lands to make way for British projects

The tribes under the Act were required to notify police if they entered settlements, which led to brutality, superstition and exclusion from social progress. The jat panchayats became their only source of community redressal

In 1950, the list of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was released. In 1952, the Ayyangar Committee Report repealed the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 and enacted the Habitual Offenders Act, 1952. This was recommended for repealing by the Renke Commission in 2008, but has so far not been withdrawn. Today, several tribes have been included under SC/ST/OBC reservation quotas Plans are afoot by the current Union ministry of social justice and empowerment to repeal even this classification in 2018.