Denotified tribes of India

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Denotified tribes (DNTs) are the tribes that were originally listed under the Criminal Tribes Act in 1871, as "addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences." Once a tribe became "notified" as criminal, all its members were required to register with the local magistrate, failing which they would be charged with a crime under the Indian Penal Code. The Criminal Tribes Act of 1952 repealed the notification, i.e. ‘de-notified’ - the tribal communities. This act, was however replaced by a series of Habitual Offenders Acts, that asked police to investigate a suspect’s criminal tendencies and whether his occupation is "conducive to settled way of life." The denotified tribes were reclassified as habitual offenders in 1959.

The creation of these categories should be see in the context of colonialism. The British authorities listed them separately by creating a category of criminal castes or tribes.

The name Criminal Tribes is itself a misnomer as no definition of tribe denotes occupation, but they were identified as tribes being their primary occupation. Another thing was that the first Census was in 1871 and at that time there was no consensus nor any definition of tribe. The terms Tribe and Caste were interchangeably used for these communities. The term tribe was used, in colonial context the term tribe occupied the notion of primitiveness and backwardness and hence they need to be civilized or transformed.

[edit] References

• Denotified and Nomadic Tribes