1 - Introduction

Summary

FIXED CATEGORIES, FROZEN IMAGES

During a brief visit to Bangladesh, in December 2005, I spotted a recent edition of the national encyclopaedia (the Banglapedia), in the showcase of a professor of history at Rajshahi University. I eagerly searched for a reference to the Garos, among who I had carried out research between 1993 and 2000, and to my satisfaction, discovered four whole pages devoted to their history, culture, religion, and habitat. To me this meant they have a place in the national representation of Bangladesh. My pleasure, however, at once gave away to disappointment, as I discovered one more image frozen in time; one that might as well be found in a nineteenth-century colonial report on Garos or another tribe. The Banglapedia described the Garos as follows:

Their faces are round, hair and eyes black, foreheads extended to eye area, eyebrows deep, eyes small, noses flat and jaws high. Beards rarely grow on their cheeks and they almost have no hair on their body.… The natural habitats of the Garo people are the hills, hillocks, deep forests and places near fountains, springs, and other water bodies. Animals, reptiles and birds are their closest neighbours…. MIRZA NATHAN, a Mughal army commander, remarked that Garos eat everything except iron. There is some exaggeration in this statement but in fact, they eat all animals except cats, which is their totem. They live in an isolated world and within their own geographic, economic and cultural boundaries and follow their own customary norms.

This is a common depiction of a so-called tribe in South Asia. Hundreds of other groups that fall into the tribal category are often described in a similar vein, both in popular and administrative publications, and frequently also in academic accounts. Somehow, dominant discourse of tribe has undergone noticeably little change since the British began their arduous (and impossible) task to classify the Indian population into neat categories of castes, tribes, religions, races, etc.