Ramoshi the Denotified tribe of Maharashtra

Abstract

The present thesis has studied lived experiences of stigma and social exclusion among one of the de-notified tribes of Maharashtra, named Ramoshi. The De-notified tribes are tribal communities who were declared criminals with the enactment of Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 (CTA). Under the provision of this Act, these tribesmen were registered and notified as born criminals in society during the British period. However, even today they are subject newlineto criminal stigma and discrimination in the hands of polity, society, and state machinery. The Ramoshi community continues to remain stigmatized and discriminated by dominant sections, deprived of access and denied of opportunities to exercise their basic human rights. Major discussions of this study revolve around how the criminal stigma, social exclusion, and resistance operate in the rural Maharashtra and also explores the forms and nature of resistance exerted by the tribe to face stigma and exclusion at individual,family and community level. The Ramoshi community faces ncidences of stigma and exclusion in their everyday lives and their challenges while coping with these experiences were recorded during the extensive field work in Satara District of Maharashtra. The tension between dominant communities and the rebellious marginalized community shows layers of active and passive forms of resistance. Their resistance conceptually falls somewhere between resistance and protest, and forms such as active/open, passive/hidden and individual/collective attempts of resistance were observed. Various coping mechanism newlinemethods, as well as resistance strategies, are developed by the community members over a period of time; but the dominant communities also have built their own set of strategies to deal with Ramoshi resistance. Strategies against strategies lead to the conflict between the two sections in the villages which lead to different forms of exclusion in terms of participation and involvement in local village meetings, governance systems, local social functions etc. The study provides an understanding of how subalterns resist to ongoing newlineprocesses of stigma and exclusion, their relations with the dominant communities and local newlinepolice, involvement in illegal activities, occupational-cultural changes and their newlinediminishing participation in village activities. The present study is purely qualitative in newlinenature and follows a multi-sited ethnographic approach