In British India, ‘scheduling’ meant the act of placing certain areas under ‘special administrative regimes’, where the usual laws and regulations did not apply.

After independence, similar provisions were included in the Constitution of India, in the form of the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, for predominantly tribal areas.

This book provides a history of the late-colonial discussions around the future of tribal communities in South Asia. In this debate were first, the British anthropologists and administrators, who believed that the introduction of modern electoral democracy would harm the tribal people. They wished to ‘exclude’ or ‘partially exclude’ all tribal majority areas from the powers of elected assemblies. Against them stood the Indian nationalists, who were opposed to such a policy of territorial separation, seeing it as another instrument of the British policy of divide and rule.

Through the story of this history of scheduling, the author brings to life the intellectual debates, political mobilisation, and cultural assertiveness that lay behind the creation of the category of ‘Scheduled Tribes’. Showing the connections between colonial and independent India that remain alive even today, this book offers an understanding of the forces and frameworks that continue to shape the tribal situation in current times.