Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

4
Legal Identity and Natural Resource
Management
The Foraging Irula Women of Killai,
Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu
P. Thamizoli and P. Ignatius Prabhakar
‘Who are we? We are deprived of our identity and we are lost’ (Chorus of voices
at a meeting on 27 August 1998, in the Irula settlement, MGR Nagar).
A historical analysis of tribal citizenship in the Indian subcontinent reveals
the constraints and difficulties that tribal groups have faced and the struggles
that they have undergone. The efforts by different tribal groups to
obtain legal identity continue in various parts of the country even in
the present time. The traditional foraging nature of many tribal groups,
their relative isolation and their existing notions of territoriality are not
consonant with practical efforts to establish and formalise their legal
identity. The tribal communities have their own cognitive concepts of identity
and citizenship, as also of rights and livelihoods. Ignoring their identity
and refusing their legitimacy provide very little or no scope for the representation
of these groups and their participation in the ‘mainstream’. The
relationship between the individual and the state has been differently
conceptualised across historical moments and geographical regions. Class,
caste, ethnicity, gender and age intersect with notions of the role of individuals
and/or communities, their status and legitimacy and, subsequently,
with citizenship. Rights have to be universal, but social and economic
exclusion and oppression act as barriers to achieving this; in addition,
the prevailing value system reinforces the inherent economic, social and
gender bias. The gradual gaining and enforcement of rights would lead