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Tribal Settlements
The scheduled area includes Dungarpur, Banswara and
the Pratapgarh tehsil of Chittorgarh district. The heavily concentrated
tribal area comprises Kherwara, Kotra, Gogunda, the Phalasia tehsils of
Udaipur district, the Abu road tehsil of Sirohi district and the Achnera
and Arnod Panchayatsamities of Chittorgarh district. In sparsely
populated tribal area, the non-tribal population is predominant. This
area includes Tonk, Bhilwara and Alwar districts.
The tribal population in Rajasthan is concentrated
in belts running from Sirohi through the Udaipur, Dungarpur, Chittorgarh
and Banswara districts to the Bundi, Kota, Sawai, Madhopur, Tonk and Jaipur
districts.
The Bhils are not gypsies. The whole of the Bhil
country which is the south-western part of Rajasthan is mountainous,
embracing the wildest area of the Aravallis. The Bhils live in pals or
clusters of detached huts among the hills, each hut standing on a small
mound in the midst of its path of cultivated land. The settlement or pal
is divided into a number of paras or phalas which afford cover and protection
in case of attack. A cluster of huts within a single enclosure forms a
typical Bhil habitation in Rajasthan.
A Garasia settlement is not a cluster of houses. The
dwellings are scattered over slopes of hills and mounds and the fields
extend in front of them. These solitary dwellings are made of bamboo and
leaves and lightly plastered over with cow-dung.
The Meenas who constitute almost half of the tribal population used to
live on rocky elevations or in thick forests and their settlements were
called Mewasas. The cluster of their houses was also called a pal and
was named after the gotra to which most of the inhabitants belonged. The
Meenas were settled in the villages of Jaipur, Sawai- Madhopur and
Tonk districts. Of their two classes, the Purana Basi Meenas are mostly
agriculturists while the Naya Basis belong to the light-fingered fraternity
which prior to independence was subjected to daily attendance at the nearest
police station under the Criminal Tribes Act. |
