SOGIO-ECONOMIG STUDY OF KANJARS OF DISTRICT MAINPURI (U. P.) DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY, ALIGARH IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ECONOMICS 1 966-67 (in lieu of paper IV) Written under the supervision of : Jr, p. (11. J^ANERJGE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH BY Roll No. 1 4 7 Enrolment No. E 5 9 6 2 Till 777 P R S ? G 3 Kanjars form one of the most important denotified tribes of the country. Formerly they used to be desi<5natcd as 'Criminal Tribe", After the independence and particularly after the initiation of the planned economic development, the Government has shoi-jn a great keenness to rehabilitate them. Unfortunately there is a lack of sufficient informa- tion on the basis of x^ich any scheme for their rehabilita- tion can be formulated. In the proposed study an effort has been made to fill in this gap in a limited vay, ''The stud;/ is desigrsd to find out the socio- economic condition of the Kan.iars of Mainpuri district, their Income-consumption pattern, the ba-clcground of their life and the mode of utilization of the present educatioral and environmental opportunities,^ It is hoped that a realistic survey of this type \jill help to develop a technique which could be used for more extensive sui-veys of other scheduled tribes living in other areas. The method of study has been empirical in nature. The original data have been collected on the basis of personal investi-jation which have been processed, compiled and tabulated before dramng inferences from them, To collect the data, I lived at different intervals with the Kanjars of the district under investigation. Being a resident of this area, it became comparatively easy for - 10 - me to create an atmosphere of confidence among ttiam. It vjas encouraging to find that they looked very enthusiastic about the economic, social and educational upliftment of their community, Biis survey on the "Socio-economic Study of the Kanjars" is, In fact, an attempt to investigate in a more coordinated vay, a field hitherto vrorked on divergent lines by specialists, in order to establish the ^ basic principle for the xvelfare of the tribes. I am grateful to Dr. P.O. Banerjee of the Department of Economics, Aligarh Muslim lTniversity,Aligarh for the most valuable guidance and encouragement. My thanks arc also due to Sri Sukhbasi Lai and Sri Anokhey Lai, the Panch of the Kan jar Community, helped and assisted mo in conducting the enquiry. Roll No. 147 30th April, 1967. C 0 K T B N T Chapter Page I Introduction 1 II The Kan jars 29 III Economic Structure 47 IV Family Structure and 6 o Social Life Y Crime and Social Vice 89 VI Education 108 VII Housing 115 VIII Health and Sanitation 124 IX Welfare 'Activities 133 X Conclusion and Suggestion 143 Appendices 157 GRAPH S 1. ShovAng population 2. Sho\dng occupation 3. Shov/ing incomc 4. Shov;ing budget 5. Shovang crimes 6. Showing alcc^iolism 7. Showing education 3. Showing accorainodation. CHAPTER I INTROEUCTION 1. Introduction to the subject 2. Importance of the subject 3. Object of survey 4. Concepts and assumption 5. Unit of analysis 6. Morthods of survey 7. Report presented 8. Nature and scope of study 9. Difficulties during investigation. CHAPTER I INTROroCTION The evolution of the social structure during centuries of feudalism on regions which were not then developed by communications led to existence of large communities which suffered handicaps and disabilities imposed by other economically and culturally dominant groups. The chief amongst the unprivileged or specially handicapped groups are the "^x-criminal Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Tribal population, and other groups who can be considered to constitute the-weaker section of the population and who are socially, economically and educationally backward. Kan jars are one of the most important de notified tribes of the country. Formerly they used to be called as 'Criminal Tribes'. The criminal tribes (which, in addition to Kanjars, include Doms, Haburas, Bauriyas, Sansiyas, Karwala, Tharus, Nats and many other similar groups) are made up of a few pastoral communities which could not adjust themselves to the economy of settled life; small sections of forest tribes which broke away from larger tribe because they could not adjust themselves to economies resulting from the forest and land policies - 10 - Of successive governments; and certain groups -vAiicli were temperamentally and psychologically unable to adjust themselves to a law-and-order society and found it profitable to take advantage of concentrated properties in settled economies rather thah to earn their livelihood by productive labour. The members of these groups were treated as , born criminals and were subject to vigilant watch over <1 their movement by the Government, These people consti- tuted a separate category of population from 1911. This intentional segregation must have been inspi^red by the belief that they formed a group v»hose special profession was crime and v^o consequently required a special treatment, which the Criminal Tribes Act of 1B71 (modi- fied in 1S97 and 1911) purported to provide. This is born out by the then Member for Law and Order Mr. Stephens, while introducing the bill.^ "The special feature of India is the caste system, A,s it is, trades go by castes; a family of carpenters will be carpenters, a century or five centuries hence, if they last so long. Keeping this in mind the meaning of professional criminal is clear. It means a tribe whose ancestors were criminals from times immemorial, who are themselves destined by the usages of caste to commit crime and whose descendents will be offenders against law, untill the whole tribe is exterminated or accounted for In the manner of the Thugs. \i)hen a man tells you that he is an offender 1. Raghvlah, V: The Problems of Criminal Tribes, 1949, p.6. - 10 - against the law, he has been so from the beginning, and will be so to the end, reform is impossible, for it is his trade, his caste........his religion to commit crime." The Crovernment, therefore, started on two assumptions. First, all persons in a particular group or caste are criminal by birth and, second, once a criminal always a criminal. ' It postulated that the Kanjars, the so-called criminal tribe represented a group of born criminals, that crime was hereditary with their members and that criminals could be reformed by ruthless punishment and lifelong harrassraent. The Goverrwent, therefore, provided for registering all the membsrs of the tribe declared as criminal tribes. It further required so registered members to report them- selves to the police authority at fixed intervals for Ha^i, and to notify their place of residence and any change of residence. But the approach of the Government was found eventually wrong. Criminals are the persons who do not conform to the norms of conduct prescribed by the State and society and vho, due to certain factors of environ- ment, come in conflict with existing laws and suffer punishment and not due to their heredity. They are maladjusted or unadjusted individuals. - 10 - Also, a fQv anthropological and ^^lological tests, which \jere made by Dr. Majumdar, pointed to the fact that the members belonging to the so-called criminal tribes did not differ either in blood grouping or in anthro-pometrical measurements from other non-criminal tribes and castes. In fact the case with which some of them used to change their dress and appearance and used to pass off as respectable^ persons altogether belied that theory. Culturally also the different groups stand on different levels. Vftiile the Kanjars of U.P., the Baurias in the Punjab and the Phanesapardhis of Bombay are still in the hunting stage, trapping dear and other beasts and gethering honey, the Gujars of tJ.P. are in the pastoral stage , Territorially they do not form a block, they are but distributed all over the country. \«/hen the separate groups stand out as units, ethnically and culturally, their grouping into one group is basically wrong. It should be noted tiat they differ from each in the modes of doing criminal acts, in their codes of conduct and in modes of signs, which they use to convey information to their people. In fact, they forn various caste-groups which have failed to adjust themselves to new conditions and have fallen into anti-social activities. - 10 - An entire tribe cannot be criminal, neither can a large section of it be so. A few families or a gang may be prone to commit non-bailable offences, but it is not justifiable to dube a tribe as criminal merely for administrative expediency. A restriction on the activities of the leaders of the gang or group wuld serve better. ^ Many members of the criminal tribes do not commit any crime, neither do they have any ambivalence towards crime. Bven the most criminal of the .tribes have supplied responsible warders and watchmen in settlements whose integrity is beyond dispute. No attempt has ever been made to treat individual criminals in these tribes different from the tribe itself. Figures of crime incidence among the criminal tribes are not reliable, but if an effort is made to isolate crime from the criminal, much of the incidence of crime would be traced to economic conditions which compelled these people to take criminal profession. If we look deeply into the different aspects of criminal tribes and specially Kan^ars, they present a very lamentable picture. Most of the people are extremely poor and have no fixed place of above nor any settled profession.