As Conrad said: “India outside the alluvial plains was actually sparsely populated and those regions which didn’t generate a large agricultural surplus and was dominated by nomadic groups and hunter-gatherer groups were not subject to any sustained form of forced incorporation; they were largely left along, as long as they accepted the political suzertainty of the regional rulers - many Hindu rulers were happy to enter such agreements in return for military service during large scale campaigns; there was little effort to concertedly settle adivasi dominated areas or tax them; when this changed as under the Mughals and the British you had massive resistance. From Vedic times, if you read most Hindu sacred texts and epics; the forest and deserted regions were those where there was not settled civilised life but where people lived according to different customs and mores; which is why traditionally only ascetics or those who wanted to prepare for the afterlife would go to the forest for meditation and sever their links with mainstream society and also why in the Ramayana and Mahabharata both Ram and the Pandavas endure most of their exile in the forest.”
vanavAsI-s depicted in the kAvya-s:
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guha, close friend of rAma.
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shabarI, great devotee of rAma.
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beDara kaNNappa, great devotee of shiva.
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naLa, king of niShAda-s.
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ekalavya, great student of droNa.
Self identification of the vanavAsI-s: ST2015-data.
Contrast with interactions with Abrahamisms
Consider:
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Prisoners of a White God - 2008 documentary on disastrous Christian missionary activity in the Akha populace.
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Forced schooling and deracination of Native Americans, Eskimo-s, Australian aborignes by Christian missionaries.
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As Vikram said: “In Eaton’s book on the spread of Islam in East Bengal, one sees that soon after conversion and some direct contact with Arabia (pg 282-283) East Bengali Muslims started abandoning central tenets of their tribal identity and adopting a more Arabized culture. The same process can be seen continuing in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India even today.
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“In the year 1871 the British rulers of India (who were practicing Christians) had passed an uncivil and highly derogatory law, known as the Criminal Tribes Act.” It notified a group of 160 castes, who presently constitute the core of today’s ‘dalit samaj’ as “hereditary criminals” on the ground that as a community they were passing on the professions like theft, burglary, house-breaking, robbery, dacoity and counterfeiting of coins from one generation to the next. “The total headcount of the so-called criminal tribes branded as ‘pariahs’ by our former Christian rulers was at that time approximately six crores (i.e., 60 million) constituting nearly 20 to 25 percent of the Hindu population.”