Human Rights of Indigenous People – An Analysis ‘A focus on Human Rights Conditions of De-notified Tribes'

Abstract

Every human being has some fundamental rights. We have inherited those rights by our nature and without which we cannot live as human beings. The idea concerning the conduct of men towards each other and the desirable structure of the community has been conceived by enlightened individuals in the course of history¹. But the rights of indigenous people came into limelight only in the recent past. Those people are identified as "primitive savages” or "uncivilized” by the civil society. Historically, often they have been disposed of their lands or deprived of their access to valuable resources. Time immemorial those groups of people have been wiped out, either by war, diseases, exploitations, cultural assimilation, colonizing people or through policies of extermination. The social conditions of the indigenous peoples in India are dark and gloomy. Amongst them the most disadvantageous communities are DNTs. This study focuses on the human rights situation of the indigenous people in India with emphasis on De-notified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes (DNTs), who are branded as "born criminals” or "habitual offenders”. The study is based on secondary data collected from various sources which have been duly acknowledged.