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Indigenous people, known as ‘tribals’ in common parlance in the Indian context, concentrate by and large in surroundings isolated from the rest of the population. With the advent of colonialism two centuries ago, the term tribe acquired a pejorative sense: ‘a race of people in a primitive or barbarous condition’ — the aborigines: Indian terms ādivāsī, vanajāti, janajāti, janajamāti, also carry a similar connotation.