Author:

Abhya Singh
Junior Research Fellow
Visva-Bharati University

Email: abhs763@gmail.com

Abstract::This paper examines the impact of colonial forest policies on the socio-economic life and identity of the Sahariya tribe of Bundelkhand, with particular focus on the regions of Lalitpur and Jhansi during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historically dependent on forest-based subsistence practices such as hunting, gathering, and shifting cultivation, specially the slash-and-burn technique known as dhaiya, the Sahariyas had a close and autonomous relationship with their environment. The advent of British colonial rule, however, fundamentally altered this relationship through the introduction of forest reservations, restrictive land policies, and legal frameworks such as the Indian Forest Acts and the Criminal Tribes Act.Drawing on colonial gazetteers, census reports, ethnographic accounts, and official forest records, this study traces how forest regulation led to the criminalisation of customary practices, occupational displacement, and loss of access to ancestral lands. It argues that these policies not only undermined the Sahariyas economic base but also initiated a process of spatial dispersal and social reclassification. By the 1931 Census, the Sahariyas had largely transitioned from forest-dependent subsistence to wage labour and had become increasingly integrated into the Hindu caste order, resulting in the erosion of their tribal distinctiveness.

Key Words::Colonial Forest Policy, Sahariya Tribe, Identity Transformation, Tribal Marginalisation.