Tribal reaction on
social media
to mainstream media
portrayal of tribals
Samarjit Kachari
Assistant Professor
Dept of Electronic Media and Mass
Communication
Pondicherry University
The portrayal of tribals in Indian media, have not received much
attention from researchers. As per the census of 2011 India’s
tribals includes 8.6 % of the total population of the country. But
their representation in Media along with the Scheduled Castes is
almost nil as shown in the study done by BN Unyal in 1996 and
Robin Jeffrey also demonstrated the same in his book ‘India’s
newspaper revolution’ published in 2010. As a result of which
their portrayal in the media has been through the lens of the
mainstream or dominant communities who work in the media.
In the same vein the indigenous Bodo tribe in Assam also has
no presence in Guwahati based Assamese or English mainstream
media in Assam.
Members of the Bodo tribe are spread in almost all parts of Assam,
with major concentration along the Assam-Bhutan and Assam-
Arunachal borders. The Bodos, who constitute the largest tribe in
Assam, have their own language and a distinct culture. They have
for long been asserting their independent identity exclusive of the
mainstream Assamese identity and thereby not assimilating into
the mainstream Assamese culture. Apart from it the Bodos are
also demanding for the creation of a separate Bodoland state by
bifurcating Assam. This act of the Bodos has annoyed many in the
mainstream Assamese society, who take pride in the composite
Assamese identity and the geographical area called Assam.
Though Bodoland movement halted for a while with the creation
of Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD), an arrangement
for tribal autonomy under the provisions of the 6th Schedule of
Indian constitution, the movement has gathered steam once again.
Invariably the mainstream media which is owned and dominated
by journalists from the mainstream Assamese communities is not
considered to have a neutral view about the Bodos. Hence it is
important to explore how Bodo youths perceived the depiction of
their political struggle, language, society and culture in Assamese
media.
In the post-independence period the initial discourse of tribes
was dominated by need for integration of tribes into the state
as its citizens and on the other hand the other discourse was to
seek assimilation of tribes into the mainstream Hindu culture.
Both these discourses were without the tribes. With the spread
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