Odisha releases India’s first tribal community-based encyclopedia

Odisha became the first state to publish an encyclopedia based on tribal communities. The “Encyclopedia of Tribes in Odisha” was unveiled by state chief minister Navin Patnaik on September 26, 2022. 

The encyclopedia documents the unique and old-age traditions and culture of Odisha. Schedule Castes and Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute (SCSTRTI)  and Odisha State Tribal Museum published the encyclopedia. Tribes constitute 22.85% of the population in Odisha. A total number of 62 tribal communities live in the state. 

CM @Naveen_Odisha has released five edited volumes of ‘Encyclopaedia of Tribes in Odisha’ published by @scstrti & #Odisha State Tribal Museum. The first-of-its-kind Encyclopaedia in country, covers all 62 Scheduled Tribe communities and 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups. pic.twitter.com/iFn2fEWprv

— CMO Odisha (@CMO_Odisha) September 26, 2022

Encyclopedia of Tribes in Odisha: Constituents

1. The encyclopedia consists of five edited volumes.
2. It has 418 research articles on the tribals, including 13 particularly vulnerable groups.
3. The encyclopedia is of 3800 papers contributed by its own research personnel.
4. The available articles are by several research scholars and eminent anthropologists on distinct aspects of the tribes. 

Encyclopedia of Tribes in Odisha: Significance

1. Frequent and considerable changes are being witnessed in the age-old culture and living styles of the tribes. Thus a documented cultural identity of the tribes is necessary.
2. Publishing an encyclopedia is an attempt to accumulate and present published and unpublished data regarding their ethnography and development.
3. The objective of publishing an encyclopedia is to appraise the old and new, the past and the present cultural description of the tribal community.
4. The encyclopedia is a fine repository of ethnographic knowledge and an excellent exposition of unaltered, specific, and varied tribal cultures.

Background

The numbers as a percentage of the total population are higher in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, but Odisha has the most diverse tribal communities in the country. The state government of Odisha brought out a tribal atlas containing 60 plates of maps, with subjective graphs and diagrams, that portrayed the distributional aspects of Odisha’s tribal population, ecological setting of the tribal habitat, and socio-cultural attributes including linguistic or dialectical affinity, sex composition, and literary levels.