The Health and Education among the Patharkatta/Kanjars: A Denotified Community of Uttar Pradesh Mishra Gaurav1,*, Singh Udai Pratap2 1Post Doctoral Fellow, Dr Ambedkar International Centre (DAIC), Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, New Delhi, India 2Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India *Corresponding author email id: gaurav.anthro@gmail.com
Online published on 28 October, 2022. Abstract De-notified Tribes (DNT) are those communities of India that were got listed under ‘the Criminal Tribes Act’ propounded during British rule in India in 1871. It was mandated that all tribe members register with the local magistrate whenever any community is notified; else, they risk being punished with a felony under the Indian Penal Code. However, after the Indian independence, this ‘Criminal Tribe Act’ (CTA) was repealed and a number of amendments and other laws were made in order to give them a constitutional safeguard, but the stigma with these tribes is not ending. The present paper is about one DNT community whose members are following numerous occupations after being settled from gipsy life. The Patharkatta/Kuchbandiya/Shilpkar or Kanjar, have many derogatory names in government records but their status in surrounding people is yet like a ‘Criminal Tribe’, which demoralising these people in coming to the mainstream. This paper investigates the health and educational facility being available to them at their settlement. Policy feedback is also given to restore and rehabilitate these DNTs which can be utilised for their mainstreaming. Top Keywords De-notified, ex-criminal tribes, CTA, Constitutional safeguards, Patharkatta, Kanjar, Health and education infrastructure, Uttar Pradesh. Top |