Criminal Tribes Act
Since the 1870s, various pieces of colonial legislation in India during British rule were collectively called the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA). Such legislations criminalised entire communities by designating them and their members as habitual criminals.
The first CTA, the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, was applied mostly in North India, before it was extended to the Bengal Presidency and other areas in 1876, and updated to the Criminal Tribes Act 1911, which included the Madras Presidency. The Act went through several amendments in the next decade, and, finally, the 1924 version incorporated all of them.
At the time of Indian independence in 1947, thirteen million people in 127 communities were subject to the legislation. They were subject to compulsory registration and a pass system which limited their movement and where they could reside. The Criminal Tribes Act 1924 was repealed in August 1949 and former “criminal tribes” were denotified in 1952, when the Act was replaced with the Habitual Offenders Act 1952. In 1961 state governments started releasing lists of such tribes.
Today, there are 313 Nomadic Tribes and 198 Denotified Tribes of India who continue to face its legacy through continued alienation and stereotyping with the policing and judicial systems and media portrayal.
