How India's Oldest Tribal Community, Kalbelia, Continues To Live A Marginalised Life In The Post-Independence Era

Rajasthan is also home to numerous tribal and nomadic communities. Unfortunately, the contribution of these tribes and smaller communities to Rajasthan's diversity and traditions is often overlooked. One such tribe is Kalbelia.

The Kalbelias were snake handlers once. The word Kalbeliaa itself is a combination of the words ‘Kal' meaning snake and ‘Belia' meaning friend. The traditional occupation of the Kalbelia tribe has been catching snakes and trading their venom.

However, in 1972, the tribe faced an existential crisis after the Wildlife Protection Act was enforced. They moved away from their traditional livelihood as nomadic snake charmers to whatever work they could find. They were even left to beg so now they are rag pickers or collect scrap.

Kalbelias have been categorised as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), they get negligible benefits from this categorisation.

The denotified tribes continue to live a marginalised life in the post-Independence era. Most people of the Kalbelia community just earn enough money to live on and nothing extra to save.

Speaking to NDTV, Kishan Nath, President of Kalbeliya Tribe, Rajasthan, informed If you that the Kalbelia community were not given access to water or road facilities., except from a very few places. Besides, Kalbelia has not been given any financial support or land rights. They don't have access to housing or to regular food, to the extent that they don't even have ration cards.

The community remains de-notified. Most of them do not even have their birth certificates to further access their basic human and healthcarte rights. According NGO Bhasha's survey report, 44.1 per cent of the Kalbelia community have no birth certificates - that's the highest figure for all of India. This also corresponds to the low literacy rate among them.