INDIA, November 13, 2016 (Center for Policy Studies by Anjaneya Bajaj): This thirty-second note on the Religion Data of Census 2011 concerns the Christianisation of many of the very numerous tribes of Arunachal Pradesh. One of the main stories of the Religion Data of Census 2011 is about the Christian penetration into Arunachal Pradesh, a State that had largely escaped Christianisation until recently. We have discussed the issue in our earlier note, Arunachal Joins the Christian Northeast. Now we present the religious profile of individual tribes of the State; this data for 2011 has been released only recently.
Discussion of the individual tribes of Arunachal Pradesh is highly complicated because of the great multiplicity of tribes listed in the Census tabulations. In 2011, the Census lists as many as 105 individual tribes in Arunachal Pradesh; the number was 100 in 2001. This numerousness of the tribes counted in the State has become possible because of the ambiguous language of the Constitutional Order listing the tribes to be included in the Schedule. The Order names only 16 tribes, but says that all tribes of the State including these 16 would be part of the Schedule. This has made the list open-ended.
Many of the tribes listed in the Census are divisions and subdivisions of the same tribe. We have tried to group the numerous tribes into a few groups that are ethnically distinct and inhabit distinct geographical regions of the State. The religion data for these groups indicates that some of the major tribal groups have been fully or largely Christianized, while many of the Buddhist and Hindu tribes have continued to retain their identity.
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