An Asur couple in Sakhuapani village of Jharkhand. (Express Photo by Prashant Pandey) An Asur couple in Sakhuapani village of Jharkhand. (Express Photo by Prashant Pandey)

The term tribal defies any universal definition. Between the Maoris of New Zealand, the Aborigines of Australia and the Indigenous People of North America, there is a shared historical fact. They were all there before the colonial powers pushed them to margins. This is not so in the case of all tribal communities in India.

Some of the Indian tribes such as the Onges and the Jarawas of Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been entirely indigenous. Some others like the Banjaras in Western and Central India and the Gujjars in the Himalayas have been nomadic. And, some, such as several sub-groups of Bhills, haveagricultural work.

The ancestry of the Asurs is not quite clear. Going by the most widely shared tale of their origin, it seems that two of these three sub-groups came from ‘outside’ and were adopted and endeared by a third sub-group which had been resident in the area from earlier times. The folktale speaks of two children — a girl and a boy — being lifted up by a cyclone — a mythological person — and being dropped atop a hill. The twins could not be rescued but subsequently became ‘spirits to be worshipped’.

Oral history mentions that Sarguja district in Madhya Pradesh was the original habitat of the Asurs, or at least of one of the three clans. At present, they are resident in the forests of Palamu, Gumla