India today is increasingly virulent in its consciousness and display of ethnicity. The smaller communities, which have survived on the fringes of its social and demographic map, are also being cornered in the process of polarization. Inevitably, some of them are rediscovering forgotten, almost lost, identities. The members of our tribes, who are in a sense the true sons of our soil, are in hopeless minority (about 7 percent of the population). Over many centuries they have been marginalised by latter settlers, and either appropriated culturally into the majority ethos, or left to the mercy of religious preachers.