Rationality and Tribal Thought

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SOJATA MIRI (b. 1942), is a Professor of Philosophy and at present she is the Dean of the School of Humanities and Education of North- Eastern Hill University. Throughout her long career as a teacher and researcher she has developed a deep interest in the understanding of cultures other than one's own, particularly tribal cultures.

Her interests range from philosophy to anthropology and history of the tribal people of the north-eastern region. Her published books form include: Suffering, Religion and Society: North-East India (Ed.): The Khasi World View: A Conceptual Exploration; Liangmai Nagas: Legends and Stories; Communalisms in Assam: A Civilizational Approach.

  The department of Philosophy was established in the year 1974 with the express aim of helping the students of the North Eastern region to achieve an authentic awareness of their own cultures and traditions. The majority of our students, we discovered, belonged to what are popularly referred to as tribal communities. The need to inquire into questions related to the understanding of tribal culture was felt from day one. I must confess here that at the outset we teachers had to overcome our own preconceptions and prejudices that had come to be associated with the word "tribal". The "tribal" has been generally classified as the one who is primitive and barbaric. Lacking. a literate tradition, he is less developed with a way of looking at the world, which is naive and simplistic. A dialogue with colleagues in the sister departments led to the finding that they too, by and large shared with their counterparts in the rest of the country, an implicit faith in the Victorian understanding of the human condition as divided between the lowest, the savage, and the highest, which is what is understood as civilization.

The misplaced confidence in the western type of theoretical knowledge as the one and only type of knowledge, has left a very limited space to other systems of thought which could be termed rational. The ideal rational understanding is one that moves on the pattern set by the western civilization.

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