• The UN defines indigenous populations as comprising the descendants of peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world and overcame them
• They live in conformity with their social, economic, and cultural customs and traditions than the institutions of the country of which they now form a part
• Today there are approximately 30 crore indigenous peoples spread throughout the world including India. They have time and again spoken of their struggles, their agenda and their rights. They call for equal representation in world politics
• They appeal to governments to come to terms with the continuing existence of indigenous nations as enduring communities with an identity of their own. Today loss of land, which has supported many life systems since times immemorable, has become a major concern for these indigenous people

India’s Indigenous People

• In India, indigenous people usually describe the Scheduled Tribes constituting nearly eight per cent of the population of the country
• Most indigenous populations in India depend for their subsistence primarily on the cultivation of land
• For centuries, they had free access to as much land as they could cultivate
• However, after the establishment of the British colonial rule these areas inhabited by the Scheduled Tribe communities, were subjected to outside forces
• Although they enjoy constitutional protection in political representation, they have not got much of the benefits of development in the country 
• In fact, they have paid a huge cost for development since they are the single largest group among the people displaced by various developmental projects since independence

Issues Related to Rights

• Issues related to the rights of the indigenous communities have been neglected in domestic and international politics for very long
• During the 1970s, growing international contacts among indigenous leaders from around the world aroused a sense of common concern and shared experiences
• The World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975. The Council became subsequently the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN

Sacred Groves in India

• Sacred groves in India (parcels of uncut forest vegetation in the name of certain deities or natural or ancestral spirits) exemplify such practice 
• As a model of community-based resource management, groves have lately gained attention in conservation literature. The sacred groves can be seen as a system that informally forces traditional communities to harvest natural resources in an ecologically sustained fashion
• Some researchers believe that sacred groves hold the potential for preserving not only biodiversity and ecological functions, but also cultural diversity
• Sacred groves embody a rich set of forest preservation practices, and they share characteristics with common property resource systems. Their size ranges from clumps of a few trees to several hundred acres
• Traditionally, sacred groves have been valued for their embodied spiritual and cultural attributes. Hindus commonly worshipped natural objects, including trees and groves. Many temples have originated from sacred groves
• Deep religious reverence for nature, rather than resource scarcity, seems to be the basis for the long-standing commitment to preserving these forests
• In recent years, however, expansion and human settlement have slowly encroached on sacred forests. In many places, the institutional identity of these traditional forests is fading with the advent of new national forest policies
• A real problem in managing sacred groves arises when legal ownership and operational control are held by different entities. The two entities in question, the state and the community, vary in their policy norms and underlying motives for using the sacred grove

Conclusion

The Declaration made by the United Nation turned into a norm for the estimation of the security of native freedoms under the public and worldwide system. It calls for a useful course of action to advance the privileges of native people groups, to end mistreatment and all types of separation. It additionally allows freedom to indigenous people to keep up with their social, monetary and social privileges. The Scheduled Tribe have been given exceptional assurance under the Constitution of India which has a lot of relationship with the recorded reality. In regard to the security of the clans and their territory right, it has been given extraordinary accentuation in Indian law, as it assumes a significant part for the endurance and keeping up with their unmistakable character.