Guwahati: More and more tribal people in India are taking up important and significant jobs that were once the hegemony of upper castes.
However, little attention is given to find out how others treat these high achieving tribal people..
A doctoral study by a Salesian priest on the indigenous people of eastern India has found that their high achieving members suffer from ethnic discrimination stress in their work places.
“The Ethnic Discrimination Stress (EDS) in the workplace among high-achieving Adivasis is a problem that has received little attention in research literature,” says Dr. Johny Dominic Padinjareparampil who in March completed doctor of philosophy degree from Capella University, USA.
The priest’s qualitative phenomenological study used Giorgi’s descriptive psychological method to investigate the problem.
The descriptive phenomenological method in psychology was developed by the American psychologist Amedeo Giorgi in the early 1970s. Giorgi based his method on principals laid out by philosophers like Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Giorgi was an early pioneer of the humanistic psychology movement.
“I selected this particular method due its scientific rigor while applying Husserlian concepts of phenomenological reduction, intentionality of consciousness, and imaginative variation, to identify and describe the psychological structure of the lived experience of EDS,” says Dr Padinjareparampil, who is currently assistant director of Sumedha, a Don Bosco Centre for Psychology and Spirituality, at Jeolikote in Uttarakhand.
The Salesian priest selected 15 participants who were employed high-achieving male Adivasis above the age of 24 on the basis of the scores of General Ethnic Discrimination Scale. The data was collected through semi-structured interview using open-ended questions.
The saturation of the data was achieved with the analysis of 272 pages of interview transcripts of 10 participants.
The study found that the participants had to face overt ethnic discrimination and micro aggressions that were endemic and not just aberrant.
The lived experience of EDS involved being constantly judged by negative stereotypes, and being exposed to marginalizing behaviors from the upper caste.
The participants believed that ethnic discrimination, in spite of their academic and career achievements, was meant to perpetuate upper caste hegemony.
“The resultant feelings of dehumanization, disillusionment, anger, combativeness, and helplessness from silencing led to demoralization,” says Father Padinjareparampil.
The priest has served as vice-principal and then as principal for more than ten years at Gandhi Smarak High School at Jokbhala, exclusively for the indigenous people in Chhattisgarh state. Prior to that, he served the Don Bosco Youth and Educational Services (DBYES) for Adivasi youth at Ranchi in Jharkhand state as its founder director for eight years.
The study found that coping with EDS involved an initial period of resentful submission with negative coping behaviors and a gradual movement toward change-oriented proactive responses.
Dr Padinjareparampil notes in his study a relationship between resilience and career achievement as well as the need for both structural and paradigmatic changes to create a discrimination-free work environment.
The study further reflects the tenets of critical race theory and calls for paradigmatic changes in the caste mindset and the dominant discourse embedded with dehumanizing stereotypes of Adivasis that promote silencing and upper caste hegemony.
The priest says his findings could provide mental health workers and educators significant insight to understand the sense of discrimination experienced by India’s indigenous people and help them find effective strategies for coping with EDS.
He does not hesitate to add, “By giving a scientific voice to the Adivasi struggle against discrimination, the study can support the efforts of the marginalized and the government for the creation of a discrimination-free work environment.”
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