Among the Gond Tribe, the word 'Baree' is related to:
- (a)Sports
- (b)Agriculture
- (c)Marriage
- (d)Religious ritual
Correct — B, Agriculture. In the Gond belt of central India 'baree' (baadi) is the term for the small enclosed plot of land attached to the homestead — the kitchen garden in which vegetables, maize, chillies and tobacco are raised alongside the main field crop. It is therefore a word from the Gond agricultural and land-use vocabulary, describing a unit of cultivation rather than a game, a wedding rite or a ceremony.
- (a)Sports — Gond recreation and dance have their own vocabulary; 'baree' does not name a game or a sporting contest.
- (c)Marriage — Gond marriage practices carry separate names of their own, and the official key does not place 'baree' among them — it belongs to the cultivation vocabulary.
- (d)Religious ritual — Gond ritual life centres on clan deities and their shrines, each with its own term. 'Baree' is a land-and-crop word, not a ritual one.
MPPSC regularly tests the everyday vocabulary of Madhya Pradesh's tribes — the word for a plot, a dance, a house-decoration, a marriage form — and expects candidates to place the term in the right domain of tribal life. The Gond are one of India's largest tribal communities, spread over Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Telangana and Odisha, and their economy rests on settled cultivation of coarse grains supplemented by the collection of forest produce. Land in a Gond village is therefore described in layers: the main cropped field, and the small enclosed homestead plot near the house.
There is no way to derive this term; it has to be recognised or eliminated. The workable exam method is domain-matching — ask which sphere of tribal life the sound of the word belongs to, then use what you do know. Gond agriculture in Madhya Pradesh centres on kodo and kutki millets, maize and pulses on the uplands, with a kitchen plot beside the house; that is the domain the key places 'baree' in.
- Gond is one of India's largest tribal communities and the second most numerous tribe of Madhya Pradesh after the Bhil (Census 2011)
- Gond livelihood combines settled cultivation with the collection of minor forest produce such as tendu leaf, mahua and sal seed
- Kodo and kutki millets are the traditional staple crops of the Gond and Baiga tracts of the Satpura–Maikal belt
- Shifting cultivation in this belt carries its own local name — bewar, associated above all with the Baiga
- Gond concentrations in Madhya Pradesh lie in Mandla, Dindori, Balaghat, Seoni, Chhindwara and Betul
- Guessing 'marriage' or 'ritual' for any unfamiliar tribal word — MPPSC's tribal-vocabulary questions span farming, housing, dance and dress too
- Assuming Gond is the most numerous tribe of Madhya Pradesh; by Census 2011 the Bhil are more numerous in the State
- Mixing up local names for shifting cultivation — bewar in central India, jhum in the North-East, podu in the eastern Deccan
MPPSC asks 'the word X among tribe Y relates to' or 'which tribe practises/performs X' almost every year, drawing on state tribal handbooks. UPSC keeps to the broader plane — tribal languages, tribal agrarian change and forest rights.
Every year, a month-long ecologically important campaign/festival is held during which certain communities/tribes plant saplings of fruit-bearing trees. Which of the following are such communities/tribes?
- (a) Bhutia and Lepcha
- (b) Gond and Korku
- (c) Irula and Toda
- (d) Sahariya and Agariya
Answer(b) Gond and Korku
Same community, same domain — a Gond practice tied to trees and cultivation, tested by asking which tribe it belongs to.
Which amongst the following provided a common factor for tribal insurrection in India in the 19th century ?
- (a) Introduction of a new system of land revenue and taxation of tribal products
- (b) Influence of foreign religious missionaries in tribal areas
- (c) Rise of a large number of money lenders, traders and revenue farmers as middlemen in tribal areas
- (d) The complete disruption of the old agrarian order of the tribal communities
Answer(d) The complete disruption of the old agrarian order of the tribal communities
The same tribal agrarian world at a bigger scale — the land-and-cultivation order of tribes like the Gond, and what happened when it was broken.
“Nohdora” ornamentation made of clay on the wall is the speciality of which tribe?
- (a) Bhil
- (b) Korku
- (c) Saharia
- (d) Gond
Answer(d) Gond
Exactly the same MPPSC device — an unfamiliar Gond term that must be placed in the right sphere of tribal life, here house decoration, there cultivation.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The shifting cultivation traditionally practised by the Baiga tribe of Madhya Pradesh is known as:
- (a)Jhum
- (b)Bewar
- (c)Podu
- (d)Kumari
Answer(b) Bewar — jhum belongs to the North-East, podu to the eastern Deccan and kumari to the Western Ghats.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which pair of millets forms the traditional staple of tribal cultivation in the Satpura–Maikal belt of Madhya Pradesh?
- (a)Kodo and kutki
- (b)Bajra and jowar
- (c)Ragi and barley
- (d)Wheat and gram
Answer(a) Kodo and kutki — the classic small millets of the Gond and Baiga tracts.