There is nothing inherently sacred about tribal traditions and art.

A recurring argument in liberal and some Marxist discourse that I often come accross is that : tribals are “close to nature” and capitalism is “unnatural”; therefore tribal life constitutes an ethical or ecological alternative to capitalism and this argument leads to them concluding that tribal traditions, customs, and ways of life must be preserved or atleast protected from "outside world". This reasoning is idealist bullshit. It replaces an analysis of political economy with moral anthropology, transforming historically produced social relations into idealistic sounding tradiitions.

There is nothing inherently “natural” about tribal life, nor anything ontologically special about minorities as such. All human societies relate to nature through socially organised labour. The difference between a mud house and a concrete one is not a difference of accepting and rejecting nature , but rather difference in access to resources, technology, and infrastructure.

The symbolic deployment of tribal art, dress, and cultural forms in protests in recent protests in Delhi where lot of scheduled tribes rallied for reservation should be interpreted politically rather than mystically. These are not expressions of mythical harmony with nature , rather i see them as ways to become more visible, show unity, and resistance, particularly against the BJP’s project of imposing a homogenised Brahminical Vaishnavite Hindu identity.

When indigenous communities resist mining, deforestation, or dam projects, the significance of their struggle does not lie in their possession of a superior worldview. It lies in the fact that their material reproduction is directly threatened by the capitalist extraction which destroys concrete conditions of subsistence which is land, forests, water, and social reproduction. Saying capitalism harms nature is rather "shallow" if I must.

Indigenous or tribal struggles are therefore not inherently revolutionary. A movement becomes revolutionary not because of who is fighting, but because of its relation to capital, its organisational form, its political direction. Such struggles can be defensive, reformist, reactionary, or emancipatory depending on how they articulate themselves within broader class antagonisms.

No class, including capital, has a sacred claim to land. The question is one of power, dispossession, and accumulation.