"Many people use the term 'Adivasi' quite innocently, but the term is political through and through. Its great achievement is that it has firmly fixed the division of the Indians in 'natives' and 'invaders' in the collective consciousness, on a par with the division in natives or aboriginals and the immigrant population in America and Australia.... However, no conscious Hindu now accepts the ideologically weighted term Adivasi, much to the dismay of those who espouse the ideological agenda implied in the term, viz. the detachment of the tribals from Hindu society and the delegitimation of Hinduism as India's native religion.... All by itself, the neologism âdivâsî constitutes one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern history. ... In fact, not just 'Hindu spokespersons' but everyone who cultivates the scientific temper would reject a term which carries the load of an entirely unproven, politically motivated theory, viz. that the tribals are 'the' (i.e. the only) original inhabitants of India. Nobody is 'loath to accord to the tribal population the status of original inhabitants', certainly not the Hindu nationalists. But every objective observer would reject the effective implication of the term Adivasi, viz. that the non-tribals are not original inhabitants, on a par with the white colonisers who decimated the Native Americans."