This place today is used as a 'beggars home'. It was formerly used as a prison for the Denotified tribe in Ahmedabad called the Charras. The Naukholi, were 9 rooms allotted to the tribe."Former director of the Baroda-based Tribal Literature Project and noted tribal scholar G.N. Devi suggests that the story goes back to the early years of the colonial rule. “In those times, whoever opposed the British colonial expansion was perceived as a potential criminal. Particularly, if any attempts were made to oppose the government by the use of the arms, the charge of criminality was a certainty.” The other plausible theory is that after the 1857 rebellion, the colonial authorities grew nervous about nomadic people who moved around carrying important commodities such as salt and honey, and possibly carrying intelligence the British could not control.The British labeled these nomadic tribes as “criminals” or “Notified tribes” under India's Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, to solve their law and order problems. This Act gave them powers to declare certain "tribes, gangs, or classes" as ‘born criminals'. The act required all the members of the “Notified tribes” to register with the local magistrate. The notified tribes were forcibly moved to permanent 'reformatory settlements' that acted as virtual prisons for the tribes and sources of cheap labor for the imperialist. The general rule being that, for any offence in the locality, without enquiry or evidence the people of these tribes could be arrested with non-bailable warrants."
In 1952, five years after independence, the Criminal Tribes Act was finally repealed. But instead of accepting these tortured tribes, whole heartedly in the main stream system, Independent India declared these tribes ‘denotified’. This new label is a forced memory of the past in the minds of these Tribes and that of the general public. The Government of independent India simply replaced the ‘criminal act’ by the 'Habitual Offenders Act' which preserved most of the provisions of the former Criminal Tribes Act. More than 50 years after independence, we still refer to these tribes as De-Notified Tribes (DNTs). They are still living with the tattoo of ‘born criminals’ on their forehead!
