When you use Vanavasi to describe them, public at large can be educated about them intimate relationship they have with forest.

This will hopefully one day pave way to restoration of their traditional forest rights that these forest dwellers lost progressively under British rule and later in Independent India.

In the first decade in 1871 the British census mentioned that they (adivasis) are aborigines that means they are the original people with no mixer and they are not Hindus or other religion flowers, they worshipped trees and other natural things.

The term Adivasi meaning “original resident” was supposedly coined by Western Christian Missionaries proselytizing in the North Eastern states of India less than a century ago. Since it was coined, many political social activists have used the term loosely to refer to various forest dwellers and tribal ethnicities.

It is not an indigenous word attested in earlier Indian sources. It is a heavily political term meant to divide people based on which ethnicity/race was thought of as the original inhabitant of a particular land and who was a later immigrant or invader. Such division supposedly helps provide a sense of isolation in the minds of people from their roots and make them ready for religious conversion.

The government of India as well as many NGOs today do not use the word Adivasi to avoid unwanted political meanings and divisions. Other words are used instead such as Scheduled Tribes, Forest dwellers, Vanvasi and Girijan.