“How Can Design Turn Tribal Heritage into Tribal Intellectual Property?”
A fundamental ethical question that India’s design ecosystem has conveniently skirted — at the expense of the knowledge and custodianship of its tribal communities.
On the occasion of 125 years of Birsa Munda’s Ulgulan, the Tribal Design Forum reflects on what ails the economic prosperity of India’s tribal communities – and whether design can be a tool to address it.
“Let the land and the forest be our teachers.” – Birsa Munda
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Birsa-Ulgulan Context
Birsa Munda’s call for Ulgulan was both rebellion and remembrance – a reminder that knowledge, like land, must be cared for collectively. When India inherited its freedom, it also inherited a vast, living archive: the songs, forms, and systems of its tribal peoples. But instead of building structures of shared ownership, the Republic built museums of memory. The heritage model became our moral comfort. We showcased the artefacts, staged the dances, archived the stories – while the originators remained curators without control. Heritage was celebrated, but ownership was not institutionalised. The result – India honoured its tribal past but failed to convert that honour into enduring economic equity.
Policies – Heritage as Identity, Not Ownership
For ministries, heritage became a matter of culture – an identity to display, not a right to monetise. Policies classified heritage as intangible wealth but stopped short of treating it as intellectual property. Craft catalogues and exhibitions multiplied, but custodianship registers never did. Schemes for craft promotion or cultural documentation rarely built mechanisms of ownership for the creators. Communities were funded to demonstrate but not to license. When the display ended, so did their earnings. By isolating heritage from commerce, the State ensured that pride and poverty could coexist in the same village. Had custodianship been formalised, each tribal cluster could have become a self-sustaining knowledge enterprise – its symbols, rituals, and skills protected by collective rights, not charity.
Practices (Design) – Inspiration Without Custodianship
Design institutions, meanwhile, often treated heritage as a palette – a visual treasury to be modernised. Students and studios mined folk and tribal idioms for national and global projects, translating communal meaning into individual authorship. The result was a rich aesthetic vocabulary, but a silent transfer of credit. In the absence of frameworks for attribution and benefit-sharing, the design ecosystem learned to reinterpret without recognising. Heritage became a raw material for modern creativity, unmoored from its custodians. As design awards and markets flourished, the source communities were left applauding from the margins – immortalised as inspiration, excluded as beneficiaries.
The Tribal Gap – When Heritage Becomes Public Domain
The gap is visible in every marketplace and exhibition hall. What is labelled ‘tribal’ often has no tribal stakeholder. Products bear motifs of heritage but not the signatures of the people who hold it. The moral question is not who borrowed, but who benefits. When heritage is treated as public domain, every outsider gains legitimacy, and every insider loses it. Communities become vendors of authenticity rather than owners of it. A country that built patents for its pharmaceuticals never built them for its philosophies. Without custodianship, even documentation can become dispossession – when the act of recording a people’s knowledge turns into a quiet transfer of intellectual capital to the observer.
How Can It Be Bridged? – Heritage as Knowledge Capital
India needs a new compact – one that sees heritage not as nostalgia but as knowledge capital. This means building a National Register of Tribal Authorship and Custodianship, ensuring that origin is recognised wherever heritage informs commerce or innovation.
The steps are simple but revolutionary:
• Register – Every heritage-based product or curriculum must trace and disclose its source community.
• License – Introduce a custodianship license model that returns a small share of every commercial use.
• Recognise – Acknowledge tribal authorship in awards, exhibitions and design credits.
• Reinvest – Channel a portion of creative economy revenues into local creative hubs owned by the communities themselves. By linking heritage to revenue, India can turn cultural preservation into an engine of prosperity – not for intermediaries, but for its original knowledge-keepers.
A Call to the Custodians – Reflections for Tribal Professionals
To the tribal professional – designer, entrepreneur, policy thinker – this is your inheritance waiting to be redesigned. You already stand in both worlds: the traditional and the modern, the local and the global. Your work can turn heritage from display into dignity. Imagine building ventures that trade not only in products but in provenance. Imagine turning your community’s archive into a living studio – its songs, materials, and patterns protected under your stewardship. You can help your people own what they have always known. This is not retrogression; it is restoration. It is the design of fairness, not the folklore of memory. Custodianship is not a burden on creativity – it is its renewal.
Call to Action
Engage with the Tribal Design Forum to co-create models for community-owned creative enterprises, heritage licensing, and attribution frameworks that turn memory into market strength.
If this article resonated with you, tell me in one line what stayed with you – even by DM.
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Disclaimer
This essay is published by the Tribal Design Forum (TDF) as part of its ongoing public-awareness series What India and Its Tribal Communities Have Lost. It represents an independent research-reflection initiative under Ulgulan 2025 and does not necessarily reflect the official views of any ministry, design institution, or governmental agency. The content is intended for educational, archival and dialogue-building purposes under the Fifth Schedule framework, UNESCO–WIPO guidelines on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property, and the TDF Custodianship Principles. All references to historical figures, institutions, or programmes are for contextual analysis only. Reproduction or citation is permitted with acknowledgment of Tribal Design Forum (2025)
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To explore how tribal epistemology can reshape the future of knowledge, design and authorship – and to read more insights, essays and reflections at the intersection of indigenous knowledge and innovation – visit www.ulgulan2025.com
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Whether you’re curious about custodianship, intellectual sovereignty, or how tribal communities are reframing design and scholarship, there’s much to learn and engage with.
