Breaking down the question
The command word is explain, so the task is to set out clearly why defining tribe in the Indian context is genuinely difficult. The examiner is not asking for a fixed definition but for the problems that make any single definition unsatisfactory.
You must show that the difficulty is conceptual, empirical and administrative at once — the category does not map neatly onto Indian social reality, which has produced a long-running scholarly and policy debate.
How to approach it
Organise the answer around distinct sources of difficulty rather than listing traits. Move from the problem of criteria, to the tribe-caste continuum, to the isolation-assimilation debate, and finally to the constitutional and administrative approach.
Anchor the discussion in the Ghurye-Elwin debate and Beteille's caution about the concept. You may draw on definitional problems of tribes for the detailed criteria.
Model answer
Defining the tribal communities of India has long resisted consensus because no single set of criteria applies cleanly across the enormous diversity of these groups. Classic markers — a common territory, a distinct dialect, endogamy, a shared culture, an economy based on hunting, gathering or shifting cultivation, and relative isolation — hold for some communities but not for others, many of whom are settled cultivators fully drawn into market and administrative networks.
A central conceptual problem is the tribe-caste continuum. Indian tribes have never been wholly separate from the wider society; over centuries many have been absorbed into the Hindu fold, adopting caste-like practices, deities and occupations. The boundary between a tribe and a low caste is therefore blurred, and scholars such as Andre Beteille warned that tribe functions less as a precise category than as one end of a continuum, making sharp definition impossible.
This fed the famous debate between G. S. Ghurye and Verrier Elwin. Ghurye regarded tribes as backward Hindus already undergoing assimilation, while Elwin stressed their distinctiveness and the harm of forced integration, advocating protected autonomy. The two positions imply different definitions — one emphasising continuity with Hindu society, the other emphasising separateness.
The administrative approach compounds the difficulty. The Constitution does not define tribe; it empowers the state to notify Scheduled Tribes, and criteria such as primitive traits, geographical isolation, distinctive culture, shyness of contact and backwardness are applied unevenly. The result is a legal-political category shaped by policy needs rather than a coherent sociological one, so that similar communities may be scheduled in one state and not in another.
Thus the definitional problem is at once conceptual, empirical and administrative — an ideal-typical notion of tribe rarely matches the fluid, interconnected and changing realities of these communities.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner looks for structure — separating the problem of criteria, the continuum, the isolation-assimilation debate and the administrative category rather than merely listing tribal traits. Naming the Ghurye-Elwin debate and Beteille's caution shows command of the discourse. Candidates who conclude that tribe is an ideal type poorly fitted to Indian reality, and who note the constitutional silence on definition, reach the higher band.