Tribal cultures in South India are extremely varied. This paper examines different indicators of modernization, such as the degree of urbanization and the spread of literacy among the tribes, focusing on how modernization affects the tribal mind set and how this awareness is reflected in various processes of acculturation (e.g., claiming one's mother tongue identity through the ancestral language or switching over to the dominant language in the region). The paper also examines attitudes of indigenous people toward acquiring contact languages for intra-tribal, inter-tribal, and tribal-nontribal communications. It highlights certain issues relevant to nation-building, such as relations between the individual, community, culture, and state, correlating them to the newly crystallized consciousness among indigenous peoples enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The paper notes that most studies on tribal languages focus on the taxonomies of language classification, language borrowing, and relations between languages based on majority and minority status, and most developmental programs for indigenous peoples are influenced by a perspective inherited from colonial anthropology. It stresses that all human conglomerations (primitive as well as contemporary) have a unique, space-and-time-bound ethos, and indigenous heritages must be respected on their own terms, rather than absorbed into the mainstream. (Contains 23 references.) (SM)