The historical trajectory of the Banjara community reveals a profound transition from autonomous, globally connected trade nomads to an economically marginalized and socially fragmented group. Once celebrated as the vital supply-chain lifelines of pre-colonial India—essential to the logistics of empires like the Mughals—the Banjaras faced systemic disenfranchisement with the advent of British colonial rule. This paper outlines the multi-layered exploitation of the Banjaras through three distinct historical phases: colonial subjugation under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871; post-independence administrative fragmentation across regional caste categories; and modern socio-economic exploitation as distress seasonal migrant laborers. Integrating qualitative archival analysis with an empirical field survey (\(N = 450\)) across Telangana and Maharashtra, this study highlights how historical colonial policies and contemporary developmental gaps have intersected to transform a once-prosperous nomadic trading empire into a highly vulnerable and exploited community in modern India.

Keywords: Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, Banjara community, De-notified tribes (DNT), Migrant labor, Systemic exploitation, Subaltern studies.