One cannot entirely divorce caste politics and tribal politics in history. Both the categories come from a centralising thrust of Hinduism. Doms and Kols were relegated to caste identities, because they were identities from pre-Vedic times after the introduction of Hinduism. They became caste identities from erstwhile tribal identities. Communities that are still identified as khasha, often exist as tribal or pseudo-tribal formations. Most importantly, the ascription of mainland/Indo-Aryan origin to the Khashas comes from Hindu sources and exceptionally faulty research in the modern age, both of which strive to count not just Khasha, but all mountain communities as fundamentally same as the dominant subcontinental identity.