De-Hinduisation of Tribals Is it Fallout of Maoists Insurrection?

De-Hinduisation of Tribals Is it Fallout of Maoists Insurrection?

Written by

SOROOR AHMED

Published on

August 11, 2022

SOROOR AHMED opines that the Sangh Parivar is being looked upon by the Tribals as espousing the cause of exploiters, mahajans and industrialists; therefore they are shifting their loyalty.

A likely by-product of the Maoist resurrection in the heartland of India is the De-Hinduisation of the tribals. The tribal politics is at the crucial crossroads as they are being pulled towards different directions by the Christian missionaries, the Sangh Parivar and now the Maoists.

Orissa, where the Schedule Tribes comprise 22.1 per cent of the population, saw the ugly manifestation of this struggle in August-September 2008 when over three dozen Christians were killed and well above one lakh rendered homeless following the killing of a Sangh Parivar activist by the Maoists. A decade back (in 1999) the Bajrang Dal activists led by Dara Singh roasted alive Graham Staines, an Australian missionary engaged in social work along with his two young sons.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has much at stake in the tribal concentration of central India. It is doing its level best to bring those tribals into the Hindu fold, who got converted to Christianity in the last few decades. Once again Orissa has a slightly different story to tell as here, according to an estimate, more Schedule Castes, who comprise 16 per cent of the state’s population, embraced Christianity than Schedule Tribes.
So far the tribals or for that matter Schedule Castes conversion to Islam is concerned, the pace is too slow to be noticed in the recent years, though centuries back some of them did embrace this faith.

So while dealing with Muslims, the Sangh Parivar adopted a different approach. In the first three decades of independence several tribal-dominated industrial centres such as Jabalpur, Rourkela, Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Hazaribagh, etc. witnessed horrible anti-Muslim pogroms. It can be easily presumed who was behind this. In fact Jamshedpur had two big riots, one in 1960s and the other in 1979.

The anti-Muslim mayhem took place notwithstanding the fact that, unlike many parts of North India, all these places were least affected by the partition of the country. The tribals, who had perhaps never heard of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah or Muslim League, went on rampage against the Muslims. The Sangh Parivar shrewdly turned the anger and resentment of tribals, displaced by the first phase of post-independence industrialisation in 1950s and 1960s, towards the Muslims of these newly emerging industrialised cities. The same strategy was repeated in the communal holocaust of Gujarat in 2002 where the Sangh Parivar sought the help of tribals in the bloodbath of Muslims and subsequent loot of their property.

The RSS Hinduised the festivals of the Adivasis, or the aboriginals. Ram Navmi is the one such example. Till the coming to power of Lalu Prasad in Bihar in March 1990 tension and communal riots in the Jharkhand part of the state (till November 15, 2000 it was in Bihar) was an annual feature.

Though the tribals have least to do with the Hindu religion as they have their own practices and rituals, they easily became the cannon-fodder for the RSS. As they used to be militant in nature and well-versed in the traditional arms, for example, bow and arrow, it was not difficult to turn their resentment towards someone else. Though the Hindu trading communities – the businessmen, the industrialists, the money-lenders or mahajans – were the worst exploiters of the tribals, they instead directed their anger and frustration towards the Muslims, and to some extent, Christians.

Organisations like Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, a Sangh Parivar offshoot, worked whole-heartedly to Hinduise the entire tribal belt. Many of their activists spent their whole life in deep forests to counter the influence of the Church. To neutralise the Christian missionary schools they opened a chain of Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in all the nooks and corners of the tribals region of Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, etc. Such schools are run elsewhere also in the country.

However, in the last few years the Maoists seem to have checkmated the Sangh Parivar’s advancement. In fact they are on retreat from several pockets. But at places Maoists and Sangh Parivar agreed to have a truce. There are even examples of Maoists extracting huge sum of money from the Sangh Parivar activists and BJP leaders, especially the candidates interested in contesting elections.

Ironically the godless philosophy of Maoism had spread much quickly among apparently religious-minded tribals. This phenomenon seems to be somewhat in contrast to the pre-independence generations of Adivasis, who were carried away by the spiritual power of Alluri Sitaram Raju of Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh or Birsa Munda of Chotanagpur.

The pro-capitalist policies of the successive governments at the Centre and in the States led to the impoverishment of tribals. Gradually the aboriginals became conscious that they are being exploited by the vested interests. Economic factor finally prevailed. The RSS, notwithstanding all its loud claims about swadeshikaran is essentially an outfit espousing the cause of merchants, traders, industrialists and urban elite. They got exposed in the post-liberalisation era of industrialisation. These representatives of the MNCs can no more use the same strategy of using the displaced tribals against the Muslims or Christians; though they adopted this policy in Gujarat and to some extent in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.

Not surprisingly, most of these Maoist-infested States with sizeable tribal populations are being ruled by the BJP or its alliance partners. Chhattisgarh is the strongest BJP bastion, where the party is in power for the last so many years. Like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand too came up in November 2000. This state too was ruled mostly by the BJP. For a brief period it was under the President’s Rule and for two years it was ruled by Madhu Koda, an Independent MLA, who too had a long association with the BJP. Even today the BJP is a very strong ally of the JMM-led government of Shibu Soren in that state.

The neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh is under the BJP rule while in Orissa chief minister Navin Patnaik got rid of the alliance partner only before the last parliamentary elections, that is, a few months after the anti-Christian mayhem there. It is only West Bengal, having a sizeable tribal population, where the BJP is not in power directly or indirectly.

As the Sangh Parivar has nothing to give to the poor, hungry and emaciated masses save hatred, they were bound to get exposed as the agents of the same class which is busy in the gross and senseless exploitation of the tribals.