The statue of Mother Mary wearing a red border sari with baby Jesus Christ tied to her waist with a cloth the way tribal women of Jharkhand hold their babies unveiled by Cardinal Telesphore P Toppo in the Singpur village church in Dhurwa, has once again brought the question of tribal identity and its representation in the country’ decennial census to the fore.
A number of tribal rights organisations —covering the 32 tribes that practice Sarna and tribal dominated states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Assam—have decided to launch a countrywide stir from August 2013 if no action is taken by the Government on this demand.
The issue of creating a separate column for the tribal persons Sarna faith , instead of clubbing them with Hindu religion or ‘Others’ in the forms of the Census of India has gained in strength and urgency due to this amalgamation of tribal deity Ma Sarna with the depictions of Christianity. “The Christians are trying to depict Mother Mary as Maa Sarna to confuse the people of Sarna faith. Red border is very significant in our faith. Our women wear white sari with red border on auspicious occasions. An idol of Mother Mary dressed as a tribal woman will only put the message now and 100 years later that Mother Mary was a tribal from Jharkhand,” said Bandhan Tigga, a Sarna Dharamguru.
Tribal activists too are stepping up the ante to bring this matter of their unique identity and tribal ethos into the national consciousness. They feel that this depiction has affirmed their apprehensions about the loss of their individuality down the years. “This (image) has made our anxiety about tribals’ very identity and existence being obscured very real and proved that our demand of being recognised as a separate religious community is not unfounded,” says Sanjay Pahan, a functionary of Akhil Bharatiya Sarna Dharam (ABSD), an umbrella outfit of 50-odd tribal bodies.
And Pahan is not the only one. The Adivasi Jan Parishad is campaigning for awareness and support through a Padyatra that began from Birsa Munda’s birthplace.
The all India Adivasi Socio-Educational and Cultural Association (ASECA), headquartered in Rairangpur, Odisha in a letter to the Governor of Odisha have also demanded that a “suitable code be allotted for reference in various cultural and sovereign documents.... as generation after generation they have been classified as ‘others’ in the decadal census and other Sovereign documents. Since it is a precursor to Hinduism, Sarnaism should be recognised as a religion of tribals...”
A long standing demand, almost as old as the call for a separate state of Jharkhand, the issue of a separate Sarna code emerged in the 70s. “Till the 1961 census, the reports mention Sarnaism just like Jainism or Buddhism. However, the Janata government in the 1974-75 and the RSS influence later on gradually eclipsed the Adivasi identity and Sarna was amalgamated in the ‘Others’ column in subsequent censuses,” said Dr. Prakash Oraon, former director of Tribal Research Institute. “Adding tribals to the ‘Others’ column also skews the tribal population ratios, thus creating conflicts in the disbursement of benefits to the scheduled tribes (ST), and deciding their eligibility for it; particularly the contentious question whether Christian tribals should be entitled to ST benefits or not,” he added.