Will Tribals endorse the political gain of the Sangh Parivar or will it fight back to defend its own Identity?
A race to 2024 has already begun, and while the political parties are bending over backward to woo the entire vote bank, a very sensitive 8.6% of the total population is a specific target as the parties prepare grounds for the upcoming election.
The tribal population of India has all the political party’s noses to the grindstone. The recent nomination of a tribal women president from the Bharatiya Janta Party was the first climax in its roadmap to 2024. The party made sure that this move was heard by every single tribal individual living in the most unheard part of the country.
The tribal population was never this crucial to BJP’s political bill of fare, but the sudden urge to captivate this category can now be seen in their agenda. In a recent effort to woo tribals in Gujarat elections, BJP national leaders were seen to be leading tribal outreach programs from the front. In November 2022, Ironically, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat asked tribals to stay strong against those who try to dupe them by taking advantage of their innocence.
Tribals by nature are known to be shy and introverts. Their state of isolation has deprived them of proper education, which has resulted in a lack of political awareness amongst this population. Large institutions are constantly taking advantage of this obliviousness. Once a protector of the ‘Jal, Jungle and Jameen’ are now a great threat to the business giants as their existence secures several natural resources. And, the capitalist order of business is now evident in political movements.
Despite the rigorous effort to seize the tribals across the nation, there are few states that still manage to stay ‘Vocal for local’. Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Mizoram, Jharkhand, and West Bengal are still off the BJP clutch. Either the regional party's local sentiments or the congress’s historical inclusion of tribal community has shielded this population from BJP’s takeover.
A recent campaign for stripping converts of ST status is an attempt to create a sense of polarity and dispute, between the converted and non-converted Adivasi. This campaign continues to pick momentum ahead of the 2024 general elections. This well-designed formula is said to be backed by hostile conversations, a forced co-relation between Adivasi and SanÄtana Dharam, and a legal framework to punish the converts.
This master plan is being pushed into the system hard and fast- including the state, district, and block levels. The core idea is to make the tribals believe and adopt the thought :
‘ Tribals are vanvasi (forest dwellers) and not Adivasi (first inhabitants)’
Evidently, the Sangh Parivar resorts to the Britisher’s policy of divide and rule, and their efforts can be seen translating into communal tensions and sectarian violence, all of this for the possibility of immediate electoral gains.
The delisting demand is an effort to divide the tribals between converts and non-converts and weaken Adivasi identity. Interestingly, the Sangh Parivar is working on two fronts among the tribal communities: 1) Trying to create a rift within the tribal community and 2) Reconstructing tribal culture and creating a present-day Hindu-tribal synergy.
Currently, 35 tribal residential schools in Jharkhand are being funded by the MOTA (Ministry of Tribal Affairs), these schools are being managed by various NGOs that are subtlety engineering the little tribal minds to believe that they are part of the Hindu religion. The lessons are laden with negative sentiments towards minorities. This social engineering is ironically what RSS is against - ‘Dharamparivartan’. These government schools are funded by the Tribal Sub plan/ ST component - a plan apparently designed to protect and promote tribalism. These schools should rather have been managed only by Tribal teachers and local educationalists, to safeguard their language, culture, and identity.
Now the battle to save the ‘Adivasi’ identity and existence has to be fought at an individual level. It’s the tribals and especially their leaders that will have to decide the fate of ‘Adivasis’, not any political party or any Sangh. Will the tribals sacrifice their oneness to endorse the political gain of Sangh Parivar or will it rise above all menace to defend its genesis?
A question that either the time or the tribals will decide.
(Shilpi Neha Tirkey is Congress MLA from Mandar. Once a brand manager who helped brands develop their identity, a politician Shilpi is now striving to establish Jharkhand's identity as a state of Abua Dishum, Abua Raj, which means our state, our rule. The views expressed in the article are her own.)