This shouldn’t be the tip. It needs to be the start,” President of India Droupadi Murmu was saying inside 4 months of taking the oath of workplace, in November 2022. Her assertion got here when she was being introduced a ebook, Contributions of Tribal Leaders within the Freedom Wrestle, at a Nationwide Fee for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) occasion.
The ‘beginning’ was made abundantly clear by the then NCST Chairperson Harsh Chouhan in his keynote handle on the time: a challenge to compile data on tribal histories and cultures primarily based oral histories handed down in these communities in a bid to interchange current literature that’s primarily based on the data created by colonising governments.
The ebook was being introduced to the President at an occasion the place over 70 Vice-Chancellors of universities from throughout the nation, together with a whole bunch of anthropologists and sociologists working with tribal cultures, most themselves tribals, had been being inspired to pursue analysis methodologies that extracted historic data from oral traditions like songs, hymns of those tribal communities.
Two years later, this challenge’s progress, together with the ebook launched by the NCST and the contents in it, have come collectively to change into one of many key pillars on which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) is mounting its technique to woo the over 10 crore Scheduled Tribe inhabitants of India because the nation heads into the 2024 Lok Sabha election, wherein 47 seats out of 543 are reserved for ST candidates.
From Govindgiri Banjara of the Mangarh bloodbath to Madri Kalo of Odisha’s Sundargarh and to icons like Tilka Manjhi in Bihar and Haipou Jadonang and Rani Gaidinliu in Manipur, respectively, the histories of Adivasi resistance throughout India are taking centre stage within the BJP’s marketing campaign to set its narrative round Adivasi id.
A story that traditionally situates Adivasis as an inseparable a part of “Bharatiya Sabhyata and Sanskriti (Indian civilisation and culture)” by selecting to push tales of their rebellions as resistance to only British and Islamic invaders. And what has been indispensable for the BJP in its mission to realize this finish is the many years price of legwork put in by the Sangh Parivar’s Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams throughout north India to construct its networks within the remotest of tribal villages — efforts which have culminated within the NCST ebook that President Murmu launched in November 2022. The contents in it, which originated in a publication first put out by the Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), have now change into the principal supply being relied upon by authorities ministries to advertise tales of Adivasi rebellions.
Tribal outreach
The BJP’s intent to achieve out for tribal votes this election season was signalled three years in the past in 2021, the second it declared November 15 — the start anniversary of Adivasi icon Birsa Munda — as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’. This intent was solely cemented when its ruling coalition, the Nationwide Democratic Alliance, nominated Murmu, a Santhal lady from Odisha and former Jharkhand Governor, for President, months later in 2022.
Within the manifesto launched by the BJP on Sunday (April 14) for the 2024 normal election, the primary level beneath the occasion’s guarantees for the marginalised communities is to increase on the concept of ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’ and mark 2025 as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Varsh’. It additionally occurs to be Munda’s a hundred and fiftieth start anniversary yr.
Whereas congratulating Murmu on turning into President, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had mentioned, “India scripts history. At a time when 1.3 billion Indians are marking Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, a daughter of India hailing from a tribal community born in a remote part of eastern India has been elected our President!”
Since then, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda has taken each alternative in Parliament to credit score his occasion and their authorities for scripting historical past by making certain the appointment of an individual from the Scheduled Tribe neighborhood to the best constitutional submit of the nation – and so has Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar inside and outdoors the Home.
At every of those cases when the BJP has credited the Prime Minister’s “vision for social justice” for Murmu’s election as President, it has additionally attacked the Opposition Indian Nationwide Congress as a celebration with no comparable imaginative and prescient for having opposed her candidature. This performed out months in the past too — in the course of the marketing campaign for the Meeting elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh, the place 31% of the nation’s tribal inhabitants lives, and the place the BJP was ready so as to add to its ST seat rely.
By the point the Meeting election marketing campaign for these States was beneath means on the fag finish of 2023, one other key plank was rising: a ballot rhetoric designed round constructing a nationalistic tribal id by emphasising the federal government’s efforts to recognise the “deliberately forgotten and neglected” histories of tribal freedom fighters and their struggles.
In Chhattisgarh, M.P., and Rajasthan, the Prime Minister Modi had made it a degree to say the federal government’s recognition of November 15 as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’, a day for the nation to recognise the contributions of tribal leaders and icons in India’s centuries-long historical past of resistance to Islamic and British invaders.
Names of leaders like Tilka Manjhi, Sinagi Dai, Rani Durgavati, Rana Punja Bhil, and lots of others grew to become a mainstay in his marketing campaign speeches all through, being invoked each time he referred to Adivasis as the actual protectors of “Bharatiya Sabhyata and Sanskriti”. The Tribal Affairs Ministry and the NCST had been working laborious to have the nation familiarised with these names up to now yr by its ebook.
A story of two books
The origins of the contents within the NCST’s ebook on Contributions of Tribal Leaders within the Freedom Wrestle lie in an e-book of the identical identify that was simply months earlier than launched by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated ABVKA, an organisation that has a acknowledged goal to construct temples of Hindu gods and organise “cultural” occasions in tribal villages as a way to encode the messaging of their motto, ‘Tu-Mai, Ek Rakt’ (You and I’ve the identical blood).
The ebook provides brief descriptions of Adivasi resistance actions led by about 50 leaders relationship from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century and even after independence — a lot of it controversial and all of it unsourced and unattributed. Among the many 50 leaders, a minimum of two — Alluri Sitarama Raju (Andhra Pradesh) and ‘Thakur’ Ranmat Singh (Madhya Pradesh) — weren’t from tribal communities themselves, with the ebook displaying Ranmat’s Baghel Kshatriya neighborhood as a “tribe”.
Additional, the point out of Rana Punja Bhil from the 1576 Battle of Haldighati has led to a series of penalties that has as soon as once more ignited a fierce battle over establishing his caste in 2024 — resulting in a wrestle of id crises among the many folks of Panarwa, a small village in Rajasthan, often called Rana Punja’s residence.
In a lot of the Adivasi rebellions it touches upon, the ABVKA ebook goes on to say collaborations of Islamic rulers with the British administration whereas selecting to not spotlight comparable collaborations between Hindu rulers and native upper-caste landlords and colonial directors that tribespeople had been resisting.
Additional, in descriptions of many leaders, the ebook leaves out their efforts to construct their very own sociocultural and non secular actions, which, at instances, had been a direct response to the way in which they had been being handled throughout the Hindu social construction —like that of Rajasthan’s Govindgiri Banjara — or to the enlargement of Hinduism in sure components of the nation like that of Haipou Jadonang in Manipur, a Rongmei Naga non secular chief and activist, who wished to withstand each Christian missionaries and increasing Vaishnavism into Naga territories within the early twentieth century.
A comparability between the e-book first launched by the ABVKA and the ebook launched by the NCST confirmed that the contents on every of the 50 leaders talked about within the two books had been similar and so had been the pictorial depictions of the leaders. The NCST had credited assist from the ABVKA for compiling the fabric in it. Apart from correcting the truth that Ranmat’s neighborhood was not a tribe, the NCST leaves the ABVKA materials untouched.
On the time, the NCST was being headed by Chouhan, who, in keeping with his resume, has been “working with Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram since 1992 as State Secretary and State President, Madhya Pradesh” and was member of the ABVKA nationwide government.
Whereas senior NCST officers haven’t but answered questions relating to what checks had been utilized to confirm the data gathered by the ABVKA earlier than republishing it, Pramod Pethkar of the ABVKA responded to The Hindu’s questions on sourcing.
“We were fortunate enough that our work throughout the tribal pockets of India allowed us access to these communities. So a large part of the content put up on these tribal heroes in the book has been meticulously gathered from oral sources of history within the communities themselves,” Pethkar mentioned, explaining that these embrace neighborhood songs and anecdotes handed down by generations. “This is evidence that has been ignored for too long.”
NCST’s nudge
Chouhan was appointed because the Chairperson of NCST in February 2021, and one of many principal duties the Fee had embarked upon since then was this challenge to spotlight tales of Adivasi rebellions and have a good time the contributions of tribal leaders in India’s wrestle for Independence, in keeping with officers who labored with him throughout his tenure there.
Within the months previous the official presentation of its ebook on tribal freedom fighters to the President, the NCST had been main a challenge to take the ebook on a tour of over 100 universities throughout the nation, the place panel discussions had been organised together with researchers from Tribal Analysis Institutes on producing literature on tribal id, tribal cultures, and tribal growth from inside these communities in a bid to interchange the prevailing “colonial-era” literature on the topic. The tour had culminated in a two-day workshop in November 2022 when the ebook was introduced to the President of India.
By this time, the Delhi College had already introduced its plans to open a Centre for Tribal Research, with a key goal of encouraging research on defining “tribes” in an Indian context — a sign of the popularity that a lot of the political discourse across the inclusion and exclusion of tribes on the ST checklist had change into chaotic due to issues that originated with how British directors, Census commissioners, and anthropologists had outlined these communities and their traits.
Different universities just like the College of Mumbai and the Central College of Rajasthan quickly adopted go well with and the NCST has since been nudging as many as 104 universities to put out plans that they had for establishing centres for analysis on this space. The opposite universities embrace a few IITs, IIMs, and NITs, Banaras Hindu College, Assam College, Birsa Munda Tribal College in Gujarat, Central College of Odisha, and a number of other others.
As soon as the ebook had been introduced to President Murmu, the NCST launched variations of it on its web site. Then started the work from authorities channels to push this content material out in as many types and thru as many platforms as attainable. It started with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs utilizing the ebook’s contents, as is, to make posts on X (previously Twitter); the identical content material was then being pushed by social media handles of Doordarshan, smaller, regional workplaces of the Ministry of Info and Broadcasting, and the Press Info Bureau (PIB).
By the point campaigning was on for the Meeting elections in November 2023, the precise materials had began showing on marketing campaign posts of the BJP’s Scheduled Tribe Morcha too. Now, even because the Mannequin Code of Conduct is in place, authorities channels on social media like that of the Tribal Affairs Ministry and the PIB proceed to submit this identical materials on Adivasi leaders. As lately as April 4, when the Tribal Affairs Ministry used the content material of the ABVKA e-book to make a video on the historical past of Siddo-Kanhu Murmu —leaders of the Hul revolt within the mid-Nineteenth century.
The content material being posted doesn’t anyplace point out the BJP or its positioning. However because the occasion proceeds to make use of this well-oiled pipeline designed for the creation, legitimisation, and dissemination of information on Adivasi histories to woo Scheduled Tribe voters throughout the nation, a battlefront has now been thrown open.
Probably the most fierce opposition to the BJP’s try at filling the vacuum of knowledge on histories of Adivasi resistance in India is coming from the respective tribal communities themselves on the bottom — pushed by small, impartial events just like the Bharat Adivasi Get together in Rajasthan, which rose on the promise of resisting the appropriation of Adivasi id, and outfits such because the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Mahasabha, Kendriya Sarna Samiti in Jharkhand, and comparable ones throughout the northern tribal belts of the nation.