Former CM and former Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Champai Soren, better known as Kolhan Tiger, left his parent party for the BJP a few weeks ago. His move is a big boost to the BJP ahead of the elections, given it is facing a leadership crisis, particularly among the tribals.
Soren joining the BJP has brought to the fore two critical questions. The first is of regional parties managing the aspirations of their leaders, and the second is Hindutva's engagement with Adivasi indigeneity.
In Jharkhand, the tribal people compose the most significant chunk of the population and remain decisive in shaping the political formations in the state. The JMM has emerged as the party representing tribal interests in the state in the past few years. This is evident after the JMM-led coalition won most of the Vidhan Sabha seats in the tribal belt and formed a government.
Even in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, the BJP lost all the ST seats of the state, including sitting Cabinet Minister Arjun Munda. The saffron party, therefore, has failed to gain tribal votes, pointing to a failed ideological outreach amongst tribals. This failure has come after a lot of ideological posturing, political manoeuvring and symbolic representation of tribals to create a voter base.
Hindutva's imagination finds the tribal people to be Hindus who live in the van (forest), henceforth termed vanvasi. Through a range of subsidiary organisations and cultural activities, the RSS has provided social services to the tribal population and has tried to engage with their concerns.
Contrary to the assertion that tribals are not Hindus, the RSS finds all vanvasis to be Hindus and even participates in violent struggles against Christian Missionaries, accusing them of being engaged in religious conversion. They also initiate the reconversion of tribals to Hinduism.
The Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), also known as Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra, is the frontal organisation of the RSS for tribal outreach, working since the 1950s in tribal areas of the country.
Organisations like the ABVKA and Janjati Suraksha Manch (JSM) frequently protest against the inclusion of Christian tribals in the Scheduled Tribe list and rally for their delisting. Their protest is foregrounded on the assumption that only tribals identifying themselves as Hindus are eligible for protections and benefits provided by the state's affirmative action policies.
Right after becoming CM, Hemant Soren declared in a conference that "Adivasis are not Hindus." The discourse of Adivasi indigeneity is an evolution of their identity premised on historical lineage to the forested territory, living in a society marked by egalitarian values and community ownership, and a political history of resistance against imperial colonisation. It roots the Adivasi’s collective identity and consciousness against any organised religion.
This is why a longstanding demand of the Adivasis of Jharkhand is to implement the Sarna code, a separate religious code followed by many Adivasis in Jharkhand. This demand has been primarily opposed by the Hindutva organisations because it is seen as one that divides Hindus. The Soren government also passed a resolution for the Sarna Code in 2021, which the Centre has not yet approved.
Champai Soren, in synch with Hindutva's tone, has claimed that illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the Santhal Pargana region threaten tribal existence and identity. In recent times, the BJP-RSS has also promoted the narrative that the infiltration of Muslims is tailoring the decrease in the Adivasi population by forcibly marrying Adivasi women and grabbing their land.
The pursuit of demographic fear-mongering by the BJP-RSS is guided by their relentless effort to make inroads amongst Adivasis by projecting Muslims as encroachers and outsiders. Prime Minister Modi, in his latest rally, exhorted Adivasis to think about the alleged growing population of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas in Jharkhand. He also accused the JMM-led government of encouraging this for its vote bank.
But a recent fact-finding report published by civil society organisations in Jharkhand highlighted a host of factors responsible for the slow growth of the Adivasi population. An excerpt is attached below and the full report can be found here.
Even the Union Home Ministry recently stated in its affidavit filed in the Jharkhand High Court that links of Bangladeshi immigrants in land possession-related cases in Jharkhand’s Santhal Pargana “have not been established so far.”
Hindutva is fomenting an ethnonationalist politics premised on a majoritarian outlook to transform the discourse of Adivasi Indigeneity. It fractures the idea that the Adivasi subscribes to by subverting the socio-political concerns of indigenous groups with the formation of a communal identity.
Demographic fear-mongering weaponises territorial belonging and community resource ownership, central to the discourse of indigeneity, to create enmity amongst Adivasis and Muslims. The idea of land, understood as a collective good, is manifested as a sacred territorial space exclusive to Hindus.
Hindutva, therefore, hijacks the discourse of indigeneity and supplants it with ethnonational majoritarian idioms.
Most importantly, it obfuscates the fundamental question of capitalist depredation and exploitation faced by the Adivasi community, as it is in resistance to this that Adivasi consciousness has developed. Experts have often flagged alarming health indicators, abject poverty, mass migration and dispossession dominantly contributing to the current state of Adivasis and their slow population growth, all of which have a consequential linkage with capitalist exploitation.
By transposing the threats of capitalist exploitation and state inefficiencies to demographic changes, Hindutva politics effectively tries to dilute the Adivasi indigeneity. The appropriation of Adivasi indigeneity for its territorial nationalist purpose promotes Hindutva forces as saviours and protectors of the Adivasi community from Muslim infiltration.
In this regard, the future beholds the trajectory of Champai Soren’s political life vis-a-vis tribal politics in the Hindutva camp. The BJP has found a tall tribal leader to disseminate demographic fear-mongering amongst the Adivasis. His being an insider and mass leader will carry considerable weight on this issue and can generate appeal - and fear - amongst the tribals.
(Himanshu Shukla is a PhD Student at the Centre for Political Studies at JNU. Views are personal.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)