In the five-phase assembly election in Jharkhand, whose result will be declared on 23 December, the political parties are making appeals to the ‘tribal identity’ of the population in different ways.
The main opposition party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha has emphasised “equity and pride” along with 28 per cent reservation for Scheduled Tribes in its manifesto. The Congress has pledged to tackle farm loans and the scourge of usury, the single biggest reason for tribal distress for centuries. The All Jharkhand Students Union, an OBC party at the forefront of indigenous struggles, promises to push tribal reservations even higher to 32 per cent.
The incumbent BJP is on the defensive, mainly due to their amendments to the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act (1908) and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act (1949) permitting the use of tribal land for industrial purposes. The bills have not been signed into law. A major flashpoint is also the construction of a 1,600-megawatt power plant in Godda district over acres of land allegedly acquired by force. Modernity, many activists say, is the smokescreen for brutal land grab.
The fact that BJP CM Raghubar Das is non-tribal, the first in Jharkhand’s history, has heightened old suspicions of extractive outsiders and reinforced clichés that tribal people cannot be stakeholders in their own future.
All this also tells us something bigger about how India’s political and cultural imagination of the ‘tribals’ needs scrutiny as well as an upgrade.
Jharkhand is India’s second poorest state, where tribal communities – who make up 26.2 per cent of the population – are once again fighting for their land, resources and self-esteem. The state’s rich coal and mineral reserves sharpen this irony.
Tribal people in India continue to be seen either through a romantic prism or as a war-like, inscrutable group – surviving at the margins of national experience. Although sometimes, a Birsa Munda statue is installed and handicrafts of bell-metal are sold at Dilli Haat as symbolic curios of our diversity.
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A life of being props
Nothing brings this disconnect out like a recent poster in Delhi, in 2019.
In the Aadi Mahotsav at Dilli Haat in the capital, one advertisement portrayed Indian tribes as tongue-thrusting, fearsome and almost ready to lurch into the world of civilisation, order and stability. The image tested both fear and fetishes of the viewers, exciting them with alternate cultures that still share their space, yet cautioning them of the risks of any deeper engagement.
At the 2017 edition of the Delhi’s celebrated Surajkund Mela, themed on Jharkhand, the ‘props’ were real. Men in leaf skirts, plumage headwear and body paint greeted ribbon-cutters, bureaucrats and the bemused bourgeoisie of the capital.
Both examples complement the Jharkhand story – as sold in Delhi. In the idea of India, the communities are used more like artefacts than seen as participants. Their long-standing demands for land rights and employment have been downgraded to stalls at handicraft melas.
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Recovering local heroes
Far away from these posters and parades, Jharkhand’s tribes are fighting these urban caricatures with their own political history.
Local tribal heroes from the past are being memorialised, the ones who launched battles and challenged the authority of the colonial state. This is not only because every community needs their own messiahs but also to counter the notion of them being apolitical subjects.
For the Santhals, the tribe that mostly backs the JMM, this history comes in the form of two brothers, Sidhu and Kanu Murmu, who led the Santhal Rebellion of 1855. The rebellion was against cruel moneylenders but later developed into a more generic disaffection for all ‘outsiders’ including the British. Forest rights were also at the heart of the struggle. The uprising was easily quelled, but the brothers continued to be revered as symbols through which future sovereignty could be asserted.
Nothing changed for the next 150 years or so. Debt grew, lands were encroached and poverty increased. Many artists of Bengal, especially in Shantiniketan, in the early 20th century incorporated the community in their new, inclusive vision of nationhood, but in the art, the Santhals had been defanged, their weapons taken away and their contestations overlooked; what remained were only men with drums and women with cymbals, dancing in an arcadia. This image lived on in the postcards of modern India, and in the festivals that celebrated it.
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By contrast, in the Santhal Pargana region that goes to the polls next week, statues of the Sidhu and Kanu with bow and arrows have emerged in almost every village and major intersection. In once-forgotten Bhognadih, the brothers’ birthplace, a vast canopy displaying the gilded men has become the new shrine of regional politics where tributes are offered, oaths renewed and fairs held. The weaponisation of the two rebels aims not only to subvert the notional docility of tribe, but also to project aggression as a form of rational politics.
The cult of Birsa Munda in Chota Nagpur is a similar recovery of near-dormant heroes. Along with sculptures, posters, commemorative busts and political invocations, a 150-foot statue of the leader, an initiative of AJSU, is also being constructed to greet travellers on the Ranchi-Jamshedpur highway.
Politics is deifying its gritty warriors and reclaiming their prestige, as it must. But it may be sidestepping deeper concerns. Government job reservations for indigenous people is seen as an easy fix. Land alienation, unsettled tenancy, poor healthcare and education and extreme poverty persist, and continue to be the very reasons that launched past struggles.
The slogan ‘jal jungle zameen’ (water, forest, land) has been central to affirming tribal identity in Jharkhand. No local election speech omits it, nor do national campaigners and paratroopers. Affirmations, though, go only so far.
The author is the national spokesperson of Congress and holds a PhD from Cambridge University. Views are personal.