New Delhi: In what can be construed as a significant departure from the Sangh Parivar’s position on Adivasis, Home Minister Amit Shah Sunday said that if elected to power in Jharkhand, BJP will deliberate on a separate Sarna code for tribals in the decennial census.
Shah, while releasing BJP’s “Sankalp Patra” for the assembly elections in Jharkhand, said, “The BJP, if voted to power in Jharkhand, will deliberate on the Sarna religious code issue, and take appropriate decisions.”
A senior RSS functionary in Ranchi told ThePrint that the statement was made solely keeping in mind electoral compulsions.
“The BJP found itself on a sticky wicket on this issue. There had to be some accommodation of tribal sentiment,” the functionary said. “It has only been said that the BJP government will deliberate on the issue. Whether or not the demand is actually met is another issue.”
However, asked if even the suggestion BJP could deliberate on the Sarna issue goes against the Sangh Parivar’s long-term ideological position on tribals, the functionary said, “At most, they (tribals) can be seen only as being as separate as Jains or Buddhists. In actuality, they are more Hindu than anyone else … nobody can separate vanvasis from the Hindu fold.”
“Tribals themselves say something and do something else. They say they want Sarna, but they go to temples, celebrate all Hindu festivals. Even Hemant Soren goes to temples. The demand for Sarna is bogus,” he said.
Adding, “But because it was made to corner the BJP, it has been said that the BJP will deliberate on it.” There is a need to separate the cultural and ideological side of religion, and its political side, the functionary maintained.
Yet, Shah’s statement has created a stir among the ranks of the RSS including in Jharkhand.
“We have for years gone around telling vanvasi they are Hindu, and we have made significant strides,” an RSS functionary said. “They all celebrate Durga Puja, Vijayadashami, Diwali with so much gusto now. Every tribal village has temples, and tika-sporting youths … to say that BJP will consider or deliberate Sarna code undoes all our hard work,” he added.
In Jharkhand where tribal groups according to the 2011 census constitute 26 percent of the population, the ruling JMM-backed demand for a separate Sarna code is at an all-time high.
The tribal communities, which do not identify themselves as belonging to any organised religion such as Hinduism, Islam or Christianity, identify their religion as “Others” in the census. Seen as an insult to their faith, they have been demanding that a separate column be created for the Sarna religion.
The issue has been a tricky one for the BJP as its ideological mentor, the RSS, has always maintained that the tribals who have not converted to Christianity are part of the Sanatan Dharma.
For decades, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar have stated that the tribal communities of India are part of the Hindu fold, and that the idea that they form a separate religion has been sown by Christian missionaries and ‘anti national’ forces as part of a conspiracy to break India.
The rallying cry of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), the RSS-affiliate which works among tribal communities in India, is in fact, “Tu Main, Ek Rakht (you and I have the same blood)”—a phrase that emphasises the common origins of the Adivasis and non-Adivasi Hindus in India.
Tribal communities have always posed a major question mark on the Hindutva ideology since unlike Islam and Christianity, they are not perceived to have come to India from outside. According to most versions of history, they are the original inhabitants of India—a meaning captured in the word “Adivasi”, preferred terminology of self-identification by tribals.
However, the RSS does not use the word “Adivasi” for tribals since according to the Hindu nationalist reading of history, the autochthones of India were the Aryans of the Vedic times, and not the tribals, who the RSS prefers calling vanvasi or “forest-dwellers”.
“The idea that there are inhabitants of this land whose existence here predates the Aryans, and who don’t call themselves Hindu destabilises the whole history cobbled up by Hindutva,” said Lakshmi Narayan, a Ranchi-based tribal activist. “They can say what they want but no Adivasi will believe that a BJP government will give them the Sarna code.”
Yet, with tribal groups who emphatically assert their separateness from Hindus, relentlessly making the demand for a separate religion, and the ruling JMM wholly backing it, BJP has found itself cornered on the issue.
“Sarna is a place of worship,” said Kariya Munda, a former eight-time MP of the BJP from Khunti. “It is like a gurdwara or masjid. Can a gurdwara or masjid be a separate dharma?” Munda asked. “Everything about the Sarna and Sanatan is the same. This demand is only politically-motivated to break the BJP’s foothold among Sanatani tribals,” he said.
“The BJP will obviously not let that happen.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)