[Communalism Combat - October 2004 | Cover Story
http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2004/oct04/cover.html ]
Lost tribes [Part II]
by D.K. Singh
[...]
While the sheer brutality and inhumanity of this incident had the common man reeling in shock and horror, here was a bunch of RSS volunteers who were absolutely thrilled at the opportunity to indulge in Christian-bashing. Humanity had taken a back seat in a make-believe world where people were more committed to the Hindutva ideology. By the next day, news spread that the police had arrested a Hindu as one of the suspects. The sangh parivar was not very happy with this development but with a BJP government in power in Madhya Pradesh they had to control their aggression.
It was in such a tense atmosphere that this writer accompanied a full-time sangh volunteer on a visit to a middle school run by the BJSP at Mohkampura, about 40 km from Jhabua. Here, this full-timer divulged the "misdeeds" of Christians at Jhabua to 500-odd boys and girls. Very conveniently, he skipped any mention of the suspect arrested by the police. A similar exercise was in progress at other centres. The episode only reiterates how the misrepresentation of facts can sow seeds of hatred in young and impressionable minds. When this writer confronted the RSS activists asking them how they could skip the most crucial point in the incident, especially if they had chosen to relate all the ghastly details to such young people, they shrugged, "We will find out the truth, no matter what the police say."
In Jhadol block in Udaipur district, there lives the much-vilified Father Philip Prashant, a Roman Catholic who runs a school and hostel called Nirmala Niketan. Meet any RSS or VHP activist in the area and they are sure to come up with the story about how, in 1997, Father Prashant had poisoned three children when they refused to convert. For them, it was irrelevant that in 2000 a local court acquitted the Father and other staff at Nirmala Niketan after it found no evidence to substantiate the allegations against them. In the alleged incident of poisoning, one child had died while two others had survived. The two survivors had categorically stated that they had been bitten by a snake while they were sleeping. The allegation of food poisoning was never substantiated. Yet the Hindutva brigade’s propaganda continues.
Recounting the incident, Father Prashant said that on that fateful night in 1997, he was away in Udaipur. Three inmates of the hostel had developed stomach pains and were taken to the local hospital where one of them died. Although it turned out to be a result of snakebite, the VHP spread the rumour that the children were poisoned because they had refused to convert. "The VHP organised demonstrations and sit-ins in the township, sloganeering against us and asking the people to throw us out. They knew the truth but they were not ready to hear reason. They just want to trouble us with falsehood," he said.
In 2000, the sangh parivar was overjoyed when a Christian pastor named Ruben alias Ramlal Damor of Palawara in Jhadol block re-converted to Hinduism after an 18-year association with the Church. Joining hands with the parivar, he levelled a string of allegations against the Church and is now being projected as a hero by the sangh parivar. The Church has a different version, though. Father Jaswant Singh Rana, joint secretary of the Philadelphia Fellowship, said, "Ruben studied in our Bible College here and was with us for 18 years. He was married. When we learnt that he was having an affair with another woman, we fired him. Then he joined another denomination and was fired from there also due to his involvement in financial irregularities. It was then that he joined the VHP." The sangh parivar is, however, going gaga over this prize catch, quoting Ruben’s allegations in their literature, speeches and mass contact programmes.
And, as if locally generated propaganda were not enough, the sangh is now organising tours of visitors from the north-eastern states to recount "horror tales" of Christian atrocities. Needless to say, the poor tribals have no way of verifying what they are told about the north-east. In January 2004, two groups of people from the north-eastern states came to Rajasthan and visited different parts of the state telling people about Christian atrocities back home, showing them slides and distributing CDs. In 2000, the RSS admitted 13 girls from different refugee camps in the north-east to its Mohkampura school in Banswara district. These girls are now being showcased in the interior areas of Rajasthan as proof of Christians’ atrocities against ‘Hindu’ tribals.
The teenagers are often made to describe, to visitors as also local students and parents, how their houses were destroyed and families attacked just because they worshipped Hindu gods. "About nine years back, one evening, 60 to 70 people came, burnt the temple in our house, beat the family members and warned that we should evacuate the village because we were Hindus. It was then that we came to the refugee camp at Ghosiram, about two days’ journey from our Kolaliyan village. We stayed in the camp for about eight years before we got the opportunity to come here and study," said Class VII student, Krishna, 17. Goading by the schoolteachers notwithstanding, it appeared to be a brilliant show of retention from a girl who was just eight years old when the incident allegedly happened. Thirteen-year-old Devaki, a Class VIII student at Mohkampura school also recounted similar experiences before coming to the refugee camp. She wanted to become a police constable "to beat the Christians".
The BJP regime in Rajasthan, which took over in December 2003, has been of great help to the Hindutva brigade. Shortly after it took over, the ministers in the new regime were shooting their mouths off, declaring their intention to hold yet another inquiry into the activities of the Immanuel Mission in Kota, making Vande Mataram mandatory in prayers at hostels run by the state social welfare department and vowing to further the Hindutva agenda. A declaration concerning tribals was bound to be in the offing. And it came barely a month after the BJP took charge. Presiding over a meeting with senior government officials, state tribal area development minister, Kanak Mal Katara issued instructions that some steps had to be taken to exclude the converted Christian tribals from the list of Scheduled Tribes. An official press release stated as much.
With the civil rights organisations up on their feet against the move, which threatened to snowball into a major controversy, the minister made a U-turn and official release notwithstanding, claimed that he had issued no such instructions. All that he had asked for, he later told the media, was to devise some way to ascertain the population of Christian tribals. Katara, however, maintained that the converted Christians should be excluded from the ST list because they were trying to get the best of both worlds – as Christians and as ST.
Although the government move had been pre-empted, it had already provided fuel for the sangh parivar’s propaganda machine to start rolling. Sangh activists went around threatening the Christians, saying it was high time they re-converted or else they would be deprived of their ST status. And though the move created a sense of insecurity among Christian tribals – as voiced by several civil rights organisations – there was no attempt by the government to allay their apprehensions.
Appropriation of tribal identity
Until the 1980s, they were Nakma, Budiya or Naru. Now, about two decades later, their children are Shivaram, Nathulal and Giridhar.
For the tribals in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district, the assimilation of their ethnic identity, once reflected by their names, into a broader Hindu identity is just a reflection of changing times. A section of them would rather believe the change in traditional nomenclature is a positive trend signifying ‘urbanisation’ and to some extent, ‘Sanskritisation’ in their society.
However, community elders are a little disturbed. Why should they need a pandit (temple priest or some Brahmin) to name their children? They cannot understand why the new generation was becoming so particular about janmapatris (horoscopes) for which pandits charged a hefty amount.
Somehow, the ankora – a certificate given by priests about a person’s name, parents’ name and details of birth including time, day and date – has slowly crept into the post-natal rituals in tribal society. The names, as given earlier, had their roots in the tribal terms for the day of the week a child was born. They were taken from the season of the year or the names of shrubs. An infant could be called by the equivalent term for gold or silver in the tribal language or by some term of affection.
For instance, a child born on soma (Monday) would be named Somaram (male) and Somli (female); on mangal (Tuesday), Mangla (m) and Mangli (f); badki (Wednesday), Budiya (m) and Budaji (f); vetvar (Thursday), Vaisaram (m) and Vaisli (f); hakkarbar (Friday), Hakra (m), Hakri (f); thavar (Saturday), Thavaro (m), Thavri (f); and, ditwar (Sunday), Ditla (m), Ditli (f).
But for about a decade now there has been a noticeable change in nomenclature. A child believed to have been born through prayers at the temple of the deity Bhairoji is named Bhairulal (m) or Preki (f); one believed to have been born from the blessings of Lord Shiva is named Shankarlal/Shivaram (m) or Savita (f); and Ambalal (m) or Ambabi (f) if the parents had visited the temple of the deity Amba.
Meanwhile, hundreds of such temples have mushroomed in the tribal heartland of Rajasthan over the same period.
Laxmilal Damor, sarpanch of Makradar gram panchayat, cited several other changes in his community’s system of nomenclature and in other aspects of life during the last ten or so years. "Long back, we had shifted from cattle dung to urea to increase the fertility of our land. We have now resumed using more cow dung, thanks to advice from activists of the Rajasthan Vanwasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP)," he said.
The sarpanch had no explanation for the other changes, although he surmised that the gamitis (mukhiya or village headmen) could be partly responsible for this, as they had started sending people to pandits. For long, the duski (small black bird) had been thought of as a good or bad omen amongst the tribals. If it flew by their right side when they came out of their houses it meant they had a good chance of success in whatever project they were going for but if it flew past them from the left, it was considered a bad omen. If they came out of their houses and saw a woman approaching with an empty pitcher, it was a bad omen. But if the pitcher was filled with water, it meant good luck. Sighting a widow at the start of the journey was again a bad omen.
Earlier, socio-economic factors determined the marriage of two persons, now pandits matched their stars and horoscopes. "It is the pandits who tell us what time to see our daughter’s would-be bridegroom or when and how to put our plough to the field. They have started fixing muhurats (auspicious times) for marriages and any other important event in our lives," said Nathulal Damor of Palwara village.
Not all Brahmanical influences on tribal life are recent. It has been happening since the time a section of tribals shifted from hilltops to plains and when plains people made inroads into forests and hills. In fact, the primordial primitive traits that provide ethnicity and identity to a tribal group have been undergoing a systematic and irreversible change through what social anthropologists would call the ‘Hindu method of tribal absorption’. As tribals started interacting with plains people, they also started inculcating Brahmanical traits.
With tribal migration to the plains and the arrival of plains people into the hills and forests, there emerged a reform movement among the tribals. In 1911, Govind Giri, a member of a nomadic tribe in Dungarpur who had been influenced by the founder of the Arya Samaj, Dayanand Saraswati, started a Bhagat movement and managed to attract a large number of converts. A number of Bhagat cults have been working among the Bhils. All these cults teach Hindu practices, namely, devotion to Hindu deities and observance of Hindu festivals, rituals and manners. All the Bhagat cults condemn the Bhil traditions of magic, witchcraft, theft, adultery, alcoholism and meat eating.
Through well planned, systematic and insidious methods, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates are now promoting the Bhagat cults to subjugate tribal identity. Despite recently emerged differences in their customs and beliefs, tribals had remained faithful to their core identity marked by kinship and clan. The Hindutva family is now striving to cut out these core features. They are promoting and re-interpreting the commonality between Hinduism and animism to accelerate the already existing process of Sanskritisation.
Before they started ploughing the field at the start of the agricultural season, tribals used to worship a deity they called ‘Gajanand’. They did this without any physical image of the deity; they had no idea who Gajanand was: they had been doing it for ages. Now, thanks to the RSS family, they ‘know’ it was actually ‘Gajanan’ (the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesha) whom they had been worshipping. Many tribal houses have been given statues of Ganesha and people are instructed in his worship. But the Ganesha some of them have started worshipping now is only about a decade old as compared to the centuries old oral tradition of Gajanand.
A magazine brought out by the RSS explains why they are popularising Ganesha. According to Ram Swaroop, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader cited in an article in the magazine, Ganesha has played a vital role in the ‘swadharma wapsi’ (return to original religion) of tribals (implying their re-conversion from Christianity to Hinduism). The RSS claims that in the past ten years about 35,000 Christian tribals have re-converted to Hinduism. A large number of tribals from Rajasthan go to Gujarat and Maharashtra to work as labourers and are influenced by the tradition of Ganapati (or Ganesha) worship there. "Consider this. Only ten years back, Ganesha Chaturthi was started in 50 villages. It is now a mega festival in Banswara district. Such is the situation now that no organisation (read VHP) has to take any initiative for this festival today," says Ram Swaroop.
During the weeklong festival, people fast, abstain from liquor consumption, worship Ganesha and participate in nightlong bhajan programmes (singing devotional songs). Needless to say, the VHP or other RSS affiliates are involved in all these events, from the installation of statues to organising bhajan programmes till the statues are immersed in water. The sangh parivar now plans to install statues of Ganesha at the entrance of about 55,000 houses in 316 villages of Kushalgarh block in Banswara district alone. The sangh has already facilitated the setting up of at least 25 to 30 groups of youth called Ganesha Navyuvak Mandal in Banswara town.
According to Bhagwan Sahai, general secretary (organisation) of the RVKP, programmes to install Ganesha statues and for Ganesha immersion were organised in 885 villages last year. Besides this, the RVKP is conducting 1,000 satsang mandals (groups of bhajan singers). "The results of all these efforts are clearly visible in tribal life," he said.
The sangh parivar has emerged as a great promoter of various Hindu sects, which have had a great influence on the tribals’ traditional belief system. The Bhagat movement, propagating the "higher social and religious ideals" of caste Hindus, has provided an impetus to the sangh campaign aimed at the appropriation of tribal distinctiveness.
Diverse Hindu sects under the Bhagat movement like the Vaishnavite Baneshwar Dham sect, originating in the 18th century, the Govind Giri Panth, originating in the early 20th century, the Kabir Panth, Ramdeo Panth and Nathji Panth, are today indirectly or directly associated with the sangh parivar. Though the various sects have their own philosophies and social sanctions, there is an underlying commonality in them. They denounce faith in their traditional religious beliefs and borrow their philosophies from wider Hinduism. They denounce faith in traditional tribal belief in animism and instead believe in karma, reincarnation, an omnipotent and omnipresent God, fasting, non-alcoholism, and vegetarianism. Hindu gods and goddesses like Brahma, Vishnu, Krishna, Mahadev and Parvati are worshipped.
The Hindutva family has been trying to bring all sects together on one platform and propagate Hinduism through bhajan mandalis, an assembly of Bhagats, the practice of which is attributed to the Baneshwar Dham sect. They call this Shradha Jagaran Kendra/ Satsang Kendra (literally, faith-awakening centres). The Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, an RSS affiliate, runs over 4,100 such centres that organise weekly or fortnightly bhajan mandalis.
In a society where village assembly provides the only means of entertainment and relaxation from hard and monotonous routine, these nightlong programmes of singing are fast gaining popularity and slogans like "Jai Shri Ram" shouted by the RVKP activists in between the religious songs are rather well received by the ganja-smoking audience.
I visited one such bhajan mandali at Naka Sarva village, about 80 km from the Banswara district headquarters. The nearest road to the village is about eight km away and in the dark of night it is quite common to see people carrying an ill person on a cot to the nearest medical help, at least 15 km away. Death on the way to a medical centre is not unusual in these areas, which have failed to figure in the development module of successive governments.
Around 10 p.m., as we reach the village, shrouded in darkness due to the lack of electricity, there are just three or four persons waiting in the dim light of kerosene lanterns. Within half an hour, groups of men and women start emerging out of the darkness, traversing treacherous terrain infested with snakes and thousands of dangerous animals and insects.
As Thawaria Bhagat (from the Giri sect) starts filling chillums with ganja, and musical instruments like harmoniums, cymbals, tamboora, manjira and chimta are put in place, animated villagers discuss their good fortune on the purchase of a jeep in the nearby village, which was likely to make their lives so much easier.
Thawaria’s chants slowly grow louder, building with the tempo of the musical instruments:
"Shri Ram kaho, Shri Krishna kaho,
Dono ka naam baraabar hai,
Shri Ram ki patni Sita hai,
Shri Krishna ki patni Radha hai…"
(Call him Shri Ram or call him Shri Krishna,
Their names are the same,
Shri Ram’s wife is Sita,
Shri Krishna’s wife is Radha…)
As the chorus ends, visiting RSS activists from Banswara shout "Ramjanmabhoomi (Ayodhya) ki jai", "Bharat Mata ki jai", "Jai Shri Ram". So musically surcharged is the ambience that everybody including elders, women and children, repeats the slogans as if in a hypnotic state. While the chillums are refilled, sangh volunteers begin a pep talk, trying to convert the audience’s temporary exuberance into permanent loyalty to the Bhagats.
"Have you people noticed why there are so many Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers in Anandpuri area? That is because there are more Bhagats in that area. Kushalgarh area (the venue of the bhajan mandali) is the least developed and the number of Christians here is rising because there are fewer Bhagats here," says an RSS functionary.
With the chillums going around and the audience becoming more animated, Thawaria resumes, this time borrowing a theme from the Ramayana:
"Duniya mein kisi ka koi nahin,
Duniya mein hamara koi nahin,
Hanuman ke saath hazaaron the,
Jab Lanka gaye tab koi nahin;
Duniya mein kisi ka koi nahin,
Duniya mein hamara koi nahin,
Sita ke saath hazaaron the,
Jab Lanka le gaye tab akeli thi."
(Nobody is yours in this world,
Nobody is mine in this world,
There were thousands with Hanuman,
But when he stormed Lanka, there was none;
Nobody is yours in this world,
Nobody is mine in this world,
There were thousands with Sita,
But when taken away to Lanka, she was alone.)
The programme continues, with some girls chipping in with devotional songs in the local dialect as well, and more slogans from the RSS activists. When we left around midnight, the bhajan mandali was still in progress.
This was just a glimpse of the series of programmes facilitated and organised by the Hindutva family in tribal villages. In 2003, the RSS took 11 busloads of Bhagats to participate in the Dharma Sansad (Parliament of Religion) in New Delhi – a visit that ended up being their introduction to Hinduism. The organisers took the tourists to several famous centres of Hindu pilgrimage, including temples in Jaipur, Mathura, Hardwar and Rishikesh. The trip was a big hit with the villagers, many of whom had never gone beyond Banswara district.
Under the influence of the Bhagats, many people were also said to have quit drinking. "You will see people falling off bicycles and starting again for Gotmeshwar Dham (in the same district). They actually start from home, determined to give up drinking after vows to God Shiva at Gotmeshwar Dham. But they want to drink their fill before they reach Shiva’s place," said a proud young man. It was another matter that many such well-intentioned drinkers were said to have lost consciousness on the way, trying to take their last possible draughts before they reached Shiva’s place.
The Bhagat movement, following as it did centuries’ old cultural interaction between tribals and caste Hindus in Rajasthan, has given rise to new symbolic representations of Hinduism in tribal culture – the marking of forearms and forehead, wearing the rosary, sacred threads and saffron clothes as also in the people’s mode of greetings.
As the sangh parivar intensifies its efforts to penetrate tribal culture through the Bhagat movement, some scholars are concerned about the impact of this movement on homogeneous tribal identity leading to ‘social stratification’ and the concepts of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ on the one hand, and ‘touchability’ and ‘untouchability’ on the other. "The tribals are becoming second rate copies of caste Hindus, specially of the twice-born ones. But with all this, they are not being accepted at par with higher Hindu castes by the members of the latter… People of the higher Hindu castes are, by and large, even now reluctant to visit their houses and do not even accept water from them," said RS Mann in Culture and Integration of Indian Tribes.
Interestingly, the sangh parivar also quotes scholars to prove the ‘Hindu’ origin of tribals. A senior RSS ideologue in Banswara seemed to be a great fan of The Tribal Culture of India, written by anthropologists LP Vidyarthi and Binay Kumar Rai. What he seemed particularly impressed with was a chapter in which the authors said, "Now, broadly speaking, the tribal in India is practically by religion a Hindu. It is well known that Hinduism is a product of many cultures. Every kind of religious act, from the sacrifice of the Vedic Aryans to the rituals of primitive people can be observed in the main body of Hindu religion."
But Adityendra Rao disputed this in Tribal Social Stratification, in which he dealt so comprehensively with the differences between tribal religion and Hinduism. "The concepts of Karma and Dharma are foreign to the Bhils. They are this worldly. For them there is no existence of heaven and hell… The notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not religious in essence…" said Rao, a lecturer in sociology at the Government College, Nathdwara, Rajasthan.
Bhils do not enter Hindu temples nor do they have any images or idols in their houses. They do not employ Brahmin priests for any of their ceremonies, such as births, marriages, and deaths, but employ their own Bhopas and Jogis who are Bhils. They believe that they become spirits after death, but they do not believe in rebirth into human or animal form. Even today the animist Bhils are fond of eating beef and do not show any special regard for the cow.
Bhils do believe in witchcraft, ghosts and magic charmers, but this belief is not otherworldly. Their only notion about the human soul is that after death it wanders in the recesses of the world; the concept of moksha (salvation) is totally absent among them. The Hindu concept of virginity or pativrata is non-existent for a Bhil woman. Illicit sexual relations are a matter of concern only if the woman is married; when it is considered to be a violation of social norm. Tribal logic is rudimentary: When a woman has been paid a bride price by one man, how can she have sexual relations with others? Hindu notions of sanctity associated with the female sex are totally absent among animist Bhils. n
(DK Singh, a journalist with The Hindustan Times, is based in Jaipur. This report is part of a collaborative research project and forthcoming publication jointly commissioned by Xavier Institute of Communications and Sabrang Communications and Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai).
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