by Citizen's Inquiry Committee
Digant Oza
Harsh Mander
Irfan Engineer
Lakshmanbhai Rathore
Prasad Chacko
Ram Puniyani
Rohit Prajapati
Shabnam Hashmi
Suresh Khairnar
Uttambhai Parmar
Released in New Delhi, January 3, 2005
(For further information contact:
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Untold Story of Hindukaran (Proselyisation) of ADIVASI (TRIBAL) in DANG
Contents
Executive Summary
Introduction
Political Economy of Dangs
The Sangh and anti-Christian mobilisation
Shabri, the Kumbh and the pseudo-mythology of Dangs
Voices from the Dangs: Testimonies
The open Sangh-State Nexus
Conclusion
Annexures (not there in the e-mail version)
Executive Summary
A people's investigation was undertaken regarding plans to organise what is being described as a massive Shabri Kumbh in the tribal district of Dangs in Gujarat, on Feb 11-13, 2006. Organisations affiliated to the Sangh with the open support of the BJP state government are strenuously mobilising around 5 lakh adivasis and Hindutva activists to attend this gathering, in a remote and socially and environmentally highly sensitive and vulnerable forested region.
Two fact finding committees was formed to visit the district, and meet the local people, activists, VHP workers, district authorities and other concerned persons. The first committee comprised Irfan Engineer (Director Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai), Suresh Khairnar (Convener Dharma Nirpeksh Nagrik Manch, Nagpur), Digant Oza, (Editor Jalseva and a social activist, Ahmedabad) and Ram Puniyani, Secretary (All India Secular Forum). The second team comprised Harsh Mander (Anhad), Uttambhai Parmar, Rohit Prajapati (PUCL, Vadodara) Prasad Chacko (ActionAid Gujarat), Lakshmanbhai(Aman Samudaya, Gujarat) and Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad). Both teams visited Ahva, Subir, Unai, Saputara and talked to the local people and activists. The latter team also met local district officials and leaders of the RSS. The two teams visited the district consecutively between 10 and 21 Dec, 2005.
For last several years, the Sangh and its front organizations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad and the Hindu Jagaran Manch have been targeting the tribal belt of India, which includes Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Orissa and Gujarat. The efforts of the Sangh organisations is to see that adivasis lose their identity, culture and traditions of worshiping nature without being part of any mainstream religion, by asserting that they are Hindus.
A major focus of their efforts is in Dangs, a predominantly adivasi area with sparse population and rich forest cover. It is the smallest district of Gujarat, with a population of 1,86,000. 92% residents of the district are tribal. The Bhils, Kokanis, Warlis are the major tribal groupings. Dangs is one of the two districts in the country having more than 90% rich forest-cover. With very small and uneconomic holdings, the majority of the cultivators barely manage to survive for few months of the year on the crops harvested. The agricultural labourers find some employment only during the agricultural season. Large numbers migrate in semi-bonded conditions to Surat district to work as cane-cutters in the sugar co-operatives. The political economy of Dangs presents a typical case of utter neglect, dispossession and non-development.
Against this background, the State, in close collaboration with Sangh organisations, is engaged in a systematic campaign to divide the Dangi adivasis on religious communal lines and pit them against each other. The BJP and RSS led outfits are spreading their tentacles into every nook and corner of Dangs on the ostensible plea of countering the proselytisation activities of the Christian missionaries and saving the 'Hindu' adivasis. There is no doubt, that this campaign has twin objectives. First is the suppression of the basic religious rights of the adivasis practising Christianity and thereby also curbing the rights of the Christian missionaries to carry on their activities. Second, is diverting the growing consciousness of the Dangi adivasis about their traditional rights and self-rule onto communal and anti-tribal and anti-people issues.
The total Christian population of Dangs today is less than 8,000 (around 5%), although a range of both Catholic and Protestant missionaries have established their missions in the district over a period of more than a hundred years. The population of Christians in Gujarat as a whole are even less, a mere 0.5%. Still the 'threat' of Christian conversion has been made into a strong and emotive propaganda plank by the Sangh in tribal areas, along with the more generalized manufacture of hatred against Muslims.
In Dangs, following the ascendancy of the BJP to the state government in Gujarat in 1995 and in the centre in 1996, anti- Christian propaganda was raised rapidly to boiling point. These efforts became far more organized from 1997, especially after the arrival in the district of Swami Aseemanand, a VHP functionary from West Bengal who initiated vicious anti-Christian propaganda and started projecting the work of Christian missions as a threat to both Hinduism and the national security. He has been visiting village after village, doing propaganda against Christian missionaries and Islamic Jehadis. He has also been propagating so-called re-conversion, ghar-vapasi (or homecoming) to Hinduism amongst the adivasis.
The religion of the Dangi adivasis in animistic, with varied gods and goddesses like animals, plants, trees and hills, the forces of nature like rain, mountain, ghosts and spirits, including tigers, cows, serpents, the moon, and gods of corn, the rains, the wind, the hills and forests. They are not Hindus, at least not subscribing to the Brahminical mainstream traditions of the faith. Therefore it is erroneous to describe the abandonment of Christian faith, to the extent that it is taking place under Hindutva influence, as 're-conversions' or home-coming to Hinduism.
Whereas Christian missionaries are working in this area from over a century, organised and violent attacks on them were mounted against them in 1998. Throughout the year 1998, there were 38 recorded cases of anti Christian violence, especially attacks on places of worship. A number of leaflets were published and the Gujarati newspapers added fuel to the fire, supporting the propaganda against the tiny Christian population of Gujarat. 'Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao' (Arise Hindus, throw out the Christians) represents the overall sentiment of these pamphlets. Christians were said to be foreigners who are converting the gullible tribal people. Investigations by human rights groups and reports of Communalism Combat confirmed that these were well planned attacks on Christians, which were rapidly aggravated after the BJP came to power at the state and the BJP led coalition came to power at the centre. Rather than assuaging the wounds of Christian community, Vajpayee added salt to the wounds with his characteristic masterly moral ambiguity, by calling for a national debate on conversion, thereby indirectly providing a rationale for the violence.
The VHP and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, in their attempts to convert adivasis into Hinduism, have misused the legend of Shabri and Ram. The legend is propagated that Ram had visited Dangs, which according to them is the Dandkarnya of the Ramayana. A nearby hill, Chamak Dongar (Shining Mountain) has been touted as the exact place where Ram met Shabri and ate the wild berries tasted by her. They have built a huge temple at this place, for which a large number of trees were cut, and laws protecting tribal land ownership as well as forests were violated.
Although the Kumbh Mela is a tradition unchanged through the millennia, organised by turns in four fixed locations of India, Nasik, Hardwar, Allahabad and Ujjain, the Sangh is organising in Dangs what is at best described as a pseudo- Kumbh, for which there is no religious sanction. The propaganda materials including very professionally prepared CDs reveal the true intent of the Kumbh. These describe Christianity as a dangerous foreign faith, and call for its destruction in the same way as Ram had killed the demon Ravana. What Ram did to Ravana needs to be repeated and foreigners thrown out. Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao is their inflammatory central slogan.
The intense hate propaganda against Christians has started resulting in the intimidation of Christian community as a whole. We could see the fear writ on the face of most of the Christians we met.
The teams observed with great concern that even the pretence of distance between the state apparatus and the Sangh has been abandoned. The local administration, its functionaries, vehicles and funds, are openly being used for the advancement of the intensely divisive state agenda. The Collector justified communal mobilization as religious and cultural awakening, thus unabashedly adopting the rhetoric and idiom of the Hindutva forces.
What is important to understand is that the intended Kumbh Mela is not a religious issue. It is not a battle of Hindus against Christians. It is a political game to mislead the adivasis, and divert their anger at pauperisation and dispossession by the state and non-adivasi outsiders, by cynically creating a pseudo-mythology. It aims to alienate them from their land and culture, to Hinduise them to build a majority constituency on the basis of religion and to reap political benefits, and to create grave divisions in the name of religion, their eating habits and political affiliations among the adivasis. The issues at stake are tribal culture, tribal identity and their livelihoods, the freedom to pursue and propagate one's faith guaranteed under the Constitution, and the security of minorities.
The openly partisan support of the state government for the dangerous sectarian objectives of the Sangh needs to be combated, and the safety of minorities secured, else the tribal regions of India, already dispossessed and pauperised, will flow with the blood of sectarian hatred.
At the outskirt of Shabri Temple, there is a pillar which has a slogan in Hindi, which reads : 'Sankalap: Dharmantaran aur Jehad ke Vichar ko Vishwa se Nirmool Karenge.' (Our resolve is to free the world from the ideologies of conversions and jehad'.) The Sangh with the open support of the state government has clearly drawn its battle lines. It is for people who cherish secular democracy in our land to expeditiously and resolutely respond.
Introduction
Plans are afoot to organise what is being described as a massive Shabri Kumbh in the tribal district of Dangs in Gujarat, on Feb 11-13, 2006. Organisations affiliated to the Sangh with the open support of the BJP state government are strenuously mobilising around 5 lakh adivasis and Hindutva activists to attend this gathering, in a remote and socially and environmentally highly sensitive and vulnerable forested region. It is this that provides the immediate context for two concerned citizens' investigations and this report based on their findings.
However the larger context of this report is that 1998 witnessed a series of organized attacks on the Christian tribal populations in Dangs, and anti-Christian mobilization has been unrelenting in the district since, although mercifully overt violence has not recurred. The investigation aims also to enquire about the sense of security experienced by the small Christian tribal population of the district. The still larger context for the report is the activities of the Sangh organizations in tribal regions in many states of India, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chatisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa that targets both Christian tribal people and missionaries. However, this report focuses on the Dangs in Gujarat.
Two fact-finding committees were formed to visit the district, and meet the local people, activists, VHP workers, district authorities and other concerned persons. The first committee comprised Irfan Engineer (Director Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai), Suresh Khairnar (Convener Dharma Nirpeksh Nagrik Manch, Nagpur), Digant Oza, (Editor Jalseva and a social activist, Ahmedabad) and Ram Puniyani, Secretary (All India Secular Forum). The second team comprised Harsh Mander (Anhad), Uttambhai Parmar, Rohit Prajapati (PUCL, Vadodara), Prasad Chacko (Regional Director, Action Aid Gujarat), Lakshmanbhai Rathore (Aman Samudaya, Gujarat) and Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad). Both teams visited Ahva, Subir, Unai, Saputara and talked to the local people and activists. The latter team also met local district officials and leaders of the RSS. The two teams visited the district consecutively between 10 and 21 December, 2005.
The teams aimed to address the following questions-Why is the Kumbh being held in this area at this point of time in this region? What is the link if any between the attacks and violence against the Christians in Dangs and this programme? Is there a sense of insecurity in local populations? What is the role of the state government in organizing and supporting this programme, if any? This report summarises their observations.
[. . . ].
FULL TEXT OF THE REPORT (in PDF) IS Available at:
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/DangsReport3jan2006.pdf
