Tribal culture threatened by RSS-sponsored Kumbh
by Satish Misra
(The Tribune, January 16, 2006)
Gujarat continues to be the laboratory of Hindutva for the Sangh Parivar as the RSS begins its latest experiment in the tribal district of Dang where a three-day long “Shabri Kumbh” will begin on February 11.
The RSS organisations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, the Hindu Jagran Manch and the VHP have been active in the tribal belts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Gujarat and Rajasthan for some years now, but the Shabri Kumbh is the first major communalisation exercise. Slogans like “Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao” (Arise Hindus, throw out Christians) are being used to create hatred.
A Citizen’s Inquiry Committee, consisting of Editor Jalseva Digant Oza, Anhad representatives Harsh Mander and Shabnam Hashmi, Director of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism Irfan Engineer, Aman Samudaya convener Lakshmanbhai Rathore, Action Aid Gujarat Regional Director Prasad Chacko, All India Secular Forum Secretary Ram Puniyani, PUCL representative in Vadodara Rohit Prajapati, Dharma Nirpeksh Nagrik Manch Convener Suresh Khairnar and Uttambhai Parmar visited the area and has prepared an interesting and revealing report ‘Untold Story of Hindukaran (proselytisation) of Adivasis in Dang”.
The committee observed 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 used for the advancement of the intensively divisive state agenda”.
Dang Collector R.M. Jadhav “justified communal mobilisation as religious and cultural awakening, thus unabashedly adopting the rhetoric and idiom of the Hindutva forces”, the report pointed out.
“It is a political game to mislead the Adivasis, and divert their anger at pauperisation and dispossession by the state and non-Adivasis outsiders, by cynically creating a pseudo-mythology”. Kumbh Mela is not a religious issue. It is not a battle of Hindus against Christians.
Dang became the pet RSS ground after the ascendancy of the BJP to the state government in 1995 and to the Centre in 1996. Anti-Christian propaganda was raised to the boiling point resulting in the burning of three dozen churches on December 25 and 26, 1998.
As a matter of fact, the Sangh efforts had become intensive and penetrating after the arrival of VHP functionary from West Bengal Swami Aseemanand in Dang in 1997.
“The cultural indoctrination of Adivasis as Hindus is the core focus of the campaign” by the Kumbh organisers as new myths are being created.
While Adivasi empowerment is the need of the hour, the RSS, through its Kumbh, is trying to divert the attention from the real issues. Outsiders have as such grabbed Adivasi land. The RSS would not like Tribal people to become conscious of these anomalies.
This is one strong reason for the RSS to threaten the education process being run by the Christian missionaries.
Kumbh is aimed at alienating the Adivasis from their land and culture, to Hinduise them to build a majority constituency on the basis of religion and to reap the political benefits, and to create grave divisions in the name of religion, changing their eating habits and political affiliations, says the report.
One objective is to divert “the growing consciousness of the Dangi Adivasis about their traditional rights and self-rule to communal and anti-tribal and anti-people issues.
The Sangh method to achieve its goals are interesting as Shabri, a tribal figure in Ramayana who had fed Lord Ram with berries which had been first tasted by her lest they were bitter, is being used as a vehicle to convert Adivasis to Hinduism.
Though the District Gazetteer mentions that there are legends that Ram and Lakshman roamed the forests of Dang and met their Bhil devotee Shabri here. But similar legends prevail in many parts of the country, and the local Adivasis in the past never held Ram and Shabri in any special reverence. Their gods are mainly animistic, and they worshipped the spirits of animals, crops, hills and many other creatures and objects of nature and daily living.
The VHP and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, in their zeal to convert tribal people into Hinduism, have found the Shabri legend useful because of her tribal origins and her loyalty to the chosen icon of Hindutva Ram. The legend is being propagated that Ram had visited Dang, which, according to the Sangh, is Dandakaranya of 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.
It is interesting that the politically driven faith of Sangh followers is as certain of exact location of Ram’s meeting with Shabri as it is of the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya.
A Shabri temple (Shabri Dham) was constructed in 2004 for which land was grabbed by the Assemanand and Kumbh Trust. Initially, a local was forced to donate 1.25 acres of land; later they forced him to part with nine acres, and within a month they felled over 700 trees (natural as well as planted) from that plot of land.
With a view to turning the myth into reality, the Sangh activists have also created a small pond called “Pampa sarovar” where Shabri’s Guru Matang Rishi used to bathe. The pond has been created by building check dams on the Purna river by misusing official funds. The Kumbh mela is being held here.
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