(Book Review / The Hindu
Oct 02, 2007)
Not just an urban phenomenon
by Prema A. KuriEN
Ethnographic account of the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a tribal community in Chhattisgarh
RELIGIOUS DIVISION AND SOCIAL CONFLICT—The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural India: Peggy Froerer, Social Science Press, New Delhi, Distributed by Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd., 1/24, Asaf Ali Road, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 650.
Most of the literature on the spread of Hindu nationalism in India to date has focussed on urban areas, the middle classes, and the use of mass media and public festivals to disseminate the message. Peggy Froerer’s book in contrast, examines the transmission of Hindu nationalist ideas by members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to rural “adivasis” and the impact it came to have on inter-group relations, in particular the relations between Christia ns and Hindus. She argues that it is particularly important to understand how the Hindutva ideology has penetrated into the everyday lives of “adivasi groups” because despite the setbacks that the movement has received at the national level, it seems to be gaining in strength in states with large “adivasi” populations.
Ethnographic study
The book is based on a two year (1997-99) ethnographic study of Mohanpur, a village in a remote and densely forested area of Chhattisgarh, central India. Mohanpur comprised 164 households with Hindu “adivasi” families forming the majority. However, there were also 43 households belonging to Catholic “Oraon adivasi” settlers who had migrated to the area from the neighbouring district. The “Oraons” were ranked the lowest on the local caste hierarchy and were considered to be untouchable by the Hindu community. The majority of the Hindu households were agriculturalists but most “Oraons” worked as labourers in the industrial town, 40 km away. “Oraons” also made some additional money by producing liquor and selling it to the Hindu community. These two sources of income, together with the fact that the Catholic church discouraged their members from engaging in many of the expensive rituals practised by the local Hindu groups meant that the “Oraons”, in the course of their one generation settlement in the area, were able to gain in material prosperity and even outstrip the economic position of the landowning dominant caste in the village. They were consequently able to take over (on usufructuary arrangements) land mortgaged by Hindus in times of economic need. This reversal of community fortunes of the dominant “Ratiya Kanwar” caste and the “Oraons” led to the development of local tensions. The book narrates the manner in which the RSS workers were able to harness and frame these tensions in larger communal terms.
Mission
The local RSS leader, Raj, was a member of Mohanpur from a “Ratiya Kanwar” family who had completed his schooling at a Catholic school and had gone to the city in search of a university education and a good job. Failing at these attempts, he turned to the RSS, embraced the Hindutva ideology, and became a “pracharak”. Subsequently, he and some of his RSS friends had taken on the task of disseminating the Hindutva message to “adivasis” in the area and had started visiting the village regularly from the city. Using his position as a member of a prominent local family, Raj was able to recruit some other young men from the village to help him in his mission. Since their main opponent in the area was the Catholic church, Raj and his friends developed a strategy of attacking but also emulating the practices of their rival.
Strategies
Froerer argues that the local RSS pracharaks mimicked the strategies used by the church, primarily its ‘civilising mission.’ Thus, like the church, the civilising strategy of the RSS involved trying to purge the “adivasis” of their ‘jangli’ or backward religious practices and getting them to adopt the deities, rituals, and festivals of ‘proper’ or city Hinduism. The RSS workers also gained local support by getting involved in the kind of civic activism that Christian missionaries had undertaken for generations, such as setting up schools, hospitals, and focussing on the economic and political rights of their constituents. Raj set up a local nursery school, established a local health worker to take care of the routine medical needs of the area, and also got a corrupt village official dismissed from his position. Through these strategies, the RSS leaders were able, over time, to cultivate a Hindu identity among the “adivasis” and link them to the larger Hindu nation. They also reinforced the ‘sons of the soil’ politics of entitlement of the local Hindus and created a wedge between them and the “Oraons” by defining the latter as Christian outsiders who were part of a national conspiracy to impoverish and decimate the Hindu community. Eventually, the RSS “pracharaks” were able to obtain legitimacy to use aggressive tactics to implement their agenda.
This is a carefully analysed and well-written ethnography which provides an excellent lens into grassroots processes by which Hindu nationalism becomes entrenched in rural areas. It deserves a wide audience since it cautions against the facile assumption that the Hindutva movement is merely an urban phenomenon and that it will soon disappear due to its electoral defeat.
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