Sowing saffron in the north east
Furquan Ameen Siddiqui, Hindustan Times New Delhi, December 13, 2014
Historically, the north eastern states have been cut off
geographically and culturally from the rest of India. Largely populated
by tribes- many of whom continue to follow their ancient animist
religions- the Seven Sisters of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur,
Tripura, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have always attracted
proselytizers, whether it was the Vaishnavites who influenced Manipur in
the late medieval period or the Christian missionaries of the colonial
period.
RSS-styled assemblies and shakha activities is part of the physical activities assigned for the children. The daily routine includes morning and evening prayers which include singing RSS prescribed patriotic songs and devotional songs praising Hindu gods and goddesses (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Now, the battle for the hearts and minds of the north east seems set to intensify with the growing presence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates in the region, who are working to further the Hindutva agenda there. Indeed, the saffron bodies seem to have learnt a good deal from the Christian missionaries they so deride and their message is being successfully propagated through education.
This could have been unremarkable, perhaps even welcome in the absence of a robust secular educational system provided by the state, except that the work of right wing Hindu organisations and the government's deep interest in north east raises several questions; questions about the erasure of indigenous cultures through the indoctrination of children and the propagation of the idea that the
area's animist cultures are actually a strand of the ur-Vedic religion that's also the precursor of modern mainstream Hinduism.
The eventual hope seems to be to reap political dividends.
Last week, RSS affiliates in north India caused controversy by conducting public 'reconversions'. Another bigger event is planned for Christmas in Aligarh. Under attack, the government mooted an anti-conversion law to be followed by all states and the Centre. During a debate in Parliament on the same topic, union minister Venkaiah Naidu, while quoting Sardar Patel, said: "It is well known that in this country there are mass conversions by force, conversions by coercion and influence. And, we cannot deny the fact that children have also been converted."
"We consider every tribe to be a part of Hindu or Sanatan Dharma. We consider all Vanvasis a part of this larger Dharma," says Rajesh Das, Sangathan Mantri (organisation secretary) of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, which runs a growing network of schools, hostels and temples in the north east. Das, who supervises the ashram's projects in Tripura and Mizoram, believes the tribals of the region are being guided to the right path through a holistic and nationalistic approach. Das, just like other karyakartas in north east, is not in a hurry either. "We'll see what happens to them [tribal identity] after 100 or 200 years."
In February this year, the long-standing conflict between the Mizo and the Bru (Reangs in Tripura) tribes took me to that corner of the country. In 1998, thousands of Bru tribals had fled Mizoram following ethnic clashes with Mizos. They had taken refuge in the bordering areas of Tripura. Today, some 35,000 refugees remain stranded in the camps scattered around the remote reaches of Kanchanpur, a sleepy hamlet in Tripura.
In 1998, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), an RSS affiliate in tribal areas that provided relief at the camps, had stirred trouble by claiming that the Brus were Hindus. 17 years later, in February 2014, there was no overt sign of the VKA's relief work at the camps. Instead, there were religious mandalis or groups. At the Santipara camp, I met Manikya Reang, a Bru tribal who had fled Mizoram at 14 and sought refuge in one of the seven camps in Tripura.
When I first met Manikya as a Hindustan Times reporter, he didn't care about my name but was insistent about finding out my religion. I gave him a fictitious Hindu name, Sanjay, which stuck as my chain of contacts expanded through him.
The Brus, like many northeasterners, were originally animists - many still are- and believed in the spiritual essence that inhabit inanimate. The concept of worshipping idols or symbols is completely alien to them. Many were initially converted by Christian missionaries. Some of those who escaped Mizoram after the troubles continued to follow animism.
Lighting up of incense, diyas and praying to symbols and images have replaced some traditional Apatani rituals blurring the lines between indigenous practices and north Indian Hindu rituals (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
After the VKA reached the camps, a large number have turned toward Hindu deities. A Bru priest of the Shiva mandali recalls that his people accepted Hindu gods, and eventually formed Ram or Shiva mandalis or groups. Manikya didn't just turn toward these mandalis, he became a purna kaaleen pracharak (full time worker) of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
Since 2006, Manikya has been preaching to displaced tribals about the Hindu way of life and about Bhartiya sanskaar (Indian values), and has been involved in opening schools in remote areas. Soft-spoken, short and lean, Manikya, who is in his thirties, spoke in the fluent Hindi that he had picked up during his stay at a VHP-affiliated hostel in Banswara, Rajasthan, which he also credits with his 'return' to Hindu dharma.
"The daily routine involved learning about our motherland, patriotic songs and our history," he says. When asked why he was converting animists to Hinduism, he insisted that his people had always been Hindu. "It's just because of the lack of education and awareness that we call ourselves different," says Manikya who claims to have opened, in the last six years, more than 340 Ekal Vidyalayas or one-teacher schools in Tripura, Assam and Manipur. More than 12,000 children now attend these schools.
A concept introduced by the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India (EVFI), which is involved in setting up non-formal schools in remote areas, the Ekal Vidyalays have one trained local teacher and about 40 students, who are taught for three hours. The emphasis is on imparting 'holistic education', which includes Hindu prayers, 'Indian values' and promoting nationalism.
Posters of Swami Vivekananda and Goddess Saraswati look down from the walls of one thatch-roofed, makeshift Ekal Vidyalaya on the banks of a small stream at a refugee camp. Here, about 15 students of different ages are listening to a local 'Guruji'. On being urged by Manikya, the students recited a few prayers in Sanskrit.
Ekal Vidyalaya is just one of the many initiatives run by RSS affiliates in the region. Others like Sewa Bharati, Vidya Bharati, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Friends of Tribal Society (FTS) or Van Bandhu Parishad (VBP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharat Kalyan Prathisthan (a unit of the VHP), Bharatiya Jan Seva Sansthan (BJSS) and the Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh have also been running both formal and informal education units including balwadis (pre-schools), Bal Sanskar Kendras, hostels, residential schools, night schools, coaching centres and primary, secondary and senior secondary schools across the north eastern states.
Much has been written about the growth and spread of the saffron influence in the tribal pockets of western and central India. However, the campaign to saffronise the tribal belts of the north east has gone almost unnoticed. According to Seva Disha, a five-yearly RSS report on the activities of the Sangh Parivar, its presence has grown at a steady pace.
Students in a hostel run by Vidya Bharati affiliated Abotani Vidya Niketa in Old Ziro. Children, as young as six or seven, are brought in from remote border parts of the state to this residential school (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
In 1995, the RSS and its subordinate associates had only 656 units in the north east, which is divided into two prants or regions- Uttar Assam and Dakshin Assam. According to the last available report, the figure had reached 5,198 units by 2009.
Looking for clean slatesSince its inception in 1925, the RSS has recognised the centrality of education in any project to gain prominence and power. Towards this end, it has focused its energy primarily on propagating its ideology through education. Going by their own figures and claims in Seva Disha reports from 1995 to 2009, nearly 50% of all their sewa karyas is dedicated to educational activities.
In the book Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right, Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen wrote: 'It is not surprising that Hedgewar (RSS founder Dr KB Hedgewar) began with boys of 12 to 15, and that RSS has always tried to catch its recruits at a very tender and impressionable age. "Leave aside the minds already crammed with well-formed opinions," RSS workers are told, "and concentrate on clean slates."
The utter failure of the secular Indian state to provide even primary education in large swathes of the north east has left a void there. Despite registers showing growing numbers of schools opened and teachers, the truth is that the scene is grim. For many decades, the only major private educational enterprise in far-flung parts of the country was the Catholic church with its schools and colleges.
Christian missionaries of different denominations have been working in the area since colonial times. Today, more than 70% of the population of Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya are Christian and the numbers are growing in Manipur and Arunachal too.
"It is a fact that the whole north east owes a great deal to the Christian missionaries," says Bishop John Thomas Kattrukudiyil of St Joseph Cathedral, Itanagar, referring to the large percentage of the educated population of these states who attended Christian schools. The RSS and its sister organisations, however, beg to differ.
Manikya Reang, a VHP karyakarta working in the Bru refugee camps near Kanchanpur, Tripura claims to have opened, in the last six years, more than 340 Ekal schools in Tripura, Assam and Manipur with more than 12,000 children attending (Photo: Burhaan Kinu/HT)
"In the garb of providing them with a good education, the Christians have converted the uneducated tribals. We are just trying to bring them back," says Srikrishna Bhide, sangathan mantri or organising secretary of VKA in the north east.
The latent animosity among some tribals towards Christian proselytisation and their own fears about losing their cultural identity has, in a convoluted way, helped the spread of Hindu nationalist organisations.
From Guwahati in Assam, to Agartala in Tripura, to the small towns of Pasighat and Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh, every worker of the RSS, VKA or VHP that I met repeated the same words when asked why they considered the area's tribals to be Hindu- "Sanatan Dharma". A term of antiquity, it became popular in the 19th century as a 'native' name for Hinduism during the Vedic period and was liberally used during the Hindu revivalist movement of the period.
Of brainwashing and indoctrination
In its January 16, 2005 edition, RSS mouthpiece, Organiser quoted the-then VHP general secretary Pravin Togadia as saying, at a gathering in Rohtak, Haryana: "With a view to create awareness among the villagers, the VHP has decided to start Ekal Vidyalayas and other service projects in 25,000 villages of the country".
He added that "the VHP wanted to expand its work in such a way that the Hindus, whenever the need arose, could foil any conspiracy in the society".
The anti-Christian sub-text is strong in all the branches that I visit in Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. Nibaran Mahato, a full-time member of Arunachal Vikas Parishad (AVP), an offshoot of VKA, whom I met in Itanagar in April this year, puts the organisation's fear bluntly: "We work with the community and prevent them from becoming Bharat Vidrohi (anti-India)".
Mahato claims that the focus of the Christian missionaries has always been to target tribes that are relatively richer and occupy a higher rank in the hierarchy.
"This way, they can convert the weaker ones easily," he says. "We work with all the communities and help them develop without any discrimination."
A Christian dominated neighbourhood in Itanagar. Throughout Arunachal Pradesh religious allegiance is evident with these symbolic assertions. A white triangular flag with a red sun is symbolizes that the house follows Donyi-Polois and helps in warding off Christian missionaries (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Mahato, who is from West Bengal, is a product of VKA's education programme and is in charge of a balwadi where his wife teaches. Like many other karyakartas working in the north east, Mahato believes that once a tribal community adopts a 'foreign' religion like Christianity or Islam their nationalism starts to diminish.
Khawang Lowang, principal of the Abotani Vidya Niketan school (a branch of Vidya Bharati schools, an educational front of the Sangh with several branches in the north east) in Ziro has been a part of the RSS since the 1990s when the organisation first entered the region.
Located in picturesque Old Ziro, where most people belong to the Apatani tribe, the school runs a hostel for children from remote border villages that are not even connected by road. Its students belong to tribes that follow different forms of animism including Donyi Polo, Intay and Rangfra, apart from Christianity and Buddhism.
Lowang, a Nocte tribal from Changlang district says young people are being seduced by the Western influences that the Christian missionaries bring. "It's the lure of an English education and western culture that attracts young ones to the Church and their schools," said Lowang. "When we started there was a lot of opposition against opening a 'Hindu school'; now we get students from all the tribes."
A day in the hostel starts with pratah vandana (morning prayers) that involves reciting Sanskrit slokas. The evening assembly complete with the RSS salute is held in front of a saffron flag. This is followed by sandhya vandana (evening prayers). The vandana session involves singing devotional songs or bhajans before pictures of Hindu gods followed by patriotic songs prescribed by the RSS.
The prayer room is adorned with portraits of Swami Vivekananda, Sangh leaders like KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar, and of Bharat Mata holding a saffron flag instead of the tricolor! Students are required to recite the Ekatmata Stotr in praise of Bharat Mata at the start of the day. The stotr names places associated with Hindu saints, poets, kings and queens, Hindu sacred geography, myth, and the sacred books of the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs, and finally praises RSS leaders Hedgewar and Golwalkar.
The curriculum makes it clear that the Bharatiya sanskriti followed in these schools is actually mainstream north Indian Hindu sanskriti. Following on the RSS ideology of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan, Hindi is part of the 'core curriculum' and extra effort is expended to promote it.
While inaugurating a Vidya Bharati school in a village in Gujarat's Bharuch district, in June this year, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat said, "Five years ago, we started a Vidya Bharati school in Nagaland. Today, the children studying there speak Hindi. We are glad that we have been able to spread the spirit of nationalism there."
A Donyi-Polo Gangging in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh. Ganggings are temple-like congregational halls constructed during the Donyi-Polo movement to revive and promote indigenous practices. The Ganggings stand heavily influenced by Hindu rituals (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
He added that it was unfortunate that people see Vidya Bharati as a violent organisation when it was just educating tribals to make them aware of what is happening around them. "It is untrue. The aim is to educate through the tenets of the Hindu way of life," he said.
In 1996, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) evaluated school textbooks in Vidya Bharati run schools and pointed out that 'the Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas' and that their Sanskrit Jnan series (taught in every Vidya Bharati school) is 'designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture'.
School of thought
According to the statistics on their website, Vidya Bharati has more than 13,000 formal schools and nearly 10,000 Sanskar Kendras and one-teacher schools (run primarily in rural and Vanvasi areas) with a combined strength of over 33.5 lakh students all over the country. In Assam alone, Vidya Bharati affiliated Shishu Shiksha Samiti- that runs Sankardev Shishu and Vidya Niketans- claims to operate 470 schools with around 1.19 lakh students.
Formal schools affiliated to Vidya Bharati functions within the parameters of an organised, formal education system, where the school follows the syllabus and books prescribed by state or central examination boards- usually deviating in a few respects: the inclusion of yoga, Sanskrit and moral and spiritual education.
Similar to Vidya Bharti, the Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalayas (VKV) of the Kanyakumari-based Vivekananda Kendra operates a number of schools in the north east, primarily in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The Vivekananda Kendra is another beneficiary of the foreign funding that the Sangh receives. In July 2014, a report (Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups) on non-profit groups in the US affiliated with the Sangh Parivar mentions Vivekananda Kendra International as one of those that receive funding.
In Arunachal alone, under the aegis of the Vivekananda Kendra Shiksha Prasar Vibhag (VKSPV), the VKV is administering 33 schools, whereas in Assam, the number stands at 18 schools. VKVs too promise 'value-based education' and patriotic upbringing of 16,000 students that go to these schools.
What makes the Ekal Vidyalayas - run by VHP, VKA, Vidya and Sewa Bharati in tribal pockets of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura, and VBP or FTS in the tea estates of Upper Assam - different from these formal schools is the apparent lack of interest in professionally running the schools or training teachers, and the lack of a concrete curriculum. The spread of Ekal Vidyalayas in the north east has been exponential. The current count of such non-formal schools stands at 3923 with more than 1.13 lakh tribal students.
Children in one of the villages inside a tea estate in Dibrugarh recite a prayer from the notebook distributed by RSS affiliated Van Bandhu Parishad that runs several Ekal schools in the tribal/rural villages across the country (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
A one-teacher school entirely depends on the acharya/guruji or the teacher. Gurujis are mostly local youth who are supposed to be selected by the gram samitis, but in reality, are selected by the regional pracharak. These gurujis are trained in steps: first through a five-day training shivir (camp), then a three month teaching probation and a final ten-day training shivir. These schools serve a medium of contact with the villagers and the teacher is the eyes and ears of the Sangh.
"They aren't just teachers," says Rajesh Das. "The teacher is also a karyakarta, and that karyakarta keeps the organisation updated of what is happening in the village."
In one bagani (estate) tribal colony buried deep in one of the tea estates of Dibrugarh, some 30 kms from the city, Van Bandhu Parishad or FTS runs a one-teacher school. In the district alone, the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation claims to operate 271 schools attended by more than 8000 children. Most of the baganis who live in these tea estates hardly knew about Ekal Vidyalayas.
All they had heard about was a school that functions for three hours soon after the government schools are over. Run in the government structure designated for aanganwadi, this Ekal school is overseen by a 22-year-old guruji, Mithuram.
When I asked Mithuram about the need for a school when there was already a government school nearby, he told me what every other karyakarta has been saying - the curriculum includes teaching good manners to the students and learning about Hindu Dharma, daily recitation of Saraswati and Guru Vandana and Deshbhakti and Omkar geet (devotional and patriotic songs) that are not taught in government schools.
Going by the text
A committee setup by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2005 headed by human rights activist Avdhash Kaushal submitted a report that found communalisation rampant in Ekal Vidyalayas and in their textual materials and curriculum. The committee surveyed Ekal schools in Jharkhand's Singhbhum district and in Assam's Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts.
These Ekal Vidyalayas run by FTS, as the committee found, were even funded by the then BJP-led NDA government. The funds sanctioned were not only from the HRD Ministry but also the Ministries of Rural Development, Tribal Welfare, Science and Technology and Women & Child Development. The funding was later stopped by the UPA government after the committee recommended that the grants given to FTS be frozen. As if communalisation wasn't bad enough, the students at the non-formal educational units are not even receiving a halfway decent education.
Take the case of the balwadis run by VKA in many parts of Arunachal. They work on similar lines to Ekal Vidyalayas that function as a pre-school of sorts. A visit to these balwadis in Itanagar, Ziro and Pasighat revealed a lack of interest in running such schools professionally. Many are run out of shacks or abandoned structures and basic amenities were absent.
The teachers hired quit quite often. But perhaps, as Mahato himself admits, the idea is not to run these 'institutions' professionally. "We don't want to run these schools as professionals. Schools, balwadis or health centres that we run are all set up to create a way into the community. Then we work with the community to counter Christian missionaries," he says.
Going local to go national
In Meghalaya, the model of the Sangh's educational network is markedly different. Several schools that operate in the villages do so as local Seng Khasi schools. Seng Khasi, an indigenous cultural and socio-religious organisation in Meghalaya started a school and a college in Shillong.
However, several independent Seng Khasi schools mushroomed in the remote reaches of the state and were named after the mother organisation.
VKA organising secretary of Meghalaya, Dr Vishwamitra Batra, said the Sangh funds and supports several independently running Seng Khasi schools in the state. Support ranges from helping set up a school, to providing books and stationery to hiring and paying teachers.
Another RSS supported organisation Lei Synshar Cultural Society (LSCS), hardly known outside the small town of Jowai in the Jaintia hills, has been sending scores of kids from Meghalaya to Karnataka. After the 2009 Tehelka story about the saffronisation of young minds and about children being sent to other states with the help of RSS volunteers, locals are wary of speaking about it, but continue to send their children to Karnataka.
In 2011, 165 children were reportedly sent by the society to southern states. The society claims to have sent more than 1000 children to various schools in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu run by Trusts, Sadhus and Mutts. According to Swear, a local businessman and a member of LSCS who supervises the running of one such school, the Sangh is spreading the spirit of nationalism and supports them in safeguarding their identity.
"People in the villages are too poor to afford even food for their children; then how are they going to bear the expenses of a decent education? This is where RSS and Lei Synshar steps in by helping kids to get education outside the state," he says.
In February this year, the Madras High Court took up an alleged trafficking case of 20 minor girls between the ages of 8 and 13 from Jowai and nearby Pynursla. The girls were rescued from a Trust that ran a hostel in Hosur, Tamil Nadu and were sent by LSCS. Batra denies an RSS role in sending children outside the state.
The VKA and VHP also run several hostels in different parts of the country. According to the VHP website, it runs 89 hostels, 34 orphanages and 15 residential schools across the country. The VKA operates 225 hostels with a strength of 7,774 children in various parts of the country.
North eastern children are primarily sent to hostels in the states of UP, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala. With so many schools run by the Sangh and its affiliates in the region, why send the children to hostels outside the state?
According to Sewa Disha, the 'hostels for students belonging to north eastern states and other vanvasi areas [are run] to counter separatist mentality and convince the students that they are a part of the mainstream of our country.' The hostels also help the Parivar to propagate their Guruji's ideology and mould these children. Indeed, Manikya says it was his time at the VHP hostel in Banswara that made him realise that he has always been a Hindu.
Smells of social engineering Speaking during the launch of his book Jyotipunj in Rajkot in 2008 - attended by RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat and VHP leader Sadhvi Rithambara- the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi had quoted an instance where political leader Jayaprakash Narayan had attended one of the Sangh meetings and found it surprising when every worker introduced himself with his Sangh aayu (sangh age) - a measure of how much one worker has spent his life as a Sangh worker.
He says that Narayan was surprised and wondered how anyone can give 30-40 years of his life for one work, one thought and one mission. The karyakartas or pracharaks that I met in the north east were no different. They were in different stages of their Sangh aayu, working towards one mission- to convince animist tribals that they have always been a part of the larger 'Hindu fold', a part of Sanatan Dharma.
An Apatani village just outside the small town of Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh. The traditional prayer rituals in Apatani has now been Hinduised after the Hindu organisations like RSS and AVP started working in the area (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Arunachal Pradesh holds a special place among the RSS cadre as the state shares a border with China. Both Chinese claims over the parts of the state and the spread of Christian missionaries is a major concern and their call for nationalism across the state is much louder.
"There was a conscious effort by the state to keep Christianity out of Arunachal. Hindi and Hinduism were promoted to make Arunachalis different, a buffer zone between Indians and Chinese," says John Dayal, civil rights activist and co-founder of the All India Christian Council.
About 30% of the state's population - Arunachal prohibited the use of bribery or coercion for conversion in 1978 - follows animistic traditions like Donyi-Polo.
In the late 1980s, the small town of Pasighat, home to the Adi tribe began to see a revival of the Donyi-Polo religion. Talom Rukbo emerged as the father of Donyi-Polo and suggested recovering and recording endangered rituals, prayers, and hymns on paper. Soon, other tribes of Tani and Apatani followed. In the decade that followed, Rukbo was heavily influenced by the RSS and its affiliate the Arunachal Vikas Parishad (AVP), a front that the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram took when objections were raised about starting the organisation in the state.
Rukbo was made the first president of AVP and received support for his movement. Twelve years after the death of Rukbo, the AVP seems to have gradually taken over the movement. As a result, the difference between local rituals and Hinduism as practiced in north India has blurred. Traditional practices have mingled with borrowed Hindu ones like the lighting of diyas and incense during prayer.
The Ganggings, the Donyi-Polo congregation-prayer halls, now have a bell like the one in a Hindu temple. Symbolism is prominent in the AVP's promotional work and Donyi-Polo followers are asked to put up a flag, a white triangular one with the image of the sun on it, to ward off Christian missionaries. Books and pamphlets on Donyi-Poloism are published and distributed by the AVP, along with lockets and an image designed by the AVP for the tribals to pray to.
Talum Rukbo's counterpart and a leader of the Donyi-Polo Mission, Kaling Borang, who is involved in the documentation of indigenous scriptures, thinks Rukbo had made a mistake by seeking the help of Hindu organisations like the AVP and the RSS who later hijacked the movement. Borang, however, believes their influence has faded out after Rukbo's death.
So smooth, they can't tell
However, the Parishad and RSS pracharaks in the Apatani and Adi belt are very influential and their success lies in how their ideas have been absorbed and internalised by tribal people like Yabor Tagbo and Taga Borang, who belong to the Adi community. Tagbo and Borang, who are teachers, are convinced that their local beliefs overlapped with that of Hindus.
"We tribals didn't have any religion; we just had different tribal practices. Even though they look different, they have come from the same source," they say.
Tapan Basu, one of the authors of Khaki Shorts Saffron Flags believes a kind of colonisation is underway in many parts of central and eastern India. "There are little traditions or indigenous practices present in these [tribal] regions that can't be in any way be called or associated with Hindu traditions or practices," he says.
The extent of the internalisation of north Indian Hindu belief can be seen in the subtle shift in dietary habits. Traditionally, meat forms a major part of the diet of the Adis. Both Tagbo and Borang said that once they became part of the AVP, they started going to Hindu temples and tried not to eat meat when they went.
One of them had even taken a dip in the Ganga at Haridwar and had brought back Gangajal for the local temples. Earlier, the holy river revered by mainstream Hindus had no religious significance in the tribal belts of the north east.
The Sangh's social engineering project also continues in Ziro valley's seven villages, home to the Apatanis. Gyati Pada, a forest official, is a member of the local AVP and looks after the balwadis. While many in the Adi tribe are convinced that their faith is part of the Hindu fold, most Apatanis disagree. Pada said he joined the AVP because it offered to support their struggle to preserve their faith, but maintains that their faith and Hinduism are very different.
Pada, who has been to several religious places of northern and southern India on a trip sponsored by the AVP, is unhappy that many native practices have started to resemble those of the Hindus. The Hindu influence has seeped into the local temples too. People living in Ziro now know the Shiva temple as the Donyi-Polo Shiva temple, a name that's engraved on the entrance. Similar to the concept of Donyi-Polo Ganggings built in Adi areas, a Meder Nello (the newly-adopted Apatani place of worship) was started with the support of the AVP in one of the seven villages occupied by the tribe near Old Ziro.
In eastern Changlang district, a separate project has developed a version of idol worship which was absent in the traditional Rangfraaism followed by the Tangsa, Tutsa and Nocte tribes. Earlier, the supreme spirit Rangfra revered by these tribes wasn't bound to temples, idols or any form earlier.
Political dividends
While the Sangh Parivar tries to bring the tribes of the north east into the Sanatana Dharma fold, it can be assumed that the political fruits of these efforts will be reaped by its political face, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Although these projects are yet to lead to any political gains for the BJP, the election results in Assam this time might shed some light on the future benefits of the RSS' massive social engineering project.
For the first time, the BJP won seven out of the 14 parliamentary seats in Assam. More remarkably, it made inroads into a traditional Congress stronghold - the tea garden workers and Adivasi communities in upper and northern Assam, in Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur, Jorhat and Tezpur.
Political outcomes in the central part of the country might shed some light on how the RSS's political arm is sweeping across the tribal regions. BJP won 32 of the 39 tribal reserved seats it contested during the Lok Sabha elections - clinching proof of the party's popularity among tribals. It also won 10 of 11 seats, controlling two of the four tribal reserved seats in Chhattisgarh.
"It's a long-term investment. The RSS continues to try and build an opinion in civil societies, through education, for example. Once they do so, it is very easy for them to capture power because when people go to vote, they'll think of voting for a Hindu party," says Tapan Basu.
The changing dynamics in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh has led to some communal unrest. The VHP along with a BJP MP from Bastar conducted a 'ghar wapasi' (Home returning) ceremony claiming to 'reconvert' 35 tribals to Hinduism. The event prompted attacks on church goers. Several such incidents have been reported from nearby Jhabua and Dhar, and from states like Odisha, Gujarat and Jharkhand. The north east seems to be headed for a similar fate.
Opium of the masses?
However, the Hindu nationalist RSS has always claimed to be a cultural organisation with no interest in politics but with one thought, one mission - the dream of achieving a Hindu Rashtra. To achieve that objective, the RSS and its affiliates run projects that recognise the part that education plays in moulding young minds.
"The school is embedded within a tight and comprehensive range of institutions that would, in calibration, coordinate the child's leisure, education, ideological growth and religious understanding', writes Tanika Sarkar in a paper on the Historical pedagogy of the Sangh Parivar.
Patriotic songs, disciplinary drills, sports and special curricula that favours a surrendering of individuality is as much a part of the educational experience at these schools as it is at any neighbourhood shakha. This method of combining both physical and psychological tools to propagate ideology among children can be gleaned from a story that Golwalkar loved to relate: A rich man who saw a beautiful peacock in his garden gave it food mixed with opium. The peacock started coming every day. Eventually, it got so habituated that it came regularly at the appointed hour even without the opium.
RSS-styled assemblies and shakha activities is part of the physical activities assigned for the children. The daily routine includes morning and evening prayers which include singing RSS prescribed patriotic songs and devotional songs praising Hindu gods and goddesses (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Now, the battle for the hearts and minds of the north east seems set to intensify with the growing presence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates in the region, who are working to further the Hindutva agenda there. Indeed, the saffron bodies seem to have learnt a good deal from the Christian missionaries they so deride and their message is being successfully propagated through education.
This could have been unremarkable, perhaps even welcome in the absence of a robust secular educational system provided by the state, except that the work of right wing Hindu organisations and the government's deep interest in north east raises several questions; questions about the erasure of indigenous cultures through the indoctrination of children and the propagation of the idea that the
area's animist cultures are actually a strand of the ur-Vedic religion that's also the precursor of modern mainstream Hinduism.
The eventual hope seems to be to reap political dividends.
Last week, RSS affiliates in north India caused controversy by conducting public 'reconversions'. Another bigger event is planned for Christmas in Aligarh. Under attack, the government mooted an anti-conversion law to be followed by all states and the Centre. During a debate in Parliament on the same topic, union minister Venkaiah Naidu, while quoting Sardar Patel, said: "It is well known that in this country there are mass conversions by force, conversions by coercion and influence. And, we cannot deny the fact that children have also been converted."
"We consider every tribe to be a part of Hindu or Sanatan Dharma. We consider all Vanvasis a part of this larger Dharma," says Rajesh Das, Sangathan Mantri (organisation secretary) of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, which runs a growing network of schools, hostels and temples in the north east. Das, who supervises the ashram's projects in Tripura and Mizoram, believes the tribals of the region are being guided to the right path through a holistic and nationalistic approach. Das, just like other karyakartas in north east, is not in a hurry either. "We'll see what happens to them [tribal identity] after 100 or 200 years."
In February this year, the long-standing conflict between the Mizo and the Bru (Reangs in Tripura) tribes took me to that corner of the country. In 1998, thousands of Bru tribals had fled Mizoram following ethnic clashes with Mizos. They had taken refuge in the bordering areas of Tripura. Today, some 35,000 refugees remain stranded in the camps scattered around the remote reaches of Kanchanpur, a sleepy hamlet in Tripura.
In 1998, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), an RSS affiliate in tribal areas that provided relief at the camps, had stirred trouble by claiming that the Brus were Hindus. 17 years later, in February 2014, there was no overt sign of the VKA's relief work at the camps. Instead, there were religious mandalis or groups. At the Santipara camp, I met Manikya Reang, a Bru tribal who had fled Mizoram at 14 and sought refuge in one of the seven camps in Tripura.
When I first met Manikya as a Hindustan Times reporter, he didn't care about my name but was insistent about finding out my religion. I gave him a fictitious Hindu name, Sanjay, which stuck as my chain of contacts expanded through him.
The Brus, like many northeasterners, were originally animists - many still are- and believed in the spiritual essence that inhabit inanimate. The concept of worshipping idols or symbols is completely alien to them. Many were initially converted by Christian missionaries. Some of those who escaped Mizoram after the troubles continued to follow animism.
Lighting up of incense, diyas and praying to symbols and images have replaced some traditional Apatani rituals blurring the lines between indigenous practices and north Indian Hindu rituals (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
After the VKA reached the camps, a large number have turned toward Hindu deities. A Bru priest of the Shiva mandali recalls that his people accepted Hindu gods, and eventually formed Ram or Shiva mandalis or groups. Manikya didn't just turn toward these mandalis, he became a purna kaaleen pracharak (full time worker) of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
Since 2006, Manikya has been preaching to displaced tribals about the Hindu way of life and about Bhartiya sanskaar (Indian values), and has been involved in opening schools in remote areas. Soft-spoken, short and lean, Manikya, who is in his thirties, spoke in the fluent Hindi that he had picked up during his stay at a VHP-affiliated hostel in Banswara, Rajasthan, which he also credits with his 'return' to Hindu dharma.
"The daily routine involved learning about our motherland, patriotic songs and our history," he says. When asked why he was converting animists to Hinduism, he insisted that his people had always been Hindu. "It's just because of the lack of education and awareness that we call ourselves different," says Manikya who claims to have opened, in the last six years, more than 340 Ekal Vidyalayas or one-teacher schools in Tripura, Assam and Manipur. More than 12,000 children now attend these schools.
A concept introduced by the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India (EVFI), which is involved in setting up non-formal schools in remote areas, the Ekal Vidyalays have one trained local teacher and about 40 students, who are taught for three hours. The emphasis is on imparting 'holistic education', which includes Hindu prayers, 'Indian values' and promoting nationalism.
Posters of Swami Vivekananda and Goddess Saraswati look down from the walls of one thatch-roofed, makeshift Ekal Vidyalaya on the banks of a small stream at a refugee camp. Here, about 15 students of different ages are listening to a local 'Guruji'. On being urged by Manikya, the students recited a few prayers in Sanskrit.
Ekal Vidyalaya is just one of the many initiatives run by RSS affiliates in the region. Others like Sewa Bharati, Vidya Bharati, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Friends of Tribal Society (FTS) or Van Bandhu Parishad (VBP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharat Kalyan Prathisthan (a unit of the VHP), Bharatiya Jan Seva Sansthan (BJSS) and the Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh have also been running both formal and informal education units including balwadis (pre-schools), Bal Sanskar Kendras, hostels, residential schools, night schools, coaching centres and primary, secondary and senior secondary schools across the north eastern states.
Much has been written about the growth and spread of the saffron influence in the tribal pockets of western and central India. However, the campaign to saffronise the tribal belts of the north east has gone almost unnoticed. According to Seva Disha, a five-yearly RSS report on the activities of the Sangh Parivar, its presence has grown at a steady pace.
Students in a hostel run by Vidya Bharati affiliated Abotani Vidya Niketa in Old Ziro. Children, as young as six or seven, are brought in from remote border parts of the state to this residential school (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
In 1995, the RSS and its subordinate associates had only 656 units in the north east, which is divided into two prants or regions- Uttar Assam and Dakshin Assam. According to the last available report, the figure had reached 5,198 units by 2009.
Looking for clean slatesSince its inception in 1925, the RSS has recognised the centrality of education in any project to gain prominence and power. Towards this end, it has focused its energy primarily on propagating its ideology through education. Going by their own figures and claims in Seva Disha reports from 1995 to 2009, nearly 50% of all their sewa karyas is dedicated to educational activities.
In the book Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right, Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen wrote: 'It is not surprising that Hedgewar (RSS founder Dr KB Hedgewar) began with boys of 12 to 15, and that RSS has always tried to catch its recruits at a very tender and impressionable age. "Leave aside the minds already crammed with well-formed opinions," RSS workers are told, "and concentrate on clean slates."
The utter failure of the secular Indian state to provide even primary education in large swathes of the north east has left a void there. Despite registers showing growing numbers of schools opened and teachers, the truth is that the scene is grim. For many decades, the only major private educational enterprise in far-flung parts of the country was the Catholic church with its schools and colleges.
Christian missionaries of different denominations have been working in the area since colonial times. Today, more than 70% of the population of Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya are Christian and the numbers are growing in Manipur and Arunachal too.
"It is a fact that the whole north east owes a great deal to the Christian missionaries," says Bishop John Thomas Kattrukudiyil of St Joseph Cathedral, Itanagar, referring to the large percentage of the educated population of these states who attended Christian schools. The RSS and its sister organisations, however, beg to differ.
Manikya Reang, a VHP karyakarta working in the Bru refugee camps near Kanchanpur, Tripura claims to have opened, in the last six years, more than 340 Ekal schools in Tripura, Assam and Manipur with more than 12,000 children attending (Photo: Burhaan Kinu/HT)
"In the garb of providing them with a good education, the Christians have converted the uneducated tribals. We are just trying to bring them back," says Srikrishna Bhide, sangathan mantri or organising secretary of VKA in the north east.
The latent animosity among some tribals towards Christian proselytisation and their own fears about losing their cultural identity has, in a convoluted way, helped the spread of Hindu nationalist organisations.
From Guwahati in Assam, to Agartala in Tripura, to the small towns of Pasighat and Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh, every worker of the RSS, VKA or VHP that I met repeated the same words when asked why they considered the area's tribals to be Hindu- "Sanatan Dharma". A term of antiquity, it became popular in the 19th century as a 'native' name for Hinduism during the Vedic period and was liberally used during the Hindu revivalist movement of the period.
Of brainwashing and indoctrination
In its January 16, 2005 edition, RSS mouthpiece, Organiser quoted the-then VHP general secretary Pravin Togadia as saying, at a gathering in Rohtak, Haryana: "With a view to create awareness among the villagers, the VHP has decided to start Ekal Vidyalayas and other service projects in 25,000 villages of the country".
He added that "the VHP wanted to expand its work in such a way that the Hindus, whenever the need arose, could foil any conspiracy in the society".
The anti-Christian sub-text is strong in all the branches that I visit in Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. Nibaran Mahato, a full-time member of Arunachal Vikas Parishad (AVP), an offshoot of VKA, whom I met in Itanagar in April this year, puts the organisation's fear bluntly: "We work with the community and prevent them from becoming Bharat Vidrohi (anti-India)".
Mahato claims that the focus of the Christian missionaries has always been to target tribes that are relatively richer and occupy a higher rank in the hierarchy.
"This way, they can convert the weaker ones easily," he says. "We work with all the communities and help them develop without any discrimination."
A Christian dominated neighbourhood in Itanagar. Throughout Arunachal Pradesh religious allegiance is evident with these symbolic assertions. A white triangular flag with a red sun is symbolizes that the house follows Donyi-Polois and helps in warding off Christian missionaries (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Mahato, who is from West Bengal, is a product of VKA's education programme and is in charge of a balwadi where his wife teaches. Like many other karyakartas working in the north east, Mahato believes that once a tribal community adopts a 'foreign' religion like Christianity or Islam their nationalism starts to diminish.
Khawang Lowang, principal of the Abotani Vidya Niketan school (a branch of Vidya Bharati schools, an educational front of the Sangh with several branches in the north east) in Ziro has been a part of the RSS since the 1990s when the organisation first entered the region.
Located in picturesque Old Ziro, where most people belong to the Apatani tribe, the school runs a hostel for children from remote border villages that are not even connected by road. Its students belong to tribes that follow different forms of animism including Donyi Polo, Intay and Rangfra, apart from Christianity and Buddhism.
Lowang, a Nocte tribal from Changlang district says young people are being seduced by the Western influences that the Christian missionaries bring. "It's the lure of an English education and western culture that attracts young ones to the Church and their schools," said Lowang. "When we started there was a lot of opposition against opening a 'Hindu school'; now we get students from all the tribes."
A day in the hostel starts with pratah vandana (morning prayers) that involves reciting Sanskrit slokas. The evening assembly complete with the RSS salute is held in front of a saffron flag. This is followed by sandhya vandana (evening prayers). The vandana session involves singing devotional songs or bhajans before pictures of Hindu gods followed by patriotic songs prescribed by the RSS.
The prayer room is adorned with portraits of Swami Vivekananda, Sangh leaders like KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar, and of Bharat Mata holding a saffron flag instead of the tricolor! Students are required to recite the Ekatmata Stotr in praise of Bharat Mata at the start of the day. The stotr names places associated with Hindu saints, poets, kings and queens, Hindu sacred geography, myth, and the sacred books of the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs, and finally praises RSS leaders Hedgewar and Golwalkar.
The curriculum makes it clear that the Bharatiya sanskriti followed in these schools is actually mainstream north Indian Hindu sanskriti. Following on the RSS ideology of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan, Hindi is part of the 'core curriculum' and extra effort is expended to promote it.
While inaugurating a Vidya Bharati school in a village in Gujarat's Bharuch district, in June this year, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat said, "Five years ago, we started a Vidya Bharati school in Nagaland. Today, the children studying there speak Hindi. We are glad that we have been able to spread the spirit of nationalism there."
A Donyi-Polo Gangging in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh. Ganggings are temple-like congregational halls constructed during the Donyi-Polo movement to revive and promote indigenous practices. The Ganggings stand heavily influenced by Hindu rituals (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
He added that it was unfortunate that people see Vidya Bharati as a violent organisation when it was just educating tribals to make them aware of what is happening around them. "It is untrue. The aim is to educate through the tenets of the Hindu way of life," he said.
In 1996, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) evaluated school textbooks in Vidya Bharati run schools and pointed out that 'the Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas' and that their Sanskrit Jnan series (taught in every Vidya Bharati school) is 'designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture'.
School of thought
According to the statistics on their website, Vidya Bharati has more than 13,000 formal schools and nearly 10,000 Sanskar Kendras and one-teacher schools (run primarily in rural and Vanvasi areas) with a combined strength of over 33.5 lakh students all over the country. In Assam alone, Vidya Bharati affiliated Shishu Shiksha Samiti- that runs Sankardev Shishu and Vidya Niketans- claims to operate 470 schools with around 1.19 lakh students.
Formal schools affiliated to Vidya Bharati functions within the parameters of an organised, formal education system, where the school follows the syllabus and books prescribed by state or central examination boards- usually deviating in a few respects: the inclusion of yoga, Sanskrit and moral and spiritual education.
Similar to Vidya Bharti, the Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalayas (VKV) of the Kanyakumari-based Vivekananda Kendra operates a number of schools in the north east, primarily in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The Vivekananda Kendra is another beneficiary of the foreign funding that the Sangh receives. In July 2014, a report (Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups) on non-profit groups in the US affiliated with the Sangh Parivar mentions Vivekananda Kendra International as one of those that receive funding.
In Arunachal alone, under the aegis of the Vivekananda Kendra Shiksha Prasar Vibhag (VKSPV), the VKV is administering 33 schools, whereas in Assam, the number stands at 18 schools. VKVs too promise 'value-based education' and patriotic upbringing of 16,000 students that go to these schools.
What makes the Ekal Vidyalayas - run by VHP, VKA, Vidya and Sewa Bharati in tribal pockets of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura, and VBP or FTS in the tea estates of Upper Assam - different from these formal schools is the apparent lack of interest in professionally running the schools or training teachers, and the lack of a concrete curriculum. The spread of Ekal Vidyalayas in the north east has been exponential. The current count of such non-formal schools stands at 3923 with more than 1.13 lakh tribal students.
Children in one of the villages inside a tea estate in Dibrugarh recite a prayer from the notebook distributed by RSS affiliated Van Bandhu Parishad that runs several Ekal schools in the tribal/rural villages across the country (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
A one-teacher school entirely depends on the acharya/guruji or the teacher. Gurujis are mostly local youth who are supposed to be selected by the gram samitis, but in reality, are selected by the regional pracharak. These gurujis are trained in steps: first through a five-day training shivir (camp), then a three month teaching probation and a final ten-day training shivir. These schools serve a medium of contact with the villagers and the teacher is the eyes and ears of the Sangh.
"They aren't just teachers," says Rajesh Das. "The teacher is also a karyakarta, and that karyakarta keeps the organisation updated of what is happening in the village."
In one bagani (estate) tribal colony buried deep in one of the tea estates of Dibrugarh, some 30 kms from the city, Van Bandhu Parishad or FTS runs a one-teacher school. In the district alone, the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation claims to operate 271 schools attended by more than 8000 children. Most of the baganis who live in these tea estates hardly knew about Ekal Vidyalayas.
All they had heard about was a school that functions for three hours soon after the government schools are over. Run in the government structure designated for aanganwadi, this Ekal school is overseen by a 22-year-old guruji, Mithuram.
When I asked Mithuram about the need for a school when there was already a government school nearby, he told me what every other karyakarta has been saying - the curriculum includes teaching good manners to the students and learning about Hindu Dharma, daily recitation of Saraswati and Guru Vandana and Deshbhakti and Omkar geet (devotional and patriotic songs) that are not taught in government schools.
Going by the text
A committee setup by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2005 headed by human rights activist Avdhash Kaushal submitted a report that found communalisation rampant in Ekal Vidyalayas and in their textual materials and curriculum. The committee surveyed Ekal schools in Jharkhand's Singhbhum district and in Assam's Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts.
These Ekal Vidyalayas run by FTS, as the committee found, were even funded by the then BJP-led NDA government. The funds sanctioned were not only from the HRD Ministry but also the Ministries of Rural Development, Tribal Welfare, Science and Technology and Women & Child Development. The funding was later stopped by the UPA government after the committee recommended that the grants given to FTS be frozen. As if communalisation wasn't bad enough, the students at the non-formal educational units are not even receiving a halfway decent education.
Take the case of the balwadis run by VKA in many parts of Arunachal. They work on similar lines to Ekal Vidyalayas that function as a pre-school of sorts. A visit to these balwadis in Itanagar, Ziro and Pasighat revealed a lack of interest in running such schools professionally. Many are run out of shacks or abandoned structures and basic amenities were absent.
The teachers hired quit quite often. But perhaps, as Mahato himself admits, the idea is not to run these 'institutions' professionally. "We don't want to run these schools as professionals. Schools, balwadis or health centres that we run are all set up to create a way into the community. Then we work with the community to counter Christian missionaries," he says.
Going local to go national
In Meghalaya, the model of the Sangh's educational network is markedly different. Several schools that operate in the villages do so as local Seng Khasi schools. Seng Khasi, an indigenous cultural and socio-religious organisation in Meghalaya started a school and a college in Shillong.
However, several independent Seng Khasi schools mushroomed in the remote reaches of the state and were named after the mother organisation.
VKA organising secretary of Meghalaya, Dr Vishwamitra Batra, said the Sangh funds and supports several independently running Seng Khasi schools in the state. Support ranges from helping set up a school, to providing books and stationery to hiring and paying teachers.
Another RSS supported organisation Lei Synshar Cultural Society (LSCS), hardly known outside the small town of Jowai in the Jaintia hills, has been sending scores of kids from Meghalaya to Karnataka. After the 2009 Tehelka story about the saffronisation of young minds and about children being sent to other states with the help of RSS volunteers, locals are wary of speaking about it, but continue to send their children to Karnataka.
In 2011, 165 children were reportedly sent by the society to southern states. The society claims to have sent more than 1000 children to various schools in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu run by Trusts, Sadhus and Mutts. According to Swear, a local businessman and a member of LSCS who supervises the running of one such school, the Sangh is spreading the spirit of nationalism and supports them in safeguarding their identity.
"People in the villages are too poor to afford even food for their children; then how are they going to bear the expenses of a decent education? This is where RSS and Lei Synshar steps in by helping kids to get education outside the state," he says.
In February this year, the Madras High Court took up an alleged trafficking case of 20 minor girls between the ages of 8 and 13 from Jowai and nearby Pynursla. The girls were rescued from a Trust that ran a hostel in Hosur, Tamil Nadu and were sent by LSCS. Batra denies an RSS role in sending children outside the state.
The VKA and VHP also run several hostels in different parts of the country. According to the VHP website, it runs 89 hostels, 34 orphanages and 15 residential schools across the country. The VKA operates 225 hostels with a strength of 7,774 children in various parts of the country.
North eastern children are primarily sent to hostels in the states of UP, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala. With so many schools run by the Sangh and its affiliates in the region, why send the children to hostels outside the state?
According to Sewa Disha, the 'hostels for students belonging to north eastern states and other vanvasi areas [are run] to counter separatist mentality and convince the students that they are a part of the mainstream of our country.' The hostels also help the Parivar to propagate their Guruji's ideology and mould these children. Indeed, Manikya says it was his time at the VHP hostel in Banswara that made him realise that he has always been a Hindu.
Smells of social engineering Speaking during the launch of his book Jyotipunj in Rajkot in 2008 - attended by RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat and VHP leader Sadhvi Rithambara- the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi had quoted an instance where political leader Jayaprakash Narayan had attended one of the Sangh meetings and found it surprising when every worker introduced himself with his Sangh aayu (sangh age) - a measure of how much one worker has spent his life as a Sangh worker.
He says that Narayan was surprised and wondered how anyone can give 30-40 years of his life for one work, one thought and one mission. The karyakartas or pracharaks that I met in the north east were no different. They were in different stages of their Sangh aayu, working towards one mission- to convince animist tribals that they have always been a part of the larger 'Hindu fold', a part of Sanatan Dharma.
An Apatani village just outside the small town of Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh. The traditional prayer rituals in Apatani has now been Hinduised after the Hindu organisations like RSS and AVP started working in the area (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Arunachal Pradesh holds a special place among the RSS cadre as the state shares a border with China. Both Chinese claims over the parts of the state and the spread of Christian missionaries is a major concern and their call for nationalism across the state is much louder.
"There was a conscious effort by the state to keep Christianity out of Arunachal. Hindi and Hinduism were promoted to make Arunachalis different, a buffer zone between Indians and Chinese," says John Dayal, civil rights activist and co-founder of the All India Christian Council.
About 30% of the state's population - Arunachal prohibited the use of bribery or coercion for conversion in 1978 - follows animistic traditions like Donyi-Polo.
In the late 1980s, the small town of Pasighat, home to the Adi tribe began to see a revival of the Donyi-Polo religion. Talom Rukbo emerged as the father of Donyi-Polo and suggested recovering and recording endangered rituals, prayers, and hymns on paper. Soon, other tribes of Tani and Apatani followed. In the decade that followed, Rukbo was heavily influenced by the RSS and its affiliate the Arunachal Vikas Parishad (AVP), a front that the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram took when objections were raised about starting the organisation in the state.
Rukbo was made the first president of AVP and received support for his movement. Twelve years after the death of Rukbo, the AVP seems to have gradually taken over the movement. As a result, the difference between local rituals and Hinduism as practiced in north India has blurred. Traditional practices have mingled with borrowed Hindu ones like the lighting of diyas and incense during prayer.
The Ganggings, the Donyi-Polo congregation-prayer halls, now have a bell like the one in a Hindu temple. Symbolism is prominent in the AVP's promotional work and Donyi-Polo followers are asked to put up a flag, a white triangular one with the image of the sun on it, to ward off Christian missionaries. Books and pamphlets on Donyi-Poloism are published and distributed by the AVP, along with lockets and an image designed by the AVP for the tribals to pray to.
Talum Rukbo's counterpart and a leader of the Donyi-Polo Mission, Kaling Borang, who is involved in the documentation of indigenous scriptures, thinks Rukbo had made a mistake by seeking the help of Hindu organisations like the AVP and the RSS who later hijacked the movement. Borang, however, believes their influence has faded out after Rukbo's death.
So smooth, they can't tell
However, the Parishad and RSS pracharaks in the Apatani and Adi belt are very influential and their success lies in how their ideas have been absorbed and internalised by tribal people like Yabor Tagbo and Taga Borang, who belong to the Adi community. Tagbo and Borang, who are teachers, are convinced that their local beliefs overlapped with that of Hindus.
"We tribals didn't have any religion; we just had different tribal practices. Even though they look different, they have come from the same source," they say.
Tapan Basu, one of the authors of Khaki Shorts Saffron Flags believes a kind of colonisation is underway in many parts of central and eastern India. "There are little traditions or indigenous practices present in these [tribal] regions that can't be in any way be called or associated with Hindu traditions or practices," he says.
The extent of the internalisation of north Indian Hindu belief can be seen in the subtle shift in dietary habits. Traditionally, meat forms a major part of the diet of the Adis. Both Tagbo and Borang said that once they became part of the AVP, they started going to Hindu temples and tried not to eat meat when they went.
One of them had even taken a dip in the Ganga at Haridwar and had brought back Gangajal for the local temples. Earlier, the holy river revered by mainstream Hindus had no religious significance in the tribal belts of the north east.
The Sangh's social engineering project also continues in Ziro valley's seven villages, home to the Apatanis. Gyati Pada, a forest official, is a member of the local AVP and looks after the balwadis. While many in the Adi tribe are convinced that their faith is part of the Hindu fold, most Apatanis disagree. Pada said he joined the AVP because it offered to support their struggle to preserve their faith, but maintains that their faith and Hinduism are very different.
Pada, who has been to several religious places of northern and southern India on a trip sponsored by the AVP, is unhappy that many native practices have started to resemble those of the Hindus. The Hindu influence has seeped into the local temples too. People living in Ziro now know the Shiva temple as the Donyi-Polo Shiva temple, a name that's engraved on the entrance. Similar to the concept of Donyi-Polo Ganggings built in Adi areas, a Meder Nello (the newly-adopted Apatani place of worship) was started with the support of the AVP in one of the seven villages occupied by the tribe near Old Ziro.
In eastern Changlang district, a separate project has developed a version of idol worship which was absent in the traditional Rangfraaism followed by the Tangsa, Tutsa and Nocte tribes. Earlier, the supreme spirit Rangfra revered by these tribes wasn't bound to temples, idols or any form earlier.
Political dividends
While the Sangh Parivar tries to bring the tribes of the north east into the Sanatana Dharma fold, it can be assumed that the political fruits of these efforts will be reaped by its political face, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Although these projects are yet to lead to any political gains for the BJP, the election results in Assam this time might shed some light on the future benefits of the RSS' massive social engineering project.
For the first time, the BJP won seven out of the 14 parliamentary seats in Assam. More remarkably, it made inroads into a traditional Congress stronghold - the tea garden workers and Adivasi communities in upper and northern Assam, in Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur, Jorhat and Tezpur.
Political outcomes in the central part of the country might shed some light on how the RSS's political arm is sweeping across the tribal regions. BJP won 32 of the 39 tribal reserved seats it contested during the Lok Sabha elections - clinching proof of the party's popularity among tribals. It also won 10 of 11 seats, controlling two of the four tribal reserved seats in Chhattisgarh.
"It's a long-term investment. The RSS continues to try and build an opinion in civil societies, through education, for example. Once they do so, it is very easy for them to capture power because when people go to vote, they'll think of voting for a Hindu party," says Tapan Basu.
The changing dynamics in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh has led to some communal unrest. The VHP along with a BJP MP from Bastar conducted a 'ghar wapasi' (Home returning) ceremony claiming to 'reconvert' 35 tribals to Hinduism. The event prompted attacks on church goers. Several such incidents have been reported from nearby Jhabua and Dhar, and from states like Odisha, Gujarat and Jharkhand. The north east seems to be headed for a similar fate.
Opium of the masses?
However, the Hindu nationalist RSS has always claimed to be a cultural organisation with no interest in politics but with one thought, one mission - the dream of achieving a Hindu Rashtra. To achieve that objective, the RSS and its affiliates run projects that recognise the part that education plays in moulding young minds.
"The school is embedded within a tight and comprehensive range of institutions that would, in calibration, coordinate the child's leisure, education, ideological growth and religious understanding', writes Tanika Sarkar in a paper on the Historical pedagogy of the Sangh Parivar.
Patriotic songs, disciplinary drills, sports and special curricula that favours a surrendering of individuality is as much a part of the educational experience at these schools as it is at any neighbourhood shakha. This method of combining both physical and psychological tools to propagate ideology among children can be gleaned from a story that Golwalkar loved to relate: A rich man who saw a beautiful peacock in his garden gave it food mixed with opium. The peacock started coming every day. Eventually, it got so habituated that it came regularly at the appointed hour even without the opium.
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sowing-saffron-in-the-north-east/article1-1296264.aspx
