Business Standard
Shekhar Gupta: Hindi, Hindu, Tribalistan
How the RSS's Hindu-isation gameplan in Arunachal draws upon Nehru's Hindi-isation policy for what was then NEFA
Shekhar Gupta | New Delhi January 29, 2016
There is a Nehru-in-NEFA (later Arunachal) story I cannot confirm referring to any recorded history, but if you spend time in the Northeast, you’d hear it often enough from old-timers. In October 1952, Nehru visited Ziro, the heartland of the Apatani tribe, accompanied by young Indira. The Apatani chief greeted him and took a liking for Indira, and apparently told Nehru something like: you are the chief of your people and I am the chief of mine. Why don’t you give your daughter to me in marriage and I will give you so much in bride money. That offer included, it is said, some hundred mithuns — the bovine which is more a buffalo than a cow, is reared for meat, sacrifice and trade, not milk, and the slaughter of one of which in front of his Raj Bhawan infuriated the current governor so much he had his chief minister fired. Nehru, it seems, smiled and said he was so touched, but that he had already given his daughter away to someone else in marriage and it was such a pity they never met earlier. He probably knew, unlike Governor Rajkhowa, that slaughtering a mithun is the highest honour an Arunachal tribe offers a guest, not an insult.
The story may indeed be embellished in folklore. But the fact is, Nehru loved the Northeast, and didn’t necessarily know how to deal with the problems he had inherited there. In the process, he resolved some, complicated others, but also laid the foundation of three doctrines to protect, govern and integrate the region with the Republic.
The first was to give the region’s ethnic diversity wide political space even if it ultimately resulted in states with a million or less people each: Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur and finally Arunachal Pradesh. If states so far were organised on linguistic lines, these were carved out ethnically.
The second was what I call the Doctrine of the Insurgency Bell Curve. Naga Hills, then a district of Assam, erupted in the fifties and Nehru unleashed the Army. So intense was the fighting (before the 1962 China war) that the IAF even had a Dakota shot down by insurgents as it took supplies to a besieged garrison and the pilots were taken “prisoner”. But Nehru never stopped talking to the rebels, led by exiled Phizo. The doctrine that finally emerged was: the state will fight an insurgency brutally and unforgivingly, but never close doors for negotiations. The bell curve of violence will reach an inflexion point when rebels are convinced they will never win, no matter what the score in lives lost or taken. That’s when the politicians and the spies will be waiting to cut deals. Over the decades all these major groups have made peace in return for political power. The government was to be flexible in the extreme, even constitutionally creative, as in inserting special amendments (under the convenient larger umbrella of Article 370) to answer some Naga concerns (Art. 371A(1))
The third doctrine evolved for the most remote and wide northern rim of the Northeast, stretching along the Himalayas from Bhutan in the west to Myanmar in the east, but mostly bordering Tibet (China). The British also had a unique dispensation for it, like the North West Frontier, allowing mostly tribal laws, including bride price and blood money, to prevail. Like NWFP, this was called NEFA, or North-East Frontier Agency. It was distant, sparsely populated (1.5 million people in 84,000 sq km today), but never posed the challenge of separatism or violence until some rioting this week. But the Chinese started claiming and then invaded it in 1962.
Nehru built a bespoke cadre for the the Northeast: Indian Frontier Administrative Service rather than leave it to the main IAS. Most IFAS officers here had an adventurous, exploratory disposition. Much of what I know about this elite came from one of its most illustrious members, Nari Rustomji, who visited my home in Shillong often in 1981-83 while writing his brilliant Imperilled Frontiers: India’s Northeastern Borderlands (OUP, 1983). Nehru, he would say, wanted better understanding of the tribes and reached out to self-taught English ethnologist Verrier Elwin (trained as a theologian with a doctorate in divinity) who did landmark work on tribal India. Elwin became an Indian citizen and Nehru’s trusted counsel on tribal affairs.
The most important element of Elwin’s approach was to protect the tribals from “outside” influences and from the misplaced and dangerous mainlander notion of “civilising” them as they had wonderful cultures and customs of their own. He elaborated on this in his own writings, notably A Philosophy for NEFA. Rustomji called it the policy of “hastening slowly”. Nehru embraced it. Rustomji had begun finding parts of it outdated as change was becoming inevitable.
Nehru was also paranoid about the Chinese in NEFA. What if the China-backed separatist virus of Nagaland reached NEFA? At its eastern edge (Tirap region) Arunachal also shares a tough border with Nagaland. The Chinese could then just walk through. For Nehru was also deeply upset by having to deal with foreign pastors (Rev. Scott, notably) negotiating on behalf of the Nagas. A decision was therefore taken to keep Christian evangelists out of what was to be renamed Arunachal Pradesh. Its tribes were brought into the national — and nationalist — mainstream through Hindi-medium education. Arunachal is now the only Hindi-speaking state in the Northeast. Talk to Kiren Rijiju in Hindi.
This continued after Nehru. I entirely believe the story that Mrs Gandhi told Nanaji Deshmukh she didn’t want the church in Arunachal and would rather have Hindu missionaries, Ramakrishna Mission and RSS fill in. In 1978 (when Janata ruled Delhi) the Arunachal assembly passed the Freedom of Religion Act, making proselytisation nearly impossible. There were protests by the church and some unusual complications. For example, the Nagaland Assembly adopting a resolution condemning this law and the then Arunachal chief minister, P K Thungon, calling this interference in his state’s “internal affairs”.
That law survives because of a larger Congress-RSS agreement on the principle. That’s why as power changed hands in Delhi, the ruling party in Itanagar defected en masse the same way. Gegong Apang served as Congress, “Arunachal Congress” in partnership with United Front and then BJP chief minister with the same legislature party. Of course he returned to the Congress as it came to power again at the Centre.
That compact is now breaking with the rise of the BJP. The RSS has an obsession with the region where its key ideologues have devoted lifetimes. While some of Arunachali tribes are Buddhist and a handful Vaishnavite, most would have been called animists in the past. The biggest tribes, Adis (Gegong Apang), Nyishi (Nabam Tuki) and Apatanis (former CM Tomo Riba) follow Donyi-Polo, or the worship of the sun and the moon. In the RSS view, how is this animism? Hindus have prayed to planet-gods forever — note how a Shani (Saturn) temple has been in the headlines lately.
The Congress, all these decades, worked on a slow Hindi-isation and Indianisation of Arunachal tribes as distinct from Christian Nagas, Mizos, Khasis and Garos. The RSS is no longer B team of the Congress in Arunachal. Now it wants rapid Hinduisation. This should put the desperate impatience of its hand-picked governor in Itanagar, as also some statements of the governors of Assam and Tripura, in perspective. And you know what? Mr Tuki, though a Nyishi, is that rare Arunachali convert to Christianity.
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Showing posts with label Arunachal Pradesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arunachal Pradesh. Show all posts
January 29, 2016
January 28, 2016
Hindu takeover of tribal religion: Unholy politics of India’s far right (Clea Chakraverty)
Le Monde DiplomatiqueFebruary 2016
Hindu takeover of tribal religion
Unholy politics of India’s far right
Ultra-nationalist Hindu organisations are taking a close interest in indigenous religion in the mountains of northeast India.
by Clea Chakraverty
Rata Yirang, a young Adi tribesman, comes back from a hunting expedition with a well-filled bamboo bag. He signals his success by clicking his tongue and hooting. In plastic sandals (made in China), he moves easily over the mud and gravel between the houses on stilts of his village. Damro, population 1,000, stands on a hill 800 metres above sea level in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Bordering China, Bhutan and Burma, it’s a region of forests, rivers and mountains largely unexplored except by the locals, mostly “scheduled tribes” (1) who speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Damro is about six hours by jeep from the district capital, Pasighat, a former British army station in the Siang valley.
Life in the valley, largely unchanged until the 2000s, has rapidly caught up withthe global economy, which has brought advertising, private banks and cheap Chinese and Indian consumer goods. The electricity supply is intermittent, but everyone has a mobile phone. People crowd around the few television sets, fascinated by Indian sitcoms. But agricultural festivals and fertility rituals still govern the rhythm of life for the villagers, who depend on subsistence farming and hunting. The Adi religion blends mythology with shamanistic and social practices and has until recently resisted institutionalisation.
According to clan elder Saram Yirang, young people today are “more interested in Bollywood and western fashion than in the wellbeing of the village.They are moving to the city, and clan solidarity is gradually declining.” The latest census (2001) shows the state’s urban population has increased to 21.34%, compared with 3.70% in 1971. Some blame this migration for the adoption since 1980s of the dominant non-tribal — especially Christian — cultural practices, to which they attribute the most significant changes. “Christianity has made significant inroads into all tribes. The converts don’t observe our festivals any more,” said Aini Taloh, chair of an Adi feminist and cultural organisation in Pasighat. A dozen evangelical churches have been established there in under a decade (2).
A young Baptist pastor said: “Our ancestors were like children. People continue to worship nature spirits, but we believe that is shaitan — the work of the devil. We condemn sacrifices and the consumption of alcohol.” These churches with their powerful, well-organised congregations use a modernist message to win over new converts, while incorporating aspects of local culture (folk songs, dances) into their services. They hold regular prayer and healthcare camps. These “healing crusades” (in both the physical and spiritual senses) have been very popular with participants, who are turning away from healers, whom they feel charge too much, and government hospitals, which suffer from staff absenteeism (3).
“The evangelicals started converting masses of people, because they were offering something more attractive, more modern, than our tribal system,” said Kaling Borang, a civil servant in Pasighat who became a militant indigenist in the 1970s. “Conversions threatened our culture. That’s why we created our own religious movement, reforming our practices and beliefs.” A few educated, English-speaking Adi took up the cause, concerned by the extent of conversion to Christianity, which had already spread to most other states in India’s northeast (4).
In Arunachal Pradesh today, households that practice Donyi-Polo display a flag with a red sun on a white ground. The place of worship, a big rectangular house, is mostly frequented on Saturday mornings, when services are held. There is an altar, with figures from tribal mythology in the style of Hindu gods.A psychedelic rainbow symbolises the faith. There are candles, incense and little bronze bells. The innovation continues: “We have introduced meditation and yoga, and reciting the word keyum,an Adi concept similar to the Hindu ‘Om’ (5),” said Tajom Tasum, secretary general of the Pasighatganggin. But this is not to everyone’s taste.
“Thirty years ago, none of this existed. The reforms were useful in fighting against conversions, but now, Hindu organisations are interfering with our beliefs,” said Kalin Taloh, a business owner in Pasighat, who refuses to go along with them. The organisations provided strong support to the indigenist movement. According to Borang the support was only logistical at first: “We didn’t know how to get started, how to organise our movement. They gave us practical help, manpower, training, advice...”
But these organisations are part of, or have close links to, the ultra-nationalist Hindu movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organisation). The RSS’s ideological project, Hindutva (Hindu-ness), is based on a political and supremacist vision of Hinduism. In many Donyi-Polo places of worship today, there are portraits of RSS leaders. Talom Rukbo, co-founder of the indigenist movement, was made an icon of the RSS after his death in 2002.
These organisations have had a strong presence in Arunachal Pradesh since the Sino-Indian war of 1962, and operate through a social and educational network designed to strengthen the sense of national identity. The small Donyi-Polo Vidya Niketan primary school in Pasighat, and 14 others like it in the RSS Vidya Bharati (6) network in Arunachal Pradesh, offer activities over and above the official Indian curriculum: patriotic songs glorifying Bharat Mata (Mother India) and religious songs in Sanskrit. Yet most pupils are from tribes like the Adi, who are unfamiliar with Sanskrit and the Hindu pantheon. “As far as we are concerned, they are Hindu,” said educational coordinator K V Ashokan. “Donyi-Polo is part of Hindu pluralism. If local people think otherwise, we won’t try to stop them from saying so. But this religion is as indigenous as Hinduism: we have the same beliefs. Hindus have Surya, the Sun, and our god Ram was himself a descendant of the Sun; Hindus venerate nature, as do followers of Donyi-Polo. So what’s the difference?” Ashokan, a senior figure in the organisation, believes education should raise young people’s awareness of their culture as promoted by the RSS, which seeks to demonise conversion to Christianity. Schools also foster a Hindutva view of history.
One RSS organisation, Arun Jyoti, asserts in an English-language pamphlet that there is a “need to protect nationalist sentiment against foreign agents”, especially through its personal development and counselling camps for teenagers. This implies that social and economic ills are due to “backward” tribal culture, a view shared by RSS organisations and by India’s education system, according to anthropologist Nandini Sundar (7).
Omer Tatin, assistant secretary of Arunachal Vikas Parishad, another local RSS organisation, said: “The ministry of tribal affairs is useless. When we wanted to establish our religion formally, only the RSS supported us. That’s why we turned to them.” Like other Adi, he believes the tribal populations need to be developed.The Adi have internalised the rhetoric of a branch of Indian sociology led by Govind Sadashiv Ghurye in the 1940s: the tribes are “backward Hindus”, who must be assimilated through (Hindu) cultural and economic development. This view, reflected at the highest levels of government, helps to get massive industrialisation projects accepted. Between 2005 and 2014, public-private partnerships signed 162 pre-project agreements for dams on the Brahmaputra, without properly consulting the people who would be affected and with no transparency about the use of the funds.
Life in the valley, largely unchanged until the 2000s, has rapidly caught up withthe global economy, which has brought advertising, private banks and cheap Chinese and Indian consumer goods. The electricity supply is intermittent, but everyone has a mobile phone. People crowd around the few television sets, fascinated by Indian sitcoms. But agricultural festivals and fertility rituals still govern the rhythm of life for the villagers, who depend on subsistence farming and hunting. The Adi religion blends mythology with shamanistic and social practices and has until recently resisted institutionalisation.
According to clan elder Saram Yirang, young people today are “more interested in Bollywood and western fashion than in the wellbeing of the village.They are moving to the city, and clan solidarity is gradually declining.” The latest census (2001) shows the state’s urban population has increased to 21.34%, compared with 3.70% in 1971. Some blame this migration for the adoption since 1980s of the dominant non-tribal — especially Christian — cultural practices, to which they attribute the most significant changes. “Christianity has made significant inroads into all tribes. The converts don’t observe our festivals any more,” said Aini Taloh, chair of an Adi feminist and cultural organisation in Pasighat. A dozen evangelical churches have been established there in under a decade (2).
A young Baptist pastor said: “Our ancestors were like children. People continue to worship nature spirits, but we believe that is shaitan — the work of the devil. We condemn sacrifices and the consumption of alcohol.” These churches with their powerful, well-organised congregations use a modernist message to win over new converts, while incorporating aspects of local culture (folk songs, dances) into their services. They hold regular prayer and healthcare camps. These “healing crusades” (in both the physical and spiritual senses) have been very popular with participants, who are turning away from healers, whom they feel charge too much, and government hospitals, which suffer from staff absenteeism (3).
“The evangelicals started converting masses of people, because they were offering something more attractive, more modern, than our tribal system,” said Kaling Borang, a civil servant in Pasighat who became a militant indigenist in the 1970s. “Conversions threatened our culture. That’s why we created our own religious movement, reforming our practices and beliefs.” A few educated, English-speaking Adi took up the cause, concerned by the extent of conversion to Christianity, which had already spread to most other states in India’s northeast (4).
‘We felt devalued’
“From the time when we first had contact with the rest of India — at school, or when applying for official documents — we always had to identify ourselves by our religion. But we didn’t have one, or at least not one that other Indians knew about. We felt devalued,”said Borang. Local activists decided to blend their religious practices under the name Donyi-Polo (sun-moon), which relates to cosmology and tribal beliefs. In 1986 they established an official committee. Inspired by Christian and Hindu practices, they established places of worship known as ganggin, and a clearly defined pantheon with standardised divinities and symbols. Talom Rukbo, leader of this group, proposed to write down the songs and prayers — a revolution for these tribes, which have a preference for spoken forms of language.In Arunachal Pradesh today, households that practice Donyi-Polo display a flag with a red sun on a white ground. The place of worship, a big rectangular house, is mostly frequented on Saturday mornings, when services are held. There is an altar, with figures from tribal mythology in the style of Hindu gods.A psychedelic rainbow symbolises the faith. There are candles, incense and little bronze bells. The innovation continues: “We have introduced meditation and yoga, and reciting the word keyum,an Adi concept similar to the Hindu ‘Om’ (5),” said Tajom Tasum, secretary general of the Pasighatganggin. But this is not to everyone’s taste.
“Thirty years ago, none of this existed. The reforms were useful in fighting against conversions, but now, Hindu organisations are interfering with our beliefs,” said Kalin Taloh, a business owner in Pasighat, who refuses to go along with them. The organisations provided strong support to the indigenist movement. According to Borang the support was only logistical at first: “We didn’t know how to get started, how to organise our movement. They gave us practical help, manpower, training, advice...”
But these organisations are part of, or have close links to, the ultra-nationalist Hindu movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organisation). The RSS’s ideological project, Hindutva (Hindu-ness), is based on a political and supremacist vision of Hinduism. In many Donyi-Polo places of worship today, there are portraits of RSS leaders. Talom Rukbo, co-founder of the indigenist movement, was made an icon of the RSS after his death in 2002.
These organisations have had a strong presence in Arunachal Pradesh since the Sino-Indian war of 1962, and operate through a social and educational network designed to strengthen the sense of national identity. The small Donyi-Polo Vidya Niketan primary school in Pasighat, and 14 others like it in the RSS Vidya Bharati (6) network in Arunachal Pradesh, offer activities over and above the official Indian curriculum: patriotic songs glorifying Bharat Mata (Mother India) and religious songs in Sanskrit. Yet most pupils are from tribes like the Adi, who are unfamiliar with Sanskrit and the Hindu pantheon. “As far as we are concerned, they are Hindu,” said educational coordinator K V Ashokan. “Donyi-Polo is part of Hindu pluralism. If local people think otherwise, we won’t try to stop them from saying so. But this religion is as indigenous as Hinduism: we have the same beliefs. Hindus have Surya, the Sun, and our god Ram was himself a descendant of the Sun; Hindus venerate nature, as do followers of Donyi-Polo. So what’s the difference?” Ashokan, a senior figure in the organisation, believes education should raise young people’s awareness of their culture as promoted by the RSS, which seeks to demonise conversion to Christianity. Schools also foster a Hindutva view of history.
A Hindutva view of history
Ashokan said: “We need to be sure of the loyalty of the local populations. Muslims and Christians cannot be loyal. How can they, when their allegiance is to the Pope of Rome or Mecca? When people do not feel they are Hindus, then they are foreigners. It’s a threat to our national identity and integrity.”At the little school, the teachers use Hindi on a day-to-day basis. “Post the 1962 war, the Indian government let missionary schools such as the Ram Krishna mission or Vidya Niketan run freely in Arunachal to ensure that Hindi was also taught. The idea was to get and maintain a grip in the region, especially since in the other northeastern states such as Manipur or Nagaland, the insurgent movements were gaining popularity,” said Mirza Zulfiqur Raman of the social sciences department at the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati. “This allows the government to assert its authority in the region.”One RSS organisation, Arun Jyoti, asserts in an English-language pamphlet that there is a “need to protect nationalist sentiment against foreign agents”, especially through its personal development and counselling camps for teenagers. This implies that social and economic ills are due to “backward” tribal culture, a view shared by RSS organisations and by India’s education system, according to anthropologist Nandini Sundar (7).
Omer Tatin, assistant secretary of Arunachal Vikas Parishad, another local RSS organisation, said: “The ministry of tribal affairs is useless. When we wanted to establish our religion formally, only the RSS supported us. That’s why we turned to them.” Like other Adi, he believes the tribal populations need to be developed.The Adi have internalised the rhetoric of a branch of Indian sociology led by Govind Sadashiv Ghurye in the 1940s: the tribes are “backward Hindus”, who must be assimilated through (Hindu) cultural and economic development. This view, reflected at the highest levels of government, helps to get massive industrialisation projects accepted. Between 2005 and 2014, public-private partnerships signed 162 pre-project agreements for dams on the Brahmaputra, without properly consulting the people who would be affected and with no transparency about the use of the funds.
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