https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha/bjps-2024-election-campaign-scripting-a-new-tribal-identity/article68079640.ece
BJP flags put up at the entrance of a residential colony in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, where more than 85% of the population belongs to the Scheduled Tribes and 65% of the area is covered with forests. | Photo Credit: AFP
This should not be the end. It has to be the beginning,” President of India Droupadi Murmu was saying within four months of taking the oath of office, in November 2022. Her statement came when she was being presented a book, Contributions of Tribal Leaders in the Freedom Struggle, at a National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) event.
The ‘beginning’ was made abundantly clear by the then NCST Chairperson Harsh Chouhan in his keynote address at the time: a project to compile knowledge on tribal histories and cultures based oral histories passed down in those communities in a bid to replace existing literature that is based on the knowledge created by colonising governments.
The book was being presented to the President at an event where over 70 Vice-Chancellors of universities from across the country, along with hundreds of anthropologists and sociologists working with tribal cultures, most themselves tribals, were being encouraged to pursue research methodologies that extracted historical knowledge from oral traditions like songs, hymns of these tribal communities.
Two years later, this project’s progress, along with the book launched by the NCST and the contents in it, have come together to become one of the key pillars on which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is mounting its strategy to woo the over 10 crore Scheduled Tribe population of India as the country heads into the 2024 Lok Sabha election, in which 47 seats out of 543 are reserved for ST candidates.
From Govindgiri Banjara of the Mangarh massacre to Madri Kalo of Odisha’s Sundargarh and to icons like Tilka Manjhi in Bihar and Haipou Jadonang and Rani Gaidinliu in Manipur, respectively, the histories of Adivasi resistance across India are taking centre stage in the BJP’s campaign to set its narrative around Adivasi identity.
A narrative that historically situates Adivasis as an inseparable part of “Bharatiya Sabhyata and Sanskriti (Indian civilisation and culture)” by choosing to push stories of their rebellions as resistance to just British and Islamic invaders. And what has been indispensable for the BJP in its mission to achieve this end is the decades worth of legwork put in by the Sangh Parivar’s Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams across north India to build its networks in the remotest of tribal villages — efforts that have culminated in the NCST book that President Murmu launched in November 2022. The contents in it, which originated in a publication first put out by the Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (ABVKA), have now become the principal source being relied upon by government ministries to promote stories of Adivasi rebellions.
The BJP’s intent to reach out for tribal votes this election season was signalled three years ago in 2021, the moment it declared November 15 — the birth anniversary of Adivasi icon Birsa Munda — as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’. This intent was only cemented when its ruling coalition, the National Democratic Alliance, nominated Murmu, a Santhal woman from Odisha and former Jharkhand Governor, for President, months later in 2022.
In the manifesto launched by the BJP on Sunday (April 14) for the 2024 general election, the first point under the party’s promises for the marginalised communities is to expand on the idea of ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’ and mark 2025 as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Varsh’. It also happens to be Munda’s 150th birth anniversary year.
PM Modi lauds election of Droupadi Murmu as first tribal woman President
While congratulating Murmu on becoming President, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “India scripts history. At a time when 1.3 billion Indians are marking Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, a daughter of India hailing from a tribal community born in a remote part of eastern India has been elected our President!”
Since then, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda has taken every opportunity in Parliament to credit his party and their government for scripting history by ensuring the appointment of a person from the Scheduled Tribe community to the highest constitutional post of the country – and so has Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar inside and outside the House.
At each of these instances when the BJP has credited the Prime Minister’s “vision for social justice” for Murmu’s election as President, it has also attacked the Opposition Indian National Congress as a party without a similar vision for having opposed her candidature. This played out months ago too — during the campaign for the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh, where 31% of the country’s tribal population lives, and where the BJP was able to add to its ST seat count.
Cabinet okays declaration of Birsa Munda's birth anniversary on Nov 15 as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas