Hindu Nationalists And The Tribal Convert: A Hypocritical Concern?

“As per Constitutional provisions, tribal students are getting free books and scholarships from taxpayers’ money. They enjoy certain reservations in the education sector. Are you paying the taxes for charity?” he asked in a speech that his organisation, the Janajati Suraksha Manch (JSM), circulated through social media platforms in May 2024.

“For 75 years, tribals who converted to Islam three generations ago have been enjoying the benefits of reservation for tribals… using these reservations, they reach higher posts. Who do they support? They support Imran and Ishtaq,” said Uikey, alluding to Muslims. He added that Christian civil service officers with a tribal background “will always tell people to visit churches”.

The JSM is backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Uikey contested the 2023 Madhya Pradesh election on a BJP ticket from the tribal-concentrated constituency of Pandhurna, but lost. He is part of the JSM central leadership.

The Supreme Court of India had earlier ruled that tribal people who have adopted Christianity, or any other religion, continue to remain tribals and eligible for reservation benefits granted by the Constitution. However, the JSM has been busy building a nationwide movement among tribal people demanding an amendment to Article 342 of the Indian Constitution, which deals with the list of Scheduled Tribes (STs).

During August and September 2024, the JSM carried out a nationwide postcard campaign, covering states like Odisha, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Nagaland.

The campaign is about facilitating tribal people to write letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that “those people from the tribal community who have changed their religion by abandoning their traditions, customs, culture” be excluded from the ST list.

The postcard campaign is slated to culminate in a Delhi Chalo or march to Delhi programme in November. Since the court declined, the government must now take up the matter and amend the Constitution, they believe.

In Maharashtra, riding the momentum generated by the JSM since last year, BJP legislators Niranjan Davkhare and Pravin Darekar called an attention motion in the state council, demanding the removal of those tribes from the ST list who had converted to Islam and Christianity. In response, BJP minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha announced that the government would establish a committee with members of all political parties to study the issue of conversion among tribals.

However, Maharashtra legislator Kapil Harishchandra Patil, a former minister of state for Panchayati Raj who heads the Samajwadi Ganarajya Party, calls the saffron camp’s approach hypocritical. “They are demanding delisting of those tribals who convert to Christianity and Islam, but are silent on those tribals converting to Hinduism,” he says. He alleges a Hindutva attempt to hijack their identity.

In the neighbouring Gujarat, the conversion of Dang and Bhil tribals to Christianity has been a contentious issue. The BJP government in 2016 announced that due to state intervention, the conversion of Dang tribes has almost come to a halt. However, Dharmendra Bhavani, joint secretary of the RSS-affiliated Vishva Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) Dharma Parsar (religious campaign) department, counters the claim, stating the conversion is still rampant in the state.

“In Tapi district, there is a strong wave of conversion among the Bhils. There are 578 churches here even when the majority population is not catholic,” he alleges, adding that “anti-national NGOs and foreign-funded Christian missionaries” are spreading the misconception that Adivasis have no religion and are nature worshippers.

“Adivasis are closest to the Hindu religion. Unlike the Hindu Sanatani religion, the Quran and the Bible have no mention of nature worshipping. These people oppose if Adivasis go to the temple and follow Hindu rituals, but they have no objection when Adivasis go to mosques or churches,” says Bhavani.

To “prevent forceful conversions”, the VHP has assigned 1,000 Dharma Rakshaks (protectors of religion) in rural areas to propagate Hinduism, Hindu culture and establish that Adivasis are Sanatani Hindus. In the last decade, the VHP’s Dharma Parsar department has 157 projects that have prevented 70 lakh conversions and reconverted 9.85 lakh tribals to Hinduism, says Bhavani. “We believe only Hindu castes should get the benefits of reservation.”

They also run the ghar wapsi (homecoming) campaigns to convert tribals to Hinduism. Bhavani stresses that it is not illegal as “it enables tribals to connect to their origin roots”.

Others strongly disagree. “Tribes are non-Hindus. Their nature worship has no relation with Vedic Hinduism at all,” says Babu Rao Mediyam, a former parliamentarian of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who heads the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch (ASRM).

He says that some tribals have also adopted major religious beliefs like Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, but they continue to retain their tribal beliefs. He highlights how the majority of tribals in Odisha have adopted Christian beliefs, while the majority of tribal people in Chhattisgarh and Telangana also follow Hindu beliefs.

“This does not make anyone less tribal than the other. We, though, oppose conversion to any major religion, as we believe, in the long run, the major religions will eat up the original tribal beliefs and their cultural, linguistic, religious, traditional and livelihood practices,” says Mediyam, adding that the demand to delist those who have adopted Christianity and Islam is “unconstitutional and retrograde”.

In Jharkhand, political attempts to divide tribals over religious conversion have been going on for the past two decades. The issue of delisting gained prominence at a JSM rally at Morabadi Ground in Ranchi in December 2023 last year.

However, religious polarisation among tribals has not yet given the saffron camp their desired result. The 2024 Lok Sabha election results showed that the BJP’s grip on the tribal vote bank has weakened for the first time since Jharkhand’s formation. The three Lok Sabha seats the BJP lost in the state were all reserved for tribals. Some political analysts, however, believe that the issue of delisting might increase distrust among tribals in the future.

According to senior journalist Sunny Sharad, the BJP is preparing to fight the Jharkhand assembly elections this year with delisting as a prime issue. In this context, Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been given charge of Jharkhand, while Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma will try to win over the Santhali tribals with his aggressive Hindutva stance.

In recent years, the campaign has picked up pace in northeast Indian states like Tripura, Assam and Manipur which have a sizable tribal population. While some have converted to Christianity in these states, others continue with their original faith or are leaning towards Hinduism. As a response to the Hindu nationalist initiative, counter-campaigns have gained momentum in Jharkhand and West Bengal over including the Sarna religious code in the upcoming Census so that tribals can list their separate religion.

According to tribal leader Birbaha Hansda from West Bengal, it is due to the lack of the Sarna religious code that some are misled to list themselves as Hindus in the census. “The BJP and the RSS do not want the Sarna religious code in the Census because they want to appropriate the tribal religion,” she says.

Many tribal rights activists in Jharkhand and West Bengal believe the Sarna code movement is the antidote to the delisting campaign.

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, Shweta Desai and Asghar Khan

(This appeared in the print as "A 'Hypocritical' Demand?")