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Untold Story of Proselyisation of Tribals in Dangs, Gujarat 

UNTOLD STORY OF HINDUKARAN (PROSELYISATION) OF ADIVASI (TRIBAL) IN DANGS
(GUJARAT, INDIA): A Report

by Citizen's Inquiry Committee

Digant Oza
Harsh Mander
Irfan Engineer
Lakshmanbhai Rathore
Prasad Chacko
Ram Puniyani
Rohit Prajapati
Shabnam Hashmi
Suresh Khairnar
Uttambhai Parmar

Released in New Delhi, January 3, 2005
(For further information contact: <anhadinfo (AT) yahoo.co.in> )
__________________________________

Untold Story of Hindukaran (Proselyisation) of ADIVASI (TRIBAL) in DANG

Contents

Executive Summary
Introduction
Political Economy of Dangs
The Sangh and anti-Christian mobilisation
Shabri, the Kumbh and the pseudo-mythology of Dangs
Voices from the Dangs: Testimonies
The open Sangh-State Nexus
Conclusion
Annexures (not there in the e-mail version)

Executive Summary

A people's investigation was undertaken regarding plans to organise what is
being described as a massive Shabri Kumbh in the tribal district of Dangs in
Gujarat, on Feb 11-13, 2006. Organisations affiliated to the Sangh with the
open support of the BJP state government are strenuously mobilising around 5
lakh adivasis and Hindutva activists to attend this gathering, in a remote
and socially and environmentally highly sensitive and vulnerable forested
region.

Two fact finding committees was formed to visit the district, and meet the
local people, activists, VHP workers, district authorities and other
concerned persons. The first committee comprised Irfan Engineer (Director
Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai), Suresh Khairnar
(Convener Dharma Nirpeksh Nagrik Manch, Nagpur), Digant Oza, (Editor Jalseva
and a social activist, Ahmedabad) and Ram Puniyani, Secretary (All India
Secular Forum). The second team comprised Harsh Mander (Anhad), Uttambhai
Parmar, Rohit Prajapati (PUCL, Vadodara) Prasad Chacko (ActionAid Gujarat),
Lakshmanbhai(Aman Samudaya, Gujarat) and Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad). Both teams
visited Ahva, Subir, Unai, Saputara and talked to the local people and
activists. The latter team also met local district officials and leaders of
the RSS. The two teams visited the district consecutively between 10 and 21
Dec, 2005.

For last several years, the Sangh and its front organizations like the
Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad and the Hindu Jagaran Manch have been targeting the
tribal belt of India, which includes Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Bihar,
Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Orissa and Gujarat. The efforts of the Sangh
organisations is to see that adivasis lose their identity, culture and
traditions of worshiping nature without being part of any mainstream
religion, by asserting that they are Hindus.

A major focus of their efforts is in Dangs, a predominantly adivasi area
with sparse population and rich forest cover. It is the smallest district of
Gujarat, with a population of 1,86,000. 92% residents of the district are
tribal. The Bhils, Kokanis, Warlis are the major tribal groupings. Dangs is
one of the two districts in the country having more than 90% rich
forest-cover. With very small and uneconomic holdings, the majority of the
cultivators barely manage to survive for few months of the year on the crops
harvested. The agricultural labourers find some employment only during the
agricultural season. Large numbers migrate in semi-bonded conditions to
Surat district to work as cane-cutters in the sugar co-operatives. The
political economy of Dangs presents a typical case of utter neglect,
dispossession and non-development.

Against this background, the State, in close collaboration with Sangh
organisations, is engaged in a systematic campaign to divide the Dangi
adivasis on religious communal lines and pit them against each other. The
BJP and RSS led outfits are spreading their tentacles into every nook and
corner of Dangs on the ostensible plea of countering the proselytisation
activities of the Christian missionaries and saving the 'Hindu' adivasis.
There is no doubt, that this campaign has twin objectives. First is the
suppression of the basic religious rights of the adivasis practising
Christianity and thereby also curbing the rights of the Christian
missionaries to carry on their activities. Second, is diverting the growing
consciousness of the Dangi adivasis about their traditional rights and
self-rule onto communal and anti-tribal and anti-people issues.

The total Christian population of Dangs today is less than 8,000 (around
5%), although a range of both Catholic and Protestant missionaries have
established their missions in the district over a period of more than a
hundred years. The population of Christians in Gujarat as a whole are even
less, a mere 0.5%. Still the 'threat' of Christian conversion has been made
into a strong and emotive propaganda plank by the Sangh in tribal areas,
along with the more generalized manufacture of hatred against Muslims.

In Dangs, following the ascendancy of the BJP to the state government in
Gujarat in 1995 and in the centre in 1996, anti- Christian propaganda was
raised rapidly to boiling point. These efforts became far more organized
from 1997, especially after the arrival in the district of Swami Aseemanand,
a VHP functionary from West Bengal who initiated vicious anti-Christian
propaganda and started projecting the work of Christian missions as a threat
to both Hinduism and the national security. He has been visiting village
after village, doing propaganda against Christian missionaries and Islamic
Jehadis. He has also been propagating so-called re-conversion, ghar-vapasi
(or homecoming) to Hinduism amongst the adivasis.

The religion of the Dangi adivasis in animistic, with varied gods and
goddesses like animals, plants, trees and hills, the forces of nature like
rain, mountain, ghosts and spirits, including tigers, cows, serpents, the
moon, and gods of corn, the rains, the wind, the hills and forests. They are
not Hindus, at least not subscribing to the Brahminical mainstream
traditions of the faith. Therefore it is erroneous to describe the
abandonment of Christian faith, to the extent that it is taking place under
Hindutva influence, as 're-conversions' or home-coming to Hinduism.

Whereas Christian missionaries are working in this area from over a century,
organised and violent attacks on them were mounted against them in 1998.
Throughout the year 1998, there were 38 recorded cases of anti Christian
violence, especially attacks on places of worship. A number of leaflets were
published and the Gujarati newspapers added fuel to the fire, supporting the
propaganda against the tiny Christian population of Gujarat. 'Hindu Jago,
Christi Bhagao' (Arise Hindus, throw out the
Christians) represents the overall sentiment of these pamphlets. Christians
were said to be foreigners who are converting the gullible tribal people.
Investigations by human rights groups and reports of Communalism Combat
confirmed that these were well planned attacks on Christians, which were
rapidly aggravated after the BJP came to power at the state and the BJP led
coalition came to power at the centre. Rather than assuaging the wounds of
Christian community, Vajpayee added salt to the wounds with his
characteristic masterly moral ambiguity, by calling for a national debate on
conversion, thereby indirectly providing a rationale for the violence.

The VHP and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, in their attempts to convert adivasis
into Hinduism, have misused the legend of Shabri and Ram. The legend is
propagated that Ram had visited Dangs, which according to them is the
Dandkarnya of the Ramayana. A nearby hill, Chamak Dongar (Shining
Mountain) has been touted as the exact place where Ram met Shabri and ate
the wild berries tasted by her. They have built a huge temple at this place,
for which a large number of trees were cut, and laws protecting tribal land
ownership as well as forests were violated.

Although the Kumbh Mela is a tradition unchanged through the millennia,
organised by turns in four fixed locations of India, Nasik, Hardwar,
Allahabad and Ujjain, the Sangh is organising in Dangs what is at best
described as a pseudo- Kumbh, for which there is no religious sanction. The
propaganda materials including very professionally prepared CDs reveal the
true intent of the Kumbh. These describe Christianity as a dangerous foreign
faith, and call for its destruction in the same way as Ram had killed the
demon Ravana. What Ram did to Ravana needs to be repeated and foreigners
thrown out. Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao is their inflammatory central slogan.

The intense hate propaganda against Christians has started resulting in the
intimidation of Christian community as a whole. We could see the fear writ
on the face of most of the Christians we met.

The teams observed with great concern that even the pretence of distance
between the state apparatus and the Sangh has been abandoned. The local
administration, its functionaries, vehicles and funds, are openly being used
for the advancement of the intensely divisive state agenda. The Collector
justified communal mobilization as religious and cultural awakening, thus
unabashedly adopting the rhetoric and idiom of the Hindutva forces.

What is important to understand is that the intended Kumbh Mela is not a
religious issue. It is not a battle of Hindus against Christians. It is a
political game to mislead the adivasis, and divert their anger at
pauperisation and dispossession by the state and non-adivasi outsiders, by
cynically creating a pseudo-mythology. It aims to alienate them from their
land and culture, to Hinduise them to build a majority constituency on the
basis of religion and to reap political benefits, and to create grave
divisions in the name of religion, their eating habits and political
affiliations among the adivasis. The issues at stake are tribal culture,
tribal identity and their livelihoods, the freedom to pursue and propagate
one's faith guaranteed under the Constitution, and the security of
minorities.

The openly partisan support of the state government for the dangerous
sectarian objectives of the Sangh needs to be combated, and the safety of
minorities secured, else the tribal regions of India, already dispossessed
and pauperised, will flow with the blood of sectarian hatred.

At the outskirt of Shabri Temple, there is a pillar which has a slogan in
Hindi, which reads : 'Sankalap: Dharmantaran aur Jehad ke Vichar ko Vishwa
se Nirmool Karenge.' (Our resolve is to free the world from the ideologies
of conversions and jehad'.) The Sangh with the open support of the state
government has clearly drawn its battle lines. It is for people who cherish
secular democracy in our land to expeditiously and resolutely respond.

Introduction

Plans are afoot to organise what is being described as a massive Shabri
Kumbh in the tribal district of Dangs in Gujarat, on Feb 11-13, 2006.
Organisations affiliated to the Sangh with the open support of the BJP state
government are strenuously mobilising around 5 lakh adivasis and Hindutva
activists to attend this gathering, in a remote and socially and
environmentally highly sensitive and vulnerable forested region. It is this
that provides the immediate context for two concerned citizens'
investigations and this report based on their findings.

However the larger context of this report is that 1998 witnessed a series of
organized attacks on the Christian tribal populations in Dangs, and
anti-Christian mobilization has been unrelenting in the district since,
although mercifully overt violence has not recurred. The investigation aims
also to enquire about the sense of security experienced by the small
Christian tribal population of the district. The still larger context for
the report is the activities of the Sangh organizations in tribal regions in
many states of India, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chatisgarh,
Jharkhand, Orissa that targets both Christian tribal people and
missionaries. However, this report focuses on the Dangs in Gujarat.

Two fact-finding committees were formed to visit the district, and meet the
local people, activists, VHP workers, district authorities and other
concerned persons. The first committee comprised Irfan Engineer (Director
Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai), Suresh Khairnar
(Convener Dharma Nirpeksh Nagrik Manch, Nagpur), Digant Oza, (Editor Jalseva
and a social activist, Ahmedabad) and Ram Puniyani, Secretary (All India
Secular Forum). The second team comprised Harsh Mander (Anhad), Uttambhai
Parmar, Rohit Prajapati (PUCL, Vadodara), Prasad Chacko (Regional Director,
Action Aid Gujarat), Lakshmanbhai Rathore (Aman Samudaya, Gujarat) and
Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad). Both teams visited Ahva, Subir, Unai, Saputara and
talked to the local people and activists. The latter team also met local
district officials and leaders of the RSS. The two teams visited the
district consecutively between 10 and 21 December, 2005.

The teams aimed to address the following questions-Why is the Kumbh being
held in this area at this point of time in this region? What is the link if
any between the attacks and violence against the Christians in Dangs and
this programme? Is there a sense of insecurity in local populations? What is
the role of the state government in organizing and supporting this
programme, if any? This report summarises their observations.

[ . . . ] .

FULL TEXT OF THE ABOVE REPORT (without annexures) IS AVAILABLE AT:
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/DangsReport3jan
2006.pdf

Sunday, January 02, 2005