From the capital, Ranchi, to the highways branching out into the forested villages where most of Jharkhand’s tribal population lives, flags asserting a religious identity can be found fluttering nearly everywhere. Along highways, wherever there is a red-and-white striped flag, the marker of the Sarna tribal religion, there is also a saffron one with Hindu gods planted next to it — each vying to establish its dominance over the other.
As the demand for a separate Sarna religious code in Census 2021 gathers steam in the State, there is tension in tribal-dominated villages. On the one hand, Hindu groups backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are leading efforts to “develop” tribal villages by making them aware of “their cultural and traditional roots”. On the other, tribal activists led by outfits such as the Kendriya Sarna Samiti (KSS) are resisting these efforts saying the Hindu groups have taken a page out of the playbook of Christian missionaries to subsume their distinctive culture and identity under the umbrella of Hinduism by “brainwashing” the poorest tribal people.
“Christian missionaries first started converting poor tribal communities with the promise of an English education, jobs and hospitals. Now, Hindu groups are using the same methods to do something more malicious: changing the very nature of what tribal people believe Sarnaism to be and how it should be practised,” said Handu Bhagat, a KSS activist in Gumla district, which has the highest proportion of the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population in the State.
