Nandini Sundar - Chhattisgarh Police, Traders Target CPI Leader for Tribal Beliefs
An FIR has been lodged
against Manish Kunjam for circulating an adivasi account of the Durga-Mahisasur
conflict that upper caste migrants say hurts their religious sentiments.
Manish Kunjam is also the district secretary of the CPI, and one of the best known adivasi leaders in the area, who has consistently fought against Salwa Judum and police atrocities under Operation Green Hunt, against displacement by mining companies in Bastar
A spectre is haunting
the Hindu right in Chhattisgarh: the spectre of adivasi and dalit or ‘moolnivasi’ independence
from the Brahminical fold. All the powers of the old order have entered into a
holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, local
traders, the media and above all, the police.
On September 15,
Manish Kunjam, the Sukma, Chhattisgarh-based national president of the Adivasi
Mahasabha, forwarded a WhatsApp message to a group he was part of. The message
retold the adivasi version of the conflict between Durga and Mahisasur, a
moolnivasi raja. The forward noted that in Bengal, Durga idols are
considered incomplete till earth
is brought from the house of a sex worker. (It is another matter that sex
workers are beginning to resent this practice.) The message goes on to
explain the origins of this practice, saying that the Brahmins, being unable to
fairly defeat in arms the brave Santhal raja, Mahisasur, sent Durga as a
beautiful woman. She plied him with alcohol and other amusements for 8 days
till on the 9th day, seeing her chance, she killed him.
The message goes
on to say that the Brahmins not only defeated the moolnivasi raja, but actually
made the adivasis worship his killer, Durga (Shakti being seen as an
appropriation of an adivasi mother goddess). It also asks readers whether
deities/demons with several arms and half-animal bodies can actually exist as
humans, and to think rationally about these depictions. Finally, it addresses
the moolnivasi samaj – who had been prevented by Brahminical ideology from reading
for themselves – to awake and recognise their ideological subjection. The
message ends with the words, ‘Namo Buddhai, Jai Bharat, Jai Moolnivasi’.
Many traditions, many contradictions: Had the sender not been Manish
Kunjam, who is the leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Bastar and
an ex-MLA, the WhatApp message might have remained one of the main stories
in circulation on social media describing an alternative version of history and
myth, just as oral narratives circulated through the vast subcontinent with
many different contradictory versions of the Ramayana, including those where
Ravana emerges as the hero, and Sita a victim at the hands of a misogynist Ram.
The proliferation of Mahisasur festivals across the country may be a
recent phenomenon, but the worship of Mahisasur has an old and widespread
history. The Asurs of Jharkhand and West Bengal regard him as an ancestor and treat
the nine days of Navratri as a period of mourning. In Mahoba, in Bundelkhand,
there is an ancient Mahisasur temple which
has been given protection by the Archaeological Survey of India. Santhals have
held a public puja for Mahisasur on
navami in Purulia district for at least the past 12 years.
The Durga-Mahisasur debate had come up in parliament even before Smriti
Irani raised the Durga-Mahisasur issue. But whereas Irani brought it up to
show the ‘depraved’ mentality of Mahisasur devotees, Indira Gandhi had earlier
allegedly accepted the point that Durga had killed dalits and adivasis and refrained
from accepting a comparison with her.
Complaint against
Manish Kunjam: Unfortunately, the Congress cannot be relied on to be consistently
secular, and when news of Manish Kunjam’s WhatsApp forward got around, the Youth Congress in
Bastar took umbrage and its leader, Sushil Maurya, registered a
complaint against Manish Kunjam in the Kotwali thana in Jagdalpur. Not to be
outdone, a little known outfit called the Dharmsena filed a complaint in
Sukma, and an FIR under Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code (intentionally
insulting the religion of a particular class) was promptly registered by the
police.
Many local traders, all of whom are immigrants from Hindu upper
castes and have exploited the adivasis for years, looking down on them as
‘backward’ and ‘uncivilised’, went to town over the supposed insult.
Effigies of Manish Kunjam were burnt at various places and on September 19, the
traders and police jointly ensured a bandh of Sukma town.
The adivasi
resurgence: However, Manish Kunjam is also the district secretary of the CPI, and one
of the best known adivasi leaders in the area, who has consistently fought
against Salwa Judum and police atrocities under Operation Green Hunt, against
displacement by mining companies in Bastar, and for the introduction of the
Sixth Schedule of the constitution, which would better guarantee adivasi rights
than the Fifth Schedule has done.
Once the news got
around that their leader was being targeted, all the moolnivasi communities of
Bastar began to protest. There are several adivasi communities in Bastar –
Halbas, Bhatras, Koyas (Gonds), Dhurwas and several groups which are classed as
SC or OBC like the Maharas, Pankas, Rauts, and others – who collectively regard
themselves as Bastariya. The CPI has tried hard in recent years to bring them
under the common banner of moolnivasi, in its struggle for the
Sixth Schedule. There are also umbrella bodies like the Sarv Adivasi Samaj
or Sarv Samaj.
Significantly, all of
them have issued statements condemning the case against Manish. For instance,
the Koya Samaj has said that Mahisasur is worshipped in Bastar and the FIR is
an attempt by some forces to impose their Brahminical Hindu ideology on weaker
sections like adivasis. They say that adivasis have the right to worship
whoever they like, and it should not concern anyone else. They also point out
that the entire case has been drummed up to weaken the adivasi struggle for jal, jangal and zameen (water,
forests and land) in which Manish Kunjam has been a primary voice. Another
press release issued on September 22 by the Sarv Adivasi Samaj has also
strongly condemned the FIR against Kunjam and called for an FIR to be
registered under the SC/ST (Prevention
of Atrocities) Act against those who levied the charges in the first
place.
The provisions of the
Act certainly seem to be attracted in this case, with its effigy burning and
other attacks on a respected tribal leader, quite apart from the way in which
the gory killing of Mahisasur is depicted and celebrated. Section 4 of the
Amendment Act adds the following to Section 3:
‘Whoseover being
non-SC/ST…
(p): institutes false,
malicious or vexatious suit or criminal or other legal proceedings against a
member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe;
(t) destroys, damages
or defiles any object generally known to be held sacred or in high esteem by
members of the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes.
Explanation.––For the purposes of this clause, the
expression “object” means and includes statue, photograph and portrait;
(u) by words
either written or spoken or by signs or by visible representation or otherwise
promotes or attempts to promote feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will against
members of the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes;
(v) by words
either written or spoken or by any other means disrespects any late person held
in high esteem by members of the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes;
shall be punishable
with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which
may extend to five years and with fine.’
The Sukma Koya Samaj
has called for a bandh on September 26, and in the meantime, irate villagers
have attempted to shut down weekly markets in Nama (September 20), Korra
(September 21), and Kukanar (September 23). Predictably, the police has been
working with traders to foil this, and the media has dutifully reported it as a
case of poor traders being done out of business and of disappointed village
shoppers. Never mind that the same people who are sending these WhatsApp
messages condemning the market closures are the same Salwa Judum/Samajik Ekta
Manch/Agni leaders who shut down weekly markets for years during Salwa Judum
and still prevent villagers from the interior visiting markets.
Previous cases: This is not the first
time an attempt to insult adivasis has boomeranged on the
Hindutva forces in Chhattisgarh. Earlier this year, journalist cum social
activist Vivek Kumar in Manpur, Rajnandgaon was arrested for two months for a
Facebook post on Durga and Mahisasur which he had posted two years previously.
A March 12 rally by Hindutva forces shouting ‘Mahishasur (Bhainsasur) ki
auladon ko, jutey maro salon ko’ (‘it’s time to hit the followers of
Mahisasur with shoes’) then resulted in a counter FIR against them.
In 2014, the Delhi
police had raided the office of Forward Press in Delhi, for publishing
articles on Mahisasur and filed a case against its editor and owner, Pramod
Ranjan. However, this has only made him more determined to research and
spread the word on Mahisasur and other suppressed Bahujan heroes.
Bastar
administration’s response: A clearly shaken
administration which has always sided with upper caste immigrants against the
adivasis and dalits they are constitutionally charged to serve is now trying to
mobilise the traditional pargana majhis – or headmen – against Kunjam. Many of these
people left their villages after Salwa Judum and started siding with the
administration.
It remains to be seen
who will win in this battle between the state-backed forces of the Hindu right
and a resurgent adivasi population.
Nandini Sundar is a
professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics.
Her latest book
is The Burning
Forest: India’s War in Bastar (Juggernaut, 2016)
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