Author: Hartosh Singh Bal
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 25, 2004
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=39828
Introduction: In the Bhil tract
of MP, the Sangh Parivar has gone where no missionary has. And the fallout
is a dramatically altered cultural idiom
As the government in the state strives
to absolve Sangh organisations of blame in the anti-Christian violence
in Jhabua, it is clear that the BJP really does not have much choice. It
is payback time for the work the RSS has done in the district. Work that
the RSS ostensibly claims is an answer to the missionary activity that
has been underway here for over a century. But even as competing religiosities
tear the Bhils apart, it is clear that the conflict is as much about politics
as it is about religion.
The Bhil tract of Madhya Pradesh
is contiguous with the Bhil areas of Gujarat and Rajasthan and much as
in Gujarat, here over the past few years the Sangh Parivar's work has transformed
the cultural landscape far more drastically than anything that the Christian
missionaries have achieved. The obvious beneficiary has been the BJP.
The young RSS chief of Jhabua district,
Vaibhav, admits as much,''It is due to our work that the Bhils here realised
they were Hindus. We now have a dharma rakhsha samiti in almost every village
in the district. And it is because of this work that the BJP MLAs have
won here.''
This is no mean achievement. A verse
from a 1979 collection of Bhil songs perhaps best reflected how the Congress
was once perceived here: as a stately banyan tree.
In Jhabua, the banyan has toppled.
This did not happen easily. Despite a century of effort the church has
not found it easy to make inroads among the Bhils. The 1991 census figures
for Jhabua, while certainly an underestimate, places the number of Christians
at 14,974 out of a population of just over 13 lakh. Father Pradeep Cherian
of the Catholic Diocese of Meghnagar says, ''Our work began here in the
1890s. We have several schools and hospitals here, proselytisation has
never been our primary aim. Perhaps the same is true of the Protestants
but the Pentacostals are another matter.''
The primary aim of the Pentacostals
is conversion and they have been by far the most successful of the Christian
denominations over recent times. Antervalia was one of the villages where
Christians came under attack recently. The ire of the Sewa Bharti activists
focused on a church building coming adjacent to the residence of a Pentacostal
sewak from the Salome Mission based in Dahod.
Khum Singh is the VHP chief of the
district, and was part of the mob that entered the Jhabua mission school
attacking priests after the rape and murder of a 9- year-old on the school
premises. The arrest of a Hindu for the crime has not in any way assuaged
his anger at the church and he continues to demand an end to the Changai
programmes, which incidentally have nothing to with the Catholics who run
the mission school.
Khum Singh himself is a Bhil and
has been running his own Bhil Adivasi Sudhar Samiti for over 20 years before
joining the VHP. He traces his efforts to a visit to a temple in Gujarat.
The visit led to a 'reaffirmation' of his Hindu faith, ''Since then I have
made over a lakh bhagats.''
These bhagats are as a radical a
departure from traditional Bhil mores as are the Christians. A bhagat adopts
some saffron in his clothing and renounces meat and alcohol. The influence
from Gujarat and the work of people such as Khum Singh provided a ready
base of Bhagats for the Sewa Bharti when it began its work in this region
barely five years ago.
In every village, the organisations
drew upon the bhagats to set up dharma raksha samitis that spoke of the
Hindu religion, established new traditions and cautioned against conversion
to Christianity. Chief among the changes that the Sewa Bharti wrought was
the festival of Ganesh Visarjan.
The Sewa Bharti effort has also
been directed at invoking the fear of Christianity to mobilise its own
strength. Chaman Singh Damor, the Bhil panchayat secretary of Piplia village
and a Sewa Bharti volunteer, says: ''We were taught that all of us tribals
are Hindus and should not convert to Christianity. This is what we were
to spread in our village.''
It is this second plank that has
resulted in the disastrous events in Jhabua, and it has everything to do
with politics. In villages such as Amkut where most of the Christians are
second or third generation converts, Hindus such as Vijay Singh Dawar openly
say, ''The church has been established here in 1914. We have never had
any trouble amongst us till the sadhvis from Gujarat and the RSS people
from outside came and provoked the violence.''
And in Antervalia as the mob shouted
slogans against the Christians, there were also voices raised about the
Christians supporting the Congress. As a final warning the victims were
told they should leave or renounce Christianity, because, voices among
the mob claimed, ''It is our government now.''
