VHP leaders deliver fiery speeches

By Amitabh Shukla

Bero (Ranchi), June 5

THE TWO-DAY festival of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Bero, the first of its kind in the tribal hinterland, turned out to be an attempt to impose the value system of the Sanatan dharma on the followers of the Sarna (nature worship), practiced by the tribals here.

The senior leaders of the VHP, who had congregated here to make their presence felt amongst the tribals, made inflammatory speeches against the Christian missionaries and the religion itself. Some of them even went to the extent of ridiculing the followers to the extreme.

As a result of the VHP's propaganda, a law and order problem threatened to stall the proceedings. A group of tribals under the banner of Central Sarna Samiti and the Akhil Bhartiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad (ABAVP) demonstrated at the venue and criticised the attempts of the VHP to club them with the Hindus. "We are not Hindus. We have a separate value system and religion," read one of the placards carried by the demonstrators.

Some tribal organisations point out that this is the first time that a militant Hindu outfit like the VHP is spreading its propaganda in the tribal belt. "The area no longer remains a belt of tranquility as both the Hindu hard-liners and the Christian missionaries are locked in a battle of supremacy," said Ram Chandra Gope, a long-time resident of Bero.

"We have launched several programmes to make the Vanvasis aware about their glorious past and the fact that they are a part and parcel of the Hindu society," said Mr Ganga Prasad Yadav, Vice President of the Bihar unit of the VHP. He said that the religion, which the tribals follow, is an extension of sanatan dharma, just like Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism. He refused to buy the arguments of the anthropologists who say that the tribal religion is different from the Hindu practices.

When asked about the motive of honouring the pahans (religious heads of the tribal villages), Mr Sushil Kumar, an office-bearer of the south Bihar unit of the VHP said that it was through them that they are hoping to penetrate into the tribal villages. "As the pahans are influential, we want them to take the initiative and proclaim that the Sarnas and Hindus are the same," he said. Mr Kumar said that though they did not have any immediate plans of reconverting the Christian tribals to Hinduism, they would start doing it once a consensus emerges.

The meeting passed six resolutions that demanded a complete ban on conversions, investigations into the activities of the missionaries, ban on the recruitment of tribal Christians in government jobs, transfer of the property of the converted sarnas to those who still follow the religion, ban on the practice of converting community centers into churches and government initiative to check the proliferation of Churches in the villages.

The VHP leaders asked the tribal chiefs present on the occasion to raise the slogan of "Jai Shri Ram" as a mark of approval to the proposals. Amidst the blow of conch shells, some of the tribal chiefs raised the slogan while the remaining watched the proceedings silently.

(2000)

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