[This article was published on India
Facts in instalments in April-June 2015. Certain major changes have taken place
since I wrote the article. That is, things have definitely changed for the
worse: for example, the Christian population of Arunachal Pradesh, which was
18.72% as per the 2001 census, is now
30.26% as per the 2011 census.]
Are the tribals of India “Hindus”?
The legal position on this question is very clear.
According to the Constitution of India, laws framed for Hindus apply to the
following three categories of people:
(a)
to any person who is a Hindu by religion in any of its forms and developments,
including a Virashaiva, a Lingayat or a follower of the Brahmo, Prarthana or
Arya Samaj,
(b)
to any person who is a Buddhist, Jain or Sikh by religion, and
(c) to any other person domiciled in
the territories to which this Act extends who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi
or Jew by religion.
Thus, according to the constitution, every citizen of
India, except a Muslim, a Christian, a Parsi or a Jew, is legally a Hindu. The
constitution draws a distinction between three categories of legal Hindus:
(a) Hindus Category One (consisting of all
those who can still be categorised as full-fledged Hindus within the Hindu
religious fold, including members of sects having antecedents traceable to
mainline Hindu religious texts or individuals),
(b) Hindus Category Two (consisting of members
of the three sects, namely Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, founded by Hindu
individuals, which originated as sects within the Hindu religious fold, but, in
the course of history, came to acquire a more distinctive religious identity), and
(c) Hindus
Category Three (consisting of members of indigenous religious groups native
to India, not founded by any particular individual, following ancestral forms
of belief or worship not specifically having antecedents traceable to mainline
Hindu religious texts or sects).
The people who are outside this purview themselves
belong to two categories:
(a) ex-Hindus, i.e. Muslims and Christians,
who, by and large, are converts from the Hindu fold, and
(b) non-Hindus, i.e. Jews and Parsis, who, in
spite of different degrees of intermingling with local people, are by and large
historical descendants of non-Hindu refugees or migrants from outside India.
The basic criterion on which the constitution divides
the Indian population into legal Hindus and legal non-Hindus is clear:
(a) members of all religions which originated
within India are legally Hindus, and
(b) members of all religions which originated
outside India are legally non-Hindus.
When the legal definition of who is a Hindu is so loud
and clear, why should it became necessary at all to discuss the question of
whether or not tribals are Hindus? Obviously, all tribals who have not
actually converted to Christianity or Islam are Hindus.
But, in India, things are not so simple. It becomes
necessary to thrash out the question of whether or not tribals are Hindus,
because Christian missionary organisations and their open or covert spokesmen,
the leftist and secularist politicians, academicians and media persons, have
made it a question which must be answered in detail.
According to the missionaries and their spokesmen,
Indian tribals are not Hindus, and they are an open field for the missionaries
to “harvest their souls”. Some of the spokesmen are kind enough to suggest that
Hindus are also free to convert the tribals to Hinduism if they so wish. Tahir
Mehmood, writing in the Hindustan Times of 28/1/1999, after arguing that
tribals are not Hindus, concludes with this generous offer: “Hindu religious
preachers can, thus, lawfully offer their religion to the tribals. So can the
Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and followers of all other major religions. This
can be done, by all communities, only peacefully and strictly within the legal
parameters.”
As if Hindus desirous of converting anyone to Hinduism
would be any match for the powerful and organised Christian missionary network
in India, funded by powerful multi-billion dollar churches, foundations and
evangelical groups in the U.S.A., Europe and Australia, and backed by western
politicians, media and governments and the international organisations
controlled by them (operating in the name of religious rights, human rights,
civil rights, etc.) and with the overt and covert backing within India of the
secularist establishment, the leftist academia and the American-funded media,
not to mention the convent-educated middle-classes!
Of course, when Hindu organisations actually do make
their piddling efforts to stem the evangelistic steam-rollers by spreading
awareness among the tribals of their Hindu identity, they face a political and
media blitzkrieg, and stand accused of “communalism” or “minority-bashing”.
Supporting Christian missionaries is an article of
faith for secularism in India. When the secularist-leftist magazine Tehelka, in
one of its early issues, carried detailed reports about the heavily funded and
militarily organized subversive activities of foreign missionaries in India,
there was a sharp reaction from prominent leftist and secularist personalities
who wrote floods of letters to the magazine expressing shock at the publication
of such reports in a secularist-leftist magazine, and accusing it of having
betrayed secularism. Ever since, Tehelka is in the forefront of “reports”
indicting “communal” Hindu organisations for harassing Christian missionaries
and neo-Christian converts.
The following is the most classic example of
the nature of secularism in India, the status of Hinduism in India, and the
power of the evangelists: the Times of India, on 3/1/1987, carried an article,
entitled “RSS baits Church in Bihar
tribal belt”, about tensions and rioting incidents in South Bihar (now
Jharkhand) between Christian tribals and non-Christian tribals, highlighting a
report by the PUCL (People’s Union for Civil Liberties) on the matter: “The report said that the missionaries had
revolutionized the lives of poor tribals in the interior villages and have
turned them into proud men and women… ‘RSS and other diehard communal Hindu
organisations’ had entered the arena… They were trying to appeal to
non-Christian tribals in the name of ‘Hinduism’ and organising various Hindu
festivals, it said. This, the report said, ‘has given rise to the tension and
conflict between the Christians and non-Christians, which suited the interest
of the RSS’… The report said the missionaries have also reacted to the RSS
challenge in a spirit of retaliation”.
In short, if powerful and super rich foreign
missionaries enter into the interior heartland of India, and mass-convert large
sections of tribals to their foreign religion by telling them that the religions,
gods, beliefs and practices of their ancestors are “satanic” and will take them
to hell, and that the only way to escape hell and attain heaven is to accept
Christ and convert to their alien religion, this does not amount to “baiting” or provoking anyone, such as
the tribals in particular or Hindus in general, or violating their civil
rights. In fact, it amounts to turning the tribals “into proud men and women”! But if Hindu organisations
(automatically “diehard communal”,
since Hindu, in opposition to the presumably “tolerant and secular”, since
Christian, missionaries!) enter these areas within their own country, and
appeal to the local people in the name of their ancestral religions, and
actually have the gall to “organize
Hindu festivals”, it naturally amounts to gross “baiting” and provocation of the foreign missionaries and violation
of their civil rights. And if there is any “retaliation” by the missionaries to this “baiting”, it is of course excusable as a perfectly natural and
justifiable “reaction” to these
gross provocations by the communalists. And of course civil rights
organisations have to rush to the protection and defence of these poor,
helpless and oppressed missionaries, and the hapless plight to which they have
been reduced by “minority baiters” from the RSS has to
be propagated in our secular press!
Another example from a second leading national
newspaper: “In the last two decades,
religious organisations claiming monopoly over spiritual knowledge have moved
into these parts and started branding the age-old ways that enabled people of
different communities to live in harmony as ‘corrupt’, ‘evil’, or simply
‘wrong’. The uniqueness of the local culture is being obliterated by these
outfits, which are painting religion in one uniform shade, advocating a way of
life they claim represents true faith. In doing so, they are sowing the seeds
of fundamentalism, and seem to be quite happy doing it”. Doesn’t this sound
like a description of Christian missionaries, who claim to have a “monopoly over spiritual knowledge”
since their religion and God are the
only true ones (all others being false religions and Gods who can only lead to
hell), who “move into” different
areas of the world to spread this message, who compel people to leave their “age-old ways” of worship and religion
because these are “‘corrupt’, ‘evil’, or
simply ‘wrong’”, and seek to obliterate everywhere “the uniqueness of the local culture” by trying to paint the whole
world in one international imperialistic “fundamentalist”
colour?
Wrong! This is a description (in an Indian Express
article, 11/10/98, “Converting History”,
by Rajesh Sinha, describing the situation in certain parts of Rajasthan)
condemning the VHP and other Hindu organisations for having “started competing with Christian
missionaries in establishing schools [etc.]”, thereby leading to “most Christian converts now returning to
the Hindu fold”. The writer, with a straight face, tells us: “In the process, the saffron hawks are
changing the face of Rajasthan, where once communal identity was a matter of
little importance”. Is this some kind of incurably perverted mental
sickness, or is it the power of the dollar?
It must be noted that the question of whether tribals
are Hindus or not is, strictly speaking, not
material to the larger question of conversions as such, since it is not a Christian claim that they intend
to convert only non-Hindus to Christianity. Conversion of every living
non-Christian human being to Christianity is the central dogma of evangelical
Christianity. In rural and urban areas alike, large numbers of people belonging
to every caste and community, not excepting brahmins, are being converted day
and night by these all powerful evangelists. Recently, the Mufti of Kashmir
passed a fatwa against Kashmiri Muslims being converted to Christianity: the
Indian Express, already in 6/4/2003, had carried a detailed news report about
the large-scale conversions of Muslim youths to Christianity by American
evangelists in Kashmir.
In fact, different Christian sects all over the world
are even engaged in feverish conversion of each other’s “flock”: Pope John Paul
II, while addressing the Fourth General Conference of Latin American Bishops in
Santo Domingo, 1992, exhorted the bishops to protect their “flock” from “rapacious wolves” (i.e. from the cash-rich American fundamentalist
churches and sects engaged in large-scale conversions of Latin American Catholics)
[The same Pope, in November 1999, in his public meeting in Delhi, exhorted the
Indian Catholics to continue their evangelistic efforts to make India a
(Catholic) Christian land!].
Therefore, it would appear that the question of
whether Indian tribals are Hindus or not is only an academic question since the
evangelist Christians want to convert them anyway, whether or not they are
Hindus. But, nevertheless it is still a very important question from the point
of view of missionary propaganda:
a) to tell the tribals that they are not Hindus and
have no connections with the larger Hindu society around them,
b) to tell the world, as in the above case (of the RSS
“baiting” the Church in Bihar’s tribal belt), that the converted tribals were
not Hindus in the first place, and so it is no business of the Hindus to
interfere if the tribals are converted to Christianity, and
c) to tell posterity that Hinduism is as foreign a
religion to India as Christianity, in the name of the Aryan invasion theory, as
the tribals, mischievously named “adivasis” (a word coined by British
administrators in the 1930s to suggest that the tribals are the “aborigines” or
“original inhabitants” of India and that other Indians are not), represent “pre-Aryan”
religions while Hinduism is an “Aryan” religion brought by “Aryan invaders”
from outside. [Note that anyone who rejects the idea that India’s
non-tribals are outsiders in India, and calls the tribals “vanavasis”
instead of “adivasis”, is automatically branded as “communal”!]
Therefore, it is imperative to examine whether or not
Indian tribals are Hindus, and this is what we will be doing in this article.
Again, it must be noted that the question is two-fold.
As we saw, there are three categories of legal Hindus in India. In this
first part of the article, we will only examine the following question: to what extent can India’s tribals be said to belong to “Hindu Category Three”
rather than to “Hindu Category One”? In the second part of this article, we will examine the following
question: To what extent can Indian tribals belonging to “Hindu Category Three”
be considered to be distinct enough from “Hindu Category One” as to justify the
three above points of missionary propaganda?
The question we are examining in this first part of
the article is vital to the whole discussion because it tells us what the
tribals themselves have to say about whether or not they belong to “Hindu
Category One”:
It must be remembered that the final conclusive
evidence about a person’s religious identity is what that person
himself/herself declares it to be. The figures we are presenting here are
the figures for the religious composition of the different scheduled tribes
(listed in the official lists of
scheduled tribes for each state) in the different parts of India, as declared by the tribals themselves in
the official census, as reported and
documented in detail by a well-funded international missionary project called
the Joshua Project (its site informs us that its figures for the different “ethnic people groups” of the world are
“accurate, regularly updated”, to “encourage pioneer church-planting movements
among every ethnic group and to facilitate effective coordination of mission
agency efforts”). They are not
figures presented by any “diehard
communal Hindu organisations”. On the contrary, they are a telling
pointer to the malignantly motivated nature of the people (politicians,
ideologues, “scholars”) who claim that India’s tribals are not Hindus but
“animists”.
The figures must, further, be seen in the following
three contexts:
1) In every other religion of the world, we find all
the different sects of that religion claiming to be the truest, or only true,
representative of that religion. Thus, Shias and Sunnis each claim to represent
the truest form of Islam and accuse the other of being heretics or imperfect
Muslims. Now, within Sunnis, the Wahhabis (Deobandis in India), Ahle Hadees and
common Sunnis (Barelvis in India) each make the same claims. Likewise, in
Christianity, every sect or Church – whether Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant or
pertaining to some new fundamentalist group – claims to represent the truest
form of Christianity. It is only in the case of Hinduism that we see the
opposite phenomenon of sects or erstwhile sects striving to prove that they are
not Hindus. This is due to a combination of three factors: British machinations
to this effect during the days of British rule, post-Independence laws (such as
Article 30 of the constitution, among many others) which discriminate against
Hindu sects and make it profitable for these sects to declare themselves
non-Hindu, and the general Secularist paradigm in India which makes “Hindu” a
word of abuse. All this led even an organisation like the Ramakrishna Mission
(founded by Swami Vivekananda, best known for his representation of Hinduism in
the World Congress of Religions) to approach the Indian judicial system to get
itself declared as a non-Hindu minority group.
Add to this, the well-sustained campaigns by the
missionaries and their entrenched spokesmen to brand the tribals as non-Hindus.
In the face of all this, if the Indian tribals declare
themselves to be Hindu in the proportions indicated by the figures, what
greater proof is required for the fact that they are indeed “Hindu Category
One”?
2) In the case of the scheduled castes, the persons
belonging to these castes lose the benefits of reservations on conversion to
Christianity or Islam. Hence, we find many crypto-Christians (i.e. people who
are converted Christians, but pretend to be, or even declare themselves to be,
Hindu) among Christian converts from the scheduled castes. However, converts
from the scheduled tribes do not lose
the benefits of reservations on conversion to Christianity (or Islam); hence
there is no practical compulsion for converts from the scheduled tribes to hide
their new religious status.
Furthermore, it is also a fact that Christian converts
from the tribals manage to corner most of the seats reserved for the tribals to
the disadvantage of non-Christian tribals: there is a detailed report on this,
with facts and figures, by S K Kaul, former Deputy Commissioner, Commission for
the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, entitled “Christian converts corner the lion’s share
of Reservation quota in services for Vanavasis”, in the Organiser, Republic
Day Special, 1989.
Again, in the face of all this, if the Indian tribals
declare themselves Hindu in the proportions indicated by the figures, what
greater proof is required for the fact that they are indeed “Hindu Category
One”?
3) In most of the states, the percentage of tribals
who declare themselves to be Hindu is overwhelmingly
higher than the percentage of the total populations, of the states
concerned, who declare themselves Hindu. This makes the tribals even more
emphatically “Hindu Category One” than the non-tribals!
Let us go on to the figures:
I . The Southern Heartland
The following are the figures for the total tribal
population of the four South Indian states, (Tamilnadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka), which constitute the southern heartland of India, (i.e. the
part of India furthest from the land borders of India, and therefore the least
affected by the medieval invaders from the north and the destruction wrought by
them, and the land which preserves the oldest monuments and richest traditions
of India). First we will take the tribes having more than 97 % declared Hindus:
TRIBE
|
States
|
Total
Population
|
%age of
Hindus
|
Kuru(m)ba
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
36,90,015
|
99.38
|
Naikda/Nayaka
|
A, Ka
|
18,94,181
|
99.76
|
Koya
|
A, Ka
|
6,43,775
|
99.66
|
Yenadi
|
A
|
5,60,854
|
99.25
|
Yerukula
|
A
|
5,44,219
|
98.29
|
Gond
|
A, Ka
|
4,81,568
|
99.41
|
Konda
Dhora
|
A
|
2,51,568
|
98.60
|
Irular
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
2,13,612
|
99.95
|
Bagata
|
A
|
1,53,775
|
99.98
|
Konda
Reddi
|
T, Ke, A
|
1,49,352
|
98.75
|
Savara/Saora
|
A
|
1,47,934
|
97.41
|
Jatapu
|
A
|
1,45,220
|
99.65
|
Mannan
|
T, Ke
|
1,28,803
|
99.95
|
Paniyan
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
98,744
|
99.73
|
Koli Dhor
|
Ka
|
98,075
|
99.95
|
Kadu
Kuruba
|
Ka
|
91,256
|
99.15
|
Kattunayakan
|
T, Ke, A,
Ka
|
75,517
|
99.23
|
Kammara
|
T, Ke, A,
Ka
|
64,717
|
99.40
|
Chenchu
|
A, Ka
|
58,027
|
99.67
|
Kolami/Kolowar
|
A
|
57,886
|
99.96
|
Kuruman
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
55,040
|
99.78
|
Konda Kapu
|
T, Ke, A,
Ka
|
52,480
|
98.36
|
Gadaba
|
A
|
46,457
|
99.97
|
Meda
|
Ka
|
44,290
|
99.90
|
Mukha
Dhora
|
A
|
41,615
|
99.75
|
Sholaga/Soligaru
|
T, Ka
|
41,606
|
99.94
|
Jenu
Kuruba
|
Ka
|
41,136
|
99.97
|
Malayan
|
T, Ke
|
38,223
|
100.00
|
Yerava
|
Ka
|
30,767
|
99.95
|
Adiyan
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
30,367
|
99.07
|
Manna
Dhora
|
A
|
29,856
|
99.60
|
Pardhan
|
A
|
28,594
|
99.42
|
Malakkuravan
|
T, Ke
|
26,774
|
99.95
|
Kanikkar(an)
|
T, Ke
|
26,662
|
98.91
|
Koraga?Koracha
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
26,076
|
97.84
|
Hasalaru
|
Ka
|
24,561
|
100.00
|
Muthuvan
|
T, Ke
|
23,205
|
99.70
|
Mali (of
Andhra)
|
A
|
21,754
|
100.00
|
Malai
Vedan
|
T, Ke
|
20,405
|
99.19
|
Ulladan
|
Ke
|
19,225
|
98.70
|
Gowdalu
|
Ka
|
11,553
|
100.00
|
Andh
|
A
|
11,508
|
99.42
|
Malai Kudi
|
Ka
|
10,794
|
100.00
|
Iruliga
|
Ka
|
9,204
|
99.98
|
Malasar
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
8,913
|
99.65
|
Kaniyan
|
T, Ka
|
8,866
|
99.03
|
Reddi
Dhora
|
A
|
7,938
|
99.74
|
Hakki
Pikki
|
Ka
|
7,786
|
99.88
|
Eravallan
|
T, Ke
|
7,683
|
99.80
|
Malai
Pandaran
|
T, Ke
|
6,533
|
98.96
|
Kadar
|
T, Ke
|
5,417
|
97.86
|
Thoti
|
A
|
5,109
|
99.63
|
Pardhi
|
Ka
|
4,879
|
100.00
|
Kudiya
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
4,365
|
99.75
|
Bhil
|
A, Ka
|
3,604
|
99.47
|
Palliyar
|
T, Ke
|
2,873
|
99.06
|
Maleru
|
Ka
|
2,641
|
100.00
|
Kathodi
|
Ka
|
2,191
|
99.91
|
Toda
|
T, Ka
|
1,588
|
98.11
|
Barda
|
Ka
|
1,581
|
99.24
|
Bavcha
|
Ka
|
1,471
|
100.00
|
Kota
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
1,380
|
99.28
|
Maleyakandi
|
T, Ka
|
1,033
|
100.00
|
Kulia
|
A
|
884
|
98.87
|
Hill Reddi
|
A
|
589
|
100.00
|
Aranadan
|
T, Ke
|
560
|
99.82
|
Rona
|
A
|
508
|
98.43
|
Chodhara
|
Ka
|
403
|
98.26
|
Patelia
|
Ka
|
251
|
100.00
|
Gamit
|
Ka
|
225
|
100.00
|
Dubla
|
Ka
|
126
|
100.00
|
Vit(h)olia
|
Ka
|
96
|
100.00
|
Rathawa
|
Ka
|
30
|
100.00
|
Next, the tribes having 90-97 % declared Hindus, followed
by the tribes having 50-90 %. In both cases, we will also examine the
percentage of converted Christians, and the total percentage of Hindus +
Christians:
TRIBE
|
States
|
Total Population
|
%age of Hindus
|
%age of Christians
|
%age of Hin+Chr
|
Kui Khond
|
A
|
93,481
|
95.80
|
3.89
|
99.69
|
Valmiki
|
A
|
78,461
|
95.46
|
4.21
|
99.67
|
Kuricchan
|
T, Ke
|
47,595
|
96.17
|
3.66
|
99.83
|
Urali
|
T
|
27,368
|
95.31
|
2.38
|
97.69
|
Palliyan
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
6,927
|
92.70
|
5.44
|
98.14
|
Hill Pulaya
|
Ke
|
3,749
|
93.65
|
6.21
|
99.86
|
Mudugar
|
T
|
1,252
|
96.96
|
1.12
|
98.08
|
Maha Malasar
|
T, Ke, Ka
|
691
|
95.95
|
3.18
|
99.13
|
Varli
|
Ka
|
188
|
93.62
|
5.85
|
99.47
|
Kokna
|
Ka
|
150
|
96.00
|
?
|
?
|
Kochu Velan
|
T, Ke
|
53
|
90.57
|
7.55
|
98.12
|
TRIBE
|
States
|
Total Population
|
%age of Hindus
|
%age of Christians
|
%age of Hin+Chr
|
Sugali/Banjara
|
A
|
23,03,147
|
88.14
|
11.86
|
100.00
|
Malai Arayan
|
T, Ke
|
35,715
|
57.16
|
42.79
|
99.95
|
Malayarayar
|
Ke
|
7,129
|
65.42
|
34.35
|
99.77
|
Palleyan
|
T, Ke
|
320
|
78.44
|
20.94
|
99.38
|
It can be seen that the overwhelming majority of the
tribals of South India are self-declared “Hindu Category One”. The percentage
of Hindus in the total populations of the four states, incidentally, is as
follows: Tamilnadu 88.11%, Kerala 56.16%, Andhra Pradesh 89.01%, Karnataka
83.86%. But only four tribes are below 90%, the lowest being 57.16% in one.
And, wherever there are Christian converts in any tribe, the Hindus and
Christians in that tribe together go well above 97%, so that it is clear that
the Christian conversions were from “Hindu Category One” people, and not from
“Hindu Category Three” people, there being almost none of those in South India.
Fantastic and revealing summary.
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