Some 25 groups from Adivasi communities in West Bengal gathered for a mass agitation by hundreds of Indians in the town of Purulia on March 31 to draw attention to various issues they say are affecting Indian communities. “We are not asking for anything beyond what has been legally provided to us by the Constitution of India,” said Mitan Chandra Tudu, president of the West Bengal Scheduled Tribes Welfare Association.
Biggest on the agenda, the group’s representatives say, are calls to cancel “fake” scheduled tribe (ST) certificates that they believe have grown in number in the state. “Fake ST, SC (registered caste) certificates are being handed out and the state government has been helping people to get them for a long time. When this happens, the people who really belong to the ST/SC community are deprived in the fields of education, employment and in other places where there are reservations,” said Balakram Soren, chairman of the advisory committee of the Welfare Association of Scheduled Tribes of West Bengal.
Also on the agenda is a contentious issue: the Kurmi community’s attempts to seek ST status. The demand for recognition of the Kurmu community as a registered tribe in India has been debated for several years. Simultaneously, there has been increasing pushback from various recognized indigenous groups protesting the community’s inclusion on the Indian government’s official list of Scheduled Tribes.
During Friday’s protest, Adivasi community groups also protested against the recognition of Raghunath Mahato and Chanku Mahato as Indian revolutionaries. Raghunath Mahato is believed by the Kurmi community to have been an 18th century community revolutionary and a leader during the Chuar rebellion of 1766 to 1816 in the Jungle Mahal districts of present-day West Bengal and Jharkhand. The community believes that Chanku Mahato was another 19th century revolutionary leader who fought against the British during the Santal Hul or Santal Rebellion of 1855-1856.
Tudu says the West Bengal Institute of Cultural Research, a government body that investigates indigenous communities, has yet to recognize the Kurmi community as a “primitive tribe.” “There are no historical documents to support the claims that they fought against colonial rule. So now, to meet the criteria that they are a primitive tribe, they are now creating their own history. They are creating imaginary figures and posing as historical figures who have fought against the British to prove they were patriots. They are trying to create characteristics by claiming that they have their own language, religion, etc., to show that they qualify for tribal status,” Tudu said.
But indigenous history in India has been largely undocumented, relying mainly on oral tradition and scant archival documentation from pre-independence India. In indigenous communities, there has not been enough research on the role of indigenous leaders as revolutionaries who fought against British colonial rule on the subcontinent.
With the West Bengal panchayat elections just around the corner, the protesting Adivasi groups are hoping that the mass unrest will bring their demands into clearer focus. Indigenous activists interviewed for this report say the state government has not been doing enough for their communities.
“Whatever the prime minister is saying and doing are temporary measures. The government will throw a festival, give some goats and chickens to a handful of villages. That’s all. But adivasis continue to be displaced and their rights violated. Look at the case of Deocha Pachami,” Soren said, referring to the world’s second-largest coal block, located at Birbhum, West Bengal.
“We will continue protesting. We cannot accept the negligence of the state government and we are making this protest so that the government changes its perspective towards the indigenous communities”, added Soren.
