A Tight Slap On Missionaries’ Agenda

BJP-led NDA wisely chose Odisha’s Droupadi Murmu as its Presidential candidate for the upcoming Presidential election. She won the election with a clear margin and was elected as the first President of India from the tribal community on July 21. This comes at a crucial time when some tribal leaders and organisations are demanding that India’s tribes be enumerated separately from Hindus in the upcoming Census. Their demands for declaring “Tribal are not Hindus” was gaining traction after Droupadi Murmu’s name was announced.

After the declaration of Droupadi Murmu’s name, the missionary mafia on Twitter is now fully exposed. No doubt she is the best weapon against such missionary conversion mafia who are targeting Hindu tribes in different ways for decades. Her photos of sweeping the floor of a temple, whispering something into the ears of Nandi, the ‘vahana’ of Lord Shiva went viral in the media and social media recently. It is believed that when a devotee whispers prayers into the ears of Nandi the prayers will be communicated to Lord Shiva. This was on the morning of the next day of announcement as Presidential candidate. But Droupadi Murmu did something she’s done every day since returning to her hometown in August 2021 after retiring as Jharkhand Governor – sweeping the floor of a Shiva temple in her locality.

After seeing this, the vested interested missionaries’ mafia groups who have been planning for cutting tribal from Hindu cult are in fear about their propaganda. Droupadi Murmu’s profile, gesture, daily routine, Dharmik belief sends the right message to the converted tribes as well as the conversion mafias. A Santhal Hindu tribal woman sitting in the Rashtrapati Bhawan will be a big message to the propagandists who are always trying to draw images that tribal people are not part of Hindu society.

Earlier, some political leaders propagated ideas on on behalf of breaking India forces. “Adivasis were never Hindus and they never will be,” Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren had said in a conference at Harvard University. On November 11, 2020, Jharkhand Assembly had passed a resolution asking for a separate religion code called the Sarna code for the tribal population. Across the country, debates have erupted over tribal dominated States such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam. It is being argued that tribals are not Hindu, so they should be recognised as a separate religion. A section of certain intellectuals have been working tirelessly for years to prove their anti-Hindu sentiments, which are being reflected in different platforms.

But what is the purpose behind it? First of all, to separate the tribal from the Hindu society to create a wall of division under the pretext of creating their own unique identity and pave the way for the creation of a terrible class struggle. Over the years, North Eastern States such as Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya have become Christian-dominated.

The BJP-led NDA announcing Droupadi Murmu is aimed at removing a century-and-a-half-old narrative of the ‘tribal vs non-tribal’ divide. The Santhal rebellion against colonialism was one of the bravest yet largely-unknown chapters in the history of India. Puri Jagannath of Odisha, from where Droupadi Murmu comes from, provides the sacred model for the integration of forest-dwelling and non-forest-dwelling communities. All 645 tribal communities in the country are Hindus, as they worship Lord Shiva, Ram, Jagannath as well as all Gods and Goddesses worshipped by the larger Hindu society. Tribal folk-tales across the country attest to these facts. In Valmiki Ramayana and Mahabharata, the tribals are called forest dwellers. The recognition of these forest-dwelling characters is equivalent to Rama and Krishna in the entire Sanatan culture.

With Murmu becoming the President, the systematic conversion of tribals will now be curbed and the voice of this community will be raised against the conspiracy being hatched to separate them from Hindus and Hindutva.