The Long History Of Muslim-Adivasi Camaraderie In Jharkhand

The Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while launching the electoral manifesto of the BJP in Jharkhand, said that the party would bring a law to restrict the transfer of land from Adivasis to ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’. He also reiterated the promise of implementing the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the state, but this time with a twist— “Adivasis will be exempted from its ambit,” he said.

This is, however, not the first time that the trope of Bangladeshi infiltrators has been invoked by BJP leaders in the run-up to the Jharkhand Assembly elections. It started with the BJP’s plan to bring in Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma as the election-in-charge of the state. Sarma is known for invoking the narratives of ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’ on his home turf. But the way it worked in his favour in Assam, will it serve the same purpose in Jharkhand? The historic cultural transactions and bonhomie between Adivasis and Muslims in the Chhota Nagpur region vouch for a different reality where the sense of assimilation prevails over imaginative separation.

A meeting with Padma Shri lokgeet singer Madhu Mansoori—who gained prominence with his song ‘Gao Chorab Nahi’—around 20 km from Ranchi, behind a roadside dhaba named ‘Jharkhand Muslim Hotel’, brings forth a new form of identity assertion. Showing reverence to his Muslim identity, if you greet him with Assalamu Alaykum, he responds with folded hands and a broad smile and says, ‘Johar’. Explaining his identity in a lucid manner, he says: “I consider myself to be an ‘Oraon Muslim’. The privileging of Adivasi identity over religious identity stems from the long cultural relations we share with the Adivasis.” Although his family embraced Islam several generations ago, being Adivasis, their cultural practices remain the same. He says that while he celebrates Eid and Baqarid, he never desists from celebrating Karma or Sarhul.

Such cultural bonhomie between these two communities also became the backbone of the Jharkhand statehood movement. In 1962, Jaipal Singh Munda, the founder of the Adivasi Mahasabha, flanked by Zauhar Ali, a Muslim leader associated with the movement, gave the slogan Julaha-Kohla Bhai Bhai—referring to the relationship between Jharkhandi Muslims, known as Julaha, and the Adivasis, mentioning the Kol tribe.

The Julaha identity gave a sense of resistance to the Muslims of this region who were being looked down upon by their coreligionists in north India. “The Muslim leaders from Bihar used to call us Julaha in a condescending manner. But we perceived it differently. Except for a few religious practices, we are like Adivasis,” says Zubair Ahmad, a former central committee member of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. He invested his youth for the cause of the Jharkhand statehood movement and always upheld the rights of Adivasis and Muslims together.

R.R. Diwakar, who served as the Governor of undivided Bihar in the 1950s, noted in his book Bihar Through the Ages that the Muslims had become one with the Adivasis in the past 800 years. Johannes Baptist Hoffman, a German Jesuit linguist and missionary to the Mundas in India, has also mentioned that over the years, Mundari dialects have borrowed several words from Arabian and Persian languages.

Other historical sources like Ranchi Gazetteers note that it was during the time of Sher Shah that a large population of Muslims settled in the Chhota Nagpur region. One gets to know from different archival sources about a white elephant that drew Sher Shah’s army to Chhota Nagpur. The elephant named ‘Shyam Chandra’ was in the possession of the king of Chhota Nagpur. But Sher Shah believed that he needed the elephant to become Delhi’s ‘emperor’. Though it is not clear from the accounts whether he could take possession of the elephant before taking over Delhi’s throne, Muslim soldiers and their families started settling down in this region. On the other side were thousands of Adivasis who embraced Islam in Santhal Pargana—the Muslim-dominated region that has become the central point of the BJP’s electoral campaign.

The relationship of Adivasis and Muslims in the Santhal Pargana region has also been invoked by Pasmanda activist and scholar Razaul Haq Ansari. “Adivasi kings had provided support to the Momins (Muslim weaver caste). They even had a department that was involved in business, and the Adivasis would carry out agricultural activities. It was the Adivasis, particularly, who worked to prepare Momins for business activities. After conversion, the Adivasis retained their land, but the Momins lost theirs,” he writes.

The relationship definitely had some political implications as well. It was during their fight against British colonialism that Muslims in Jharkhand stood strongly with the Adivasis. While Muslims in most of the north Indian states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh supported Jinnah’s two-nation theory, the Muslims of Chhota Nagpur—dominated by Momins or Ansaris—sided with the Congress.

In the 1937 legislative assembly elections, the Muslim League lost the Ranchi seat to R Ali, a Momin Conference leader. In the 1946 elections, under the leadership of Abdur Razzaque Ansari, the Congress bagged all five seats in the Chhota Nagpur division. When the Muslim League gave a call for an Adivasisthan—a separate corridor to connect the proposed East and West Pakistan—the Ansaris were with the Congress. They were even called the ‘dogs of the Congress’ by the League leaders, writes Ansari.

Jharkhand-based scholar Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff also referred to the statement of Momin Conference leader Amanat Ali to establish this point. During an interview, Ali said: “When Nehru paid a visit, I competed with my school friends over who would touch his feet. We were punished for this in school. The teachers (some of whom were English) did not appreciate us welcoming Jawaharlal Nehru. The history of our involvement in the freedom struggle is very old. In 1857, more than 70 per cent of the sepoys, who were killed in the movement against the British, were Ansaris. We were called the “bloody Julahas”.

However, the term ‘Julaha’ gradually became the word of resistance for Muslims during the Jharkhand statehood movement. Though the movement, initiated by the Adivasi Mahasabha, primarily wanted to address Adivasi concerns, gradually the leadership understood the importance of Moolvasis—those non-Adivasis who have been staying in Jharkhand for centuries. The formation of the Jharkhand Party is mostly attributed to this realisation that the state of Jharkhand would only be a possibility when a separate ‘Jharkhandi’ identity is formed. And that would have never been possible without the assimilation of Muslims within the broader Jharkhandi identity.

Ansari thinks that it is the ‘Ashrafization’ (stringent observance of pure Islamic practices by the mostly ‘upper caste’ Muslims who consider themselves as the descendants of Prophet Mohammad) of Muslims that affected the relations between the two communities. But still, on the ground, they share the same cultural space. Though in the 1990s Muslims in the Jharkhand statehood movement asked for their community rights as the ‘minority’ by forming different organisations, the relationship with Adivasis remained intact.

Against this backdrop, when Assam CM Sarma or Union Home Minister Shah give calls to mark Bangladeshi infiltrators in the Santhal Pargana region—obliquely referring to Muslims in this region through the tropes of land jihad and love jihad—the history of long bonhomie goes for a toss. Will the constructed narrative of today overshadow the historical narratives to create a conflicted future?