Clashing Classifications: Tribal Christianity and Unconverted Tribes

Tensions or divides between tribal Christians and unconverted tribals have been noted since at least 1930 when a Protestant Christian Oraon wrote of how unconverted Oraons did not accept him as a member of the same tribe.

Amongst the Oraons, another pertinent case was that of the legal contestation of the tribal identity of tribal Christians, which went up to the Indian Supreme Court where the petition that engaged in this contestation was dismissed (the petitioner was Kartik Oraon) (Dasgupta 2016). In contemporary times, the rise of Hindu nationalism amongst tribals has also been noted, as have instances of how this has been directed against tribal Christians (Froerer 2006). Violence against Christian tribals by the unconverted tribals who may live alongside them has been ascribed to jealousy born of economic competition - the assistance that the Church provides to Christian tribals in the fields of education and healthcare has been argued to be a factor that has fuelled such conflicts (Bauman 2013).

Tribal Christianity can be said to have an uneasy relationship with the Sarna Movement - two cases can be mentioned that reveal this. The first is the ‘Nemha Bible’ incident and the second is the controversy over the depiction of Mary as a tribal woman in a red and white sari with a baby (baby Jesus) in her arms. The Nemha Bible incident occurred, when in 1995, the Bible Society of India published a Bible in Kurukh (the Oraon language) titled ‘Nemha Bible’. It contained derogatory references to non-Christian tribals and Sarnas (used here in the sense of sacred natural sites). The Church had been advised to withdraw the Bible by tribal intellectuals, but it was reported that it had not taken heed of their warnings. In 2008, when violence against Christians broke out in the state of Odisha (Kanungo 2008), these derogatory references in the Nemha Bible were used by Hindu right-wing groups to instigate similar violence in Jharkhand. It organised a meeting in Dumri, in the district of Gumla, and publicised the derogatory statements which the Nemha Bible contained.

This did in fact succeed in stirring up the emotions of many non-Christian tribals and some wanted to react violently. However, the leadership of the Sarna movement decided to defuse the tension by asking the Church to express its solidarity with non-Christian tribals in a public manner. The Church agreed and a tribal Catholic cardinal (Telespore Toppo) made this public gesture. However, it was reported that this did not serve to satisfy all the leaders of the Sarna Movement (Borde 2016). The second incident occurred five years later, in 2013, when a church in the village of Singhpur, not far from Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, erected a statue of the Virgin Mary which depicted her as a tribal woman in a red and white sari, which is the traditional dress of several tribes in east-central India and is often worn at ceremonies in Sarnas. This was seen by the leadership of the Sarna Movement as a tool to convert more tribespeople to Christianity and it was demanded that the statue be removed. There were several protests, some of them on a mass scale - one of these involved over 3,000 tribals marching to Singhpur with the threat that they would forcibly bring the statue down⁷. Since then, inter-communal relations in the area cannot be said to be cordial. Four kilometres from Singhpur, at the village of Sithio, protests broke out roughly two years after this incident when Christian tribals reportedly tried to install a Christmas star after uprooting a Sarna flag⁸.

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Source: Behera Maguni C. (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Readings on Tribe and Religions in India: Emerging Negotiations. Routledge,2024. — 502 p.. 2024

Clashing Classifications: Tribal Christianity and Unconverted Tribes

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