Spiritual Perspective of Tribal Identity
Spirituality among tribal communities plays an integral role in their culture, and serves as a beacon for the way in which they live their lives. Although tribals are socially, economically, and educationally less developed, they are rich in history, folklore, and culture.
For tribals, community means the living, unborn, dead, and nature as a whole. These three things are interwoven within the context of tribal spirituality. In tribal worldview, attachment with ancestral territory, closeness to natural resources, and its own socio-political institutions are of great importance. Connectedness to nature, one another, and to common destiny form the crux of the tribal worldview. Therefore, in order to understand social structure and identity question of tribals it is important to understand their religious universe.There are a number of issues grappling tribal communities. Tribal regions have become a space for competitive faiths. Our country in recent years has witnessed an aggressive form of proselytisation and communal mobilisation of tribals by Hindutva forces against Christian missionary activities. This is done to reconvert Christian tribals and Hinduise tribal people. It has created a contesting ground for tribal religious assertions where every stakeholder has taken a firm position. Let us consider the previous example of a clash between Sarna and Christian followers. Followers of Sarna Dharam worship nature whereas followers of Christianity installed a statue of mother Mary wearing a white saree with a red border holding a child in hand. Personifying mother Mary as Sarna Mata created enormous tensions between Christian converted tribals and non-converted tribals. Similarly, the issue of conversion and non-conversion among Santals has developed feelings of superiority and insecurity. This has adversely affected their social relations.
Non-converted Santals consider Sari Dharam7 as superior to Christianity, and condemn Christian burial practices, and other customs (Census of India 1971 and Bhowmick & Jana 2008).Here we can observe that religion has become a disintegrating force and created a schism in tribal attempts of identity assertion. As Kumar says, it is difficult to take positions where faith, belief, identity, and claim of righteousness are involved. But as far as sociology of religion is concerned, following religion in accordance with local culture and usage is legitimate from a theological standpoint. Nevertheless, entertaining the idea of heterogeneity of Adivasi religious experience can construct a ground on which plural or collective identity of tribes under the term ‘Adivasi or Tribe’ can be negotiated (Kumar 2014).
The question of tribal identity begins with the absence of any criteria to identify people or communities as Scheduled Tribes. Societies or communities are usually based on strict linguistic criteria or strict ideas of cultural practices. Focus on culture as a strict marker for determining a particular group identity is a very well-established phenomenon. For tribals, beliefs and cultural practices are their religion. Any distinct practice or deviation amounts to the case of detribalisation and creates segments in identity.
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