India’s mega economic makeover put limelight on tribal Christians

As India is gearing up for general polls to elect a new prime minister next year, its tribal people have become the toast of the town -- numbering 104 million in the South Asian nation they make up the largest indigenous population in any country in the world.

The sudden importance on them is because India’s two tribal Christian majority provincial states are going to polls on Feb. 27 after the country is headed by a first tribal president -- Droupadi Murmu-- a woman from the Santal tribe in eastern India. Her Proto-Austroloid tribal community is the third largest in India.

Meghalaya, with its awesome mountain ranges, scenic waterfalls, and plateaus, shares borders with Bangladesh, and has its more than 85 percent of population Christians. Majority of them are tribal people belong to the Mongoloid stock and they mainly live in the hills.

The Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination with 849,226 faithful among Meghalaya’s 3.28 million population. But it is fifth-poorest state in the second largest economy in Asia. Like Nagaland and Meghalaya look forward to financial assistance from the federal government’s coffers to run its economy.

Nagaland, bordering military-ruled Myanmar, is the largest Baptist place in the world with over 90 percent of its 2 million people following Christianity. Hilly tribal people form 85 percent of its population. The Nagas of Nagaland speak Tibeto-Burman languages. 

Provincial assembly elections in these tiny states used to assume less importance as together they do not elect more than three lawmakers out of 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha). 

But this time that not the case. Each drop counts as vital laws are in the pipeline to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2025 and by 2027 the third largest in the world.

The economic makeover of the Asian nation demands converting virgin resource-rich forest lands into industrial and commercial purposes. 

In the largest democracy, all the Bills passed by lawmakers in Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha (upper house) have to secure the nod from the President to become laws. 

Definitely, the cumbersome forest land acquisition process in the second most populous nation in the world can be made easy if someone from the tribal community is proposing Bills and again someone from the same community is signing on the dotted lines.

Keeping the general polls in 2004 in mind, the current federal government has already eight ministers in the cabinet represent major tribal groups such as the Gond, Santal, Miji, Munda, Tea tribe, Kokana and Sonowal-Kachari in the country. 

Though Christians and Muslims together make up more than 18 percent of the India’s population, there is no presence of mainstream Christian and Muslim groups in the current cabinet.

But since tribal people are of vital importance for the government in the coming days, there is a Christian from a tribal background -- John Barla – in the federal cabinet. Barla, a tea workers’ leader from the eastern state of West Bengal, looks after minority affairs.

Tribal and Dalits (former untouchables) together make up 60 percent of the country’s 27 million Christians with tribal people alone accounting for nearly 33 percent of Indian Christians.

In 2021, the total forest cover in the country was 80.9 million hectares, a 24.62 percent of its geographical area. For centuries, forests have been home to thousands of tribal people and Britain made the first laws over them during its colonial Raj days. With the Indian Forest Act of 1878, the British rulers acquired the sovereignty of forests in India.

Though tribal people, called Adivasis in India, make up 8.6 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people, there was hardly any laws to protect their rights even after Independence till 2006. 

India made up with the lost time by piecing together the Forest Rights Act which came into force in 2009. The Act recognizes the rights of forest dwellers and vest the rights of the forest land and its products with them. 

However, there is a controversial clause in the Act which states that a forest-dweller has to live in the forest for at least three generations, prior to December 13, 2005, to claim the land titles and benefits. Many applications by tribal people are struck in this clause.

The polls in eastern state of Meghalaya and Nagaland are taking place as attacks on tribal Christians have increased in the country recently in central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. India’s largest tribal state will also face polls this year.

According to a fact-finding panel, hundreds of Christians were forced to flee their homes in Chhattisgarh after a series of attacks, including public beatings and social boycott, on the second week of December last year, which spoiled their Christmas.

The attack on tribal Christians is often blamed on the fringe elements of the ultranationalist outfits like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which has started a reconversion program called Ghar Vapsi (returning home) to bring tribal people back to Hinduism.