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Indian poor look with hope to their new president

Draupadi Murmu is expected to address grave situations and reduce the pain of displacement of tribal communities
India's new President Droupadi Murmu (center) inspects a guard of honor after her swearing-in ceremony, at the presidential palace Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on July 25. Murmu is the first person from one of the country's marginalised tribal communities to serve as head of state

India's new President Draupadi Murmu (center) inspects a guard of honor after her swearing-in ceremony, at the presidential palace Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on July 25. Murmu is the first person from one of the country's marginalised tribal communities to serve as head of state. (Photo: AFP)

Published: July 25, 2022 10:22 AM GMT
Updated: July 25, 2022 11:36 AM GMT

Members of tribal communities danced across India in colorful jubilation as the country’s new President Draupadi Murmu was sworn in today at the presidential palace.

Murmu, the first indigenous person to become head of state, has raised hopes among India’s 1.3 billion citizens.

Independent India’s 15th president, and the country’s second woman to hold the post, may not be able to curb the corporate sector’s march into her beloved forests of central India, ensure more constitutional posts for tribal people, or keep large numbers of their youth out of jail on trumped up charges. 

The 64-year-old Murmu’s victory has caused the most anxiety among the nearly 30 million-strong Christian community, a large chunk of whom are historically from Dalit and indigenous societies. The Dalits among them are struggling to get constitutional recognition, currently given to Dalits from the Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh faiths

The tribals, whose land rights were not so far linked to their religion, now see increasing pressure from regional governments and a fast escalating campaign by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindu groups to deny converts to Christianity such rights and privileges. This may rob Christians of their traditional land rights, livelihoods, and state-subsidized education.

Christians fear Prime Minister and BJP leader Narendra Modi has chosen Murmu to speed up the disenfranchisement of tribal people who profess Christianity as their faith instead of Hinduism.

Civil society and peace activists, more aware of the political reality, still hope that even at the worst of times, Murmu will not sign any death warrants. India’s first female president, Pratibha Pail, was compassionate. She did not reject mercy appeals. She just chose not to accept them in a hurry. India has a very large number of convicts on death row, many of them poor, or also Dalits and Adivasis. The late president Pranab Mukherjee so far has the dubious rank of dismissing the largest number of mercy petitions.

Getting a president from amongst women, or Dalits and the indigenous group is tokenism, but under the ancient caste system and patriarchal mores, even tokenism is a big deal. It raises hopes among the people that the tide may be turning, that an end or dilution may be in sight from age-old bondage.

But tokenism in reality can only go so far, and no further. K. R. Narayanan, India’s first Dalit president, couldn’t do much to uplift the Dalit community and stem its victimization at the hands of India’s self-styled upper castes.

But Narayanan, who as a young man out of the London School of Economics under Harold Laski, was handpicked by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to join the nascent diplomatic service, as president five decades later did ensure that the Supreme Court would get its first Dalit Chief Justice.

That the Chief Justices of India failed in the trust shown in him, is another matter.

Under the constitution, presidents are no more than figureheads. Their executive powers are limited to calling the leader of the largest political group to form a government after a general election, or when an incumbent government loses a vote of confidence. For everything else, the president is pilloried in Indian political lore as a rubber stamp.

Outgoing president Ram Kovind, the second Dalit to hold the post, got the short end of the straw of history. The regime in his term was headed by Modi, who in any case takes his policy and personnel decisions on his own and possibly in consultation with his trusted aides, but without caring much for the cabinet or parliament.

This saw Kovind’s five-year term as president end in the blink of an eye. He will be remembered for nothing other than seeing a dilution in the constitutional provision for Dalits.

Modi had a masterstroke in nominating Murmu, a widow who has been a teacher, councilor, legislator, and state governor in a distinguished personal career, as the ruling party’s candidate for the presidency.

Murmu was born in 1958, into a Santhal family in Odisha in Mayurbhanj, not far from the place where the Australian missionary, Graham Stuart Staines, working among those afflicted with leprosy, was burnt alive with his sons Timothy and Phillips on Jan. 22, 1999.

Though a  resident of Odisha, Murmu has a following among large central Indian tribal communities that range from Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to Bengal and even pockets of Assam in the East and certainly covering the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. 

Several of these states, including Modi’s home state of Gujarat, go to the polls to choose new legislative assemblies next year and he hopes to score big. At present, among these states, Modi’s BJP rules only in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, with the Congress in power in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and a regional tribal party in Jharkhand.

The tribal people, 8.2 percent of the national population, are not a monolithic block. The Peoples of India project of the anthropological survey of the federal government puts them in three groups. The first settled long before the Aryan influx, and are Austro-Asiatic-speaking Australoid people, living mostly in central India. The term Adivasi, collectively used for indigenous peoples, in fact broadly means original people. The other major groups are of the Northeast, with linkages to migrations from Myanmar, Tibet and China, India’s three north and eastern neighbors.

As a group, the indigenous people comprise 573 communities, recognized in the constitution as Scheduled Tribes [STs], who get affirmative action benefits in land rights, education, and government jobs. The Adivasis alleged many of these benefits have been usurped by non-Adivasi groups.

Also, a burning issue is the dilution of Fifth and Sixth Schedules under Article 244 of the Indian Constitution, which gives them self-governance in specified tribal majority areas in nine states. It provides protection to the Adivasis from the alienation of their lands and natural resources to non-tribals.

It is feared this otherwise seldom-enforced safeguard will be amended soon to formally effect the transfer of tribal lands to non-tribals and corporate bodies. Murmu, as governor of Jharkhand, did put a stop to the state’s BJP government-proposed amendments to two land laws that threatened the rights of tribal people but did not force the government to form the tribal advisory council for Jharkhand.

Other issues include amendments in various acts, such as the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 and the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, is a direct attempt to bypass provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. Many states are yet to make the necessary rules, but even where such rules have been made, the implementation of PESA is questioned.

A report by Down To Earth magazine shows that at least 181 municipalities are functioning unconstitutionally in Scheduled Areas of seven states. Extending the urban areas without a legal basis has created a governance crisis in the Scheduled Areas and undermines the traditional rights of tribal people.  Other issues are land alienation, loss of access and command over forests and community resources, enforced eviction due to development projects and lack of appropriate rehabilitation and indebtedness.

More than 50 million people have been displaced in India due to "development" projects for over 50 years. Around half of the displaced are due to dams, mines, and industrial development. Adivasis, about 40 percent of the displaced, are the worst affected.

Tribal leaders and rights activists say Murmu is expected to urgently look into this grave situation and reduce the pain of displacement of the community through her good offices.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

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