Are Adivasi voters in Jharkhand swayed by the BJP’s infiltration narrative?
In Santal Pargana, other issues seem to be on the minds of voters, regardless of who they are voting for.
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Bhognadih village lies around 400 km from Ranchi. It falls within the Barhait assembly constituency, a longstanding stronghold of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha – Chief Minister Hemant Soren won the Barhait seat in 2014 and 2019, and is contesting it again in the upcoming election on November 20.
The village is historically important. It is the site where Santal Adivasis began their rebellion against the British and other oppressive outsiders in 1855. The rebellion was led by the brothers Sido and Kanhu Murmu whose descendants, a total of 16 families, still live in Bhognadih.
On November 3, one of them, Mandal Murmu, made local headlines when he joined the BJP. The development was startling because Mandal was one of Hemant Soren’s proposers – he had nominated him for the election and signed his nomination papers.
BJP leaders claimed Mandal had switched sides because he endorsed the party’s chief campaign plank: that Muslim “infiltrators” are taking over Adivasi land, thereby reshaping the region’s demography and culture, with the JMM government turning a blind eye to the problem.
On September 15, for instance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a rally at Jamshedpur, “Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators have become a major threat in the Santal Pargana and Kolhan.” While the Santal Pargana is...
