Lost MP tribe finds its ground

Gulzar Singh Markam, state party chief, relates a recent encounter with Digvijay Singh, ‘‘He called us for a meeting and offered to leave 5 ST seats for us. He told us we were damaging the Congress in 60 seats. He tried to tell us this would benefit the BJP while damaging a party which had always been sympathetic to the tribals. I thrust a piece of roti made from mango kernel into his hands, telling him this is what his development had reduced the tribals to and said that if he was willing to leave all 41 ST seats in the state, we would consider it.”

With the Congress holding 27 of these 41 seats, Digvijay has good reason to worry. Even in the last elections the GGP had taken third place behind the Congress and the BJP in 7 constituencies, and in two of these it had ensured the Congress lost the seat to the BJP because of the GGP votes. But since then the party has witnessed a dramatic growth in support.

Part of the reason for this growth is the work being done by the GGP in a region long neglected. The party runs several schools where teaching is carried out in Gondi and has opened nearly 300 banks in Mandla and Dindori districts. The bank works in a fashion which the simplest of tribals can comprehend. Gond women deposit a handful of rice two times a day against which money is credited to their accounts. The banks also give loans to tribals at very low rates of interest.

This work is now being harnessed. The tribals form over 20 per cent of the population in MP, and the Gonds are the largest tribal group in the state, concentrated in the south east of the state. In districts such as Mandla, Dindori and Shahdol, they form over 45 per cent of the population, thus effectively deciding who wins and who loses. And the party has put up 61 candidates covering much of this area. All of this is reason for the BJP to cheer, but the party in its own way has watched the growth of the GGP with alarm. This is because the GGP is an obstacle to the very methods the RSS has so effectively used in the Bhil areas bordering Gujarat to ‘Hinduise tribals’ through Ganesh visarjan and installation of Hanuman idols.

The GGP has an ideology of its own, almost a counter-Hindutva that insists the Gonds are a separate people who are not Hindus. The campaigning style and the social work is modelled very much on the pattern of the RSS, but here it works against the Sangh. Aligned with this is a demand for a separate Gondwana state and recognition for Gondi as a national language.