As Champai passes litmus test, Sorens pull out tribal card to fight BJP in Jharkhand

Undeterred by his recent arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged money laundering case, former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren launched a scathing attack at the BJP, on Monday (February 5), shortly before his successor, Champai Soren, won a trust vote in the state assembly.

A special PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) court in Ranchi had allowed Hemant to attend the Jharkhand assembly proceedings to participate in Monday’s trust vote, which the JMM, Congress and RJD coalition won comfortably, bagging 47 votes against the BJP-led Opposition’s 29 votes. The more crucial takeaway from the trust vote, however, wasn’t the victory of the ruling alliance but the interventions made by the former and current chief ministers, which were, at once, aggressive, emotive, lucid and profusely political.

Sorens tap into tribal narrative

The two Sorens pivoted the discussion into a narrative that is now certain to form the bedrock of their coalition’s electoral pitch against the BJP in Jharkhand ahead of the impending Lok Sabha polls. Necessitated by Hemant’s arrest and the political drama that both preceded and succeeded it, the trust vote sought by Champai could have easily slipped into another hackneyed rant by the BJP’s rivals about the misuse of central probe agencies to persecute Opposition leaders.

The two JMM leaders, however, sharply turned the trust vote debate into a stinging indictment of the BJP’s politics of “ghrina aur dwesh” (hatred and malice) against “tribals (adivasi), indigenous people (moolnivasi), Dalits and OBCs (pichhda varg)”.

Champai, who opened the discussion with an account of the “numerous welfare schemes that Hemant Soren had implemented in the past four years,” scorched the BJP by repeatedly slamming the party for working against “adivasis and moolnivasis” and for “not being able to stomach that a tribal chief minister was working to solve problems that had historically plagued tribals, indigenous people and the oppressed communities”.

The chief minister recalled the days of Jharkhand’s struggle for statehood, of which he was a key figure, the critical role Hemant’s father and JMM founder, ‘Dishom Guru Shibu Soren’ had played in the agitation and how the BJP had “mocked us tribals then as it humiliates and harasses us now”.

Hemant slams BJP, says ‘we’re considered untouchables’

The most acerbic jibes, though, came from Hemant himself who, without taking names, alluded to a casteist jibe made at him by a prominent pro-BJP Hindi television news anchor following his arrest and asserted that the remark was a manifestation of the anti-tribal mindset that the saffron party had propagated. “Yeh hame achoot samjahte hain (they consider us untouchables)”, he said.

Hemant slammed the BJP claiming “hum jungle se baahar aa gaye aur inke baraabar baithne lage toh inko laga inke kapde maile ho gaye (we tribals came out of the forests and began to sit next to them so they think their clothes have become dirty)”.

Later in the day, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, whose Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is currently passing through Jharkhand, too referred to this quote by the former chief minister in a post on X and wrote, “this isn’t just a statement, it portrays the collective pain of the tribal community; the BJP can’t tolerate a tribal chief minister in Jharkhand.”

Rubbishing the BJP and ED’s allegations that he had purchased an 8.5 acre plot of land as part of a money laundering scam, the former chief minister declared, “if anyone can prove the claims, I will not just resign from politics but will leave Jharkhand” even as he implored “my Adivasi, Dalit, backward caste brothers – be ready, the battle is long... if we do not fight this now, the generations to come will not forgive us.”

Battle-ready

What was writ large across the interventions of the former and current Jharkhand chief ministers was that they had prepared ground to use Hemant’s arrest to bring tribal identity politics front and centre of their alliance’s narrative for the Lok Sabha polls and paint BJP as the scheming villain that is out to demonise and persecute tribal leaders and trample over Jharkhandi pride.

It is not difficult to surmise how easily this pitch marries into the wider Congress-led Opposition’s social justice narrative that has, over the past year, made conducting of a caste census a primary plank of its otherwise fumbling Lok Sabha campaign.

Both Champai and Hemant seem to realise now that although the politics of tribal identity is an emotive issue in Jharkhand as well as others states with formidable concentrations of indigenous people, the BJP has been able to neutralise its political heft substantially in recent years by cleverly merging this identity into the broader and more muscular brand of Hindutva identity politics, of which Narendra Modi remains the preeminent purveyor and mascot.

Countering Hindutva narrative with tribal pitch

It was, thus, no surprise that Hemant also repeatedly stressed on the need for tribals to be proud and protective of their identity, cautioning the community that not doing so would allow the BJP to “subsume tribal identity into Hindutva”.

Senior leaders in Jharkhand’s ruling coalition that The Federal spoke to after the trust vote conceded that Hemant and Champai had “drawn out the full architecture” of their campaign for the Lok Sabha polls.

“If BJP can talk about Hindu pride, if Modi can use his OBC identity to woo the OBC vote-bank, why should tribal leaders like Hemant Soren not do the same? Jharkhand is a tribal dominated state; in the 24 years since Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar, BJP has ruled here the longest but no tribal chief minister, including from the BJP, has ever been able to complete a full term in office; even when BJP got a full majority, it chose Raghubar Das (an OBC) and not a tribal to be the chief minister for five years; does it not show the anti-tribal face of the BJP... why should we not highlight this fact,” said Hemant’s younger brother and JMM’s Dumka MLA Basant Soren.

Rameshwar Oraon, finance minister in the former Hemant Soren-led government and Congress MLA from Lohardaga, told The Federal that “Hemant’s arrest and the BJP’s failed plot to topple our government has exposed Modi and BJP’s anti-tribal face... we (the state’s ruling alliance) will tell the people of Jharkhand that their chief minister, a popular tribal leader and son of Dishom Guru Shibu Soren, is being punished by the BJP only because he refused to bow despite all kinds of pressure and intimidation.”

Oraon added, “On one hand, the Congress and our allies are talking about nyay (justice) for all oppressed communities and classes, Rahul Gandhi is on a Nyay Yatra across the country; our alliance is pushing the demand for caste census so that Dalits, tribals and OBCs get their rightful share in every sphere of life and on the other you have the BJP, which stands for an-nyay (injustice), in Jharkhand, they are trying to frame a young and popular tribal leader (Hemant Soren) and in Bihar, they are doing the same with a young and popular OBC leader (Tejashwi); the people can see what BJP’s definition of social justice is and the people’s court will teach them a lesson”.

Tribal outreach at work

JMM and Congress sources said their alliance leaders have already started reaching out to tribal rights’ activists and prominent civil society groups that work with indigenous people, urging them to “join our fight against the BJP” and inform voters of the “injustice being meted out to tribals at large and tribal leaders like Hemant, in particular, by the BJP”.

Various tribal and civil society outfits in the state have expressed solidarity with Hemant since his arrest and slammed the BJP for its “witchhunt” against the former chief minister. Congress sources said the issue of “BJP’s assault on tribals” and the need for civil society groups and activists to “create voter awareness about it” was also discussed at length on Monday during an hour-long meeting in Ranchi between Rahul and a delegation of Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, an organisation that works extensively among the state’s tribal, Dalit and other oppressed communities.