A State of Difference

What is about the Adivasis of Jharkhand that prevents the saffron lotus from blooming or even taking root, unlike in the Adivasi-majority seats of Chhattisgarh and Odisha where the BJP did exceedingly well in the past few years?

- Abhik Bhattacharya and Md Asghar Khan

JUST hours after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)led Mahayuti alliance staged a sweeping comeback bagging 230 of the 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra after its dismal show in the Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated the most popular slogan of this poll season—“ek hain toh safe hain” (united we survive)—to which former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had attributed the victory. It was shorthand for a strategy to accuse the Congress-led Opposition of “dividing castes and tribes”, which the PM at an election rally in Dhule called “the biggest conspiracy against India”. Complemented with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s “batenge toh katenge” (divided we die) rhetoric stressing on “Hindu unity” across castes and tribes, the “ek…safe…” slogan worked in the BJP’s favour in what is known as the land of Shivaji, but fell flat in the land of Birsa Munda—Jharkhand—the other state that went to polls in November and where the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)led INDIA bloc’s thumping triumph with 56 of the 81 seats signalled a counterintuitive enigma of sorts.

The indigenous people across Santhal Pargana, Chottanagpur, Kolhan and Palamu regions, with their long history of resisting the domination of the ‘