Who are we? Who is Them?

This Jharkhand election will be a direct fight between the JMM and the BJP on Adivasi identity and the issue of infiltration

- Abhik Bhattacharya

THE elder’s bushy beard is silver-grey, the son’s has some pepper in it. The father is in a close-fitting white kurta, the son in a loose, bright mauve one. This photo of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren seeking the blessings of his father Dishom Shibu Soren, popularly called Guruji, before the elections heat up in the state got some 3,000 likes in three minutes on Instagram. The father-son duo knows the power of this image.

When Hemant Soren was arrested in February this year for his alleged role in a land scam, a large-size banner came across Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, carrying similar photos; to drill it into the people that the man going to jail was the son of Guruji, the architect of the Jharkhand statehood movement. The banner also carried the slogan—Jharkhand Jhukega Nahi (Jharkhand will not bow down), a nod to the resilience of a people who never gave in, even under British rule.

This pride in the people’s resilience and nostalgia of the struggle for statehood are once again the major themes in these elections for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). The distinction between the indigenous and outsiders (commonly known as diku) is gradually getting delineated. “They come from outside of the state. They don’t know our culture, language, or spirituality. They try to break us. But we will never let it happen,” says Kalpana Soren, Hemant Soren’s wife and MLA from Gandey.

For her, the ‘outsider’ is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). For the BJP, the ‘outsider’ is the alleged Bangladeshi illegal immigrant. “Infiltrators are the vote bank of Lalu Prasad’s RJD, Rahul baba’s Congress and Hemant Soren’s JMM. I promise to drive out illegal immigrants. The time has come to show the corrupt JMM dispensation the exit door. We want to change Jharkhand,” says Union Home Minister Amit Shah at a rally in Sahibganj, marking “rampant infiltration” as one of the major issues of the state.

The Identity Question