The formation of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram happened over concerns regarding the increasing activities of Christian missionaries in tribal areas. There was a fear that as the Muslim League started to demand a separate nation for Muslims, the Christian missionaries could instigate converted tribals to demand a separate nation-state for Christians. Indeed, the issue of conversion was prominent in many tribal areas, including Madhya Pradesh (then Central Provinces), even before Independence, with some princely states initiating enactments to ban conversion. These included the Raigarh state Conversion Act, 1936, the Surguja state Hindu Apostasy Act, 1945, and the Udaipur state Conversion Act, 1946. What is interesting is that all these bills were introduced or passed primarily to ban the conversion of tribes to Christianity.
During the national movement, proselytisation by Christian missionaries emerged as one of the key contested issues and a matter of concern. Even Mahatma Gandhi expressed his concern regarding conversion by Christian missionaries. In Bihar Notes (10 August 1925), he underlined that,
Christian missionaries have been doing valuable service for generations, but in my humble opinion, their work suffers because at the end of it they expect the conversion of these simple people to Christianity … How very nice it would be if the missionaries rendered humanitarian service without the ulterior aim of conversion.
After its formation, the RSS focused largely on the aspect of mobilising Hindus against Muslims, its leaders expressed their concerns regarding the roles of Christian missionaries in tribal areas. However, they could not start systematic work in tribal areas before the early 1950s, but its leaders, particularly Golwalkar, always raised the issue of the conversion of tribal people.
During the late 1930s and 1940s, one can find two facets of the concerns among the Congress leaders related to the role of Christian missionaries: For some leaders like Rajendra Prasad, the key issue was to maintain the political popularity and acceptance of the Congress among tribals, but for some (like Ravishankar Shukla) the chief concern was the supposed separatist tendencies enhanced by Christian missionaries.
It is noteworthy that in the tribal belt of the Chota Nagpur region of Bihar, the Jharkhand movement started to take shape by the late 1930s. The Adivasi Mahasabha continuously raised the issue of a separate tribal province and became more prominent when Jaipal Singh Munda joined it and became its president in 1939. Jaipal Singh Munda was a famous hockey player who was the captain of the Indian hockey team in the Amsterdam Olympics of 1927, where they won the gold medal. Thereafter, he was selected for the Indian Civil Services under the British India Government, but rather than joining it, he focused on different administrative works and teaching, before joining politics. Incidentally, when he returned to India, Rajendra Prasad asked him to work with the Congress. But after discussions with the then Bihar governor, Munda decided to work separately for the adivasis.
The Bihar Congress leadership was not happy with the growing influence of the Adivasi Mahasabha. Jaipal Singh Munda wrote to Rajendra Prasad on 16 January 1939, “I have now been recognised the natural leader of the Adivasis and I feel I must use all my weight to make the Adivasis work for their advancement within the national movement.” In the same letter, he emphatically argued that “I have always felt that nothing should be done to weaken the nationalistic force and I am most concerned that the Adivasi movement should be within the major national struggle for an all-India struggle.” In another letter written to Rajendra Prasad on 1 February 1939, Munda underlined that “I have always been and shall remain an ardent lover of the Congress principles.” He criticised the Bihar government for overlooking the interests of adivasis. Again, in his letter to Rajendra Prasad on 14 June 1939, Munda underlined that “ … the aims and objects of the Adivasi Sabha … were in full harmony with the Indian National Congress.” However, Rajendra Prasad was not convinced. He wrote to Munda on 3 July 1939 and mentioned, “I do not know how the Adivasi Sabha can be said to be in harmony with the Indian National Congress when it thought fit to set up candidates against the Congress candidates.”
Rajendra Prasad and other Congress leaders felt that the church was also helping the political activities of Jaipal Singh Munda and the Adivasi Mahasabha. Munda’s biographer Ashwini Kumar Pankaj claims that due to instigation by Congress leaders, the issue of Christian and non-Christian also emerged in the Adivasi Mahasabha, which led to a split in the organisation and a senior leader, Theble Uraon, formed a separate organisation named “Sanatan Adivasi Mahasabha”. Uraon had a close relationship with many Congress leaders. In 1940, when the Congress organised its annual session at Ramgarh, Jaipal Singh Munda claimed that it was a ploy by the Bihar Congress leaders to suppress his organisation. A day before the Congress session, Uraon organised a meeting in Ramgarh and severely criticised Munda, asserting that he was not a representative of non-Christian tribals and should not mislead them with his separatist ideas. It is noteworthy that Congress leaders were against the Jharkhand movement. One argument was that the Bihar Congress leaders wanted non-tribal Bihar people to be dominant in tribal areas. This argument could be partially true, but it seems that the more credible reason for opposition to the Jharkhand movement was fear of separatism, fuelled by the church and Christian missionaries.
Rajendra Prasad met a Catholic bishop in Ranchi in July 1939 and requested that the church keep a distance from politics and should not support any political party with separatist leanings. He wrote a letter to the bishop of Ranchi and requested him to keep away from the political activities of different organisations.
There was concern that an organisation like the Adivasi Mahasabha could create a feeling of separatism in the minds of tribal youths. The Congress leadership was also against the demand of Jharkhand. Gandhian leader, AV Thakkar, popularly called Thakkar Bapa, wrote to Rajendra Prasad on 8 March 1939 regarding the resolutions of the Adivasi Mahasabha conference held on 20 and 21 January 1939. He wrote, “The chief and the first resolution is about the separation of Chota Nagpur from Bihar, to which we, of course, cannot agree.” Thakkar Bapa suggested that Rajendra Prasad form a distinct organisation to create confidence among the tribal people. On 27 March 1939, he wrote to Prasad, “The Adivasi Sabha is a talking body or an agitating body. The committee that I propose is a silent, constructive body of actual workers. Political work will not form part of it and it is expected to win the confidence of people, as you say, by its selfless work.” He also urged Prasad that the Bihar provincial government should provide economic help to such organisations. Following his suggestions, a separate organisation, “Admi Jaati Sevak Mandal” was formed. Thakkar Bapa had worked in tribal areas for many decades but did not directly advocate the spread of Hindu values in tribal society, but had deep suspicions about Christian missionaries who he thought could foster separatism in tribal areas. This feeling was prevalent among many Congress leaders as well, which played a crucial role in the formation of the VKA.
In 1948, when the then chief minister of Central Provinces, Ravishankar Shukla, was on a visit to the tribal areas of his state, he saw black flag protests and sloganeering by tribals for a separate Jharkhand state. Shukla thought it was a dangerous and divisive campaign propagated by Christian missionaries and was worried about the conversion of adivasis to Christianity and discussed his fears with Thakkar Bapa. Bapa told Shukla that it was necessary to bring tribal people into the “mainstream” to stop conversion and contain separatism. For this, he said, the help of nationalist organisations should be taken.
Excerpted with permission from Adivasi or Vanvasi: Tribal India and the Politics of Hindutva, Kamal Nayan Choubey, Penguin India.
