ODISHA

Strengthening base

Prafulla Das

AS the Sangh Parivar works to strengthen its base in Odisha with an eye on the 2019 elections, a sense of apprehension continues to oppress the minority community across the State.

Six years after Kandhamal district witnessed the worst ever anti-Christian violence, more than 5,000 Christian people who had left Kandhamal in August 2008 are yet to return to their homes. The violence had followed the murder of the VHP leader Swami Lakshmanananda, allegedly by Maoists. Church activities have slowed down drastically after two rounds of anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal in 2007 and 2008. The Sangh Parivar is now working in an organised way to counter the churches in the tribal-dominated regions.

Many of the BJP’s national leaders have visited the State in the past few months. The Parivar seems to be adopting the tactics that had benefited the BJP in rural Bihar and Chhattisgarh. BJP leaders have identified 35 Assembly seats that are reserved for the Scheduled Tribes and another 15 Assembly seats that have more than 25 per cent tribal voters.

Now with a BJP government at the Centre, an elated Parivar has decided to increase the number of Ekal Vidyalayas, one-teacher schools, by ten times in the tribal areas. Ekal Vidyalayas, funded by the Friends of Tribals Society, are being strengthened with the appointment of one supervisor for 10 such schools, to impart non-formal education to tribal children not attending regular schools. Those managing the affairs of the Parivar are happy that in Kandhamal and Boudh districts, the majority of Sanskrit teachers working in the schools belong to the tribal Kondh community and were educated in the two Ashram schools that were run by the late Lakshmanananda.

Besides, the Parivar is also planning to unite and strengthen the Saraswati Shishu Mandir schools across the State. With the Shishu Mandirs emerging as an alternative to the poorly managed government schools, many dissident Shishu Mandir schools have come up in all parts of the State in recent years. The Odisha BJP organising secretary, who is on deputation from the RSS, is likely to take charge of the Shishu Mandir schools before the next elections.

In fact, as many as 40 Sangh Parivar outfits are covertly trying their best to polarise Odisha on communal lines. Using Odisha as a Hindutva laboratory, the Parivar had succeeded in polarising the State after the Kandhamal riots in 2008, but the BJP did not separate itself from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) immediately after that. As a result, the party failed to get votes when the BJD broke the alliance a few days before the 2009 elections.

The anger that Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik had generated in the minds of BJP leaders in 2009 has not died down. Hence, Parivar workers in the rural areas are all charged up following Narendra Modi’s assumption of office as Prime Minister. In a State where Muslims and Christians hardly have a presence, they try to make the BJP’s hands stronger by wooing Dalits and taking up issues relating to the Jagannath temple in Puri.

When there was a rift between the administration and the Shankaracharya of Puri with regard to the rituals surrounding the Rath Yatra in the recent past, the Parivar organisations as well as BJP leaders sided with the Shankaracharya. An organisation has now started working in Puri in the name of cleanliness and for the closure of liquor and meat shops in the temple town.

No other party has so many outfits working with different social groups in Odisha. The Sangh Parivar and the BJP, meanwhile, carry on with their determined efforts to make their organisation broad-based by inducting people from Other Backward Classes and Dalit and tribal groups.