Political Line newsletter: A letter and its spirit

(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)

Members of the Dhangar community in Maharashtra say they are the same as the Dhangad community — a change in one letter that they hope will make a world of difference to their lives. While Dhangad is classified as one of the Scheduled Tribes (ST), Dhangar is counted as an OBC community. This demand is roiling Maharashtra politics and my colleague Vinaya Deshpande Pandit has this field report on the issue. Those who are already classified as a tribe do not want the other to be given the status.

Which community gets tagged as a tribe is a high-stakes question and often a hugely contested one. My colleague Abhinay Lakshman has written extensively on this question in recent years. You could read several of them here.

The violent conflict in Manipur is rooted in the Meitei demand for inclusion in the ST list and Kuki resistance to it.

In 2022, the Union Cabinet approved a proposal to add several tribes to the list of Scheduled Tribes (ST) in States such as Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, so that they can avail of benefits meant for STs, including reservation.

The classification of a community as a tribe is based on criteria set six decades ago —indications of primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, backwardness.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s wife and Gandey MLA Kalpana Soren is counted as an ST member in Odisha, but not in Jharkhand — as the classification goes. 

Around seven million people who are part of the tea tribes in Assam are descendants of tribespeople from the Santhal Pargana region, but they do not get the benefits of ST reservation. Mr. Soren has challenged Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is the BJP campaign in-charge for the Jharkhand election, on the issue. 

Federalism Tract: Notes on Indian Diversity

Blind vs real faith; real babas vs fake babas?

In July this year, 121 people were killed in a stampede in Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. The incident took place when followers of a ‘godman’ scrambled to collect dust that came in contact with him. People should not follow ‘blind faith,’ the U.P. Governor said while commenting on the incident. 

A chargesheet filed recently by the U.P. police named 11 accused, but the ‘godman’ in question was not among them.

The baba of Hathras did not have much sympathy among the Indian middle class or the media, unlike the case with Isha Foundation founded by Jaggi Vasudev, alias Sadhguru. The Foundation is facing a probe ordered by the Madras High Court in a habeas corpus petition filed by a man who said his two daughters staying at the Isha Yoga Centre in Coimbatore were ‘brainwashed’. The SC has stopped the investigation now.

Political Line wonders what is blind and what is real, when it comes to faith. What is superstition and what is faith?

Karnataka government to promote Kaveri Aarti

The Congress government in Karnataka is gearing up to organise Cauvery Aarti on the lines of Ganga Aarti, a religious ceremony performed on the banks of the Ganga in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. 

Voting, after the long wait in Kashmir

Some people who arrived in Jammu and Kashmir as refugees from Pakistan in 1947 voted for the first time this year, one of them a 90-year-old man. They did not have voting rights in Kashmir until the special status of the erstwhile State under Articles 370 and 35A remained active. After amendments to these provisions in 2019, these people secured their voting rights.