The Purulia district in Bengal forms the heart of Jangalmahal or ‘forest abode’, the western part of the state. If you travel through the length and breadth of this erstwhile Maoist hotbed, you will see widened roads, forests of sal and mahua, and picturesque villages with mud houses.Kids go to school, the palash flower – known as the flame of the forest – marks the spring and the entire area is a hub of tourism. The four districts, Bankura, Purulia, Paschim Medinipur and Jhargram saw some of the bloodiest episodes of political murders just 15 years ago. The number of casualties was high – 27, 164, 429, and 42 in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively. In the post-Left period, the Jangalmahal saw a movement from violence to dismantling of the rebel groups, from numerous arrests to the death of the legendary Maoist leader Kisenji in November 2011, just a few months after the Trinamool Congress came to power. With this and the surrender or arrests of key Maoist leaders, the region started to transform. After a short phase of uncertainty in decision-making, the ruling TMC strengthened the Paschimanchal Unnayan Parshad which had been formed by the Left and prioritised infrastructure development of the region using the administrative wing of the local government institutions. There was a moment of organisational absence after the Left was gone and the TMC showed a certain reluctance to form organisations. This was when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) started to expand their base in the region.Grassroots organisations who work for tribal people in the sectors of education and healthcare and are active throughout the Jangalmahal play an important role in the grand narrative of Hindutva expansionism in other parts of West Bengal as well. Their use of invented traditions such as the Ram Navami processions lead to increasingly violent communal riots. This is a form of cultural misrecognition where traditional cultural identity markers are actively politicised to legitimise political decisions. It is in this context that the Hura gram panchayat region of Purulia district stands out. Here, the Santhal communities have shown significant resistance to Hindutva expansion through the construction of Majhi Thans despite the presence of Bharatiya Janata Party supporter. Temples and politicsThe most prominent marker of the use of cultural misrecognition in the Jangalmahal has been the installation of Hanuman idols and construction of Hanuman temples. Hanuman, from the epic of the Ramayan, is organically connected to everyday life of the villagers and has a high degree of acceptance among the caste Hindus. Hanuman temples and shrines are becoming widespread in the Jangalmahal area. These have integrated the tribal and non-tribal through the construction of new myth – that of the Islamic outsider and a Hindu-tribal joint defence. Also read: There’s Temple Politics Where You Least Expect It – Bengal’s Jungle Mahal, for OneHanuman temples begin and are sustained in more or less the five following steps. First, the RSS identifies a suitable place within a village, usually near the existing sacred places there. Second, the local RSS organisations tap one or a few villagers and encourage them to instal a Hanuman idol to legitimise their initiative. Third, an economic incentive is given to the family or group of people responsible for taking care of the daily offerings at the temple. Usually a poor Brahmin family is identified and the family or the group of families gets around Rs 1,000 a month. Fourth, a family or group is identified to bring flowers to the idol everyday. They are also the ones who will provide cleaning services. This family or group gets around Rs. 800-1000 every month. Fifth, following the successful installation of the idol, within a few years a subscription is taken from the villagers for the eventual construction and then maintenance of a temple. This makes the temple a permanent feature of the village. The expansion of the temple continues with yearly festivals. Ram Navami processions also connect these temple-based organisations. Consequently, if you are to undertake a day’s travel through the Jangalmahal today, you will see several Hanuman shrines at various phases of development. However, the Santal community of the villages in the Hura gram panchayat area, has resisted the expansion of the particular brand of Hindutva which was sought to be propagated through Hanuman temples. This is a phenomenon to record when one recognises that such resistance from a tribal cultural front has developed in a place which has overwhelming BJP support. Hura has an increasing BJP support base since 2018 which is reflected in the Panchayat elections. Figure 1: Electoral support base at Hura gram panchayat in the 2018 and 2023 panchayat elections. Source: State Election Commission database.The Member of Legislative Assembly of Kashipur, Kamalakanta Hansda, defeated the ruling TMC in the 2021 assembly election and the Member of Parliament of Purulia, Jyotirmay Singh Mahato is in his second term. Both are in the BJP. The resistanceIn the tribal villages of Hura, the proposal for the erection of Hanuman temple came as early as 2013, from the local Bajrang Dal which has been successful in building similar temples across the Jangalmahal. After getting an overwhelming majority in the 2018 panchayat election, BJP took up temple construction with new zeal. The RSS and Bajrang Dal are known to offer economic incentives to connect priest families and Barber families with the temple initiative. Among Santal families present in the Jangalmahal, the RSS and Bajrang Dal were able to make inroads into the Murmu community. While the Soren community sees a large participation in leadership positions in the gram panchayat, the Murmus are staunch BJP supporters. However, in Hura, the temple effort had to pause because the Murmus did not quite take to the initiative.“Our religion is Sari. We are not supposed to do the Saraswati Puja, let alone worship Hanuman and Ram,” said an elder, Jagannath Murmu.But Jagannath also points to what he sees is a problem. “Today, our village has three Saraswati Pujas (pointing towards a Saraswati Puja pandal nearby), someday we will understand the true value of our religion… someday some powerful Santali leader will come and bring back the original form of things,” he added. In 2022, with pressure mounting from the Bajrang Dal and other RSS organisations, including the Durga Shakti, villagers called for several village council meetings. These are called the Sholo-aana or ‘sixteen heads’ in which each of the heads of the families participated. The Sholo-aana resolved that they would not allow a Hanuman temple to be constructed in anywhere near the village. This is the most inclusive of the meeting set-up of the Santali Majhi-Disam tradition. In a Sholo-aana meeting, the village head or Majhi works as the president and it is mandatory for each family head to attend it. Above the Sholo-aana is the Pargana meeting which is attended by each of the Majhis in a region. Above the Pargana is the Disam, in which each of the Pargana heads, along with a selected few Majhis meet.The villagers, to counter the RSS’s temple efforts, began collecting subscription to construct a Majhi than which are temple-like structures signifying Santal religio-cultural markers. A newly constructed Majhi than at Majla para, Dariyakata. At one end of the village street, a pandal of Saraswati Puja can be seen. Photo: Suman Nath.While such construction marks the cultural resistance to Hindutva, the architecture of these structures – resembling a temple – points to the cultural cognitive impact of Hinduism. Another Majhi than with a branch of Sal tree signifying the symbolic presence of the Santali culture. Photo: Suman Nath.The villagers’ claim of a space for themselves to counter the Hindutva effort to build a Hanuman temple, while at once displaying support for the BJP, is in contrast to how we understand the expansion of the BJP vis-à-vis Hindutva in the country. In several villages of Hura, what we see is a particular separation of BJP as a political force and the RSS as a cultural force. While the former gets a support and latter is to be resisted. A careful understanding of the BJP’s popularity at the expense of Left Front, especially the Communist Party of India (Marxist), calls for a visit to Hura’s past. Even during the heyday of Maoist movement, Hura has been relatively nonviolent and there had been a relatively peaceful political transition from the CPI(M) to the TMC in 2011, with the CPI(M) getting a substantive vote of 43.33% but losing to the TMC, which had 44.73% of the total votes polled. The CPI(M) saw a 83.91% fall in electoral support between 2016 and 2021 when BJP saw a 41.3% rise in votes. The BJP eventually won the assembly seat for the party from the region.Also read: How Left’s Rising Vote Share Spells Trouble for BJP in Bengal This rise of the BJP and fall of the CPI(M) and the TMC at once indicates two important things. First, the absence of an organisational base of the TMC, along with the lack of monetary inflow towards the TMC party cadres like it has in urban areas and at areas with relative prosperity affected its support base here. Second, the organisational vacuum was used by the RSS-BJP to expand its original identity base at the expense of what was celebrated by the Left in its heyday as party society. While, in party society people mis-recognised the system, resulting in systemic mis-recognition, in primordial identity-based expansionism championed by both TMC and BJP, people mis-recognise ‘cultural’ expressions as the primary form of public transaction. Cultural expressions supersede other forms of service and delivery-linked transactions. This ultimately builds up a distinctive political support base that is parallel to sectarian identity. Villages in Hura indicate a potential limit to the expansion of Hindutva in the tribal region. While the area has nine clans which reside in a relatively small village – resulting in a diversity of opinions despite a rather unified support for the BJP – nearby Samukhgeriya which is a Muslim locale has also resisted such expansionism. People in Pubbaid – a multi-caste village – and Pabrapahari another multi-ethnic village, did not allow such temples as they already had a Harisabha temple within the village. Such resistance has been quite peaceful and the local Hindutva outfits have as yet not pushed further. This has, at a level, resulted in the effective separation in people’s perceptions of Hindutva as an ideology and the BJP as a political alternative to the state. Hura also shows cultural resistance to the use of the invented cultural apparatus of the Hanuman temple at the microscopic level. Whether this points to the failure of RSS’s efforts to construct a brand of subaltern Hindutva in Hura, or if it is solely a cultural response to the expansionism, needs further study.Suman Nath teaches anthropology at Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Government College, New Town, and is the author of the book Democracy and Social Cleavage in India.Note: An earlier version of this essay had said that the Paschimanchal Unnayan Parshad had been formed by the TMC. It was formed by the Left. This error has been corrected.
