Indian hardliners ask to stop welfare benefits to tribal Christians

Hindu nationalist body wants tribals who converted to Christianity to be left out of the nation’s affirmative action program

A radical Hindu group has demanded to stop the benefits of India’s affirmative action program to tribal Christians ahead of state polls in two Christian-majority states in the northeast region.

A pro-Hinud forum for protecting indigenous faith and culture, called Janajati Dharma-Sanskriti Suraksha Manch, said they want the government to remove tribal people who converted to Christianity or Islam from the official list of Scheduled Tribes (STs).

Those on the list are eligible for social welfare benefits meant for indigenous and social groups designated as socio-economically disadvantaged.

Forum members told media that they plan a demonstration before the state secretariat in Guwahati on Feb. 12 and march to the capital city of Dispur demanding both the federal and state governments make constitutional amendments to prevent tribal Christians from drawing government benefits.

Binud Kumbang, a forum leader in the northeastern state of Assam, said tribal Christians are drawing double benefits by getting their children admitted to Christian schools and also seeking scholarships and jobs quotas under the government’s welfare policy.

Socially poor Dalit people are denied welfare benefits on the ground that their religion does not practice the caste system, but all tribal people, including Christians, currently benefit from it.

The demand did not surprise Christians as it comes ahead of crucial polls in Meghalaya and Nagaland on February 27.

More than 85 percent of Meghalaya’s 3.28 million people are Christians, with 849,226 among them Catholics.

In Nagaland, the largest Baptist territory in the world, more than 90 percent of its 2 million people follow Christianity.

Most people in both states belong to indigenous tribes.

“The demand for de-listing tribal Christians is nothing new. It has been going on in states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh, where tribal people are found in large numbers,” Father Vincent Ekka, who heads the department of tribal studies at the Jesuit-run Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, told UCA News on Feb. 7.

“It is a political conspiracy ahead of provincial and general elections in the country,” Father Ekka said.

Father Ekka, who hails from a tribal community, said “the conspirators” were using religion to create divisions among tribal people so as to rob them of their land, forests, and welfare benefits.

“The tribal communities will end up losers in the bargain,” the tribal priest said.

Allen Brooks, the spokesperson of the multi-denominational Assam Christian Forum, agreed that the agenda was “to divide Indian people in the name of caste and religion” to perpetuate Hindu majority rule across the country.

He said the welfare benefits are given to tribal people “based on ethnicity as per the Constitution of India and have nothing to do with religion,” he said.

Bagiram Boro, president of the forum that raised the demand, said his organization was founded last year and it intended to stop conversions to Christianity.

He told local media that conversions have increased in the past few decades and posed a threat to tribal people’s customs and traditions.

His forum plans to submit a memorandum to Indian President Droupadi Murmu, the first tribal woman to occupy the post, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking their intervention to stop conversions, he said.

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