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Biography is a genre poorly developed
in India, but there do exist serviceable lives of our major
nationalist leaders. Those interested in Gandhi and Gokhale can read
works on them by B.R. Nanda. Admirers of Patel can turn to the life
of the Sardar by Rajmohan Gandhi. And both admirers and detractors
of Jawaharlal Nehru can turn, for ammunition, to the three-volume
biography by Sarvepalli Gopal.
These works have their limitations.
For one thing, they all focus on the politics, leaving out the
personality. Still, these books are solidly researched and reliable,
and provide a decent enough account of their subjects’ political
careers. Less fortunate have been Indian politicians who worked
outside the realm of the Congress. There are no lives, good or bad,
of such figures as the Kashmiri nationalist, Sheikh Abdullah, the
Sikh leader, Master Tara Singh, the communist thinker and
administrator, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, and the Naga freedom-fighter,
Angami Zapu Phizo. Yet these are all figures of extraordinary
interests, whose life and work illuminate many aspects of our modern
history.
Among this list of unusual, but poorly
remembered, characters is Jaipal Singh of Jharkhand. Jaipal was a
Munda from Chotanagpur, the forested plateau peopled by numerous
tribes all more-or-less distinct from caste Hindu society. Sent by
missionaries to study in Oxford, on his return he did not, as his
sponsors no doubt hoped, preach the Gospel, but came to invent a
kind of gospel of his own. This held that the tribals were the
“original inhabitants” of India — hence the term adibasi
or adivasi, which means precisely that. Jaipal formed an
Adivasi Mahasabha in 1938 which asked for a separate state of “Jharkhand”,
to be carved out of Bihar. To the tribals of Chotanagpur, he was Marang
Gomke or “Great Leader”.
Jaipal has been in my mind recently,
for two reasons. One is that I have been reading the debates of the
constituent assembly of India. The other reason I shall come to
presently.
In the constituent assembly, Jaipal
Singh came to represent the tribals not just of his native plateau,
but also of all of India. He was a gifted speaker, whose
interventions both enlivened and entertained the House. (In this
respect, the Church’s loss was unquestionably politics’ gain.)
His first speech was made on December 19, 1946, when, in welcoming
the Objectives Resolution, he provided a masterly summation of the
adivasi case.
“As a jungli, as an Adibasi,”
said Jaipal, “I am not expected to understand the legal
intricacies of the Resolution. But my common sense tells me that
every one of us should march in that road to freedom and fight
together. Sir, if there is any group of Indian people that has been
shabbily treated it is my people. They have been disgracefully
treated, neglected for the last 6,000 years. The history of the
Indus Valley civilization, a child of which I am, shows quite
clearly that it is the new comers — most of you here are intruders
as far as I am concerned — it is the new comers who have driven
away my people from the Indus Valley to the jungle fastness...The
whole history of my people is one of continuous exploitation and
dispossession by the non-aboriginals of India punctuated by
rebellions and disorder, and yet I take Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru at
his word. I take you all at your word that now we are going to start
a new chapter, a new chapter of independent India where there is
equality of opportunity, where no one would be neglected.” The
Resolution, to Jaipal, was simply a modern restatement of his own
people’s point of view. In adivasi society, there was no
discrimination by caste and gender. Thus “you cannot teach
democracy to the tribal people; you have to learn democratic ways
from them.”
Eight months later, Jaipal was asked
to speak in the debate on the national flag. Jawaharlal Nehru had
moved a resolution proposing that the flag be a “horizontal
tricolour of saffron, white and dark green in equal proportions”,
with a wheel in navy blue in the centre. On behalf of his people,
Jaipal said he had “great pleasure in acknowledging this Flag as
the Flag of our country in future”.
But then he continued, “Sir, most of
the members of this House are inclined to think that the flag
hoisting is the privilege of the Aryan civilized. Sir, the Adibasis
had been the first to hoist flags and fight for their flags. …Each
village has its own flag and that flag cannot be copied by any other
tribe. If any one dared challenge that flag, Sir, I can assure you
that that particular tribe would shed its last drop of blood in
defending the honour of that flag. Hereafter, there will be two
Flags, one Flag which has been here for the past six thousand years,
and the other will be this National Flag…This National Flag will
give a new message to the Adibasis of India that their struggle for
freedom for the last six thousand years is at last over, that they
will now be as free as any other in this country.”
Two years later, in the discussion on
the draft Constitution, Jaipal made a speech that was spirited in
all senses of the word. Bowing to pressure by Gandhians, the
prohibition of alcohol had been made a Directive Principle. This,
said the adivasi leader, was an interference “with the religious
rights of the most ancient people in the country”. For drink was
part of their festivals, their rituals, indeed their daily life
itself. Thus in West Bengal “it would be impossible for paddy to
be transplanted if the Santhal does not get his rice beer. These
ill-clad men …have to work knee-deep in water throughout the day,
in drenching rain and in mud. What is it in the rice beer that keeps
them alive? I wish the medical authorities in this country would
carry out research in their laboratories to find out what it is that
the rice beer contains, of which the Adibasis need so much and which
keeps them against all manner of diseases.”
The constituent assembly had convened
a sub-committee on tribal rights headed by the veteran social
worker, A.V. Thakkar. Its findings, and the words of Jaipal and
company, sensitized the House to the tribal predicament. As a member
from Bihar observed, “the tribal people have been made a pawn on
the chess-board of provincial politics”. There had been
“exploitation on a mass scale; we must hang down our heads in
shame”. The “we” referred to Hindu society as a whole. It had
sinned against adivasis by either ignoring them or exploiting them.
It had done little to bring them modern facilities of education and
health; it had colonized their land and forests; and it had brought
them under a regime of usury and debt.
In acknowledgement of this, the
Constitution mandated that a portion of government jobs and seats in
legislatures be reserved for adivasis. As with the untouchables,
this was a matter of compensatory justice: a case of Hindus making
up in the present for the crimes they had committed in the past.
Jaipal Singh’s work in bringing the
tribal question to centre stage is now largely forgotten. Reading
the constituent assembly debates forcibly brought him back to my
attention. But there was, as I said, also a second reason. It is
this: that the Indian victory in the recent Asia Cup hockey
tournament made one recall Jaipal’s other side. For before he
became a politician he was a brilliant hockey-player, an Oxford Blue
and the captain of the first Indian side to win an Olympic gold
medal, in Amsterdam in 1928. The Marang Gomke was not just a great
leader, but also the precursor to such outstanding adivasi hockey
players as Michael Kindo, Dung Dung, and Ignace and Dilip Tirkey.
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