Tribes in Arunachal Pradesh feel push to resist conversions to Christianity

The RSS is simultaneously proclaiming that tribal faiths come under the Sanatana Dharma.

Arunachal Pradesh has five major tribes—Adi, Apatani, Galo, Nyishi, and Tagin—which are all considered the progenies of the same great ancestor “Abo Tani” and who worship Donyi (Sun) and Polo (Moon). | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

Arunachal Pradesh, the abode of 26 major tribes and 100 subtribes, is a treasure trove of rich and vibrant tribal cultural practices. However, a new bogeyman has emerged in recent years, a growing movement that wants to revoke the Scheduled Tribes (ST) certificate issued to anyone who has converted to another religion. The drive is aimed at tribal people who have embraced Christianity, which is today the majority religion in Arunachal Pradesh (Christians constitute 30.26 per cent of the population) but overlooks basic realities.

Writing in Arunachal Times, journalist Bengia Ajum speaks of how “tribal citizens who have embraced Christianity still continue to maintain tribal customs and culture and the tribal way of life…. Seeking cancellation of their ST right is an insult. There is growing anger against such demands.”

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has been playing a major role in influencing the State’s indigenous faith believers to institutionalise and document their belief systems in order to check conversions to Christianity. In turn, it pushes the narrative that tribal faith systems are very much part of Sanatana Dharma.

Hindus are the second largest group in the State, accounting for 29.04 per cent of the total population of 13.84 lakh. According to Census 2011, Buddhists form 11.77 per cent of the population, Muslims 1.95 per cent, Sikhs 0.24 per cent, and Jains 0.06 per cent, while ‘other religions and persuasions’ (including indigenous faith believers) make up 26.20 per cent.

Even as the Pema Khandu-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government walks a religious tightrope, concern about the changing demographics is clearly shaping the emerging political realities of Arunachal Pradesh.

Pai Dawe, president of the Nyishi Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society, and ex-officio member of the Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh (IFCSAP), is part of this new discourse. He told Frontline that IFCSAP had been mounting pressure on the State government to fulfil three key demands—implementation of the anti-conversion law; delisting of converted tribals from the list of Scheduled Tribes; and renaming the existing Department of Indigenous Affairs into the Department of Indigenous Faith and Cultural Affairs.

The Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, or the anti-conversion law, was enacted in 1978 but is yet to be implemented. Dawe said the State government had initiated a move in 2018 to repeal the law but dropped it following opposition from indigenous faith bodies. IFCSAP’s consistent stand has been that the Act should be strengthened and implemented to curb “conversions”.

Dawe also claimed that indigenous faiths are part of Sanatana Dharma. Tribal people are nature worshippers who worship the five elements—water, air, fire, earth, and space. “This is also the belief system of Sanatana Dharma and, therefore, tribal people were originally believers of Santana Dharma,” he said.

Dawe, who is also vice chairman of the Donyi Polo Cultural and Charitable Trust (DPCCT), told Frontline that the RSS had played a “huge role” in making Arunachali communities realise that indigenous faith worshippers must protect their faith, language, and cultural practices, and institutionalise them through documentation. “They gave us the idea to have photographs of deities and place them on our altars for worship. Initially, they also helped by printing the photographs of deities. Now, we do it on our own. Their [the RSS’] aim is to help the indigenous people of Arunachal Pradesh protect, preserve, and practise indigenous faiths and document their rituals,” he said. Dawe, however, hastily clarified that IFCSAP, DPCCT, and other indigenous faith organisations do not receive any financial support from the RSS.

DPCCT was set up under the aegis of IFCSAP to document the faith and culture of the State’s five major tribes—Adi, Apatani, Galo, Nyishi, and Tagin—which are all considered the progenies of the same great ancestor “Abo Tani” and who worship Donyi (Sun) and Polo (Moon). The trust has set up an educational institution called Nyubu Nyvgam Yerko (NNY) in Rang village, about 6 km from Seppa town, the headquarters of East Kameng district. The school is modelled on the gurukul system and imparts indigenous faith education. Nyubu means priests, Nyvgam means wise person, and Yerko refers to learning institution. Students are given training in indigenous knowledge and schooling up to Class 8.

State patronage

Chief Minister Pema Khandu and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju inaugurated the first NNY at Rang village in East Kameng on March 20, 2021. Khandu announced Rs.3 crore for the school and said that “institutionalisation of cultural education is the need of the hour”.

Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu. | Photo Credit: PTI

“Being a Monpa, I follow Buddhism. My culture is safe as it is institutionalised. We learn and earn degrees in Buddhism. Therefore, we need to establish institutes that teach our kids their respective indigenous culture, heritage, language, way of living, and take pride in it,” Khandu said in the official release.

NNY schools follow a dual syllabus, one based on the Central Board of Secondary Education (taught by Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalaya), and the second comprising indigenous dialects and arts, hymns and songs, folklores, tales, and rituals (taught by indigenous faith organisations).

In 2018, a DPCCT team visited Ramayana Darshanam at Vivekananda Kendra in Kanyakumari and on its return set out to establish Donyi Polo Khumkos (places of worship for believers of Donyi Poloism) in every corner of Arunachal Pradesh. The seventh Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche of Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh was invited to inaugurate the first Donyi Polo Khumko. At the ceremony, a bhumi pujan was conducted by Nyubu (priests) from different Tani speaking communities, which said a lot about the influence of Hinduism on the religious and cultural practices of indigenous people.

Meanwhile, since 1994, the Arunachal Shiksha Vikas Samiti (ASVS), a wing of the RSS, has been running 26 Saraswati Vidya Niketan schools. Inaugurating the boys’ hostel of one such school at Eraloni village in Mahadevpur in Namsai district, Chowna Mein lauded the RSS’ role “in providing quality education to the people of Arunachal Pradesh in rural areas” and “their efforts to protect and preserve indigenous faith and culture”.

Religion and culture

Asked if there was too much emphasis on recasting fluid indigenous faiths and cultural practices as institutionalised religions, Dawe said: “Culture is only the expression of faith. Without faith, there can be no cultural practices.” In 2019, Pema Khandu expressed something similar when he said that “culture and faith cannot be separated and are inextricably connected”. He was speaking at an Indigenous Faith Day celebration organised by DPCCT and IFCSAP.

Adi tribesmen of Arunachal Pradesh perform their traditional dance on the occasion of the 25 years of Statehood Day celebrations in the capital city Itanagar on February 20, 2011. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR

This intertwining of religion and culture was also evident when Dawe said that DPCCT had been running an advocacy campaign among indigenous people against excessive consumption of meat and wine. “Many people, mostly those not engaged in the traditional livelihood of farming, are not required to do hard physical labour and lead a different lifestyle from that of their parents and forefathers. Consuming excessive meat and wine could be injurious to their health and cause diseases,” he said.

There has been a marked growth in the Hindu and Christian populations of Arunachal Pradesh in recent decades. In the 1971 Census, when Arunachal Pradesh was known as North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), its total population was 4,67,511. Hindus constituted 21.99 per cent, Christians 0.79 per cent, Buddhists 13.13 per cent, Muslims 0.18 per cent, Sikhs 0.27 per cent, Jains 0.01 per cent, and other religions and persuasions (which includes indigenous faiths) 63.46 per cent. In the 1981 Census, Hindus constituted 29.24 per cent, Buddhists 13.69 per cent, Christians 4.32 per cent, and other religions 51.60 per cent of the total population of 6,31,839. A decade later, in the 1991 Census, of a total polulation of 8,64,558, Hindus constituted 37.04 per cent, while Christians constituted 10.3 per cent.

In 2001, Hindus constituted 34.60 per cent, Christians 18.72 per cent, Buddhists 13.02 per cent, other religions and persuasions 30.72 per cent, Muslims 1.88 per cent, and Sikhs 0.17 per cent. And the 2011 Census shows Christians at 30.26 per cent, followed closely by Hindus at 29.04 per cent of the total population of 13,83,727.

Pro- and anti-conversions

“In Arunachal Pradesh, there is no concept of majority or minority community. All are equal and all are indigenous by birth. If the anti-conversion law is implemented, then Hindus and other faith groups will also be affected as there were only indigenous faith believers who, in course of time, converted to other faiths,” said Tarh Miri, president of the Arunachal Christian Forum (ACF).

This could explain why the BJP government does not want to implement the anti-conversion Act in Arunachal Pradesh. Speaking at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church on June 28, 2018, while paying tribute to Reverend Brother Prem Bhai, a Christian priest of the Nyishi community, Pema Khandu said the 1978 Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act “could undermine secularism and is probably targeted towards Christians” and promised to repeal it.

The ACF has been demanding the repeal of the law, describing it as a “draconian Act”. Tarh Miri, denying allegations of conversions using inducements, claimed that the “popularity of the religion has been growing because of its inclusive ideas and its preaching of unity in diversity”. He said the Bible had already been translated into most languages spoken by indigenous communities of the State.

A tribal performance during the 36th Statehood Day programme of Arunachal Pradesh in Naharlagun on February 20. | Photo Credit: PTI

In a report titled “Census of India Series No 24, Arunachal Pradesh, Part I-A, General Report”, J. K. Barthakur of the Indian Frontier Administrative Service and Director of Census Operations, Arunachal Pradesh, explains why he believes several indigenous faith believers returned themselves as Hindus in the 1971 Census. “God is not to be propitiated by sacrifice and customary rituals but is to be remembered and prayed to at any place and any time…. Under this unique, benevolent, omnipresent, omniscient god, there are multitudes of supernatural beings, some benevolent, some malevolent. These beings are propitiated by rituals that include sacrifice of animals in different forms. In this regard, the faiths of the Arunachal Pradesh tribes are similar to the Hindu faith and that is probably why large numbers of them returned their faith as Hinduism.”

Pema Khandu, speaking at the launch of a Tribal Cultural Centre at Mwya village in Deed, Lower Subansiri district, on December 17, 2021, said that “indigenous people should preserve their cultural identity passed down by ancestors”. To do so, he said indigenous languages should be widely spoken and indigenous festivals celebrated with fervour.

“India is a secular state. Arunachal Pradesh is unique… as ours is a 100 per cent tribal State. It is up to us indigenous communities to think about ourselves,” Khandu said, and called for ‘brainstorming’ at community levels about why people were moving away from indigenous faiths.

Meanwhile, Dawe said that IFCSAP and other indigenous faith bodies would continue to follow up on their three key demands, a sure sign that the clamour over religion will continue to resound in the frontier State in coming days.

To quote Bengia Ajum again, “Religious tension has the potential to create social unrest in Arunachal Pradesh. In Arunachal, within a family, there are members who are Christians, indigenous faith followers, Hindu believers, and even atheists. In many houses, both the star (symbolising Christianity) and the Donyi Polo flag are hung together…. This unique secular identity should be maintained.”

The Crux

• There is a growing movement in Arunachal Pradesh that wants to revoke the Scheduled Tribes (ST) certificate issued to anyone who has converted to another religion. The drive is aimed at tribal people who have embraced Christianity. Christians constitute 30.26 per cent of the population.
• Hindus are the second largest group in the State, accounting for 29.04 per cent of the total population of 13.84 lakh. 
• The RSS has been playing a major role in influencing the State’s indigenous faith believers to institutionalise and document their belief systems in order to check conversions to Christianity. 
• The Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh (IFCSAP has three key demands—implementation of the anti-conversion law; delisting of converted tribals from the list of Scheduled Tribes; and renaming the existing Department of Indigenous Affairs into the Department of Indigenous Faith and Cultural Affairs.
• The Donyi Polo Cultural and Charitable Trust (DPCCT) has set up educational institutions called Nyubu Nyvgam Yerko (NNY) modelled on the gurukul system which impart indigenous faith education.