Indian tribal people, including some who are now Christians, assembled in the national capital New Delhi to press their demand for a separate Sarna religion code in the upcoming census.
The followers of the Sarna religion are predominantly of tribal origin and claim to be nature worshippers. They have been demanding recognition for it as a distinct religion in India for decades. At present, the census has separate codes for only six religions: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism. While filling in these columns, a tribal person has to identify as one of these or tick against the column marked as “others” but cannot specify Sarna as a distinct and different religion.
Tribal representatives from the nine states, which are tribal dominated, are now gearing up for a mass agitation to highlight their demand,
On Dec. 7, nearly 500 tribal men and women in traditional attire sat on a fast and staged a sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar in the heart of New Delhi.
They later handed over a memorandum of their demands to the offices of the president, prime minister, federal ministers for home and tribal affairs, besides the registrar general and census commissioner of India.
“States, where tribal people are in majority or have sizable numbers, have been demanding a separate Sarna code but our demand is not been taken seriously,” Karma Oraon, convener of a tribal people’s organization named Rashtriya Adivasi Samaj Sarna Dharma Raksha Abhiyan, told.