Student protests continue in the eastern Indian Jharkhand state after the government renamed a college after a Hindu nationalist, a move church activists say was done to dismantle the identity of indigenous people.
The government move was “totally unacceptable and we condemn it,” said Bishop Vincent Barwa of Simdega, chairman of the Indian bishops’ office for tribal people.
The protest began after the government, run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), re-named the state’s pre-mier Ranchi College to Doctor Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University on April 17.
Mukherjee (1901–1953) was a Hindu who founded the nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951. Mukherjee is considered an ideologue of the pro-Hindu nationalist movement that was a precursor to the BJP.
With BJP in power in New Delhi and most states in northern India, Hindu groups have become emboldened and stepped up their action to establish a Hindu hegemony, ignoring the cultures and well being of tribal and Dalit people among them, their leaders allege.
Bp Barwa said people from elsewhere may not fully grasp the ramifications of the decision and consequences for the life and identify of the state’s tribal communities. The move pushes Hindu hegemony on people, “as they did not even consider changing the name to one of several tribal heroes who sacrificed their lives to protect indigenous land and identity,” said the bishop, who comes from the Oraon tribe.
