Ranchi, Jharkhand: The gathering darkness could not hide the immensity of the old peepal tree under which 50-year-old Meena Devi led the chorus of a Sarna prayer. A deeply meditative and primeval hymn of the Sarna faith followed by nearly 5 million people from indigenous communities, most of them in the central Indian state of Jharkhand, the hymn was a prayer offered to the giant tree.
In Purio, a hamlet of the Oraon tribal community located about 30 km west of Jharkhand’s capital, male singers’ baritones joined Meena Devi’s razor-sharp wailing tone as white and red Sarna flags, representing purity and rebellion, fluttered in the precinct protected by wire-fencing, the Sarna Sthal or sacred grove.
Claimed to have been orally passed down from their forefathers and rendered in the Oraon language Kurukh, the hymn, Meena Devi explained, invoked all flora and fauna, sought forgiveness for human transgressions against nature, and thanked the “nature god” for jal, jangal and jameen (water, forests and land).
Belying the contemplative character of the evening’s ritual, the nature-worshipping faith of Jharkhand’s indigenous communities has, in recent years, created a deep schism in Jharkhand society and politics. The demand for recognition of the Sarna religion in the Census Of India, after the Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh categories, has pitted the worship of nature against idolatry, tribal identity politics against majoritarian Hindutva.
Their common tradition of worshipping sacred groves and nature in general has brought Jharkhand’s main tribal communities, including the Santhal, Oraon, Munda and Ho, which together account for over 75 % of the population of the state’s 32 tribal groups, closer to the cause of a distinct Sarna religion enumerated in the Census. In November 2020, the Jharkhand legislative assembly, led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in its previous term, passed a unanimous resolution seeking enactment of the Sarna Adivasi Dharma Code Bill, or the Sarna code for short.
Nearly five million Indian tribals chose to register themselves as Sarna in the 2011 Census. Over 83% of these, or 4.1 million, were from Jharkhand, the rest being from states like West Bengal and Assam.
The rise in Sarna population is widely felt to have come at the cost of Hindu numbers in Jharkhand, under which non-Christian Adivasis would often be included by census enumerators. While many feel that the decades-old project undertaking a Hinduisation of tribals in Jharkhand, by Hindutva forces led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is at risk, the parent organisation of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has remained abreast of the threat.
“The Sarna issue is a narrative introduced to divide the Hindu vote,” Ritesh Kashyap, prachar pramukh (publicity chief) of the RSS in Jharkhand, told Article 14. “Unless the BJP manages to break the narrative, it will become a bigger factor in the future.”
Rallying Tribals Around Faith
With a slogan of ‘Abki janaganana, do crore Sarna’ (In the next census, two crore Sarna), one of the biggest Sarna advocacy organisations, the Raji Padha Sarna Prarthana Sabha (RPSPS), was gearing up in March 2025 for the three-day Sarhul festival in the first week of April. Across Jharkhand’s tribal regions, Sarhul is a popular celebration of the spring season and new year.
This followed a comprehensive Ranchi bandh on 22 March enforced by over 50 tribal organisations over the issue of a proposed flyover obstructing access to a Sarna sthal.
The slogan at the Sarhul festival, the RPSPS’s head Bandhan Tigga said, would be on every banner. It underlined their strategy, which includes creating wider awareness among the tribal masses using speeches, pamphlets, WhatsApp messaging and prayer meetings.
“Post Sarhul, we have sought a meeting with the Union home minister to press for the recognition of the Sarna religion,” said Tigga. Depending on the outcome, they would consider intensifying their agitation, he added. Tigga, widely regarded as a Sarna guru, has also been busy preaching and creating awareness about the Sarna religion among tribal communities in West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat.
Tigga’s views were echoed by Sonaram Murmu, central convenor of another influential pressure group, the Adivasi Sengel Abhiyan, translated as Adivasi empowerment campaign. Sonaram Murmu believes the Sarna count will increase four times in the forthcoming census from the current 4.9 million, thanks to the protracted awareness campaigns his organisation has run.
While doing so, the pro-Sarna entity has also focussed on eradicating social ills afflicting tribal society—alcoholism, superstition, witchcraft, selling votes for money, among others. “This is part of a wider campaign to better tribal society,” Sonaram Murmu said. “We had earlier led agitations demanding Sarna recognition. This time, we want to be better prepared when a mass movement is launched.”
Senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Ajay Linda, currently posted as deputy inspector general (home guards and fire services), said agitations demanding the Sarna Code had previously caused shutdowns and road and railway blockades in Jharkhand. “If their demand is not granted, there is likelihood that a call will be given among Adivasis in Jharkhand to boycott the Census enumeration,” Ajay Linda told Article 14. “This is the information we are getting.”
Implications Of An Election Issue
The issue of a separate religious category for Adivasi communities has had ramifications in the state’s electoral politics.
In the November 2024 Jharkhand assembly elections, the pro-Sarna JMM, the Congress and other parties in the INDIA bloc won 27 of the 28 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates. Formal recognition for the Sarna religion and the Sarna Code were a major campaign issue in most of these constituencies.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had won 11 ST seats in the 2014 assembly polls, was reduced to just one win in ST-reserved seats in 2024, a 10-year period that coincided with heightened awareness of and agitations for the Sarna code.
Earlier, in the summer of 2024, the INDIA bloc won all five ST-reserved Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand, including three held by the BJP. Again, espousing the Sarna cause was widely noted by political experts to be one of the reasons for the INDIA bloc candidates’ victories.
JMM general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said former JMM chief minister Champai Soren would speak about Sarna code at every Lok Sabha campaign meeting. After the tribal leader’s defection to the BJP in August 2024, he appeared to go silent on the subject.
“From the feedback I’m getting, he will lose,” Bhattacharya, who wore a green kurta approximating the colour of JMM’s flag, told Article 14 at a Ranchi hotel on polling day for the first phase of the assembly elections in November 2024. Champai Soren eventually won, but that was BJP’s only win among the state’s 28 seats reserved for ST candidates.
In terms of electoral optics, on 15 November, five days ahead of first phase’s polling and in the heat of campaigning, prime minister Narendra Modi unveiled development projects worth Rs 66,400 million, many of them focused on tribal welfare, on the 150th birth anniversary of revered tribal leader Birsa Munda.
Birsa Munda’s birthday is also Jharkhand foundation day, and Modi’s planned visit in 2023 to the former’s birthplace in Khunti district, about 50 km south of state capital Ranchi, was marred by threats of self-immolation by two tribal activists demanding implementation of the Sarna code. The activists belonged to the Adivasi Sengel Abhiyan, the pressure group headed by Salkhan Murmu, which has led Sarna-related agitations in recent years.
A former BJP Parliamentarian from Mayurbhanj in northern Odisha, Salkhan Murmu reportedly fell out with the party on the issue of recognition for the tribal religion and language. “As long as the BJP-RSS government is in power they will not allow Sarna to be recognised,” Salkhan Murmu told Article 14 over a phone call.
The same day, 15 November, Hemant Soren was seen in Lugu Buru in eastern Jharkhand’s Bokaro district, attending the annual International Sarna Dharma Mahasammelan. The Lugu Buru hill holds spiritual and religious significance for Santhals. Addressing aggrieved tribals at the International Santhal Sarna Dharma Mahasammelan while the prime minister announced a slew of development schemes, Soren said he would not allow a hydel project proposed by the state-run Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) at the sacred Lugu Buru hill, once again underlining the primacy of nature worship in Jharkhand’s indigenous life.
Most Parties Support The Sarna Code
In the November 2024 Assembly election to the Jharkhand legislative assembly, Barring the BJP, all other major Jharkhand political parties such as the JMM, Congress and even the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), which is a coalition partner of the BJP, had included in their election manifesto a promise to implement the Sarna code.
“Sarna dharam (religion) has been a marker of Adivasi identity since the time India became independent. It will remain an important issue till the demand for recognition is met,” said Basant Soren, JMM’s winning candidate from the ST-reserved Dumka constituency in eastern Jharkhand and brother of current chief minister Hemant Soren. Jharkhand, which became a separate state in 2000 after decades of struggle pivoted around the need for an Adivasi homeland in India, currently has a 26% tribal population.
The BJP’s spokesperson in Jharkhand, Pratul Shah Deo, shied away from commenting on the issue. The party’s Rajya Sabha member and former state president Deepak Prakash said there was “no confusion about BJP’s stand on Sarna,” but did not explain further.
Former CM and Union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda did not reply to calls or requests on his answering machine.
“Even though our coalition partner BJP did not include it in their manifesto for their own reasons, we did, since Sarna connects with the issue of tribal identity,” said Parwaz Khan, central media in-charge of the AJSU. He said had the NDA coalition come to power in Jharkhand, the AJSU would have definitely pressed for inclusion of the Sarna code implementation in the common minimum programme.
Election results that were declared in Jharkhand on 23 November found the NDA winning only 24 seats. The INDIA bloc won 56 seats in the 81-member assembly. The AJSU lost from both the ST-reserved seats it contested.
The state’s ruling JMM party has led the demand for recognition of the Adivasi religion by assigning a separate Sarna code in the forthcoming Census.
In 2020, the previous Hemant Soren-helmed and JMM-led state government passed a resolution in the Jharkhand assembly demanding the inclusion of the Sarna code in the Census and forwarded it to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government for consideration. Hemant Soren later followed it up by writing to prime minister Modi in 2023.
The central government and India’s ruling BJP have remained non-committal with Union minister for home affairs Amit Shah being the only senior leader to have commented. Reportedly pressed for a reply by a journalist, Shah said that if elected to power in Jharkhand, the BJP would deliberate on a separate Sarna code for tribals.
‘A Conspiracy By Christians’
The BJP’s ideological backbone, the RSS,and its affiliate organisations have on separate occasions denounced the growing and emotive demand for a Sarna religion code, calling it a conspiracy by Christian evangelists, while also claiming that all tribals in India are Hindus.
Meanwhile, church heads in Jharkhand, under the banner of the Ranchi Catholic Archdiocese, in 2020 wrote to chief minister Hemant Soren supporting the demand for a separate Sarna religion code for tribals.
In a significant upping of the ante, Hemant Soren, during his earlier term as Jharkhand CM, had mentioned during a lecture at Harvard University in 2021 that Adivasis “were never Hindus and never will be”. The community, he had said, are worshippers of nature and have a separate set of customs and practices. He further expressed concern that the central government has now removed the ‘others’ option (in the forthcoming Census), whereby an Adivasi will be compelled to pick from only the six mainstream religions, a fear among many in Jharkhand.
“Where will the Adivasis go?” Soren had wondered at the Harvard event.
In his September 2023 letter to the prime minister requesting the inclusion of Sarna in the census, Soren also highlighted the diminishing population of tribals in Jharkhand from 38% eight decades ago to 26% now.
“By articulating a jumla (idiomatic expression), one can get votes. Sarna is one such jumla,” asserted Kashyap, the RSS prachar pramukh. He said implementing the Sarna code in the census doesn’t seem possible because if Jharkhand tribals get it, Adivasis in states such as Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra too would demand a separate religion.
“Adivasi matlaab Adivasi hota hai (an Adivasi is an Adivasi),” he added. “You can’t have different codes for each.” Kashyap reiterated the Sangh Parivar line. “By default, all Adivasis are Hindu.”
He said the Sangh considers Adivasis as “true Sanatanis”. Hindu society accepts different sects such as Shaivites, Shaktas and Vaishnavs, and many who don’t worship idols and instead revere trees, hills or rocks, he said.
Another senior RSS functionary, requesting anonymity, said the Sarna issue was being raised merely for political benefit and was a “bhram (misconception)” in the minds of tribals that needed to be broken.
Social Reform And The Sarna Code
Recently, Ajay Linda, a 2008-batch IPS officer, represented Jharkhand after being selected by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) at a ministry of home affairs (MHA) conference on tribal issues. In the presence of Amit Shah, Linda gave a presentation on Sarna. According to Linda, the home minister listened without commenting while he suggested an amicable solution involving all stakeholders as “otherwise, in the future, the Sarna issue will only aggravate”.
Ajay Linda is a good person to talk to about the past as well.
While worshipping nature is a tradition they trace back to their ancestors, tribal leaders like Jaipal Singh Munda (1903-1970) and Kartik Oraon (1924-1981) laid the groundwork for identity-based tribal politics and awareness about the Sarna religion in the first few decades after India’s Independence.
Having achieved their long-standing demand for a separate state in 2000, the Sarna issue gained momentum in Jharkhand subsequently.
Linda’s elder brother, Chamra Linda, now minister for scheduled tribes and castes in the Jharkhand government, won the election from Bishunpur in western Jharkhand after “heavily canvassing for Sarna code inclusion”. Chamra Linda was previously leader of the Adivasi Chatra Sangh (ACS), popular among the indigenous student community and playing a vital role as a social reform organisation.
During the years following Jharkhand’s formation in 2000, the ACS created awareness about the Sarna faith, organised weekly Sarna prayer meetings, secured Sarna sthals, regularised a red and white dress code for adherents and popularised Sarna songs and the flag. Chamra Linda was unavailable for comments.
To understand Sarna, one has to understand tribal philosophy, said veteran tribal rights activist Sanjay Basu Mallick, sitting behind his office desk in Ranchi. In the tribal concept, there is no imagination of heaven and hell, rebirth, transmigration of the soul, unlike Abrahamic religions, he said.
The fundamental Sarna philosophy is a symbiotic relationship with nature. “It is opposed to an anthropocentric world where everything is for man to exploit and enjoy,” said Mallick, who was closely associated with the movement for Jharkhand’s statehood.
With the 4.9 million people registering as Sarna adherents in the 2011 census outnumbering Jains—one of the six mainstream religions—by 400,000, the demand gained further momentum and “massive political importance” in later years, said Ajay Linda, especially after the JMM-led Hemant Soren government came to power in 2019. Despite that, many in Jharkhand like Tigga and Sonaram Murmu think the JMM has merely milked the Sarna issue for electoral gains while rarely acting upon it at the ground level.
A Unifier Of Adivasi Identity
At the red and white colour-coded Sarna Hotel, a restaurant famed for its mutton rice meal, the young owner Peter Gari was born a Christian but identified himself as Sarna for the connection the faith has with nature. “Including Sarna faith in the census will not just be a recognition of our belief in the nature god, but also of our Adivasi identity,” he said.
Prem Soren from the Masaliya block of Dumka district said he was aware of nature worshipping since childhood but became aware of its nomenclature as the Sarna faith about a decade ago. His father and himself would tick the ‘Hindu’ box during previous censuses, but started identifying as Sarna from the 2011 census.
Prem Soren’s 20-year-old son is an active Sarna adherent. At Guruji Awas, the house of Shibu Soren in Dumka, from where Basant Soren ran his campaign, another JMM worker mentioned that while registering names for Hemant Soren government’s popular Maiya Samman Yojana, he had found that all Santhali women who were prospective beneficiaries had identified themselves as Sarna.
Dhena Hembrom from Dumka’s Tongra village is locally known as a Sarna guru, a role involving conducting Sarna initiation ceremonies, laying out rules of worship, and creating awareness among tribal villagers.
Hembrom claimed to have initiated hundreds into the Sarna faith after getting inspired by the sustained activism of Salkhan Murmu’s Adivasi Senghel Abhiyan.
Gunjal Ikir Munda, 34, fought the 2024 assembly election as an independent candidate, primarily to bring about “empowering social change” in tribal society. His father, the noted academic and a former Rajya Sabha member and vice-chancellor of Ranchi University, Ram Dayal Munda, had propounded the idea of an ‘Adi Dharam’ or a first religion to include other tribal groups in India who follow similar nature-worshipping traditions like the Sarna people.
The idea remained mostly on paper and intellectual discourse. In his native village Deori, 65 km from Ranchi, Munda rued that the Sarna issue has been exploited by all political parties for electoral gain. “It has been weaponised. What is missing is a true intellectual understanding of the issue,” said Gunjal Munda. “If implemented, the Sarna could instill pride in tribal society.”
Growing up, distinguished litterateur Mahadev Toppo knew for a long time that tribal people would be referred to as “mleccha” (impure outcasts) by caste Hindu society. “We have been seen as neither citizens nor even humans. Our self-esteem has been systemically crushed,” said Toppo. He thinks the indigenous religion stands out from Hinduism in its traditions of nature-worshipping, absence of idolatry, castelessness, non-belief in an afterlife, funeral rituals, among others. “Hinduism exploits, we cohabit with nature,” he said.
“See what mainstream society has done to the rivers, mountains, the air. Look at how everything is polluted,” said Toppo. The Sarna people, instead, worship, revere and protect everything natural, he continued. “It must be recognised not just in India but globally.”
(Shamik Bag is a Kolkata/Santiniketan-based independent journalist.)
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