Why Adivasis in Jharkhand are agitating over MS Dhoni’s favourite temple

At around 6.30 am on September 5, a group of Adivasis from Deori village in Jharkhand’s Ranchi district locked the gates of the famous Deori Maa mandir for a few hours. They said this was necessary because they had planned a meeting to discuss disputes pertaining to the temple, known as Deori Diri in Mundari, the language of the local Munda Adivasis.

“We had kept a gram sabha meeting later that day and we wanted local shopkeepers and devotees to attend, so we locked the main gate of the temple,” said Kiran Munda who was among the Adivasis.

But the move drew the ire of local Hindu groups, who asked the police and administration to intervene. A few hours later, authorities broke the lock and devotees resumed worship inside the temple. Still irate, the Hindu groups demanded that those involved in locking up the temple be arrested. They called for a bandh in Tamar block, where the village is located, and the neighbouring Bundu block.

The Adivasis insisted that they had no malintent. “We had called the meeting because there has always been confusion about the control of Deori Diri and the administration needs to make things clear,” said Manik Singh Sardar, a community leader of the Adivasi Bhumij Munda Chuar Sangam.

While the temple draws large numbers of Hindu worshippers today, Adivasi locals explained that earlier, it had a distinctly different identity. “Before Deori mandir there was Deori Diri,” said Ram Singh Munda, an Adivasi pahan, or priest, of the temple, whose family has for many generations been working as pahans at the shrine. “It used to be a marai sthal – a sacred, open place for Adivasis.”

Sardar, the community leader, added, “Our intention was not to stop anybody from entering the temple.”

On September 8, the police arrested two locals, Radhakrishna Munda and Purnchandra Munda. They also registered a first-information report against 17 locals and 100 unnamed people for offences such as rioting, unlawful assembly and promoting enmity between different groups. On October 4, the two were released on bail.

Though the flare-up of the conflict over the temple was localised, it is in fact revealing of a deeper tension in the region between Adivasi and non-Adivasi communities, over questions of land, identity and culture.

This was evident at a rally held on September 29 at the Torang ground, a few kilometres from Deori, where Adivasi groups gathered from across the state in support of Deori’s Adivasis’ right over the temple.

Many speakers who took the stage ended their speeches with the declaration that Adivasis are not Hindus. Sarna dharma leader Bandhan Tigga said that the conflict was linked to the fight for a distinct Sarna religious code for Adivasis. “The RSS wants to turn Adivasis into Hindus,” he said, referring to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party. “But our customs and lifestyles are very different from Hindus. They worship idols while we worship nature.”

Tigga noted that other than Deori, there were several other shrines in Jharkhand that were sites of contesting claims between Sarna and other communities, such as the Pahadi mandir in Ranchi, the Parasnath shrine in Giridih and Murhad shrine in Bero.

Scroll phoned and emailed officials of the local administration to seek their responses to the allegations that they were supporting Hindus over Adivasis in the dispute over the site. This story will be update if they respond.

A decades-old conflict

Deori Diri – “diri” means stone in Mundari – is located around 60 km from the state’s capital Ranchi, on the highway that connects it to Jamshedpur. Thousands visit it each year, including MS Dhoni, the former Indian team cricket captain who played a role in popularising it. “In 2011, the Indian cricket team won the World Cup and many people believe it happened because Dhoni prayed for it at the Deori,” said Sardar.

According to local lore, until a century ago, the temple’s inner sanctum only had a stone, or deori, which Adivasis worshipped. But the nature of the temple began to undergo a change after one particular Hindu king of the Tamar region decided that he wanted to worship at the site, and brought in a Brahmin priest, or panda. After this, Hindus began frequenting the temple, and the stone was carved into a 16-armed statue of the goddess Durga, the idol that all visitors worship even today.

Over time, conflict sprung up between the groups. Sandip Munda, a member of the Deori gram sabha, said that this conflict has been playing out for decades. “I remember attending a demonstration about this issue with my father when I was a little child some 30-40 years ago,” he said.

For some time, the administration sought to defuse tensions by allocating different times to different groups. In an interview to the news portal Loktantra19, Sitaram Bari, who was the circle officer of Tamar in 1984, recounted that he issued an order that permitted pandas to visit the temple only on Tuesday. However, over time the number of pandas increased and they began worshipping at the site alongside the pahans.

“Ever since Dhoni popularised the temple, the number of Hindu devotees also increased and they far outnumber Adivasis since they have more wealth and resources to visit the temple regularly,” said Loktantra19 journalist Sunita Munda, who is based in Ranchi and has tracked the conflict closely for several years.

The traditional land-owning system

Many locals say that this shift was an infringement of Adivasis’ rights over the land. They claim that the site belongs to Adivasis and falls under the Mundari khuntkatti land system, which provides joint ownership of land to those who first cleared specific tracts to make them cultivable. This land is passed on to their descendants.

Locals have records from a land survey in 1906, which state that the land falls under khuntkatti ownership. However, the same land survey also states the land that the temple stands on was registered under the name of Chamru Panda, a Hindu priest who worked at the temple. In a later land survey in 1932, only Chamru Panda’s registration is mentioned.

“The 1906 land records clearly show that this is khuntkhatti land, but the land was also registered under a panda’s name,” Sardar said.

He noted that the Chotanagpur Tenancy Acy was passed in 1908 – the law, enacted by the British as a response to Birsa Munda’s rebellion, bars the sale of tribal land to non-tribals as a way to safeguard the land of tribal people. It remains in force across Jharkhand, except in the Santal Pargana division which has separate laws that serve the same purpose.

“Adivasis want to know, if khuntkhatti land is non-transferable, then on what basis was the land registered under the panda’s name?” Sardar said.

In 2021, the descendants of those who first held khuntkatti rights challenged the panda’s original claim to this land at the Jharkhand High Court, which passed on the matter for resolution to Ranchi’s deputy commissioner. In 2023, the deputy commissioner issued an order rejecting the petitioners’ challenge and stating they were free to approach a higher court in the matter.

Meanwhile, in 2020, the administration set up a trust that now manages the temple’s operations. But Sardar argued that this move was in violation of laws meant to safeguard tribal rights. He argued that the trust should not have been formed without the local gram sabha’s consent, since the area falls under the fifth schedule. As per the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, which the parliament enacted in 1996, gram sabhas of areas under the fifth schedule have the power to take decisions on matters of land management.

Local Adivasis allege that the administration has violated these rights. Kiran Munda a resident of Deori, alleged that sometime in late 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, members of the local administration approached Adivasi locals and asked for the keys to the temple. “We told them that we would have a gram sabha meeting to discuss the matter and then give it to them,” she said.

Then, she alleged, these individuals gained control of the premises in an underhanded manner. “They asked to be let into the temple which we did,” she said. “After that they closed the entrance, removed the money from the donation box, broke our lock and installed their own lock.”

To understand the perspectives of the Hindus in the conflict, Scroll phoned Narsingh Panda, a Hindu priest who works at Deori and is also a member of the trust formed to manage the temple. “The land of Deori temple was gifted to my ancestor Chamru Panda by the king of Tamar,” he said. “The land around the temple is khuntkhatti land and it belongs to the Mundas but the temple land is ours.”

Narsingh claimed that “Hindu priests have been worshipping there since centuries, the pahans came much later”. As for the protests, he said that the Adivasis claim over the temple land had been dismissed by both the Jharkhand High Court and the district commissioner.

Money and development

The trust that runs the temple was formed in October 2020, as the dispute over it intensified. The trust included members of the district administration and police, political representatives of Tamar and a few locals. Some reports suggested that the move was unrelated to the dispute between the communities. The circle officer of Tamar told the Times of India that the administration had intervened “in the management of the temple’s affairs following several complaints of financial irregularities”.

Local Adivasis have opposed the trust since its establishment. “Devotees come from far away and donate generously to the temple, the local administration got greedy for the money which comes into the donation box,” said Ram Singh Munda, a pahan. “The trust was set up to wrest control from us Adivasis so that the administration can chase away Adivasis and turn the temple into a big business.”

As indication of this, locals noted that after it was formed, the trust painted a rate chart near the entrance of the temple that displayed fixed rates for various services. For instance, a puja for a vehicle with six or more wheels costs Rs 500, a wedding ceremony costs Rs 1,150 and Rs 200 gives visitors faster entry to the temple.

Locals strongly opposed this move. “The rates should not be fixed,” said Sandeep Munda, a resident of Deori. “By doing this, they are turning holy place into a site of business.”

Other plans have also made locals wary. In March this year, when Champai Soren was the chief minister of Jharkhand, the state government declared that it would allot just under Rs 9 crore for the beautification of the temple. The plans include the construction of 30 shops, an administrative block, a lunch hall, a marriage hall and a VIP guest house.

Locals who run establishments in the vicinity of the temple fear that they will be displaced when the beautification of the site begins. “The local administration tried to hand us notices to close our shops, but we refused to take them,” said Kiran. “We are under a lot of pressure from them. Whenever we try to assemble and conduct meetings they come and threaten us.”

Opposition to the moves

At the September 29 rally, Ram Singh Munda said, “We don’t want the trust here, the gram sabha should be allowed to manage the temple,” Activists said that they will continue holding rallies and demonstrations until their demands are met.

On both September 8 and September 9, locals from Deori travelled to Ranchi to meet Chief Minister Hemant Soren at his residence. Though they had arranged the meetings ahead of time with his team, Soren did not meet the locals on either day.

Disappointed with the lack of a response from the government, on October 1, Adivasi activists gathered at Ranchi’s Albert Ekka chowk and burnt puppets of Soren and Tamar MLA Vikas Singh Munda. Scroll emailed Soren seeking a response to these claims – this story will be updated if he responds.

Some locals in Deori argue that the conflict over Deori Diri is solely about land and its ownership and not religion. “We aren’t stopping anyone from coming to the temple on the basis of faith,” said Sardar. “Everyone is allowed to come to Deori. We are not even against the development of the temple, but the funds should come to the gram sabha and they should manage the operations.”

But others believe that the problem runs deeper, and that the set-up of the trust and the takeover of the site is an attempt to erase the Munda Adivasi claims over the site and render it a Hindu temple alone. “Adivasis are not Hindus, and this fight is part of the fight for the recognition of the Sarna identity,” said Sandeep Munda.

Sunita Munda described the problem as “a religious conflict” and noted that it was growing more intense. “In my initial interviews, people complained about how the site has been encroached over the years, and how their faith had been harmed,” she said. “But now people are getting scared of being arrested by the administration.”

Locals and activists are considering approaching the Supreme Court over the matter. “Ours is a just and constitutional fight and we will continue to pursue the matter in court,” said Sardar. However, others seemed skeptical of their chances. “We are fighting the legal battle with documents,” Sandeep said. “But there has been no result so far because everywhere it is the other party’s people who are in power.”