How BJP made a dispute between an Adivasi and a Muslim family an election issue in Jharkhand

Gaibathan is a tranquil village of about 1,400 people in Jharkhand’s Pakur district. Since July, it has been ground zero of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s infiltration narrative, which is the mainstay of its election campaign in the ongoing state Assembly polls.

The party, which is seeking to dislodge the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government, has claimed that unchecked Muslim infiltration from Bangladesh under the JMM has put Adivasi land and identity at risk.

The BJP campaign, which took shape earlier this year, received a boost in July when an old land dispute between an Adivasi and a Muslim family living in Gaibathan flared up again. The party’s leaders projected the clash as evidence that the Hemant Soren-led government was allowing Muslims to forcibly take over Adivasi land in the Santal Pargana, the northeastern region of the state, which has six districts including Pakur.

Months later, with elections underway, Scroll travelled to Gaibathan, which is part of the Maheshpur constituency, to gauge the electoral impact of the events of July.

An old dispute

Gaibathan village has a mixed population, with Adivasis outnumbering non-Adivasi Hindus and Muslims, according to a report by the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, a coalition of progressive organisations in the state.

However, in one of the four tolas or hamlets in the village, there are about 100 Muslim families and four Adivasi families.

It is in this hamlet that a land dispute broke out more than 25 years ago. A villager named Safaruddin Ansari claimed that his father had purchased a plot of land from another resident, Parmeshwar Hembrom. However, Hembrom denied that any such sale had taken place. The two fought the matter in court, which ruled in Hembrom’s favour in 2015.

This year, when Hembrom’s family began to construct a new structure on the plot adjacent to the mud house where they lived, Ansari’s family took objection and broke down a scaffold on July 18. This led to a violent fight between the two families.

Although both sides sustained injuries, the Adivasi family took a greater knock, according to the fact-finding report by the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha.

BJP leader Babulal Marandi was quick to share a video about the incident on social media, claiming that Bangladeshi infiltrators had seized the land from Adivasis. Marandi also tweeted a video from his visit to the village on July 31, in which he said that the district administration had failed to hold up the land rights of the Adivasis, either because the Hemant Soren government was weak or because it was seeking to appease the Muslim vote bank.

On August 1, Assam’s chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, one of BJP’s campaign managers in Jharkhand, also visited the site. He reiterated the claim that JMM was sheltering Bangladeshi infiltrators, and asked whether Hemant Soren was an Adivasi only when it came to asking for votes and not for protecting Adivasi rights.

But the dispute in Gaibathan had no connection to Bangladeshi infiltration, the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, pointed out. During its fact-finding visit to the village in August, it found that both the families – the Ansaris and the Hembroms – held khatian, or land records, from 1932, which proved they are both native to the region.

“BJP leaders tried to give a communal shade to a local land dispute by linking it to Bangladeshi infiltration,” said their report on the matter.

The student protest

Even though the BJP’s central claim was unfounded, the matter gained considerable attention. In the town of Pakur, 30 km away, Adivasi students at KKM college announced plans to hold a demonstration in support of the aggrieved Adivasi family on July 27.

On the night of July 26, however, around 150 policemen entered the college’s student hostel, stating that they were doing so in connection with a different case of kidnapping. Violence broke out between the students and policemen, in which students were beaten and many were hospitalised, while some policemen were also injured.

“The police came into the hostel to stop us from protesting over what happened at Gaibathan,” said student leader Jivan Baskey from KKM college. After the incident, local BJP leaders Lobin Hembrom and Sita Soren, as well Assam CM Himanta Sarma, visited the students.

Some activists, however, alleged that the planned protest was politically motivated. “There are so many cases of land conflict that occur throughout Jharkhand,” activist Emiliya Hansda said. “The students have never protested against these cases before. They seem to have been manipulated in this particular case.”

Baskey confirmed to Scroll that the students had not held demonstrations against cases of land grabbing before this instance. He explained that Kamal Murmu, a student leader of the Adivasi Chhatra Sangh, had alerted the students to the Gaibathan case. While Murmu denied having any linkages to a political party, local activist Priyasheela Besra said that the Adivasi Chhatra Sangh has had a longstanding relationship with BJP leader Lobin Hembrom.

Although the BJP had portrayed the Gaibathan conflict as one pertaining to infiltration by Bangladeshis, Baskey told Scroll that the students were simply seeking to protest against an Adivasi family’s land being grabbed.

He added that he had not seen any evidence of infiltration in the region.

A village decides

When Scroll visited Gaibathaan on November 14, we found that the BJP had successfully won the Adivasi family’s support by offering it financial assistance in the dispute.

Hopni Murmu, Parmeshwar’s wife, said that Marandi’s team had given them Rs 1 lakh for medical treatment after the assault and Rs 25,000 as funds towards the construction of the house.

“We used to vote for the JMM before this but they did nothing to help us out in the matter, so we will vote for those who helped us this time – the BJP,” Hopni said.

A few weeks after the incident, on August 18, Chief Minister Hemant Soren launched the Maiya Samman Yojana from Gaibathan village. The JMM is hopeful that the scheme, which provides Rs 1,000 per month to women between the ages of 21 to 50 year, will help it win over women voters.

The choice of Gaibathan as the launch village was not a coincidence. “After that incident [in July], we felt it was necessary for the Chief Minister’s presence to be felt there,” said a consultant working with the JMM.

A JMM party spokesperson, however, refuted such a strategy. “The BJP’s infiltrator narrative has been proven false on the ground. We had to launch the scheme from somewhere and we happened to choose Pakur,” said Dr Tanuj Khatri.

Nonetheless, the attempt did not work – Parmeshwar’s family was specially invited to attend the event, but they chose not to attend. “Even when he arrived, we saw that the Chief Minister was surrounded by Muslim supporters. We did not feel like going,” said Hopni.

As of now, the family has put up the scaffolding again – Hopni explained that they are building a mud house since the family does not have enough money to build a cement house.

Their moment in the media limelight has left the family’s life largely unchanged – they continue to rely on a mud stove for cooking, and members have to walk thrice a day to the nearest tank to fill up water for their daily use.

In the same hamlet, Muslim residents said they were happy with the JMM-led government. “Soren was set back by the pandemic and imprisonment, even then he did good work for the poor by waiving off electricity bills and implementing the Maiya Samman Yojana,” said local farmer Kamaluddin Ansari.

Muslim women said the fight between the two families had not caused any disharmony in the village. “There is brotherhood between the Muslims and Adivasis here,” said Hameeda Biwi. “What happened between those families was a one-off incident.”

Kamaluddin Ansari said, “It was a small matter but the BJP inflated it to make it a big election issue. There are no Bangladeshis here. We all have khatiani documents to show that we are natives.”

In the Adivasi tola of the village, Adivasi voters also said they had not been particularly influenced by the dispute. “The land grab incident didn’t have anything to do with us,” said Vimal Tudu, an Adivasi farmer.

But he had a less favourable view of the government – while it had provided some schemes to the village, his own observations suggested that the Muslim tola received them faster.

“We previously voted for the JMM,” Tudu said. “This time Daud Marandi, who is standing from the Samajwadi Party, had come to visit us recently. We are yet to decide whom to vote for.”

The wider impact

The Samajwadi Party is not seen as a major player in the Maheshpur constituency, which is reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Tribes. The contest here is largely between the JMM’s incumbent MLA Stephen Marandi and the BJP’s Navneet Hembrom.

However, in the neighbouring Pakur constituency, the fight is triangular – Nishat Alam of the Indian National Congress, an ally of the JMM, is pitted against Azhar Islam of the All Jharkhand Students Union Party, an ally of the BJP, and Aquil Akhtar from the Samajwadi Party. Nishat Alam is the wife of former MLA and minister Alamgir Alam who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in June this year in a money laundering case.

The JMM-Congress alliance has been traditionally strong in the Santal Pargana, which elects 18 representatives to the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly. The BJP’s infiltration narrative, political observers say, is aimed at driving a wedge between the alliance’s Adivasi and Muslim supporters.

On the campus of KKM college in Pakur, Baskey said students supported different political parties. A first time voter, he himself had decided to vote for the BJP ally – but not for reasons linked to its infiltration narrative.

“They were the first to show us support, the state government did nothing for us,” he said.

Then, pointing to the decrepit condition of the college buildings, he said, “Look at the state of the college, there is no night guard, we have to cook our own meals and so many posts for teachers are vacant. Things might improve if the BJP comes to power,” he said.