In the lead-up to the November 20 Maharashtra Assembly election, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has once again stirred the political pot with his assertion at a rally in tribal-dominated Nandurbar that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) allegedly insults India’s tribal communities by referring to them as ‘Vanvasi’ rather than ‘Adivasi.’ The distinction, while seemingly semantic, reveals much about the Congress party’s identity politics and its ongoing struggle to recapture its former relevance.
Gandhi further argued that such terminology is part of a wider effort to undermine the dignity of tribals, whom he claims the BJP fails to treat with the respect they deserve. This debate over terminology obscures more substantive issues at hand, namely, the realpolitik of caste-based appeals and the way they shape India’s political landscape. The Constitution of India, after all, makes no reference to ‘Adivasi’ instead using the official term Scheduled Tribes or ‘Anusuchit Janjati.’
The fixation on these terms, largely meaningless in fact echoes the Congress’ long-standing tendency to play identity politics for electoral gain. Rahul Gandhi has, over time, cultivated a reputation for provocative and divisive rhetoric, which he seemingly wields as a strategy to rouse caste-based tensions within India’s complex social fabric.
For years, Congress has leveraged the socio-economic grievances of Dalits, tribals, and backward classes to build a vote-bank that depends on the fragmentation of India’s social fabric. Gandhi’s continued focus on this issue seems designed not to resolve any real grievance, but to stoke divisions. After all, what significance does this distinction truly carry when both terms reflect the same social realities for India’s tribals?
This posture of ‘tribal defender’ is especially rich coming from Gandhi, given his own background. Rahul Gandhi, after all, is of Italian parentage - his mother, Sonia Gandhi, hails from a family of Italian nobility, and his paternal grandfather was a prominent European diplomat. By any stretch, he is far removed from the tribal communities he claims to champion. Does he really believe that someone with no personal ties to India’s tribal populations can claim to be their saviour?
Gandhi’s emphasis on ‘indigenous’ populations overlooks the complex history of India’s tribal communities. The Aryan Invasion theory, once widely accepted, has been debunked by a number of modern historians and geneticists, who have shown that India’s population evolved over millennia without a distinct ‘invasion.’ Persisting with the ‘indigenous vs. foreign’ narrative is not only historically flawed but a divisive strategy that risks alienating broad segments of India’s diverse population. Gandhi’s focus on caste politics appears designed to fracture the Hindu vote and win back Dalits, tribals, and backward classes. In the end, debates like ‘Vanvasi’ vs. ‘Adivasi’ are storms-in-a-teacup, with Gandhi’s fixation on it distracting from the real economic and social issues facing marginalized communities. Ultimately, this reliance on identity politics underscores the Congress’s failure to craft a unifying narrative for India’s future.
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