There are several issues behind us choosing Jaipal Singh Munda as topic for our presentation. Every time the history behind any statutory act or law related to tribal issue is read, Jaipal Singh's constituent assembly debate is definitely referred as one of the landmarks.

So to understand Jaipal Singh, it is very important for anyone to read and understand the constituent assembly debates. The statement made by Singh in the opening debate creates an understanding about how the issues of tribes were different from the project undertaken by the assembly. However, for the greater task of nation building, the tribal representatives joined hands with everyone in favour of the proposal presented by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

When we see the stand of Nehru as a person who wants to make a nation with his romanticised approach, as can be understood by his writings in the Discovery of India where he portray India as nation with great history, and compare it with the points raised by Jaipal Singh Munda in constituent assembly debate where he invokes the history of tribal people to say that they existed much before the Aryan invasion. To prove this he again quotes from Discovery of India so as to ensure that it is not challenged on flimsy grounds.

However, what we see later is that Nehru and others, in their zeal of their nation building project, forgets the promise of nation integration given by him to the tribals and thereby resorting to assimilative laws. We can see this approach of Nehru in his Panchsheel principle too and this has also been observed by Verrier Elwin in his book, The Philosophy of NEFA

We can thus see this as an instance of how concept of nationalism intervened in paradigm of ethnicity and sovereignty, without understanding the will of the people. Jaipal Singh, who was one of the strongest voices for tribal rights on the basis of their ethnicity, probably realised this much earlier and therefore did move to the politics of ethno-regionalism.

The primary reason for Jaipal Singh to realise that the ethnic and identity politics cannot get social justice for the tribals across India was the fact that the forests had been infiltrated by “dikus”, thus effectively turning the majority tribals into minority. His fears were further strengthened when the States Reorganisation Commission turned down their request for a Jharkhand state on the basis of there not being can linguistic similarity across the demography and therefore any cohesion.

Therefore on the basis of ethnoregional politics, Singh tried to bring people living in a specific geographical area (Chota-Nagpur) together for the demand of a separate state. This was seen as a climb-down from his earlier position where Santhals, Ho and other tribes were to group together so as to demand their own rule (“Abua Dishum, Abua Raaj).

This step also alienated lot of his colleagues who grew suspicious of his decision and ultimately led to the merger-cum-disintegration of the Jharkhand Party.

This strategy was effectively followed by tribal leader Shibu Soren, who is seen as a carrying his legacy forward by using the formula of social engineering and offering non-tribals assembly seats under the flag of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. Therefore, while the symbolism is

In one way, Jaipal was prescient in identifying the challenges separate identity of different tribes posed in coming together for the purpose of governance under the India constitution.

References:-

1.Shah,Alpa,Labour of Love: Seasonal migration from Jharkhand to the brick kilns of other states in India,SAGE,2006.

2.Basu,Ipsita,The politics of Recognition and Redistribution :Development and Tribal identity politics and distributive justice in India’s Jharkhand, Institute of social study, The Hague

3.Damodaran, Vinita, The politics of marginality and identity construction of indignity in Chhota Nagpur, Post Colonial Studies, 2014.

4. Nehru, J.L., Discovery of India,

5,M.S.,Bedi ,Nehru and tribal development policy, anthropology of development, 1992.