A high school for hindutva

‘‘We were all asleep that night,’’ say Samson Marandi and Bhakta Marandi, ‘‘we didn’t hear anything.’’ Their faces are inscrutable and their eyes are dead. ‘‘We don’t know any Dara,’’ says Salge Marandi, ‘‘Graham dada used to come here for leprosy work. There is a lot of leprosy here. We don’t know anything about politics.’’

Their eyes drift away from the church, in the direction of another structure in a neighbouring village: the red-painted Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Kendujiani village. Looming out of the trees of tribal Orissa, like a giant red-painted deity in a hushed landscape, suddenly, unexpectedly: the RSS. Surrounding Manoharpur, half a dozen Saraswati Shishu Mandirs dot the verdant hills, busily converting hundreds of tribal Oriya boys into dedicated pracharaks.The RSS and VHP are marching through tribal Orissa.

Inside the Kendujiani Shishu Mandir, the school teems with life. Built ten years ago, there are giant murals of Golwalkar, Hegdewar and Savarkar on the whitewashed walls, as well as bright posters of tigers and lotus blossoms. The school provides education from nursery to Class X, after which students take the Orissa Board examination.

The boys have finished class and are playing catch and guli danda in the central vegetable courtyard. What do they want to be when they grow up? A roar goes into the air. ‘‘Sangha-pracharaks!’’(RSS workers).

The principal of the Shishu Mandir is the 34-year-old ascetic-looking Dushashan Mahanto. He says the curriculum of the school is prescribed by the Shikhya Vikas Samiti, an RSS education organisation, based in neighbouring Karanjia. The boys learn vande mataram, stick exercises, yoga, English, how to do the matri pranam or RSS salute and the saraswati vandana. Many of them come from families where the mother tongue is Ho or Santhal, but here they learn Hindi and Sanskrit.

But don’t these tribal youth want careers beyond the RSS? ‘‘We teach them English,’’ Mahanto smiles, ‘‘after that it is their choice whether they want to serve the poor or do disco dance like that idiot Mithun Chakraborty.’’

Since the 1990 rath yatra of LK Advani, VHP and RSS cadres have been fanning out in Orissa’s tribal belt in a highly successful attempt at Hindu mobilisation of tribals. The Staines’ killing was a macabre manifestation of this process. Recently, in the nearby town of Tirtol, 8 women’s heads were shaved because they were converts to Christianity. Today, there are BJP units in every place where the rath yatra stopped. At the same time, as the government school system collapsed in the tribal belt, the RSS began to provide education through their Shishu Mandirs, now the central point of BJP mobilisation. Many more Shishu Mandirs are being built in Keonjhar, Nuaga as well as Cuttack.

Under the mahua tree, 14-year-old Harish Kumar Mahanto and 13-year-old Rakesh Ranjan Mahanto demonstrate their stick exercises. There are 150 boys in residence here, many of them were sons of BJP MLAs. What do they think of the burning of Graham Staines?

‘‘Our school had nothing to do with that,’’ says Harish. ‘‘The police came to our school and took away two of our gurujis (teachers). They said they were friends of Dara. But they found no evidence against them. Here we learn good values and go into the villages to help the poor.’’

Adds Rakesh, ‘‘Missionaries like Staines should know about Hinduism before they try to change it. Rajsankranti was a holy day for us. We are forbidden to crush earth on that day. Yet Staines was forcing people to work on the land during that time.’’

As the first phase of polling begins in Orissa, the BJP-BJD alliance, although troubled by infighting, is expected to make gains in the tribal belt. ‘‘We have worked hard in this area,’’ says Parashuram Naik, another teacher, ‘‘we will all campaign and vote for the BJP. Many boys are attracted to our cause. Not everybody wants to learn English and do disco dancing. We have our own ideals.’’

An invisible army hides in the forests of Orissa, growing stronger every day.