Kerala   

New Adivasi-Dalit party is born

By Our Special Correspondent

KOCHI, FEB. 19. On the first anniversary of the Muthanga police action, an Adivasi-Dalit political party was launched here today amidst tribal rituals and subaltern drum rhythms.

The party, named Rashtriya Mahasabha, was formally launched by Budha Mooppan, a tribal chieftain in Kerala. The 100-year-old Mooppan performed `Gadhika' ceremonies to pay tribute to Jogi, who was killed this day last year in the police firing in the Muthanga forest in Wayanad district. The Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha chairperson, C.K. Janu, who will head the new party, stood by as Adivasis and Dalits from across the State joined in hailing the new party.

The party, sponsored by the Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha, is the offshoot of the Muthanga incident which captured international attention last year. An Adivasi and a policeman were killed in the Muthanga police action that aborted a month and a half of Adivasi `encroachment' on the Muthanga reserve forest. In an impassioned speech, Ms. Janu told the packed audience at the Ernakulam Town Hall that the marginalised communities of Adivasis and Dalits had decided to go political in order to grab their "right to live on this land and a piece of land for a decent funeral after death.'' The new party aimed at `political empowerment' of the Adivasis and Dalits in a peaceful and democratic way within the established parliamentary political system of the country. ``We will be a very effective vote bank,'' she said. The Mahasabha would be a ``community-based political pressure group.'' It would beat the mainstream parties by their own rules of the game. These parties had, down the decades, exploited the Adivasis and Dalits without returning anything to them, she said.

Explaining the rationale behind launching the party, Ms. Janu, who had spearheaded the land struggle, said the movement had realised that only by becoming a political pressure group would the Adivasis and Dalits be able to grab their rights.

The party was a logical extension of the land struggle. ``Until now, we lived and died for others; from now on, we will live for ourselves,'' she declared. M. Geethanandan, the key architect of the party, noted that the Rashtriya Mahasabha was the first such combined political initiative of Adivasis and Dalits in the country. ``Leave the (tribal and Dalit) colonies and go to the farmlands' would be a key slogan of the new party, Mr. Geethanandan said.

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