King of the tribals

Plain Politics

Judeo is a colourful character but his downfall won't have wider repercussions

As colourful politicians go, there are few that will parallel HH Maharaja Dilip Singh Judeo of Jashpur. A man who lives life kingsize, (pun intended) Judeo is in a mess that, his friends say gloomily, was just waiting to happen.

Judeo has been a member of the RSS and the Vishva Hindu Parishad since his childhood. However, he is a rather curious kind of an RSS worker. He is fun-loving, has never hidden his fondess for a drink or two (or even three or four) and has a grandiloquent style about him that is derived in a large measure from Hindi films (it might have come from Mayo College where he studied and where they have courses that actually teach you grandiloquence. No parallels are intended but Jaswant Singh is a Mayo boy).

Friends say Judeo is a man who lives in a different age. He seriously believes in feudal values like loyalty to satraps and thinks nothing of minions who touch his feet every time they come in his sights. Liberals would be sickened at the self-effacement of his tribal (largely Oraon) subjects, and worse, his tolerance of it. But he's a King (though the times are modern) and a King of tribal people.

The thing about the Judeo family is: their vote in the seven or eight assembly constituencies in and around Jashpur is not counted "" it is weighed, there is so much of it. The family's support base dates back to the 1950s and 60s, during the reign of Judeo's father, much before 1982, when Dilip Singh acceded to the throne.

The reason for this is historical. RSS lore has it that during the struggle for freedom and after India's independence and the accession of princely states (Jashpur obediently obliged in 1948), when communal riots broke out, Hindus and Muslims in mixed localities were most at risk.

But equally at risk were convert tribals and scheduled castes. Tremendous missionary work was done in tribal areas in Madhya Pradesh by Catholics, Jesuits and Lutherans and this automatically created a Hindu reaction.

The Jashpur royal family "" headed by Raja Vijay Bhushan Singh, Judeo's father "" upheld and appointed itself the leader of this Hindu reaction. So ferocious was the 'Hinduism in danger' theme that Madhya Pradesh was one of the first states to actually set up a commission (the Niyogi Commission, set up during the chief ministership of Congress CM, Ravishankar Shukla in 1956) to investigate the circumstances of tribal conversions. Parenthetically, if Digvijay Singh is charged with 'soft Hindutva' today, he is only reverting to the thinking of his predecessors several decades ago.

Anyway, the history of Jashpur "" which, mind you, is not a huge principality with lots of money; it's spread over just around 5,000 km "" became a struggle for leadership between the royal family and the Christian missionaries.

To counter the work of the missionaries the RSS's various organs like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, the Ekal Vidyalaya, Sewa Bharati, etc. were started to give the vanvasis means of a Hindu education. (The RSS doesn't like calling them Adivasis because that means challenging the theory that the Aryans, who brought Vedic civilization to the country, are the original inhabitants of the land).

The Jashpur palace "" Vijay Vihar "" thus became a place for itinerant sadhus, saints and wandering holy men to come and rest. Like his father, Judeo never stinted in paying obesience to these men. Though the Jashpur royal staff was dressed in blue (plain, dark blue flag with the Arms a demi-lion holding an axe, outlined in light blue and a ribbon with the name of the state), it should have been saffron.

Judeo's devotion to things holy was not spiritual. It was ceremonial. Sadhus and sants, who set a great deal of store in the way things are done, not merely the belief that accompanies them, found Jashpur truly committed.

Judeo also gave his all to the RSS, which engendered a great fondness in the organisation for the ruler. However, RSS sources are quick to point out that they never saw Judeo as a 'policy leader' and that indeed, he never aspired to be a Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia.

There is, therefore, an element of surprise at the 'personal corruption' that the CD recording reveals. RSS says Judeo was considered indiscreet but never thought personally corrupt. "He would give for dharma. He never showed greed or sought personal enrichment" said an RSS source.

In 1992, after being involved in the RSS and the VHP for years, Judeo became a Rajya Sabha MP. He served for a second term in 1998. In the course of his political career, he helped start the Ghar Vapasi programme, seeking out converted Christian tribals and reconverting them after taking out processions mostly with offensive anti-Christian propaganda.

This was a new version of Hinduism, where apparently you could convert to Hinduism, without necessarily being born a Hindu.

"There was a 150-year-old Shiva temple here, which these [the Christian] people went and destroyed. Now if you go and destroy our heritage...go on breaking our temples in this manner and if you expect us to sit quietly and watch...we will not tolerate it... We are not sitting at home wearing bangles" he told an interviewer in a film made about the dilemma of the tribals of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

The Jashpur principality has always had a pro-people royalty. This is absolutely not a zamindari like Raja Bhaiyya's. The tribals consider Judeo their King and he considers them his subjects. It is an organic relationship and so far, entities like the Bahujan Samaj Party have been unable to break it.

Therefore, Judeo's debacle at the hands of a CD is unlikely to have much political effect. As his sphere of influence does not extend all over the state, only in his limited Kingdom, it is unlikely to affect other areas of Chhattisgarh. Which makes you wonder that if this was a plot to discredit the BJP, wasn't it a bit of a waste of time?