Tribal communities to showcase worship forms at Samalakha event | Latest News India

Over 70 scheduled tribe communities from across India will showcase their methods of worship at a conference being organised by the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, an offshoot of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Samalakha beginning September 20.

The conference is an attempt to showcase the diversity in methods of worship among the communities known as Janajatis while underlining the common thread of Hinduism in these practices said Pramod Pethkar, a senior functionary of the VKA.

The VKA runs schools and other institutions in tribal areas and claims there has been an attempt to convert the tribes through inducement and fear. At the recently concluded Samanvaya Baithak or coordination meeting of the Sangh and its offshoots, conversions by missionaries in several states including Tamil Nadu and Punjab was discussed.

While the opponents of the Sangh accuse it of trying to impose Hindu practices on the tribal communities, the VKA alleges that inducement and fear have been used to distance the communities from the faith and modes of worship that they follow.

To a question on the demand of some tribal communities to declare Sarna as a religion, Pethkar said, “These are attempts made to weaken the bonds between the communities and the sampoorna Hindu samaj (Hindu community).”

The conference that will be attended by senior RSS functionaries including its chief Mohan Bhagwat, will have over 2,000 volunteers from various ST communities, including from the North East.

“The estimated 70 janjatis of the country will perform their own traditional worships, which would highlight the unity of the country. Some janjatis worship the Saakar (in visible form), while some worship the Niraakar (the formless). There is diversity as well as the feeling of unity in this event. The importance of the East direction in the worship, the experience of seeing God in nature like water-fire-trees, invocation and worship of Shiva and Ganesh is also there, which forms the integral part of Hindu faith and culture,” Pethkar said.