Indian Tribal News Service
Bhopal/New Delhi
In line with the BJP’s new tribal outreach policy, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Saturday (December 4) euologised freedom fighter Tantya Bhil alias Tantya Mama even as he attacked the Congress accusing it of “glorifying only the Nehru-Gandhi family”.
He was addressing a tribal convention at Patalpani on the occasion of the tribal revolutionary’s death anniversary, observed as ‘Balidan Diwas’. Located some 35 km from Indore, Patalpani is the place where Tantya Bhil is believed to have been cremated.
Chouhan said it was the misfortune of this country that the Congress only glorified and established the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty (in history) and never remembered tribal revolutionaries like Tantya Bhil who made the supreme sacrifice for the country
Tantya was known as the ‘Robin Hood of tribals’. He was hanged by the British on December 4, 1889, in Jabalpur jail on the charges of treason.
“The people of this region worship Tantya Bhil as God. But I want to ask Congress, which ruled the country and Madhya Pradesh for a long time, why it never paid obeisance to this holy land of Tantya Bhil and built his memorial,” Chouhan asked.
Chouhan hailed Tantya as a “brave son of the mother India” and said he had fought against the exploitation by the British. The British got him arrested deceptively with the help of a traitor and he was awarded the death penalty, the CM pointed out.
The BJP has embarked on a massive tribal outreach mission with Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaring that Jharkhand’s tribal icon Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary on November 15 will be observed every year as Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas. The Centre and States even had weeklong Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas celebrations and the PM even dedicated the country’s first tribal freedom fighter museum established in Ranchi and named after Birsa Munda.
Madhya Pradesh has the country’s largest tribal population (around 22 percent) and it has mostly been traditional Congress voters.
