Breakaway Republics

A hundred-odd tribal villages have declared independence by putting up stone slabs to mark areas where the government writ won’t run

- Amitabh Srivastava

CLOSE TO THE LONG, winding Khunti-Jamshedpur road, huge stone slabs have come up in villages to function as unofficial frontier check posts notifying that these tribal areas no longer consider themselves under the Government of India. The stone slabs—similar to pathalgadi or monoliths erected in the memory of forefathers—are being used to demarcate tribal settlements as autonomous villages under the gram sabha, defy the government, and bar outsiders from entering the area. While the state government, led by Chief Minister Raghubar Das, has said that pathalgadi is being used as secessionist tool by anti-national groups to mislead naive residents, the local tribals seem all ready to believe in the powers of their liberated little kingdoms.

One such monolith at the entrance of Udburu, south of the Khunti district headquarters on the Tamar-Khunti-Kolebira road, declares it a sovereign village. Inscribed on the slab is a warning about a ban on outsiders entering or doing any business inside the village. It also says that Parliament or the Government of India have no authority to govern Udburu or any other tribal village in Jharkhand; the rule of gram sabha (local village council) is above everything else. Paradoxically, they swear by the Constitution, yet oppose constitutional institutions.

Udburu is the native place of Adivasi Mahasabha leader Joseph Purti, who goes by the aliases ‘Professor’ and Yusuf. After the police arrested Vijay Kujur, 42, the alleged mastermind of the secessionist movement, in Delhi on March 18, Purti, a 38-year old former college teacher, emerged as the main leader of the pathalgadi ‘movement’. Purti’s name figures on the wanted list of the police.