Gadchiroli June 9 (District Correspondent) The tribal community took out a massive morcha on the Sub-Divisional Officer’s (SDO) office, expressing their outrage against the Union Home Minister Amit Shah and raising slogans against him for ‘insulting the indigenous group by referring to them as ‘Vanvasi’ instead of Adiwasi.
Citizens belonging to 45 sub-castes of the tribal community from Armori, Desaiganj, Kurkheda, Korchi, and Dhanora talukas participated in the morcha under the leadership of Armori MLA Ramdas Masram. Despite the scorching heat, thousands of tribals participated in this morcha. ‘Don’t call us Vanwasis, Call us Adiwasis. We are the aboriginal residents of this country, was the slogan of the tribals throughout the morcha that attracted the attention of the people and the administration.
A march started from Birsa Munda Chowk and proceeded to the SDO office, shouting slogans of their demands, where a memorandum was submitted to the SDO Kiran Waghaskar that was addressed to the President of India. A huge public meeting was then held in which Mr. Masram strongly condemned the utterances of Mr. Amit Shah about the tribals and sought an apology from him. The other leaders also addressed the meeting and warned that the abusive word against tribals will not be tolerated.
Home Minister Amit Shah had referred to tribals as ‘Vanvasi’ during a program for tribal communities held in Delhi recently. Asserting that the term Vanwasi is derogatory—given that tribals are the rightful owners of water, forests, and land, and are the indigenous people—the protesters demanded that the constitutional term ‘Adivasi’ be used exclusively.
They demanded that the Home Minister should apologize to the nation for using the term ‘Vanvasi’ and also drew attention to various other pending demands of the tribal community.
Besides Mr. Ramdas Masram; Timeshwar Koreti, President of the 45 tribal communities, and Ramsuram Katenge, Dr. Meghraj Kapoor, Advisor of Tribal Kanwar Community; Shalikram Mankar, District President of Halbi Tribe, Mahendra Brahmanwade, former DCC chief, Madhav Gawal District President, Tribal Cell of Congress, Sanjay Kokode.
Former ZP member Prabhakar Tulavi, former Chairperson Giridhar Titram, Govind Tekam, Shashikant Madavi, Dilip Ghodam, Arun Soyam, Prabhakar Jumnake, Asha Tulavi, Gulab Sonkukra, Shriram Duga, Sandhya Naitam, Pratibha Sidam and many others participated in the morcha.
