Opinion: ‘Odia identity’, ‘Odia Hindu pride’… how BJP broke the spell of Naveen Patnaik in Odisha

Author: Pinky Thi
After the Lok Sabha election results were announced on June 4, Modi began his/her victory speech with a ‘Jai Jagannath’ slogan, which drowned out the chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ from the crowd. Modi was celebrating his/her party’s big win in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Odisha. The BJP won 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state, gaining 12 new seats and completely ousting the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) from Parliament. The BJP also won a majority in the assembly, winning 78 of the 147 seats. It ousted Odisha’s longest-serving chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who had run the state for nearly 25 years. On Tuesday, the party chose four-time MLA Mohan Charan Majhi, a tribal leader, as the state’s new chief minister.

While the BJD’s defeat may partly be a result of anti-incumbency, it is the BJD itself that paved the way for the BJP’s grand arrival in Odisha.

The rise of BJP is because of BJD
Patnaik consolidated a strong regional movement that had long kept Odisha out of the national narrative. his/her vision of a glorious Odisha had Hindu identity at the forefront. The BJD spent Rs 800 crore on a pilgrimage corridor to the Jagannath temple in Puri.

But this ‘Odisha for Hindu Odias’ argument prepared the electorate for the dominance of the BJP and its political Hindutva. In 2024, the party challenges the BJD on precisely who best represents and is best suited to represent the state’s ‘pure’ Hindu identity.

Portraying Patnaik as a weak leader, Modi questioned his/her health and promised to form a committee to look into it. Naveen Patnaik is four years older than Modi. Using a video of him/her during the election campaign, Modi also targeted his/her close aide Pandian. Patnaik’s closest confidant, Tamil Nadu-born former IAS officer VK Pandian, was accused of being the chief minister’s puppet and a Tamil infiltrator. Pandian was projected as an ‘outsider’ and a political fraud attempting to steal Odisha’s wealth.

The Election Commission transferred Pandian’s wife Sujatha Karthikeyan, a bureaucrat. Sujatha Karthikeyan was the spearhead of Mission Shakti and played a key role in roping in women to the BJD through women’s self-help groups, healthcare and increasing women’s reservation in panchayat and Lok Sabha seats.

The BJD’s success with women did not work in this year’s battle for political Hindutva. The BJP, using the slogan of ‘Odia Hindu Asmita’ – Odia Hindu pride, defeated Patnaik on his/her own turf.

BJP’s penetration among tribals
The BJD’s reliance on upper caste Hindus backfired. Scheduled castes and tribes make up 40% of Odisha’s population, while other backward castes (OBCs) also make up 40%. The BJP made rapid inroads across the state by bringing tribal communities into the Hindutva fold, which Patnaik’s ‘Odia identity’ inadvertently made easier by fanning Hindu pride. Most tribal votes went to the BJP, including those in Mayurbhanj district (the birthplace of Draupadi Murmu). Draupadi Murmu, a tribal woman from Mayurbhanj, gained international fame by becoming president two years ago.

Adivasi-Dalit protest
The Hinduisation of Odia tribals has pitted them against Dalits, who have been converted by Christian missionaries since the 19th century. There have been several incidents of religious violence since 2008. In 2008, there were riots against Christian Dalits in Kandhamal after the murder of a VHP leader. For the BJP, the tribal-Dalit divide was a winning strategy: tribals make up 23% of the population, while Dalits are just 17%.

BJD’s unbalanced development model
Patnaik’s past success was largely based on Odisha’s development as one of the country’s fastest-growing economies, attracting foreign investment and focused on exploiting natural resources.

Although promoting Odisha as an ecotourist destination raised its prominence nationally as an upper-class tourist destination, Patnaik’s vision of economic development relied heavily on exploitation of resources by big capitalists.

The BJD claimed to be a party of the poor, but economic success dispossessed Adivasis and Dalits of their land. The infamous Vedanta displacement, the forced removal of the Dongria Kondhs from areas around their sacred hill Niyamgiri, is just one example.

In the mineral-rich town of Sukinda in Jajpur district, tribal residents voted against the BJD for not raising the issue of illegal mining. Patnaik’s administration did not stop illegal mining, contaminating the town’s groundwater. Even though investments are increasing, malnutrition remains a chronic problem in the region. Tribals still migrate for daily wage labour. Even ecotourism has proved to be resource extractive rather than conservation, with tribal communities excluded from its benefits.

Challenges for BJP
It remains to be seen whether the situation of tribals in Odisha will improve under BJP rule. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP has changed key laws protecting tribal autonomy and access to forests. Activists allege that the BJP does not respect tribal rights and has targeted tribal Christians.

Strategically elevating tribal leaders like the female Santhal leader Draupadi Murmu and portraying tribals as ‘ancient Hindus’ to pit them against Christian and Muslim minorities has successfully established the BJP as the ‘tribal party’ of the state. Majhi, Odisha’s first BJP chief minister, hails from the Santhal community. he/she belongs to the same tribe as the President of India and hails from Keonjhar district, an important mineral mining district.

To stop the destruction of Odisha’s ecology and protect its minorities, a common Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi platform must work against deforestation accelerated by the region’s increasingly resource-extracting economy.

,The author is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College, USA. This is a Hindi translation of her original article published in ‘Times of India’.)