The arrest of tribal theatre activist Jeetrai Hansda in Jharkhand over a 2017 Facebook post, has exposed the fault lines over tribal identity and culture all over again. In the post, Hansda had asserted that for Santhals and other tribals, beef-eating was intrinsic to their culture.

“There should be no law that forces us to accept Hindu customs and rituals,” he had said, drawing the ire of the RSS and the police, in a state where the eating or selling of beef is banned.

Hindu right-wing organisations as well as the BJP government in the state have been proactively persecuting such acts of tribal self-assertion for at least a couple of years now.

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