In a significant move, the Jharkhand Education Department has revised a major statewide school survey to include an 'Other' option in the religion column. This change comes after strong objections from Adivasi communities and leaders who argued that the original format excluded their indigenous religious identities, such as Sarna.
What Prompted the Change in the Survey?
The controversy centered around the DAHAR (Digital Habitation Mapping and Real-time Monitoring) 2.0 survey, which is being conducted by the Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC). This survey is a crucial tool under the Samagra Shiksha framework, used to map enrolment and dropout data of children aged between three and 18 years. The data directly informs the annual work plan and budget for school education in the state.
Initially, the digital survey form provided only six pre-defined options for religion: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, and Buddhist. This left no official space for thousands of Adivasi students who follow Sarna or other tribal belief systems. Adivasi organizations labeled this omission as a form of "forceful conversion," suggesting it would statistically absorb them into Hinduism with government backing.
Adivasi Leaders Voice Strong Opposition
Prominent Adivasi figures, including former minister Geetashree Oraon and leader Premshahi Munda, had raised the alarm. They contended that erasing Adivasi religious identity from official education data would make their community invisible in policy planning and affect budget allocations.
Geetashree Oraon, a Congress leader, made a broader allegation. She claimed that the Union government has been systematically removing the 'Other' religion option from various portals since 2020, leading to an erosion of the constitutionally recognized identity of Adivasis. She asserted that the school survey was a reflection of this same approach.
"The Sarna community strongly opposes the conduct of any census or survey in a Fifth Schedule state like Jharkhand without a separate or appropriate religion code for Adivasis. This is the government’s strategy to forcefully bring the Adivasis into the Hindu fold and to destroy the Sarna identity," Oraon stated.
Official Clarification and Technical Glitch
Following the objections, the Education Department acted swiftly to modify the digital portal and add the 'Other' category. JEPC Project Director Shashi Ranjan provided context, explaining that the DAHAR 2.0 survey format was adopted from the Union government. The state's role was to digitize an existing paper questionnaire used for the annual out-of-school children survey.
"This is an annual exercise. Earlier, it was done physically through a detailed form in which the 'Other' category was already in-built. When we made it app-based, some fields did not reflect properly due to technical issues. These issues have been corrected," Ranjan clarified to The Indian Express.
He emphasized that the DAHAR survey, introduced over a decade ago and upgraded to version 2.0, remains a key instrument for both the Centre and the state. It is used to assess school coverage, identify dropouts, and plan infrastructure and welfare interventions effectively.
The inclusion of the 'Other' option marks a critical acknowledgment of Jharkhand's diverse religious landscape and addresses a key concern of its tribal population regarding data representation and identity preservation.
