RANCHI, JHARKHAND, INDIA — Every time Kamle Oraon, 50, shuts her eyes, she sees her mother scraping the bottom of a bowl to feed her four children.
“We went hungry most nights,” she says.
Many villages in this state in eastern India, known for its dense jungles, had no sanitation, and high malnutrition and unemployment. Government schools were few and far between.
But Christian missionaries opened schools even in the most remote areas during the colonial period.
Oraon went to one such school.
“They made me sing hymns, pray to Jesus Christ and even gave me a Christian name.” She pauses. “But I did not convert.”
Oraon is a Sarna — an ancient, nature-worshipping, animist faith.
After India gained independence, the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh also began setting up schools, as well as hostels and hospitals, in remote areas. RSS leaders have repeatedly said they wanted to stop the spread of Christianity in these areas.
Now, in the face of pressure from both Hindus and Christians, Sarnas want their faith formally recognized, including as a box to check on the upcoming 2026 census. The push has put Christian and Hindu groups on edge, worried they’ll lose a political base. When they band together, Sarnas have the numbers to shift electoral outcomes.
Overall, 1 in 4 Jharkhand state residents call themselves “Adivasi” — those who have existed since the dawn of time. There are 32 Adivasi groups, including large ones like Oraon, Santhal and Munda. Among these groups, many follow the Sarna faith, and in the past decade, the battle for Adivasi religious identity has intensified.
According to a December 2024 survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 49% of Adivasis in the state who consider themselves Hindus voted for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, and 44% of Christian Adivasis supported the opposition coalition in the state assembly elections of November 2024.
But it was the Adivasis who didn’t count themselves as either Hindu or Christian who tilted the balance. The opposition, led by the pro-Sarna Jharkhand Mukti Morcha party, came to power in a coalition that included the Congress Party. They won most of the constituencies where formal recognition for the Sarna religion was a major campaign issue. Modi’s BJP won in just one such constituency.
“We have realized that we were silent for far too long,” says Bandhu Tirkey, a Congress Party politician who’s been campaigning for a separate Sarna designation in the upcoming census.
An ancient religion
Counting Sarna adherents isn’t straightforward, but according to India’s 2011 census, the last conducted, they numbered a bit more than 4 million.
As of now, the census counts six religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism. The rest, including Sarna, are grouped under “others.” The Sarnas want their own designation.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Christian missionary groups spread out in the jungles of central India, setting up schools and proselytizing. After India gained independence in 1947, RSS began setting up schools, hostels and hospitals in the forests, claiming the Adivasis were originally Hindu. The casualties were the various animistic faiths that Adivasi groups practiced.
While Adivasis claim their forefathers practiced nature worship, decades of Hindu and later Christian influences have ensured that their rituals and practices borrow from those religions. Idols of Hindu and Christian deities often sit in Sarna homes.
“Many people began calling themselves Hindu or Christian and forgot about their roots in Adivasi faiths,” Bandhan Tigga, a Sarna priest, says.
But there’s been a shift back to ancient ways of worship. Most Sarna stals, the religion’s worship sites, have emerged in just the last few years, says Radhika Borde, a lecturer at the University of Leeds who specializes in indigenous social movements and religions.
The shift is unnerving Hindu and Christian leaders.
Kameshwar Sahu, a regional leader of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a Hindu group that belongs to the RSS, argues that all Adivasis were originally Hindu.
“Their culture is closer to Hindu culture than to Christianity,” he says.
Sahu’s organization has spent decades doing what it calls “reconversion” of Adivasi Christians back to Hinduism.
Reverend Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the Jharkhand Regional Bishops’ Council, disagrees. Adivasis are not Hindu, he says.
“The Sarna are a faith of their own, and they should be allowed their identity,” he says, dismissing the allegation that Christians “lure” Adivasis to convert.
Sarna stals take root
About a decade ago, Oraon walked for about 12 kilometers (7 miles) to the village of Choreya. Something in her told her to establish a Sarna stal there. The Sarna object of worship, usually a tree trunk, is also called a Sarna.
In the village, Oraon chose a large tree trunk and began worshipping it, but local men chased her away with sticks.
“They didn’t want another religion in their backyard,” she explains.
Undeterred, she went back at regular intervals to pray to the Sarna she had established. Finally, women in the village began to join her, and the Sarna gained strength.
“At a prayer meeting, you can see women shake vigorously. Some bang their heads against the floor. Some chant incessantly when they enter a Sarna stal,” says Borde, the University of Leeds lecturer.
People say the women are “possessed” when they enter a Sarna stal, she says, using a term for the physical and psychological transformation women experience when they enter what they consider a divine space.
“In many situations, this is a way for women to assert their opinions in otherwise male-dominated societies,” Borde says.
When women claim that the divine is speaking through them and that the man of the house should stop beating them, men usually comply.
Women pray in a sarna stal, where they often experience physical and spiritual transformations that strengthen their voices in male-dominated communities.
It’s common in Hinduism and Christianity for men to be told that their god can speak through them.
“But Sarna gives the women of the house that power,” Borde says.
Now, most Adivasi villages prominently feature a Sarna stal.
Once a Sarna stal is established, men and women don white and red clothes, carry small brass vessels and pray there every Thursday. White and red are the colors of peace and resistance, respectively.
“We are always peaceful,” Tigga says, “but if we need to resist outside forces to save our religion and our identity, we will not think twice.”
Throughout Jharkhand, red-and-white Sarna flags fly atop houses. Often, they flutter next to saffron flags to signify that the residents are Hindu, too.
Sarna stal and land conflicts
The Sarna faith challenges norms beyond the home, too.
Sarna stals are usually in a large open field, where people gather to sing, dance and congregate. The community doesn’t allow cutting trees in these spaces.
“We worship nature. How can we allow its desecration?” asks Tigga, the Sarna priest.
Setting up Sarna stals is an Adivasi way to reclaim ownership over their land, Borde says.
“Establishing Sarna stals also acts as an ecological movement,” says Nandini Tank, a researcher and founder of Adivasi Geotags, which aims to geotag all Adivasi sacred spaces in Jharkhand.
Across the state, Sarna stals have come in conflict with development projects.
In 2022, a flyover project was launched in Sitamoli, on the outskirts of Ranchi. Adivasi groups took to the streets, blocking highway traffic for days in protest, claiming the flyover was being built over their Sarna stal.
“Would it be OK if a flyover was built over a temple or a church?” Tigga asks.
The flyover was built anyway.
“If we have political strength, they wont be able to muzzle our voices like they did with the flyover,” says Tirkey, the politician.
Oraon goes from village to village in the Mandar block of Ranchi district to talk to villagers about identifying themselves as Sarna in the next census. “Even if you are a Christian or Muslim now, I would urge you to be true to your ancestors,” she says to them.
Although she says Hindu groups are the biggest threat to the Sarna faith, she uses their term for “reconversion”: ghar wapsi.
“I have overseen the reconversion [to Sarna] of more than 50 families in Malti village alone,” she says. “Sometimes we are reconverting those who converted to Hinduism or Christianity. Sometimes we are just reminding them of their original faith.”
