Lord Hanuman and monkey totem

Chandrabhaal Tripathi

I AM glad that Sri Nand Kumar Sai, Chairman, National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, has tried to explode a myth that Lord Hanuman was not a monkey but a tribal leader. He has contradicted Yogi Adityanath who stated during a poll meeting in Rajasthan that Lord Hanuman was a Dalit leader. 

I wrote an article on the subject in 1961 when I was posted as Assistant Commissioner for SC & ST at Jaipur, pleading for the integration of tribal communities into Indian society. I mentioned that the Dravidian tribe of Oraons migrated from around Pampa, presently in Bellary, Karnataka, to Chhota Nagpur about 1,200 years ago — as mentioned by Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy, the doyen of anthropologist (without a degree) in his monograph on the tribe. One of the totemic clans of Oraons is Tiga, which worships Hanuman as its deity. 

I wish our political and religious leaders were taught about totemism in tribal society. In Ramayana, Hanuman, Bali and Sugriva seem to be of a tribal clan, with ‘monkey’ as its totem. In the story popularised through Ramacharitamanasa by Tulsidas in North India, they are depicted as monkeys. 

As children, we used to enjoy Hanuman’s antics in the town of Basti, UP, during Ramlila. When I studied anthropology at Lucknow University, I learnt about totemism. Our guru, Dr DN Majumdar, used to say that the Aryans (a linguistic group speaking Indo-Aryan languages in modern terminology and not indicating a racial identity; though the term race itself is under dispute among anthropologists), usually identified with the Caucasian and Mediterranean races, suffered from racial superiority and looked down upon people speaking different languages or languages belonging to different families, e.g., the language of Oraons, Kudukh, belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. It is interesting to study the migration of the Dravidian-speaking Oraon tribe to now Chhota Nagpur, where most tribes speak the Mundari family of languages, including major tribes, Mundas and Santhals. 

Dr Majumdar used to quote from scriptures how the Aryans had described the non-Aryans, e.g., the handsome and fair Khas people (mentioned in the Mahabharata and a polyandrous community living in Jaunsar-Bawar Pargana of Dehradun district and adjoining Jaunpar-Rawain Pargana of Tehri-Garhwal in Uttarakhand) were described as turagamukhaah (horse-faced) or the Asura tribal community was described as anaasaah (noseless, an absurd concept about flat-nosed people).  

About 50 years ago, during my tour of Araku Valley in Visakapatanam, I asked some bhakts who their supreme deity was. Their deity was Jambavanta. A pity this tribe was reduced to the status of bears jumping on the stage during Ramlila. 

Ram bhakts should acknowledge the great contribution of various non-Aryan tribal communities to the success of Lord Rama’s war campaigns.