Places of Worship and "Adivasi" Concerns: a brief memo by V. Shruti Devi

Places of Worship and Adivasi Concerns (Uploaded, moments ago, on Facebook) (Pl. note: For the purpose of this note, I have not been too finicky about the exact usage of the terms Indigenous; Adivasi; Tribal; Scheduled Tribe/s etc., though in any other context, all the distinctions therein are important). 1. Nature, elements of Nature, such as specific rock-formations and the surrounding Habitat are worshiped by various tribal communities. 2. In India, there are a number of tribal communities with varying forms of religious worship and practice. 3. Tribals are free to join any (modern/world) religion in a secular state like ours, but are not, and should not, be compelled to join any recognized world religion. 4. In India, I find that there are many places of Adivasi worship (and here, I'm not talking about Adivasis who have created their own private pooja rooms, prayer halls etc.), but of outdoor, semi-outdoor community-access areas (Habitat), often open-air and without the trappings/props of Hindu worship, which non-tribal Hindu bhakts from nearby non-tribal villages have gradually, as genuine "devotees", started culturally and materially colonizing, in a manner of speaking. 5. While it might not be expedient for harmless victims of environmental degradation (eg., many from amongst the Adivasi community), to say Give Me Back My Earth, it is still possible to look into the kinds of areas that I speak of, and to quell the wheels that attempt to encapsulate habitat-deities into square-foot locked-in shrines that, before people realize it, invite in many of the evils of Hinduism as found in most of India today (the caste and dowry system to name a few), into the folds of what deftly gets re-categorized as a once-upon-a-time adivasi place of worship. V. Shruti Devi