Droupadi Murmu, the new head of the State of the Indian Republic, is at the heart of a strategy of Hindu nationalists aimed at obtaining the support of minorities.
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The new Indian president, Droupadi Murmu, is not only the second woman to occupy this function since independence (1947), but she has just created a historical precedent by becoming the first representative of a community of Adivasis ( aborigines) to be elected at the top of the state. She was sworn in on Monday July 25.
The post of President of India is certainly honorary, and its power comparable to that of the German or Italian presidents. But seeing this woman from the Sandalt tribe – poor population of the center and eastern India – elected to the presidency is an event in itself. The Adivasis, so -called “indigenous” populations, have long remained marginalized and reclusive, especially in the center and in the east of the country, in the forests of the States of the Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam and Odisha – State of which M me whispered, aged 64, is native.
All tribal groups represent 8.6 % of the Indian population, or around one hundred million people. The overwhelming majority of them (more than 80 %) are listed as still living below the poverty line. In Uparbeda, a native village of Droupadi Murmu, people cook over a wood fire, will look for water at the pump, and electricity has just been installed.
Ex-instructing, the new president held positions in the administration before becoming a professional political official and to hold several functions of minister in the regional government of her Odisha State. In 2015, it became government of the State of the Jharkhand State, where almost 30 % of the population is tribal.
Extend the electoral perimeter
Member of the Indian People’s Party (BJP), the formation of nationalists in power, M Me Murmu is also one more piece on the Prime Minister’s political chessboard, Narendra Modi: she allows To this cantor of the nationalist Hindu ideology to demonstrate that he is able to expand the social basis of his training. Droupadi Murmu is the one who “gives power to the poor, the oppressed, and especially to the marginalized populations”, welcomed the Prime Minister.
“The choice of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [national body of volunteers, RSS – ideological matrix of the BJP] had already focused on Droupadi Murmu during the previous presidential election, five years ago, but, at the time , Narendra Modi feared losing the vote of the Dalit community [untouchable]: they did not take into account the advice of the RSS and appointed another candidate, Ram Nath Kovind, a Dalit “, recalls Arati Jerath, an editorialist Indian. It was therefore already a question of expanding the politico-community base, but this time towards the voters located at the lowest of the hierarchy of the caste system.
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