WHY EVERYONE WANTS TO OWN BIRSA MUNDA

AN ENIGMATIC TRIBAL ICON FROM THE TURN OF THE LAST CENTURY SUDDENLY BECOMES THE TOAST OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES. WHY? BECAUSE ADIVASI VOTES ARE CRUCIAL IN A SPATE OF UPCOMING ELECTIONS

- Romita Datta

LAND, FOREST, IDENTITY, FAITH: the themes that relate to India's tribal communities seem as ancient and unchanged as the jungles of Chhotanagpur where, on a monsoon-soaked night in 1895, a 21-year-old youth named Birsa Munda experienced an epiphany. It was the onset of a remarkable story; an inflection point in Adivasi history. The one change that came with electoral democracy is that identity is now also political in the party politics sense. For a man who's a totemic figure of rebellion for Adivasis-indeed, of armed resistance to exploitation by all outsiders-it's ironic how every party is scrambling for a piece of Birsa.

The tribal icon, as he was in real life, is perhaps too complex a figure to allow for easy cooption by any party. But he is also a metaphor-an emotional bridge to a vast populace. So we see him now as the centrepiece of the BJP's outreach to India's tribals, the same segment whose disaffection Rahul Gandhi was seen tapping into in his poll campaign detour to Surat, Gujarat, amid the Bharat Jodo Yatra. If in Jharkhand, Chief Minister Hemant Soren is only paying obesiance to a figure sacred to his people, West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee is seeking to fill a void she had left after the halcyon days of the Nandigram agitation in that state's Jangalmahal tribal belt.