Obituary: Shibu Soren (1944-2025), a simple but troubled ‘tribal’ leader

People own the jal, jangal and jameen, but governments deprive them of all three resources, believed Shibu Soren until, one suspects, the very end. A simple but troubled soul, possibly naïve about government systems, his suspicion of the bureaucracy, the courts and the police, by all accounts, lasted all his life.

Even when one of his three sons Hemant became chief minister of Jharkhand, Soren senior remained a sceptic, telling interviewers that change, if any, would have to be ushered in by the people and that he had few expectations from the government.

He had barely completed his schooling and regretted his unfinished and inadequate education. Tribals, he believed, had to be educated in order to avoid being exploited.

It is remarkable that after he passed away in a hospital in New Delhi yesterday, 4 August at the age of 81, he has been almost universally described as a ‘tall tribal leader’. It is remarkable because what Shibu Soren fought for — land and forest rights, a just mining policy and faster administration of justice — was not just for tribals, who constitute less than 30 per cent of Jharkhand’s population.

Yet, the description is apt because people other than tribals in the state found it so hard to accept him as their ‘leader’. His empathy for people, however, was pronounced and to his credit, he did not shy away from meeting visitors though he had withdrawn from public life and politics for virtually the last 15 years.

His father was killed by mahajans (moneylenders) against whom the senior Soren, a school teacher, had raised his voice. The family and villagers knew the identity of the killers but did not reveal their names to the police. The widow of the murdered man, however, told the police that her son would avenge his father’s killing.

Did Shibu Soren avenge his father’s murder? Folklore holds that he did. Even as a teenager, he mobilised Santhals against moneylenders, traders and forest department officials who exploited tribals. Clashes, police firings, arrests followed and Shibu Soren and his band hid in the forests for months, eluding police and forest rangers besides the moneylenders and their mercenaries.

Villagers were poor and were in no position to feed the band and sustain their militant activities. They were thus left with no option but to extort money from forest contractors and rob people who were better off. Even this was often not sufficient, forcing the band to hide their arms in the forests and sneak out to do odd jobs before retreating into the forests. Not much, unfortunately, is known about this dramatic phase of his life. Shibu Soren himself was quite reticent about it.

However, a former forest minister of Bihar in the post-1967 period of political instability and short-lived coalition governments, Justin Richard, shared a fascinating bit of information. The merry band of rebels, he recalled, would often hold people hostage for ransom during this phase.

Some members of the band had one day appeared at Richard's doorstep asking to be fed. As they chatted, Richard casually enquired about a forest official who had disappeared and was never found. A member of the band, he recalled, made the shocking but candid confession that they had burned and eaten the man, driven by hunger. Richard was not a frivolous person, was well-read, stern and known for his honesty. There was no reason to disbelieve him.

When the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) was formed in 1973, Shibu Soren was barely 29 years old, but had acquired a cult following among Santhals, who saw him as a saviour against oppression. His following among Jharkhand's other major tribes, the Mundas, Oraons and Ho, was relatively limited. But the Santhals saw in him a militant leader who was not afraid of taking their side against ‘outsiders’ — the contractors, police and officials. The brave, austere rebel was anointed by people as 'Dishom Guru'.

The Jharkhand Party, founded by Jaipal Singh Munda, an Oxonian and captain of India’s hockey team in the 1928 Amsterdam summer Olympics, emerged as the principal opposition party in the Bihar Assembly in 1952. The party disintegrated before a proposed merger with the Congress could be formalised following the demise of Jawaharlal Nehru and Jaipal Singh himself.

Several splinter groups emerged, with N.E. Horo leading one faction and Bagun Sumbrui another. There were smaller splinter groups, all of them claiming to be the real Jharkhand Party. The formation of JMM, inspired by trade unionists Binod Behari Mahto and A.K. Roy, helped expand the reach of the JMM to Kurmis and other social groups beyond the Santhals and tribals. It was, however, only in 1980 that Shibu Soren won a seat in the Lok Sabha from Dumka, a constituency he represented in Parliament seven times.

This correspondent remembers meeting Soren after his victory in 1980 at the then NCDC (later Central Coalfields Ltd) guesthouse in Ranchi. Soren with three of his colleagues had just finished breakfast in the dining hall. He was clutching the bill and looking at it with wonder. Asked what he was inspecting, he explained that he was trying to make sure that the bill for Rs 7 and 25 paise (four annas) was indeed correct. Can breakfast be so expensive, he exclaimed, adding that he often had just about a rupee a day for his meals.

Thrice a Union minister and thrice the chief minister of Jharkhand, seven terms as a Lok Sabha MP and one term in the Rajya Sabha later — his financial problems were most certainly over. But he was still accused in the JMM bribery case in 1993 when he and fellow JMM MPs were accused of accepting bribes to vote against the non-confidence motion against the Narasimha Rao government. The CBI claimed that the MPs had deposited the amounts received in cash in their bank accounts and were unable to explain the source of the money.

Other controversies dogged his political career, forcing him to quit as Union minister and chief minister every time a fresh warrant was issued or he was convicted in some old criminal case or the other. He was also accused of the murder of a former personal secretary who had allegedly demanded his pound of flesh out of the bribes received by JMM MPs for voting against the no-confidence motion. It is worth noting, though, that all the cases against him were set aside and he was acquitted. The taint, however, remains.

It is difficult to assess him as an administrator. His stints in power were too short and erratic. Nor did he lead any significant agitation for the creation of Jharkhand after 1980. Sporadic agitations for a separate state were spearheaded by smaller groups like the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) till statehood was granted — along with Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh — in 2000 by the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Like most tribals, he remained naïve about politics, finance and policy. Again, like most tribals, he trusted his fellow human beings without any reservation — which can be attributed to many of his troubles. But he was genuinely a friend of the people, acutely aware of their plight but unable to do much about it. A rebel, he never quite understood how to exercise power, which possibly frustrated him; and it remains a tragedy that an extraordinary human being, he could not do more for his state and the people.