The Lone Ranger

Still an outsider to the community of suave smooth-talkers who run the government, alien also to the rustic-smart Laloo tribe, the barely literate Soren catapulted to national prominence during the agitation for a separate state of Jharkhand. Holding aloft the JMM banner, Soren possibly thought the world was as simple as the forests of Hazaribagh, where he was born. Which was possibly why he deposited Rs 5 lakh in a savings bank account, providing the basis of the allegation that he accepted a bribe to support the Rao government in the Lok Sabha.

‘‘Nobody can question his charisma but his manipulative skills are doubtful,’’ says Ramdayal Munda, former V-C of Ranchi University, who fell out with Soren after a long association during the tribal movement against the usurpation of their lands.

Soren was baptised into the movement under prominent Leftist leaders A K Roy and Binod Bihari Choudhary. Roy and Soren went on to become the pillars of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha that put down roots in Dhanbad and the Santhal Parganas in the late ’60s, and caught the local imagination almost immediately. Amid targeting the diku (outsider), land-grabbers and mafia hoodlums, they talked about social reform and cultural resurgence among tribals.

Soren, who fled his childhood home in Hazaribagh after it was set ablaze by baniyas, had a personal tale to tell wherever he went. He spoke all tribal languages. ‘‘He communicated well with the tribals,’’ remembers N E Horo, another tribal movement veteran-turned-Soren critic.

After the Jharkhand Party of Cambridge-educated Jaipal Singh (he led the Indian hockey team to its gold medal in 1928 Olympics) faded away, JMM became the authentic tribal party. Transcending the Christian-nonChristian among the tribes, Soren walked from hamlet to hamlet, exhorting instant audiences to fight. The tribals reciprocated by seeing in him the liberator, the divine; he is still known as Guruji.

Though the demand for a separate tribal state was realised in 2000 with the creation of Jharkhand, Soren did not consider it reason enough for a change in party name. ‘‘We sought a Jharkhand that covers the tribal areas of Orissa, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. It is yet to be achieved,’’ he said.

The formation of Jharkhand did not end that quest, but it drew a line through Soren’s brief association with the BJP. After the party overruled his claim for chief ministership and formed its own government, Soren took sweet revenge in the recent parliamentary election by reducing the BJP to just one seat.

Indeed, the present warrant against him in a 30-year-old case is supposed to hint to Muslims — a solid part of his electorate — that Soren was in some way responsible for the massacre of Muslims. Accused of ‘‘inciting a mob’’ that killed 11 people in 1975, Soren is on the run, and not for the first time. He has been to jail several times during the JMM agitation and went underground for three months after the bribery scam broke. He is also accused of murdering a personal assistant.

But to all intents and purposes, this is only a trailer for Soren and the BJP; the real showdown is saved up for the assembly elections due early next year. Let’s not miss the woods for the trees.