Pivotal figure in Jharkhand movement, Shibu Soren had a storied career with fleeting stints in power

Indian Express

a day ago

He had only brief stints in office as Union minister and Chief Minister because of recurrent legal troubles and coalition frictions, but Shibu Soren the politician left an indelible mark on the politics of Jharkhand as a key figure of the decades-long statehood movement that ultimately led to the carving out of the state from Bihar in 2000.
Soren, popularly known as 'Guruji', passed away at 81 in Delhi Monday, but the legacy of his politics continues with his son Hemant Soren, entrenched as Jharkhand CM after a convincing victory in the Assembly elections last year. It was the only instance after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls where a party trounced the BJP in a direct fight despite the latter having a steady presence in the state.
Soren, who belonged to the Santal tribe, was born on January 11, 1944, in the Nemra village of Ramgarh in the then Bihar province. He took to public life at a young age, forming the Santal Navyuvak Sangh at just 18, and fought moneylenders who lent to tribals at exorbitant rates. It was a fight fuelled by the anger at the death of his father Shobaran who was killed by moneylenders when Soren was a boy.
His politics soon became one of opposition to non-tribal 'outsiders', aligning with a sentiment that had been there even before Independence, when the tribal areas of the mineral-rich Chota Nagpur plateau were part of Bihar, and regarded non-tribals as exploitative outsiders called 'Dikus'. In 1972, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) was founded on February 2 on the birthday of Birsa Munda. In 1973, Binod Bihari Mahto became president of the party, with Shibu Soren as the general secretary.
It was Jaipal Singh Munda, a member of the Constituent Assembly and an Olympian hockey player, who had become the voice of a separate Jharkhand and championed tribal land rights and their 'autonomous' culture — neither Christian nor Hindu — in the Constituent Assembly. Munda was the leader of the Adivasi Mahasabha that resisted what it saw as Bihari imperialism and trounced the Congress in the tribal belt of then South Bihar in 1952, winning three Lok Sabha and 33 Assembly constituencies. The States Reorganisation Commission of the 1950s was also met throughout the region with slogans of 'Jharkhand Alag Prant (Jharkhand is a distinct state)'.
When mobilisations for a Jharkhand state emerged again in the 1980s, recalls Ram Guha in India After Gandhi, 'the protests … were led by Shibu Soren, a young man with long black locks who quickly became a folk hero'.
'He organised the forest harvest of paddy in lands 'stolen' from the Adivasis by Dikus (outsiders), as well as the invasion of forest lands that they claimed as their own,' Guha writes. In September 1980, 15 Adivasis were killed in police firing in Gua, which is now in Paschimi Singhbhum district, further strengthening the movement for Jharkhand.
Soren was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980 and became president of his party in 1986. He represented JMM from Dumka in 1989, 1991, 1996 and 2004. In 1998 and 1999, however, he lost the parliamentary election.
Jharkhand's formation and coalition politics
In 2000, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, Bihar was bifurcated to create Jharkhand from South Bihar, bowing to the long-standing demand in the region. The states of Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand were also created simultaneously.
However, given the fact that Jharkhand was not a tribal-majority state, the JMM had to rely on alliances to come to power in the state and Soren never had a long stint in power. Allegations of crime and corruption also made him appear like a run-of-the-mill politician.
The JMM was part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2004, and Soren joined the Manmohan Singh government as the minister of coal and mines. He had to resign within two months, as an arrest warrant was issued against him in the Chirudih case of 1975, in which 10 people, including nine Muslims, were killed in a clash between tribals and Muslims. He had to spend a month in jail. After his release on bail, he was reinducted into the Cabinet as Union Coal Minister late in 2004, as the Congress and the JMM had to contest the 2005 Jharkhand Assembly polls in alliance.
On March 2, 2005, Soren became the third CM of Jharkhand after Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda of the BJP, but his government lasted just nine days as he could not prove his majority.
In January 2006, Soren returned to the UPA Cabinet, but had to resign again in November as he was held guilty in the 1994 murder of his former private secretary Shashinath Jha, a first for any Cabinet minister. The CBI alleged that Jha was abducted from Dhaula Kuan in Delhi and taken to Ranchi on May 23, 1994, where he was killed and his body buried nearby in Piska Nagri. Charging the accused, the CBI alleged that this was done because Jha knew of the reported deal between the Congress and the JMM to save the then Narasimha Rao government during the July 1993 no-confidence motion. It was a reference to the JMM bribery case that rocked the minority government of Narasimha Rao, whose administration survived the charges.
Soren was, however, acquitted by the Delhi High Court on August 23, 2007, which ruled the CBI's claims unsustainable. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal, saying there was no evidence that the dead body exhumed was that of his private secretary as the DNA samples did not match.
In 2008, Soren again became CM. But his tenure was cut short yet again, as he failed to win a January 2009 Assembly by-election. In December 2009, he took charge as Jharkhand CM for a third time, heading a JMM-BJP coalition government this time, but had to step down again after six months when the BJP withdrew support.
Even as his health became indifferent and Soren gradually began to withdraw from active politics — he became JMM president for the sixth time in 2010, was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014 and to the Rajya Sabha in 2020 — he established his son Hemant as his successor, with the JMM remaining an entrenched party in state politics.
Despite the BJP trying its level best to breach Jharkhand last year — Hemant spent time in jail on corruption charges and the BJP accused the JMM of allowing Bangladeshi immigrants to acquire documents, marrying tribal girls and claiming tribal lands in the state — the JMM convincingly won the elections.