A FEW ‘GREAT LEADERS’

JAIPAL SINGH MUNDA

From a cattle-herding boyhood in Jharkhand’s Khunti division to Oxford to captaining an Indian hockey team that won the Olympic Gold in 1928, to the Indian Civil Service, to presiding over the Adivasi Mahasabha and becoming the first prominent voice for a separate Jharkhand state, to membership of the Constituent Assembly, he was really ‘Marang Gomke’ (Great Leader).

NANJIYAMMA

Musicologists have long speculated on the folk genesis of Indian classical music. But it took a song in the Irula language by Nanjiyamma for the film, Ayyappanum Koshiyum (2020), and a national award for best female playback singer to announce the arrival of a distinctive southern tribal vocalism on stage.

ALICE EKKA

To answer the question, ‘Can the Subaltern write?’...well, yes. A strikingly original voice, Ekka’s Hindi stories—written mostly in the 1950s-60s, prefiguring even much of the Dalit resistance writings—are currently being rediscovered by local and western scholars. Leitmotif: strong female characters.