Remembering to forget: Birsa Munda and memory politics in India

Renewed interest in Birsa Munda, an iconic anti-colonial Adivasi leader, has brought into sharp relief intensifying political contestation over Adivasi histories in contemporary India.Since 2014, commemorative initiatives, electoral strategies, and media representations have increasingly mobilised Birsa's legacy, projecting him as a national figure.This article situates this conjuncture within a wider 'memory turn' in Indian politics.The article traces Birsa's transformation from a regional symbol of resistance and Adivasi autonomy to a venerated figure embedded within nationalist cartography.It analyses how memory operates as a site of both incorporation and contestation, particularly through institutional forms such as museums, parliamentary installations, and commemorative days.I argue that memory politics in India functions through selective remembering, strategic forgetting, and the production of political icons, whereby histories of dispossession are reframed within narratives of national unity.Yet such incorporation remains partial.Adivasi articulations of memory, grounded in land, cosmology, and community practice, continue to exceed and contest state-led narratives.