On 10 November, 2021, the Union Cabinet declared 15th November, the eve of Jharkhand Diwas as the Remembrance Day for Birsa Munda and his contribution to India’s freedom struggle. Renewed interest in his memory fills the political landscape of India today. Birsa Munda is an iconic, legendary figure in Jharkhand. He is foremost an Adivasi, who later acquired various representations. He led the Birsa Ulgulan (rebellion) against British officials, upper caste zamindars and missionaries. A direct line might be drawn from that moment to the formation of modern Jharkhand. It is not surprising, then, that there is much at stake around the building of his statues in the state. The political life of Birsa Munda now thrives in political campaigns, gaining huge traction to memorialisation far removed from the lived realities of Adivasis.
The statues of Birsa Munda stand as an affective sites to recover, contest and represent memory. I have devised a conceptual lens of ‘material-memory’ to explain the burgeoning memory politics in Jharkhand. Material memory works as a collective noun to depict a wide range of objects that perform a mnemonic function, making people remember the past. However, this article uses it as a proper noun to articulate the potential of doing memory politics through objects in Jharkhand.