CONRAD K. SANGMA, 44
Chief Minister, Meghalaya, Garo tribe
An alumnus of St Columba’s School in Delhi and with management degrees from Wharton and Imperial College London, Conrad K. Sangma seamlessly combines his tribal identity with a ‘mainstream’ persona. The son of former Lok Sabha speaker, the late P.A. Sangma, he has been trying to build up his NPP, or the National People’s Party, as a representative voice of the Northeast.
PABIBEN RABARI, 38
Entrepreneur, Rabari tribe
PABIBEN RABARI (Photo: Bandeep Singh) | full screen image
Brought up in poverty in Gujarat’s Kutch, Pabiben Rabari was a homemaker before she decided to concentrate on the intricate embroidery of her Rabari tribe. After she invented a new form of stitch work, Hari Jari, avenues opened up, and her brand, Pabiben, is now a fashion staple with exports to 45 countries. Her Banyan Tree Foundation employs 300 tribal women, with an annual turnover of Rs 40 lakh.
LIPIKA SINGH DARAI, 38
Film director, Ho tribe
Lipika Singh Darai; (Photo: Arabinda Mahapatra)
Her first non-fiction film Eka Gachha Eka Manisa Eka Samudra (A Tree, A Man, A Sea) won the National Award in 2013 for Best Debutante Director in the non-feature section. Born in Mayurbhanj district, Darai graduated from FTII, Pune, in sound recording and design. She is the recipient of four National Awards—three for film direction and one for sound recording and mixing. Her latest documentary, Backstage (2021), featured the puppeteer community of Odisha.
Shantaram Siddi, 59
First graduate of his community & MLC, Siddi community
Shantaram Riddi (Photo: Mandar Deodhar)
Siddi has many firsts to his name. When he completed a BA in Economics in 1988, he became the first graduate from his community. He then set up a hostel for tribal children along with the Hindu Seva Pratishtana. The following year, Siddi—from the Malnad region in Karnataka’s Western Ghats—became the first karyakarta of the RSS-linked Vanavasi Kalyana Karnataka. As a Member of the Legislative Council (MLC), Siddi’s goal is to push for speedy distribution of land title deeds to all tribal communities in the state.
Bhajju Shyam, 51
Artist, Gond tribe
Bhajju Shyam; (Photo: Chandradeep Kumar)
In 1994, Bhajju came from Patangarh in Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district to Bhopal looking for a job. While in the alien city, he lived with pioneering Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam. With his encouragement, Bhajju began painting and, within the next three years, carved a niche for himself. In 2001, some months after Jangarh’s tragic suicide, Bhajju was commissioned to paint the walls of a London restaurant. On his return, the series of paintings he made on life in the UK capital as he saw it were compiled into The London Jungle Book. Bhajju has since authored 16 more books. He received the Padma Shri in 2018.
Andrea Kevichusa, 22
Actor, Angami, Ao tribes
Andrea Kevichusa; (Photo: Mandar Deodhar | Location courtesy ASR Studio, Mumbai)
Born in Nagaland to an Angami father and Ao mother, Andrea, the youngest of five sisters, wanted to become a doctor. But a modelling opportunity, when she was 15, changed the course of her life and took her to Mumbai, and landed her the female lead in the film Anek. Andrea believes the rest of India will soon better understand people from the Northeast, who face varying degrees of estrangement in the ‘mainland’.
VIJAYA PAWAR, 39
Entrepreneur, Banjara handicrafts, Gorbanjara tribe
Vijaya Pawar; (Photo: Mandar Deodhar)
In a bid to revive the languishing Gormati art, Vijaya Pawar formed an NGO in 2004, the Harappani Gorbanjara Mahila Kala Vikas Mandal, which has trained hundreds of tribal women to make Banjara handicraft products and earn a good living. A silent worker, Pawar achieved instant fame after PM Narendra Modi chose her among the women achievers to take over his social media handle on International Women’s Day in 2020. A winner of two international awards, Pawar hopes to take her brand ‘Pono’ global in the near future.
SHREEDHANYA SURESH, 29
IAS officer, Kurichiya tribe
Shreedhanya Suresh; (Photo: Ajeeb Komachi)
Sreedhanya’s daily-wage labourer parents in Kerala’s Wayanad district worked hard to educate their three children. After completing her postgrad, Sreedhanya met IAS officer S. Sambasiva Rao while working for the tribal development department. Motivated by him, she appeared for the civil services examination, which she cracked in 2018—the first tribal woman from Kerala to do so. Now the sub-collector and sub-divisional magistrate in Perinthalmanna, Malappuram district, she is an inspiration for her community.
DINESHBHAI BHIL, 45
Archer and archery coach, Bhil tribe
Dineshbhai Bhil; (Photo: Bandeep Singh)
Early in his life, ace archer Dineshbhai Bhil had taken aim at his career goals. Even though he could study only up to Class IX due to acute poverty, Dinesh found his calling while playing with his desi bows and arrows in his native Chhota Udaipur district of Gujarat. His special archery skills helped him shift to a Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre at the state’s Devgadh Baria, and later to Delhi and Kolkata. In between, he tasted multiple successes, winning a gold and two silver medals in the 1996 and 1997 National Archery Championships respectively. In 2005, he set up the Eklavya Archery Academy in the tribal-dominated Naswadi tehsil of his district. His students, including his 18-year-old daughter Tejal, have won many national championships.
—by Kaushik Deka, Kiran D. Tare, Jeemon Jacob, Ajay Sukumaran, Amitabh Srivastava and Rahul Noronha
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).
NANJI YAMMA
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.