People own the jal, jangal and jameen, but governments deprive them of all three resources, believed Shibu Soren until, one suspects, the very end. A simple but troubled soul, possibly naïve about government systems, his suspicion of the bureaucracy, the courts and the police, by all accounts, lasted all his life.

Even when one of his three sons Hemant became chief minister of Jharkhand, Soren senior remained a sceptic, telling interviewers that change, if any, would have to be ushered in by the people and that he had few expectations from the government.

He had barely completed his schooling and regretted his unfinished and inadequate education. Tribals, he believed, had to be educated in order to avoid being exploited.

It is remarkable that after he passed away in a hospital in New Delhi yesterday, 4 August at the age of 81, he has been almost universally described as a ‘tall tribal leader’. It is remarkable because what Shibu Soren fought for — land and forest rights, a just mining policy and faster administration of justice — was not just for tribals, who constitute less than 30 per cent of Jharkhand’s population.

Yet, the description is apt because people other than tribals in the state found it so hard to accept him as their ‘leader’. His empathy for people, however, was pronounced and to his credit, he did not shy away from meeting visitors though he had withdrawn from public life and politics for virtually the last 15 years.

His father was killed by mahajans (moneylenders) against whom the senior Soren, a school teacher, had raised his voice. The family and villagers knew the identity of the killers but did not reveal their names to the police. The widow of the murdered man, however, told the police that her son would avenge his father’s killing.

Did Shibu Soren avenge his father’s murder? Folklore holds that he did. Even as a teenager, he mobilised Santhals against moneylenders, traders and forest department officials who exploited tribals. Clashes, police firings, arrests followed and Shibu Soren and his band hid in the forests for months, eluding police and forest rangers besides the moneylenders and their mercenaries.

Villagers were poor and were in no position to feed the band and sustain their militant activities. They were thus left with no option but to extort money from forest contractors and rob people who were better off. Even this was often not sufficient, forcing the band to hide their arms in the forests and sneak out to do odd jobs before retreating into the forests. Not much, unfortunately, is known about this dramatic phase of his life. Shibu Soren himself was quite reticent about it.