Nearly 1,000 people from tribal communities in Bankura took out a protest rally here on Sunday against the alleged “undermining” of legendary tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda by Union home minister Amit Shah during the latter’s visit here earlier this month.

The tribal protest rally ended barely two hours before chief minister Mamata Banerjee arrived in Bankura on Sunday 3pm.

The rally started from Bankura’s Lalbazar area and ended at Machantala, where leaders of multiple tribal outfits mounted a public protest against Shah’s paying floral tributes on November 5 to the statue of an anonymous tribal hunter with the branches of a tree on his head.

“We tried to get the attention of our chief minister through our protest rally as she reached the district today (Sunday). The protest is against the move to humiliate our hero, Birsa Munda, as Amit Shah paid tribute to a hunter’s statue and garlanded a photograph of Munda kept by the feet of the statue,” said Sunil Kumar Mandi, the district president of the All-India Adivasi Bikash Parishad.

Mandi also said that he, on the behalf of the tribal community, had approached minister of state and Trinamul president in Bankura, Shyamal Santra, seeking an appointment to meet the chief minister to express their grief on the issue.

“We don’t know if she will have time to meet us. If she meets us, we will tell her how the faux pas has hurt the tribal community,” said Mandi.

The tribal freedom fighter has, since November 5, assumed centre stage in the battle between Trinamul and BJP after Shah’s floral tributes to the wrong statue prompted Trinamul to label the BJP “bohiragawto (outsider)” once again.

The BJP, which had mistakenly identified the hunter’s statue as that of Munda, tried to cover it up by placing a picture of Birsa Munda by the hunter’s feet.

The faux pas drew loud criticism from tribal organisations. However, the state BJP president Dilip Ghosh told journalists a few days after the event — much to the dismay of tribal organisations — that the BJP considered the statue of the anonymous hunter as that of Birsa Munda because Shah had paid floral tributes to it.

“It would have been better had they admitted their mistake,” a tribal leader had said then.
Placing Birsa Munda’s picture by the feet of the hunter’s statue on November 5 has now reportedly snowballed into a contentious issue by itself.

“We treat Birsa Munda as our Bhagwan (god) and we can’t be ready to accept such mistakes from a person like Union home minister Shah. It was just a hunter and the photograph of Birsa Bhagwan was kept by the feet of the statue,” said Luxmi Narayan Kora, state president of the Munda Samaj Farich Samiti — a welfare society for members of the Munda community.

Some members of the tribal community led by Trinamul have also decided to set up a statue of Munda near the hunter’s for which land has reportedly been identified.

Last week, Trinamul in Bankura had decided to flood Shah’s letterbox with 50,000 postcards written by tribal residents of Jungle Mahal districts, seeking his apology.