Of statues, struggles, and subaltern memory: The aesthetics of commemorating Birsa Munda

Abstract The article seeks to examine the contested politics of memory-making in postcolonial, Hindu nationalist India through the figure of Adivasi, anti-colonial leader Birsa Munda. It argues that the Indian state has engaged in a dual process of appropriation and erasure by monumentalizing Birsa through large-scale statuary, selectively framing his legacy within a sanitized narrative of national belonging. Such representational strategies function to depoliticize the contemporary struggles of Adivasis living under abject conditions of dispossession, subject to paroxysmal violence. In contrast, the article foregrounds the counter-mnemonic practices of the Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand, through erecting smadhi sthal s and pathals as subaltern attempts at reclamation of Birsa’s legacy. By attending to the material dimensions of such practices of resistance, the article frames decolonization not as a finished event, but an unfinished labour of mnemonic resistance against statist forms of historical closure. The article endeavours to make a twofold contribution: firstly, it contributes to the mnemonic turn in International Relations (IR) – by foregrounding Adivasi mnemonic agency; and secondly, it reconceptualizes decolonization as an embodied, material, and ongoing practice of reclaiming memory from statist memory regimes. In doing so, the article calls for IR to engage with the politics of Adivasi memorial praxis in the Global South.