Lo Bir Sendra: Jaipal Singh's memoir speaks of an Adivasi in two worlds

If the text sometimes feels disjointed, it is, perhaps, because Singh was not writing for publication but to remember

Lo Bir Sendra: A Hunter in the Burning Forest

by Jaipal Singh

Published by  Navayana

184 pages ₹399

  In India’s political and cultural history, Jaipal Singh is, paradoxically, a prominent and obscure figure. He was the first Adivasi to study at Oxford; the first to join the Indian Civil Service (and to resign from it); and the first to captain an Indian hockey team to an Olympic gold in Amsterdam in 1928. A powerful voice of the Adivasis in the Constituent Assembly, he remained a parliamentarian till his death in 1970, and was the most consequential Adivasi leader after Birsa Munda.