Forced to abandon her home and her job, Budhini Manjhiyain, a tribal woman in the Indian state of Jharkhand (in the east of the country), spent her entire life in exile.
Manjhiyain, who died in November, was just 15 years old when she was ostracized by her tribe, the Santhals. His crime her? Graced India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru 63 years ago.
According to Santhal customs, exchanging garlands is similar to marriage.
Manjhiyain – and the hardships she endured – were almost unknown, but her death has sparked renewed interest in the woman described by some as “Nehru’s first tribal wife”.
Many citizens of Jharkhand demand that a monument be erected in their honor, next to a statue that exists in the town of who was the first ruler of the country after its independence from the United Kingdom.
Unearthing the history
He knows little about Manjhiyain’s early life. His Wikipedia page is sparse and was created only after his death.
Sometimes a newspaper or a website wrote about her, but the information was incomplete.
In 2012, a newspaper even wrongly reported that he had died and that he had lived out his last years in a impenetrable darkness and misery.
It was these inconsistencies that pushed Sarah Joseph, a writer based in the southern state of Kerala who wrote a book inspired by Manjhiyain’s life, to find the woman and “bring her back to life.”
Joseph said that when he met Manjhiyain in 2019, he found it difficult to communicate with her because they did not speak a common language.
“However, I understood her completely.”he told the BBC.
Manjhiyain grew up in Dhanbad, a small town located in the heart of the coal mines of Jharkhand, a lush land of rolling hills where tribals make up a quarter of the population.
She was among the thousands of workers employed in Damodar Valley Corporation’s (DVC) ambitious project. This was the country’s first “multipurpose project” and included a network of dams, thermal and hydroelectric power plants that would lay the foundation of modern India.
Nehru once described it as “the noble mansion of free India”.
But building it was equally controversial. Thousands of residents, most of whom were members of local tribes, were evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for the works.
Hundreds of villages, including Kabona, where Manjhiyain lived before being ostracized, they were submerged.
The small gesture that changed everything
In 1959, Nehru announced that he would inaugurate one of the dams, called Panchet. To his surprise, the DVC leadership chose Manjhiyain and a colleague to welcome the prime minister and then everything went wrong.
At the ceremony, Manjhiyain was asked to garland the president. However, what he did not expect was that Nehru would playfully return the present to him.
The ruler also insisted that the 15-year-old girl will press the button to officially begin operations of the hydroelectric plant.
That night, when Manjhiyain returned to her village, she did not know that it was the last time she would return home.
The village headman called her and told her that by garlanding Nehru she had become his wife. He also accused her of having broken the Santhal code that forbids women to marry a stranger and, to atone for her offense, she had to give up everything and leave.
The Santhals are a peaceful tribe and their members live in small, close-knit communities and follow their own ritual codes.
One such rule prohibits its members from marrying outside the community, and violators are routinely punished with social ostracism. However, activists say the practice is often used as tool to oppress women.
Santhal men are allowed to migrate in search of work, but young, single women are rarely allowed to leave their villages. Those who do so out of economic necessity often become the object of contempt and discrimination.
Manjhiyain knew that if she left, she would never be able to return. She tried to resist and reason with the village chief, but the community’s verdict was quick and forceful: for them she had already become an outcast.
“Nobody helped her. He received death threats from his own people,” Joseph recounted.
Helpless, the 15-year-old girl gathered her things and left.
Adrift
The inauguration of the dam was hailed as a milestone in Indian history.
Although Manjhiyain was barely mentioned in newspaper reviews of the time, one newspaper noticed “the young Santhal” and described her as the first worker “to put a dam into operation” in India.
It was around this time that he earned the title of “Nehru’s tribal wife”Joseph said.
The tragedy is that Manjhiyain had no idea about this: she was busy trying to survive the most harrowing months of her life, enduring ostracism and abject poverty, her biographer added.
“Everyone read about her, but no one helped. She had nowhere to go,” the author explained.
Things got worse in 1962 after DVC fired her without cause and forced her to work for a daily wage.
The prime minister did not know of the suffering he caused the woman. An ironic situation, since Nehru is considered one of the main exponents of progressivism and modern thought in India.
Finding happiness and peace
Years passed before a ray of light appeared in Manjhiyain’s life (the exact timeline is unclear) and that was when she met a man named Sudhir Dutta.
Dutta worked in a coal mine in the neighboring state of West Bengal, where the woman lived at the time. Both they fell in love and they married.
Joseph claimed that the couple lived in poverty and Manjhiyain tried, unsuccessfully, to get her job back on several occasions.
It was not until 1985 that two journalists, researching his story, approached Rajiv Gandhi, Nehru’s grandson and then prime minister, the author explained.
Finally, after two decades, Manjhiyain he regained his job at DVC and worked there until his retirement.
“But what was his fault to begin with? That question remains unanswered,” Joseph admitted.
Manjhiyain, however, left her traumatic past behind.
“What happened to my grandmother was wrong, but during her last moments she did not complain and was at peace“His grandson told The Indian Express newspaper after his death.
Joseph said building his statue won’t change the past, but it could help reclaim its history.
Manjhiyain’s case reflects the struggle of thousands of other Indian women, whose dreams are crushed under the weight of patriarchal traditions and intense social pressures.
But it also represents millions of people who are displaced and forgotten in the name of modernization, the author said.
“She is the symbol of all the victims of development. Recovering it is a historical and political necessity,” Joseph concluded.
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