New Delhi, Feb. 14 -- In July 2016, the government of Jharkhand issued an order to remove manacles from all statues of the tribal leader Birsa Munda (1875-1900), starting with the one that stands on Birsa Chowk in the state capital, Ranchi.

"Birsa Munda is a guiding light for the youth of Jharkhand," said the then chief minister Raghubar Das. "Showing him in chains casts a negative effect on the minds of youth." That same month Mahasweta Devi, the iconic Bengali writer and activist who had won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1979 for Aranyer Adhikar (Rights to the Forest, published in 1977), a fictionalised account of Birsa Munda's life and struggles, died at the age of 90.

A decade later, in her centenary year, her work remains urgently r...