Ram Dayal Munda

This morning, almost a month after it happened, I learned of that Dr Ram Dayal Munda is no more.

He can be seen singing and dancing on Meghnath's memorable documentary 'Gaadi Lohardaga Mail'.

"Dance to survive!" was Ram Dayal Munda's personal slogan. He is Jharkhand's only Padma Shree, awarded the honour in 2010.

He was born in 1939 in the village of Diuri near Ranchi. He studied in Khuti, near Ranchi.

After gaining his Master's in Anthropology at Ranchi University, he moved to Chicago University, for his PhD. He joined the university's Department of South Asian Studies and pioneered the teaching of tribal and regional Languages. He also taught South-East Asian languages at Minnesota University.

It was in the US that he came into contact with native-American activists and his commitment to the political emancipation of India's 100m indigenous people – much the largest indigenous population in the world – began to grow, says an obit in the Independent.

He returned to India and became the Vice-Chancellor of Ranchi University in 1985. After retiring from teaching in 1999, he focused on international efforts to improve the status and prospects of Adivasis.

He took part in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva and other forums. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha.

He was sceptical of the new, fast-growth India from the Adivasi perspective. "All this hype, what does it represent for our country? – just a tiny minority is touched by all that, nothing in comparison with the millions and millions of jobless. There is no comparison with what we are losing, without compensation.

 In the mean time, millions of people will simply have to disappear. One-fifth of our tribal population is already on the street, nearly 20 million people lost, uprooted, displaced, wandering around..."