The Third Moment: Ol Chiki, Adivasi (power) and the (unfinished Grammar of) Indian Nationhood

The election of Droupadi Murmu to Rashtrapati Bhavan and Mohan Charan Majhi to the Chief Minister’s office in Odisha in close succession has unsettled the established grammar of Indian politics. That both leaders belong to the Santal community is not a footnote to democratic history; it is a punctuation mark—a full stop to one era and a comma before the next. This conjuncture signals a shift from marginal presence to institutional visibility for Adivasi communities within the political order of India. The emerging phase is not merely symbolic but indicative of a deeper rearticulation of power, identity, and representation. It suggests that the next chapter of Indian democracy may increasingly be shaped through the linguistic and cultural frameworks long excluded from it. In this sense, that next era will be written in Ol Chiki.