Ranchi: “After Baba’s passing, mother was my biggest shade. Today, that shade too has merged into nature’s embrace.”With these words on X, chief minister Hemant Soren captured a personal loss that also closes a chapter in the state’s political history. His mother, Rupi Soren, 75, died on Wednesday, barely a year after the death of Jharkhand movement icon and former chief minister Shibu Soren.If Shibu was the public face of the movement that mobilised tribal communities and drove the demand for a separate Jharkhand, Rupi was the quiet force that held the family together through decades of struggle and upheaval.As her husband travelled through villages and forests, leading agitations and building the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Rupi remained at home, raising the children and keeping the household steady.“It was she who managed the household, raised the children and ensured stability at home while Guruji waged his struggle,” said a JMM worker outside the Ranchi hospital on Wednesday night.The hardships of those years were often borne by the family. “Maai (as she was fondly known) would recall how police frequently visited the family home during the movement years and how there were times when the family had little information about Guruji’s whereabouts. Despite all this, she remained calm and composed,” said JMM spokesperson Manoj Pandey.Rupi briefly entered electoral politics, contesting the Dumka Lok Sabha seat on a JMM ticket in 1999. But her larger role was as the family’s centre of gravity — the link between the generation that fought for Jharkhand and the one that now leads it.That link was symbolically affirmed in June, when she received the Padma Bhushan conferred posthumously on her husband.“With Rupi’s passing, Jharkhand has lost more than the matriarch of its most influential political family,” said another party worker.
