Congress MP Ram Dayal Munda sings a Mundari song in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Pheroze L. Vincent)

New Delhi, March 29: It’s not every day you hear an MP sing, especially if he is a 72-year-old Rajya Sabha and National Advisory Council member, a former vice chancellor and also a Padma Shri. But again, it is not every day that Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit is among the audience.

Nominated Congress MP from Jharkhand Ram Dayal Munda today performed at the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Mahasabha, a three-day conference of tribals from across the country, at Talkatora Indoor Stadium in central Delhi.

After chief guest Dikshit was entertained by myriad tribal dancers, Munda got off the dais and girded his hips with a red handloom scarf, proceeded to the vanguard of a troupe of Mundari and Natwa dancers and drummers and dedicated a song to the chief minister.

“This song is written for people like you,” he said to the smiling matriarch. “The lyrics mean: I want to stop this river, but it is so vast,” Munda said on the microphone.

His voice then rose to a shrill mesmerising pitch, complemented by women vocalists in traditional white-and-red attire. Even as he sang, Munda conducted the drummers and the sword-wielding Natwa dancers. They danced into a juggernaut before gradually drifting out of centre stage.

“I never knew that an MP could have such a beautiful voice,” Dikshit told the tribal ideologue, who has won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for his contribution to music in Jharkhand.

According to Munda, the burning issue for tribals is the constitutional crisis in scheduled areas and the tribal sub-plan of the Planning Commission. “While a governor has the right to decide which laws can be applied in scheduled areas (tribal areas included in Schedule V of the Constitution), no governor has exercised this power,” he said, adding that the implementation of the sub-plan needed to be reviewed.

Dikshit thanked the conference for choosing her city to meet and deliberate on the issues of indigenous people. “Never think you (Adivasis) are in a weak position. Your being different from us (non-tribals) only adds to our diversity,” she said. “The whole world blesses and thanks you for preserving forests and teaching us how to live in harmony with nature. True education is not from books or computers, but from the lives you lead.”

The first-of-its-kind convention, inaugurated by Lok Sabha deputy speaker Karia Munda yesterday, has been organised by the Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ICITP). The purpose is to enable a direct dialogue between policy-makers and tribals. Almost 1,000 people from 300 tribes are attending it.