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• 1 2025-08-22T12:23:48-04:00 Nirmala Putul (1972- ): Author Profile 9 Profile for Santhali author and poet Nirmala Putul (निर्मला पुतुल) plain 2025-08-22T14:27:46-04:00 This profile was written by Srishti Raj.
  
  Community: Santhal community, Jharkhand
  
  Hindi Wikipedia
  
  Nirmala Putul (also referred to as Nirmala Putul Murmu) is a Santhali writer, poet, and activist writing in both Santhali and Hindi. She was born in 1972 in the Santhal Parganas district of Jharkhand, and now serves as the Sarpanch of the Kurwa Gram Panchayat. Her literary and activist work is deeply invested in the rights of Adivasi women and broader themes of Adivasiyat. Putul depicts Santhal life from a woman's perspective, exploring how displacement, migration, and changing relationships with the environment affect people.
  
  For instance, in the poem "Ek Stree ka Ekant" ("A Woman's Solitude") she writes about the keenly felt disenfranchisement of women:

  क्या तुम जानते हो
  पुरुष सेभिन्न
  एक स्त्री का एकांत
  घर प्रेम और जाति से अलग
  एक स्त्री को उसकी अपनी जमीन
  के बारे में बता सकते हो तुम
  
  Do you know,
  different from a man,
  the solitude of a woman?
  Apart from home, love, and caste—
  can you tell a woman
  about the ground that belongs truly to her?
  
  - From Lokpriya Adivasi Kavitaein edited by Vandana Tete

  
  In her poem "Agar Tum Meri Jagah Hote" ("If you were in my place") she depicts the struggles of being socially and economically marginalised, writing:

  कैसा लगता?
  अगर उस सुदूर पहाड़ की तलहटी में
  होता तुम्हारा गाँव
  और रह रहे होते तुम घास-फूस की झोंपड़ियों में
  गाय,बैल, बकरियों और मुर्गियों के साथ
  और बुझने को आतुर ढिबरी की रोशनी में
  देखना पड़ता भूख से बिलबिलाते बच्चों का चेहरा
  तो, कैसा लगता तुम्हें?
  
  How would it feel?
  If, at the foothills of that distant mountain,
  your village lay,
  and you lived in huts of straw and grass,
  among cows, bulls, goats, and chickens,
  and by the dim, dying light of a clay lamp
  you had to watch
  the faces of children writhing in hunger—
  how would it feel to you?
  
  - From Lokpriya Adivasi Kavitaein edited by Vandana Tete

  In "Mountain Man", she explores the connection between the human and the environment:

  When a mountain somewhere is torn apart
  His mountain-like chest shudders
  He speaks to the mountain in mountain language
  
  Shares his joys and sorrow
  Sitting on the mountain, sings mountain-songs
  Writes on the mountain in mountain script
  – “m” is for mountain
  Honing the blade of his axe on the mountain
  He’s sharpening up the dulled numbness of what’s lodged inside him
  
  - Translated from the Santhali by Aruna Sitesh and Arlene Zide (read here)

  Her publications include Nagade Ki Tarah Bajate Shabd ("Words resound like drums", 2005), Apne Ghar ki Talaash Mein ("In Search of My Home", 2004), Beghar Sapne ("Homeless Dreams"), and Phootega Ek Naya Vidroh ("A New Revolution will Explode"). The Punjabi translation of her poetry collection Nagade Ki Tarah Bajate Shabd received the Sahitya Akademi Award for Translation. 
  
  Writings On and Interviews With Nirmala Putul
  
  "Nirmala Putul on Poetry, Practice, and Adivasi Rights" by Aishwarya AVRaj (The Polis Project, 2025)
  "Being an Adivasi herself, Putul’s poems are living evidence of all the grassroots realities that appear mundane in their tone but are very much socio-political, like witch-hunting of women, appropriation of Adivasi women’s bodies by the non-Adivasi gaze, and several others. Her work engages the readers both emotionally and intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: a woman, an Adivasi person, a resident of Jharkhand, and a mother figure to many. Such an epistemic positioning makes her poetry a strong voice of resilience and struggle against gender discrimination and cultural assertion."
  
  "Critical Analysis of Nirmala Putul's Poems on Adivasi Women" by Quanisha Saboo (Adivasi Lives Matter, 2022)
  "Nirmala Putul is a Santhali tribal acclaimed author. She conveys her thoughts about the lives of Adivasi women through the poems she writes. In her poem, she cleverly brings attention to a wider issue through the stories she tells. Nirmala acts as a voice for the voiceless by chronicling the real-life stories of Adivasi women striving to achieve social standing by writing her writings in the form of poems."
  
  "Buru Gaara", a documentary on Dayamani Birla and Nirmala Putul directed by Shriprakash (PSBT, 2014)
  A quote from an interview with Nirmala Putul: "My mother always lived under severe compulsions, that made her so rigid and angry. I could feel the conflict within her, that provoked her to hit me and give vent to her emotions. I began to wander and look into other homes around me. I discovered that it was the same everywhere. Mothers in all homes, as stifled as mine. I wish I could free my mother from her present state. She would say, I have never ever boarded a train. I wished that I could take her into a train."
  
  "निर्मला पुतुल मूर्मु: कविता, संघर्ष और बदलाव की भूख लिए एक संताली औरत" (An interview with Nirmala Murmu on Main Bhi Bharat, 2022)
  वह साहित्य अकादेमी के ‘साहित्य सम्मान’ भारतीय भाषा परिषद के राष्ट्रीय युवा सम्मान, बनारसी प्रसाद भोजपुरी सम्मान सहित कई और पुरस्कारों और सम्मानों से नवाज़ी गई हैं. इसके अतिरिक्त, उन्हें विभिन्न संस्थानों से फ़ेलोशिप प्राप्त हुए हैं.  
  
  Read Nirmala Putul's poetry online
  
  "Utni Door Mat Byahna Baba" (Don't marry me somewhere far away, in Hindi on Poshampa)
  Poems from Nagade Ki Tarah Bajate Shabd (in Hindi on Kavita Kosh)
  A large selection of her poems in Hindi (on Kavita Kosh)
  "If you were in my place", "Mountain Woman", and "Mountain Man" (English translations on the blog Tribes in Translation)