Adivasi Writers: An Introduction to India's Indigenous Literature

"Popular Adivasi Poetry" (Hindi poetry Anthology overview)

Hindi-language anthology of poetry edited by Vandana Tete.

Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan, Delhi
Year: 2017 

Featuring poems by Dulay Chandra Munda, Temsula Ao, Irom Sharmila, Janardan Gond, Nirmala Putul, Anuj Lugun, and others. Available in Hindi from Amazon.com (including a Kindle edition). 


Vandana Tete's preface can be translated as "Adivasi Poems are Not Opposition, But Healing." 

In her preface, Tete discusses a number of important themes in the preface, including the theme of displacement caused by the Adivasi encounter with the state and modern industry. She recognizes that Adivasi literature has of necessity changed in recent years in response to these pressures, and today's poets use longer forms and tend to work with different tones and themes. Whatever the style, Tete argues, what matters is the shared commitment to Adivasiyat. Tete also engages with questions about the critical assessment of Adivasi writing, criticizing critical approaches that privilege certain qualities over others, leading to writers like Ramdayal Munda, Grace Gujur, and Jyoti Ujjwala being largely overlooked by non-Adivasi critics. 

Finally, Tete engages with the concept of Adivasiyat in a Global Context, comparing the Adivasi experience to indigenous people in other parts of the world: 

Does this mean Adivasiyat is finished, like the exterminated Red Indians of the Americas? Or that the Dongria Kondh of Niyamgiri, who fight to protect their mountain, will vanish from India?

We know this is not true. Despite a bloody history of thousands of years of exploitation, the Asurs still exist, and so do America’s Native peoples. The philosophy of Adivasiyat remains the last and most reliable remedy for a sick world.

Adivasi poetry, before healing, during healing, and after healing, is the most essential ritual of survival. We must hold on to this belief.



Along the way, Tete quotes excerpts from several poets whose works are included in the volume, including Ramdayal Munda. Tete quotes from his poem, "Of the Last Sal Tree in the Forest of Words" as follows: 

*“I am watching everything,
 and I am going mad with rage.
Had I known of this conspiracy,
 I would have cultivated within myself
 a poisonous liquid, that would scorch
 whoever dared to touch my skin.
 Or I would have donned thorns
 that pierced merely at a glance.”*


And she also quotes Anuj Lugun's "Confessions of a Guerilla" as follows: 

“What could be more absurd
 than this—
 that my household chickens are gone,
 pigs vanished with their pens,
 bullocks that ploughed the fields
 have either been swallowed by the soil
 or the fields themselves drowned in dung.
 The river must have changed its course
 and entered the village, or else the entire village
 sank into the river along with itself.”



Table of Contents / List of Poets