"Popular Adivasi Poetry" (Hindi poetry Anthology overview)
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
- Dulay Chandra Munda
- Temsula Ao
- Grace Kujur
- Vaharu Sonavane (Waharu Sonawane)
- Ram Dayal Munda (Ramdayal Munda)
- Mahadev Toppo
- Irom Chanu Sharmila
- Hariram Meena (Hari Ram Meena)
- Kamal Kumar Tanti
- Ujjwala Jyoti Tigga
- Nirmala Putul
- Anuj Lugun
- Vandana Tete
- Janardan Gond