Adivasi Writers: An Introduction to India's Indigenous Literature

Primary Texts and Translations

Here, we'll curate a collection of primary texts, including translations (for translations understood as still in copyright in India, we will seek permission to post). 

Places to start from the collection below:

Abhay Flavian Xaxa, "I am not your data" -- defiant poem of resistance to external definition and description. Assertion of Adivasi identity
Anuj Lugun, "Adivasi" -- poem expressing deep connection to nature, separate from artifical labels
Anuj Lugun, "Red Indians, Once Again" -- poem comparing the experience of Native American people encountering European settlers to Indian Adivasis.
Nirmala Putul, "Santhal Division" -- poem about the economic and cultural impoverishment of an Adivasi community 
Nirmala Putul, "About Adivasi Girls" -- poem about the tension between authentic folk culture and external misrepresentations
Vandana Tete, "Revolutionaries" -- biting satirical poem about the decline of revolutionary rhetoric, selling out, government sponsorships...
Mahadev Toppo, "I am a poet of the forest..." -- ecological poem ("I plant trees and poetry too...") 

Materials available online elsewhere:

Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, "Joga" (English)
Jacinta Kerketta, Profile and Selected Poems 
Five poems by Mamang Dai (English)
Nirmala Putul, "Mountain Child" 
Ushakiran Atram, "Jarwa Women"  (Hindi and English versions of a poem about objectification of Tribal women's bodies)

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