"Vimukta: Freedom Stories" (Mixed-genre collection, 2021): Overview
Published by Nayavana Publishing, New Delhi
This is a collection of writings by and about DNT groups, with an emphasis on the Chhara community of Ahmedabad. The editors describe the anthology as: "the first ever anthology of creative texts documenting the phenomenon of hereditary crime in postcolonial India."
The preface by the editors describes at length the history of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which shaped the experience of many Adivasi communities for generations. It also describes the role played by NGOs like the Salvation Army, which played a role in attempting to "reform" communities deemed as "criminal tribes:
During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Salvation Army launched a spirited campaign to contain the incorrigibles in hardened reformatories, correcting the "rabbit warren approach." The Army was granted its first criminal settlement in 1908 in Bengal, and by the 1930s both government and charitable agencies such as the [Salvation] Army were administering some fifty settlements throughout the country. (14)
The editors also address the question of whether groups like the Chharas should be classified as Adivasis:
The various ethnic communities gathered under the DNT label, while to a large extend Adivasi in origin, have been classified under each of the three constitutional schedules to different states, and sometimes as under different categories within the same state depending on region. So for example the Sansi tribals who today identify as the Chhara people of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, were in the mid-nineteenth century nomads wandering the semi-arid barrents of Saurashtra, Northern Punjab and Western Rajasthan. Having been settled in the Ahmedabad reformatory in the 1930s, the Chharas of that district are today labelled as Other Backward Classes (OBCs), while in neighboring Maninagar the Sansi population there is labelled as a Scheduled Caste (SC), and in the Panch Mahals districts as a Scheduled Tribe (ST). (30)
Table of Contents
Dakxin Bajrange, Excerpt from Budhan Bolta Hai
Dakxin Bajrange, "Bulldozer"
Kushal Batunge, "Who Am I?"
M. Subha Rao, "The life, livelihood and aspirations of a DNT couple"
Bhimrao Jadhav, "Story of a hero who broke the fence
Kanji Patel and Rupale Burke, "Pata"
Dhruv Bhatt, "Pilgrims of Darkness"
Kalpana Gagdekhar, "Confessions of a Chhara actress"
Dakxin Bajrange, "Budhan"