Poems On How Adivasis Survive

Through 100 pages of 'Poetry as Evidence', Outlook presents a selection of poems and verses that have moved us, and we feel these serve as evidence of our bleak times and lives. The poems below are the 64th, 65th, and 66th from the series.

Outlook Web Desk

Updated on: 14 January 2024 9:45 am

Tribal people protesting against the Netarhat Field Firing Range in Latehar district, Jharkhand in 1992

Jarawa

On a quest of the Oceans
A scientist from a distant country
Reached the lands of Andaman.

Saw a Jarawa Adivasi…
Who got scared by the encounter
But the scientist was delighted…

The scientist said…
Oh God… Very Nice… And wonderful
In front of the mountain-like Jarawa,
The scientist looked like an ant…

A lot like Xuanzang, who had travelled to distant places, the scientist was a bibliophile…
He was a voyager, a lot like Columbus, and Vasco de Gama.

He conducted experiments, like Newton and Einstein…
And would make attempts at writing like Shakespeare…
But fell short, of reading the nature
And then and there came a terrible Tsunami…

Andaman’s Adivasis went up in the mountains…
But the scientist and the ship perished in
the Tsunami… Swept away with all their companions.
Scientists from around the world were left stunned.

How do the Adivasis survive…

O Scientists, researchers…
Jarawa are a part of nature!

They know the gestures of the fish and the crocodile,
The speech of the birds and the animals…
With them,
They had gone away…

But the scientists were engaged in their discoveries…
and people drowned in hollow pits…
In the hollow, hollow
Tsunamis of the seas!

—Translated from Hindi by Pratyush Pushkar

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Sunil Gaikwad, Maharashtra

(Author of 12 books,?Sunil Gaikwad is an Adivasi poet from the Bhil community. His works have documented the struggles of the Adivasi community and have upheld the values of Adivasi lives, far beyond the deterministic civilisational ethos.)

Mountain Child

The mountain child —
a fragment of the mountain —
plays in the lap of the mountain
Toddling up the mountain
he plants his feet in the mountain soil
to rise like a mountain
in the land of mountains
The whole mountain
lives inside the mountain child
And in the lap of the mountain
lives the scurrying mountain child
The mountain child sees
a plane flying over the mountain
And he asks his father —
What is that bird?

—Translated from Hindi by Lucy Rosenstein

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Nirmala Putul, Jharkhand

(Nirmala Putul?was born in Kurwa village, Dumka, Jharkhand, in 1972. She started writing poetry in Santali/Santhali in the 1990s but shot into literary fame after her poetry was translated by Ashok Singh and published in two collections: Apne Ghar Ki Talash Mein?(In Search of One’s Own House, 2004) and?Nagare Ki Tarah Bajti Shabd?(A Voice Like the Thundering of Drums, 2005))

For the Hills

Those selling out their integrity
For a few pieces of silver,
How would they comprehend ever,
Why some people lay down their lives
For the sake of the hills.

—Translated from Hindi by Bhumika Chawla-D’Souza

Jacinta Kerketta, Jharkhand

(Jacinta Kerketta?is a journalist, poet and activist. Her poetry deals with identity crisis of Adivasi youths, systemic oppression of Adivasis in the country, gender- based violence, especially against women, and displacement. It also questions the state apathy of governance.???????)