बाघ और सुगना मुण्डा की बेटी
लेखक: अनुज लुगुन
अनुज लुगुन की कविता ‘बाघ और सुगना मुण्डा की बेटी’ समकालीन हिन्दी कविता की एक बड़ी उपलब्धि है। यह मुक्ति की आकांक्षा की एक बड़ी कविता है। इस कविता में इतिहास-लेखन की मुख्यधारा पर, सभ्यता के विकास पर प्रश्न है, यह मौखिक परम्परा से लिखित परम्परा तक के दीर्घ विस्तार को समेटती है, मुण्डा समाज और आदिवासी समाज के साथ यह उनमें सीमित न रहकर विश्व की एक परिक्रमा करती है, पूँजी और लालसा-लिप्सा पर प्रहार करती है, एक नये समय और समाज की रचना का सार्थक प्रयत्न करती है, यथार्थ को उसकी समग्रता में देखकर उसे बदलने की महती आकांक्षा रखती है, बाह्य शत्रु के साथ आन्तरिक शत्रु की सही पहचान करती है, एक नये मानक की रचना करती है, संघर्ष के सौन्दर्य का विकास करती है। अतीत की स्मृति, वर्तमान का यथार्थ और भविष्य का स्वप्न और उसकी कल्पना सब एक साथ समग्र रूप में यहाँ मौजूद है। कवि के यहाँ विचार और चिन्तन प्रमुख है। कविता का फलक व्यापक है, चिन्ताएँ गहरी हैं। संघर्षशील चेतना का विकास करने वाली यह कविता मुक्ति की आकांक्षा की कविता है।
एलिस एक्का की कहानियां
लेखिका:एलिस एक्का
एलिस एक्का हिंदी की पहली आदिवासी स्त्री कथाकार हैं. उन्होंने पचास के दशक में हिंदी में लेखन आरंभ किया था और 1947 से शुरू हुई साप्ताहिक ‘आदिवासी ‘ की वह नियमित लेखिका थीं. उनकी सबस पहली प्राप्य रचना, जो खलील जिब्रान के साहित्य का अनुवाद है, ‘आदिवासी’ के अगस्त, 1959 के विशेषांक में छपी है. संभव है, इसके पूर्व भी उनकी रचनाएँ छपी हों लेकिन “आदिवासी” के अंक प्राप्य नहीं होने से निश्चयपूर्वक कुछ भी नहीं कहा जा सकता. इस दिशा में अनुसन्धान बहुत जरुरी है ताकि न सिर्फ ऐलिस की रचनाएँ और उनके साहित्यिक अवदान से आदिवासी व सम्पूर्ण विश्व साहित्य परिचित हो बल्कि उनके जैसे अन्य आदिवासी साहित्यकारों का व्यक्तित्व एवं कृतित्व भी सामने आ सके. फिर भी जिसे खलील जिब्रान पसंद हो और जो झारखण्ड की पहली आदिवासी स्त्री ग्रेजुएट हो, उसकी साहित्यिक अभिरुचि, सृजन और मेघा का अंदाजा सहज ही लगाया जा सकता है.
इस संकलन में उनकी कुल छह कहानियाँ शामिल हैं : “वन कन्या”, “दुर्गी के बच्चे और एल्मा की कल्पनाएं”, “सलगी, जुमनी और अंबा गाछ”, “कोयल की लाड़ली सुमरी”, “पंद्रह अगस्त, बिलचो और रामू” और “धरती लहलहाएगी, झालो नाचेगी-गाएगी.”
आदिवासी अस्तित्व और झारखंडी अस्मिता के सवाल
लेखक:रामदयाल मुण्डा
डॉ. रामदयाल मुण्डा एक भाषाविद, नृतत्वशास्त्री, शिक्षाशास्त्री और सक्रिय एवं जुझारू राजनेता थे. उन्होंने आदिवासियों की संस्कृति और उनकी समस्याओं को व्यापक सन्दर्भ में देखने का पप्रयास किया है. संघर्ष और सामंजस्य एक ही ऐतिहासिक प्रक्रिया के दो पहलू हैं हमें इन्हें आदिवासियों की अस्मिता, उनका संघर्ष एवं उनकी समस्याओं के सन्दर्भ में भी देखने की आवश्यकता है.
रामदयाल मुण्डा ने प्रस्तुत पुस्तक में आदिवासियों को उन्हीं विशिष्टताओं को उद्घाटित किया है. भारतीय साहित्य एवं इतिहास की अनेक भूली-बिसरी कड़ियों को प्रकाश में लाने एवं उन्हें जोड़ने का भी प्रयास लेखक ने किया है.
इस पुस्तक के पाठकों को हमारी आदिवासी विरासत, आदिवासी समुदायों की भारतीय संस्कृति एवं समाज को देन, आदिवासियों की समस्याओं एवं उनके संघर्ष के कारणों एवं प्रक्रियाओं को समझने में मदद मिलेगी.
जंगल पहाड़ के पाठ
लेखक:महादेव टोप्पो
पिछले करीब दो-तीन दशकों से हिंदी साहित्य में जल, जंगल, जमीन और जमीर से जुड़े मुद्दों और सवालों ने, आदिवासी – लेखन को, एक अलग पहचान दी है. आज देश भर में, लगभग हर भाषा में यह लेखन मुखर है. आदिवासी सवालों पर महादेव टोप्पो अस्सी के दशक से ही लिखते रहे हैं. उनके लेख, कविता आदि विभिन्न पत्र-पत्रिकाओं में प्रकाशित होने के साथ-साथ अनेक संग्रहों में संग्रहित भी हैं लेकिन, स्वतंत्र-संग्रह का यह पहला अवसर है.
यह कविता संग्रह आदिवासी-दुनिया के संघर्ष, जद्दोजहद, आक्रोश, पीड़ा, प्रतिरोध के अतिरिक्त आशाओं, आकांक्षाओं, सपनों से न केवल परिचित कराता है बल्कि आदिवासी-जीवन और झारखंडी-परिवेश से जुड़े, अनदेखे कई मुद्दों, प्रश्नो की स्थानीयता को, वैश्विक-सन्दर्भों से भी जोड़कर एक नया आयाम देता है.
“जंगल पहाड़ के पाठ” संग्रह की अधिकांश कविताएं जहाँ एक ओर विकास, पूंजीवाद, विस्तारवाद, उपभोक्तावाद, बाज़ारवाद, अंधराष्ट्रवाद, सामंतवाद, श्रेष्ठतावाद, नस्लवाद की विद्रूपताएँ झेलते आदिवासियों की सामाजिक, आर्थिक, सांस्कृतिक, भाषिक, राजनीतिक समस्याओं को लोकतंत्र के व्यापक परिप्रेक्ष्य में देखने, परखने का प्रयास करती हैं वहीं दूसरी ओर ये कविताएं धरती, मनुष्य और मनुष्यता बचाने के लिए चिंतित और बेचैन भी नजर आती हैं.
मोट्यारिन: कविता संग्रह
लेखिका:उषाकिरण आत्राम
लाल श्याम शाह : एक आदिवासी की कहानी
लेखक:सुदीप ठाकुर
अंगोर
लेखिका: जसिंता केरकेट्टा
जसिन्ता केरकेट्टा बहुत कम समय में, अपनी सृजनात्मकता एवं सक्रियता से हिन्दी साहित्य जगत में, पहचान बनाने में सफल रहीं हैं। उन्होंने अपनी कविताओं में परिवेश-विशेष का जिस सजगता और प्रखरता से परिचय कराया है, वह कविता प्रेमियों के लिए एक नया अनुभव है। उनकी कविताओं में आदिवासी समाज का दुख, दर्द, गुस्सा, आक्रोश उभर कर आया है। इसके अलावा जसिन्ता ने अपनी कविताओं में आदिवासी-स्त्री की स्थिति को भी आत्मीयता से समझने का प्रयास किया है।
– महादेव टोप्पो
We come from the Geese
Authors: Ruby Hembrom (text), Boski Jain (illustrations)
We are one of the original peoples; the adivasis of this land. Our ancestors
said that Santals were born from a pair of geese—Hãs and Hãsil—and used
to tell the story of our creation.
All the peoples on Earth have stories of their origin, this is ours.
We want to preserve it here for you—gidrw—and also share it with
children all over the world.
Ruby Hembrom is a learning and development professional and the
director of adivaani. Boski Jain is an illustrator from Bhopal. This is
their first book of a series on Santal Creation Stories.
Kocharethi: The Araya Woman
Author: Narayan, Translator: Catherine Thankamma
Set in the 1930s, Kocharethi revolves around the Malayarayars, a tribe inhabiting the hilly terrains of mid-eastern Kerala. Drawing deeply from oral traditions to underscore the earthy tensions of an adivasi society, Narayan evokes Nature and the Great Spirits to unfold the Malayarayars’ changing perceptions of land and its ownership, and documents a life system that is slowly fading into history.
Translated by Catherine Thankamma, this volume includes a detailed Introduction by G.S. Jayasree as well as an in-depth interview with the author. The accompanying illustrations bring to life the story of a community that has remained largely unheard outside Kerala.
A girl swallowed by a tree
Author: Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton
This is a marvelously brave book. I know Jasmine has swum against the tide of publishers wanting her to fit her book into their agenda, and her refusal to do so testifies to her faith in her book.
This is is a book that should be used like a pathfinder for other books on oral narratives. Literature from the Northeast has been suppressed too long by mainstream publishing that requires writers from the region to write within a prescribed box and format.
Here is a writer daring to write oral literature her way, retaining the flavor of oral storytelling, including Lotha words that are culturally untranslatable in their original forms, unashamedly using the logic of the oral narrator and taking us back to an age when ‘all animals and insects could talk, and streams could babble, and all creation had the gift of language’.
— Easterine Kire
The Adivasi Will Not Dance
Author: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
In this collection of stories, set in the fecund, mineral-rich hinterland and the ever-expanding, squalid towns of Jharkhand, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar breathes life into a set of characters who are as robustly flesh and blood as the soil from which they spring, where they live, and into which they must sometimes bleed.
Troupe-master Mangal Murmu refuses to perform for the President of India and is beaten down; Suren and Gita, a love-blind couple, wait with quiet desperation outside a neonatal ward, hoping—for different reasons—that their blue baby will turn pink; Panmuni and Biram Soren move to Vadodara in the autumn of their lives, only to find that they must stop eating meat to be accepted as citizens; Baso-jhi is the life of the village of Sarjomdih but, when people begin to die for no apparent reason, a ghastly accusation from her past comes back to haunt her; and Talamai Kisku of the Santhal Pargana, migrating to West Bengal in search of work, must sleep with a policeman for fifty rupees and two cold bread pakoras.
The Adivasi Will Not Dance is a mature, passionate, intensely political book of stories, made up of the very stuff of life. It establishes Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar as one of our most important contemporary writers.
Adi-dharam: Religious beliefs of the Adivasis of India
Author: Ram Dayal Munda
Adi Dharam unfolds before us a way of life based on egalitarian principles, a continuum of nature, ancestor and human, and a symbiosis between human and animal kingdom. It emerges from a lost world the whole of humanity shared once. It was the world of magic where the creator and the created lived together. It was a spirit-centric world as opposed to anthropocentrism of the normative religions.
The survival of the Adi Dharam is, therefore, crucial for the survival of all, the toiling and peace loving people of the world, both indigenous and non-indigenous. The struggle to protect the land, forest and water is the precondition of the survival of the Adi Dharam. The ‘another world’ that we all believe is possible has to be built on the foundation of the reconstructed world of the Adi Dharam.
— Samar Bosu Mullick
Mother-Forest: The Unfinished Story of C.K. Janu
Author: Janu Bhaskaran, N. Ravi Shanker (Translator)
In January 2003, tribals ‘illegally’ occupied a part of the wildlife sanctuary in Mathunga, Kerala. Forcible eviction by the police resulted in the death of one tribal and injuries to others. Leading the tribal resistance was Janu, a young woman who had mobilized their protest at the government’s failure to honour their commitment to the tribals: the restoration of land alienated from them for “development”. Dispossessed of their lands, the adivasis feared they would lose their identity and their livelihood. In this passionate account of her struggle, Janu speaks of her childhood and her life with Mother Forest, her political awakening as a party worker in the CPM, her growing disillusionment with it, and her break from it after she felt it had betrayed the tribals. Frank, guileless and deeply moving, Janu’s unfinished autobiography is an eloquent testimony to her courage – and her convictions.
Dancing on our turtle’s back
Author: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
I think beautiful Indigenous bodies on the land, living our cultures,
singing our political systems, and animating the lifeways of our ancestors is revolutionary in the face of on-going hydro-electric development, oil and gas development, mining, deforestation, chemical farming and genetic engineering, encroachment, environmental contamination, and the criminalization of dissent. I think Indigenous peoples know how to live with the land and develop sustainable alternatives to capitalism—because it is Indigenous economic intelligence that has sustained us for most of our histories.
From the Introduction to the Indian Edition by the author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a writer, scholar, storyteller and activist of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg ancestry and is a member of Alderville First Nation. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, is an instructor at the Centre for World Indigenous Knowledge, Athabasca University.
The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey
Author: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Rupi birthed her eldest son squatting in the middle of a paddy field, shin-deep in mud and slush. Soon after, Gurubari, her rival in love, gave her an illness that was like the alakjari vine which engulfs the tallest, greenest trees of the forest and sucks their hearts out. Now Rupi, once the strongest woman in her village, lives out her days on a cot in the backyard, and her life dissolves into incomprehensible ruin around her.
The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey is the story of the Baskeys—the patriarch Somai; his alcoholic, irrepressible daughter Putki; Khorda, Putki’s devout, upright husband, and their sons Sido and Doso; and Sido’s wife Rupi. Equally, the novel is about Kadamdihi, the Santhal village in Jharkhand in which the Baskeys live. For it is in full view of the village that the various large and small dramas of the Baskeys’s lives play out, even as the village cheers them on, finds fault with them, prays for them, and most of all, enjoys the spectacle they provide.
An astonishingly assured and original debut, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey brings to vivid life a village, its people, and the gods—good and bad—who influence them. Through their intersecting lives, it explores the age-old notions of good and evil and the murky ways in which the heart and the mind works.
Sosobonga
Authors: Ram Dayal Munda & Ratan Singh Manki
In the present context of concern for the environment, the relevance of
this story is self-evident. The current global warming and consequential
fear of rain–fire and deluge is not mythical but real. In such a situation the audacity of today’s superhuman—that we are the best work of creation and therefore whatever we do is correct, is indicative of an unavoidable calamity. Being the best work of creation does not mean that man has unlimited right to toy with nature. Despite increased growth of scientific knowledge, man should have a humble feeling of his smallness, gratitude and respectfulness towards nature. Nature nurtures us all and therefore it is our duty that we should take care of her. All intents related to this thought are included in the broad canvas of the present story.
– Ram Dayal Munda
State, Society, and Tribes: Issues in Post-Colonial India
Author: Virginius Xaxa
State, Society, and Tribes revisits the concepts of ‘tribe’ and ‘tribal society’, situating the existing body of knowledge in the context of state policy and socio-cultural developments witnessed in India after independence. An overarching exposition on contemporary research and a nuanced analysis of contestations on a variety of tribal issues, the volume will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, and political science.
Disaibon Hul
Authors: Ruby Hembrom (text), Saheb Ram Tudu (illustrations)
Year after year towards the end of June, Santal men, women and children make the long walk to the spot where the Santal Rebellion started in 1855. Tracing the route of the uprising, this long walk is to remember and celebrate one defining moment in adivasi history.
The Hul, as it was and still is called, left a deep impression upon the social imaginary of the Santal people. It was a last ditch effort to defend their way of life which was being undermined by the influx of outsiders. This is a book for children to remember and cherish our heroes and their deeds.
Ruby Hembrom, a Santal, is the founder-director of adivaani. She is thewriter of adivaani’s Santal Creation Stories for children in English.
Saheb Ram Tudu, a Santal, is an artist, illustrator, animation filmmakerand sculptor with degrees from the Banaras Hindu University and theNational Institute of Design. He has won four national and two International awards for his animations. He is also a published poet.
The Life and Times of Jaipal Singh Munda
Author: Santosh Kiro
The life and times of Jaipal Singh Munda’ is a biography of the legendary leader, hockey genius as the Captain, led India hockey team to gold at Amsterdam summer Olympics, 1928, a voice of the voiceless adivasis, a member of the constituent assembly and a brain to fifth schedule and sixth schedule of the Constitution, an excellent orator and man who conceived to rescue ‘Jharkhand’ from the womb of history. An M.A. (Economics) from Oxford and an Oxford hockey Blue, jaipal quit coveted ICs career to lead Indian team at olympics—only Olympics in history where the Gold Medallist team did not concede a single goal to rivals in the entire tournament. Legendary major dhyan Chand was a member of this team. Though married into the family of Indian National Congress President W.C. Bonnerjee, jaipal dared to go against his own in-laws and formed ‘Jharkhand party’ in order to lead his ‘adivasi’ people to statehood by literally becoming a thorn in the Congress politics. Jaipal was the President of Oxford Indian majlis, a debating society. As the principal of Rajkumar college, Raipur, jaipal organised a football match in Calcutta, at which the school commoners played football with the royal princes of India.
Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire
Author: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Mohan Chandar lives with his wife and three children in the tiny and remote village of Champakbagh. One day, he rescues a strange creature from the storm that is raging outside. When he brings the creature home, the family is astonished. What sort of animal is this? Is he friendly? What does he eat? Where will he sleep? They name him Jwala Kumar, and as the days go by, they discover that Jwala Kumar is no ordinary animal. He has special powers that he uses to help his human family in their times of need. When the days are dark and hope seems to dim, Jwala Kumar lights up their lives in many ways. But who is Jwala Kumar and will he stay forever?
Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire is a captivating story of innocence and friendship, of magic and love, and of gifts that last a lifetime.