Reading Poetic Expressions from Adivasi Communities in India

Name of Author : Suchitra Singh

Abstract:  Adivasis are the indigenous communities who have been exploited and cornered earlier by the British colonizers and later by the Indian State as well while pushing them to a state of destitution. Historically, their voices have always been present in the form of oral literature, poems, short stories and novels but less explored. Writers and poets from English and Hindi literary sphere have been presenting them in their own insufficient capacities. Adivasi poets and writers like Alice Ekka, Vandana Tete, Jecinta Kerketta, Susheela Samad, Anuj Lugun are some of the prominent voices emerging in the late twentieth and twenty-first century. These poets have brought in the deeper understanding and concerns towards the world of Adivasis, their identities, relations with environment, the tales of their struggle and resistance against the vision of development, industrialisation, feminist voices in the otherwise patriarchal set up of Indian society. This paper is an attempt to study the poetic voices emerging in the sphere of Hindi and English literary fronts while negotiating their ways for preserving their identity, relations with their environment, and ways of life.

Keywords : Adivasi, Identity, Resistance, Environment, feminist Voices

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