TRIBAL ACTIVISM

For Tribal Human Rights Support

Some authors have dedicated their lives for the much deserving and over all support of the Tribal; social, cultural, linguistic, forest, material, artistic, literary, educational, economic and many other types of human right support in the country. Prominent among these writers are: Thakar Bappa, Dr. Nemichand Jain, Gopinath Mohanty, Phaneeshwar Nath Renu, Range Raghava, Mahasweta Devi, Mama Baleshwar Dayal, Nirmal Minj,etc. One among such writers whose name should be added in the recent times is Shachi Arya whose ideas and approach to the protection of tribal rights together with important literary Hindi writers protesting through their writings in favour of the tribals are summed up in her book, ' TRIBAL ACTIVISM : Voices of Protest' . Among many similar books this volume is with difference. It re-defines the relationship between literature and life,. It presents the voices of protests in an eminently authentic manner. The novelty of the approach and the attempt lies in the matching the social events, phenomena and their reflection in literature in a two way manner, that is from literature to life and from life to literature.

Although the focus in the book is on Mahasweta Devi's works which have for the first time brought the tribal protests under mainstream gaze, it seeks to push ahead the frontiers of exploitation and evaluation. It is not incidental, therefore, that the book brings to the focus such facts about tribal consciousness and action as they were kept away from history books. Coupled to this is the emanative thrust on usually unnoticed or ignored facts which compels the reader to sit up and rid himself of the misconceptions about the tribals.

The book offers not only the first full scale study of Mahasweta Devi's works, but also of the tribal voices of protest: not as a mere documentation of certain actions that took place during the course the last two hundred and odd years, but one throbbing and pulsating with life, with larger-than-life portrayals of the fighting tribals of Middle India.

The books, at the same time, evaluate the role of a great writer who cannot but to be a blend of an observer, a creator and an activist. Rawat Publications (Jaipur and New Delhi, 1998) specially deserves our appreciation to promote such volume of high ranking in social sciences.

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