Music and dance of the Santhal tribe of WB and Jharkhand. Image source – Facebook.

Adivasi culture in India is a vibrant tapestry of songs, dances, festivals, and a lifestyle in harmony with nature. Most indigenous people have historically lived in forests and continue to do so, despite deforestation and modern development encroaching on their natural habitat. The younger generation often moves to urban areas for education and better livelihoods. A deep sense of anguish pervades the adivasi lives, as their lands are forcefully taken away by the state in the name of development. This pain is reflected in their poetry and stories. Their literature is rooted in oral traditions that express their history, beliefs, culture, and mythology. Only in recent times have Adivasi writings gained recognition in mainstream Indian literature. These voices need to be given space and heard.

Prof Kanji Patel is a noted Gujarati poet and a language and cultural activist who has been working ceaselessly for close to four decades now, creating variegated forms and narratives of the life struggles faced by Adivasi communities. He established Vahi, a journal of poetry, rituals and multilingual expressions of society, which became a platform for the cultural ecosystem of adivasis. He planned, edited and compiled several ethnographic studies, under a Bhasha initiative, of the adivasi and denotified tribes of Gujarat. An upcoming work of his is an anthology of Adivasi poetry, curating 140 Languages and 400 Adivasi poets from across India, being the first effort of its kind. Prof Patel was also a member of a group appointed by the Indian government to study the living conditions of nomadic tribes in India and suggest measures for their socio-economic welfare. When he offered to do a special feature on Adivasi Poetry for Muse India, we happily accepted it, so that our readers could get a rare glimpse into the cultural world of the indigenous people. On this special feature, Prof Patel has worked closely with Dr Gopika Jadeja, a bilingual poet in English and Gujarati, editor and award-winning translator and interdisciplinary scholar. She too has been working passionately, championing the cause of adivasi literature and is currently working on an anthology of English translations of poetry from Dalit and Adivasi poetry from Gujarat. I express my deep gratitude to both of them for curating this feature with great dedication and commitment. They had a challenging time selecting the poets and poems from a much larger body of work they had gathered from across the entire country. They invited several scholars, too, to contribute articles that provide the backdrop to the poetic expressions.

The traditional attire of many adivasi tribes, particularly of the Northeastern states, is vibrant and colourful, and their songs and dances are energetic and lively. These are popular across the country due to their participation in cultural festivals. To represent this vivacious culture of the adivasis, the feature carries photographs of their habitat, dresses and dances in all the articles and poetry pages. Thus, a reader would be able to see two parallel streams running throughout the feature—one showcasing their culture and the other their poetic expressions and angst. The images are not representative of the literary work and should be seen as a separate flow. Some of the photos were sent by poets from different regions. The rest were taken from various websites on the internet. We have duly acknowledged the sources and express our sincere thanks to the photographers and websites for the beautiful images that bring alive the rich culture of the indigenous people from Kashmir to Kerala, and Arunachal to Gujarat.

I express my sincere appreciation to all the scholars and poets whose works are featured here. And I hope the feature will generate wide interest in the Adivasi poetry.