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Literary Review
Her own woman
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No rhetoric here; just a firm indictment of the `civilised' world, says ZIYA US SALAM, listening to Mahasweta Devi.
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SHE does not portray herself as a saviour of virtue or an angel of moral rectitude. In a country where you always have to be on the ball to get ahead, she is an oddball who questions the transgressions of "the civilised world". She never takes recourse to rhetoric, is aware of the "consumerist squalor" from which emerge many high-society feminists, yet refrains from dogmatism at the altar of debate. No great orator, she pauses between words, lingering your attention just a wee bit, like the last drop of rain gently tapering off the windscreen of your car, yet it is difficult not to listen to every word of hers with rapt attention - the joy is all in content, not presentation.
At a time when people pretend to be better than they are, she distrusts progress, is not swayed by monstrous reason - "Whenever dams are built, it is the tribal land which is taken away. And it is never land for land. The tribals have never devastated the land, the forests, the waters. So many Acts have come and gone. But whenever a new project is started by any industrial house or the Government, always it is the tribal land which is taken away. Tribal existence is contracting." Welcome to the world of Mahasweta Devi, a Jnanpith and Magasaysay Award winner who has devoted her life to the tribal cause.
In New Delhi to address the annual general meeting of the Federation of Publishers and Booksellers' Association in India, she pulls no punches in indicting the world on the state of tribals in the country. And telling us in her own inimitable way that we, not the tribals, have a lot to learn. As she puts it: "Tribals are untouched by cities. We don't believe in integration of tribals into the mainstream. And what have the tribals gained by the so-called development? I have been working in Purulia for decades now. They still have barter system, they are liberal with women. Tribals are the most sophisticated of human beings. No girl child is killed in their society. No dowry is asked for at the time of marriage, a girl can live in with a man before deciding whether to marry him. Marriage follows pregnancy. Widow marriage is almost mandatory. Women can give divorce. Among the tribes of Purulia, a boy and a girl meet, marry in the presence of stone. They don't live in joint families, they live jointly. Everybody earns till the old age. It is fashionable to talk of declining male-female ratio in urban India. Among certain tribes like Lodha Shavars of Midnapore and Kherioia Shavars of Purulia, there are more girls than boys. Also, in tribes there is no hierarchy. At least there is no caste hierarchy. So how can they be Hindus? They are much more civilised and advanced than the so-called civilised world. They are carrying on their own tradition. They are the mainstream."
She is not through yet. "I have been working for the tribes of Bengal for more than three decades but there is so much ignorance at every level. People do not even know that the tribals exist. The British ignored the aborigines, taking away their land. As a result there were so many tribal rebellions which find mention in history books. But our own Government has done little better. In 1998, the All India De-Notified Tribes and Communities Right Action Group was set up. The nomadic tribes had been notified as criminals in 1871. The Government of India de-notified them in 1952. However, a few years later came the Habitual Offenders Act which is a repetition of the Act of 1871."
Hasn't reservation helped? "Reservation in Government job is good for nothing. It is a hoax in States like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh. Only a handful of tribes benefited at other places too. For instance, Meenas in Rajasthan. They are de-notified tribes based in Nahrgarh. They kept state jewellery in the past and had good education. Some of them got into Government jobs but it is too small a case. The unsavoury truth is after each tribal revolution the tribals got nothing."
However, the offence is not limited to Government or bureaucrats. "The common man is ignorant about tribes. Our Hindi films add to the ignorance. They always show tribals as being high on liquor, always merry and dancing in an intoxicated state. Which is not true at all. However, it is not just Hindi cinema or English writers who are to be blamed for this ignorance. The writers in all Indian languages are ignorant of tribals' existence, their culture."
Mahasweta Devi, who was born in Dacca in 1926 in a literary family and was influenced by her early association with Ganantya, a group which attempted to bring social and political theatre to villages in Bengal in the 1940s, feels strongly about the current spree of conversion. "Just the other day, I was speaking to a girl who been converted in Madhya Pradesh and she told me, `I became a Christian because we needed medical facilities. Now I have become Hindu because I need other things. But tribals were never Hindus. They have their own culture, their own deities. For instance, when a tribal boy marries a tribal girl, it does not need a priest. He can just say that I marry you with this stone, this tree as a witness. But tribals who have been converted have actually been duped. Conversion is going on even in West Bengal from where I come. In Malda, 200-250 tribals converted to Hinduism. But all this Ghar Vapasi programmes are a vicious political campaign. In Gujarat, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad pracharaks took away the land of the tribals. In Baroda where there was tribal violence, it was not communal. It was basically retaliatory violence against the moneylenders who were exploiting them. Most of them were Hindus, a handful of them Muslims."
A strong believer in the separate identity of the tribals, she talks of "exiles" of civilisation as "the mainstream", "the dispossessed" as the original owners. No ambiguity in her speech, just a tinge of sadness in her voice; no self-aggrandisement at having stepped beyond the challenges of existentialism, just the realisation that a lot still needs to be done. She is her own woman, a journalist, a writer, a teacher, and an activist. Though, if memorials of the past are a harbinger of things to come, she has little to sail across to shores of optimism; yet she refuses to wallow in a sea of despair. Turbulent waters, or whatever, the fight is on. The presiding deity of letters is ready to dig in for the cause of "the suffering spectators of India".
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