This adivasi poet-journalist is the voice of oppressed populations
Jacinta Kerketta, a celebrated adivasi journalist, is a second-generation graduate in her community of Oraon tribals. She has ensured that her education has made her an unwavering voice of truth for her community and the world.
On November 26, Adivasi poet and journalist Jacinta Kerketta declined a literary award from a popular media house for her book of Hindi poetry, Ishwar aur Bazar. It is the third collection in her series of poems on mountains, and a moving dedication to the dalit-tribal people of Niyamgiri in Odisha, who, for a whole decade, have been fighting against bauxite mining in the region.
Kerketta refrains from elaborating her stance, but says it is deceitful for an artwork of resistance to be recognised, while the people it stands for are continually neglected.
“Mainstream media has the power to become an agent of change and transform people's perspectives. But adivasis have, for long, been viewed as being anti-development and uncivilised, and mainstream media has played little to no role in changing that viewpoint,” she says.
Standing up for her community
Kerketta, a member of Jharkhand’s Oraon adivasi community, had her first tryst with the systemic persecution of tribal people in the criminal justice system as a child, when her uncle was falsely incriminated of raping and murdering a woman and lynched by a mob, and her maternal grandmother was sent to jail.
“My uncle worked in a farm next to the riverbed where the body was found. People believed that as adivasis, we sacrificed human beings for a good harvest,” says Kerketta. “This idea--derived from stigmatising a community--was so deep-rooted, we didn’t know where and how to even start objecting to it, or prove our innocence.”
As an adult, this angst pulled her into independent journalism. After working as a reporter for a news daily between 2010 and 2013, Kerketta started writing independently for various media platforms on gender politics, the exploitation of tribal populations for land, and the role of colonisation in uprooting them from their sustainable heritage.
“There are non-dalit/adivasi writers and journalists who excellently cover dalit/adivasi issues. Their vision is empowering and their ideologies are strong. But when we equip an adivasi person--who has lived on and lost their land, and witnessed the killing of their own--with the same skills and qualities, the impact of their voice and stories is unparalleled,” says Kerketta.
“I see indifference in the mainstream media towards the tribals of the North East. There is also negligible representation of tribal people in mainstream journalism,” she adds.
Finding power in education
As the second-generation graduate from her community, Kerketta says her parents were able to access education through a mission school set up inside the remote forests of West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand 80 years ago.
“My mother was the first woman in the family to pass the matriculation examination. She had a great desire for her daughters to study and find opportunities beyond their marginalisation. She inspired my hunger for knowledge and agency,” she says.
Growing up within her community settlement, Kerketta didn’t experience discrimination first-hand until she travelled to other parts of Bihar and enrolled into different schools, as often as her father, who was in the police service, got transferred.
“Back at home, the entire community, village, and settlement was my family. When I went outside to study, I began living with children of different castes in boarding, and experienced caste supremacy for the first time,” says Kerketta. “It was also the first time I realised that my skin was darker than that of the other kids. Dominant caste teachers compared adivasi girls to cows and bulls, and said we looked like lumps of clay.”
These experiences took Kerketta, then barely 15, on a deep existential quest to learn as much about the tribal life philosophy as the caste system and the power structures that keep it alive. In class 8, she stood first, and was celebrated by the whole school. Around the same time, she also started contributing articles to newspapers and magazines on the significance of the village, forests and mountains, for tribal communities.
“This experience proved to me that by working hard, I could pass my exams while being rooted in my identity and value system. I also saw in this victory, the evidence that other girls in my community could experience the same breakthroughs,” she says.
Empowering youth
What sparked a revolution in Kerketta's heart then, has become central to her life’s work with oppressed populations. She spent the last two decades traveling across Jharkhand to meet marginalised communities, listen to their experiences, and understand the history of the state’s tribal movement. She spends many evenings dialoguing with young tribal girls in the villages of Jharkhand, encouraging them to reflect on their dreams and tribulations.
Jacinta spends many evenings dialoguing with young tribal girls in villages in Jharkhand, encouraging them to reflect on their dreams and tribulations.
“Our discussions take us into the merits and demerits of the adivasi way of life; their relationship with their parents; their thoughts on religion, understanding of education, and just about anything that they aren't able to talk about with their families,” says Kerketta.
Kerketta quickly realised that this simple activity--of sitting, reading, sharing stories and listening--sparked hope and independent thinking among the girls, who wanted to own and strongly position their narratives to the world.
“Paths have opened for them to introspect, question, and build strong ideologies and sustainable futures,” says Kerketta.
“In the village of Kachchabari in Khunti district of Jharkhand, one of the villages where we engaged with the girls, many of them refused child marriages, started going to school and decided against leaving the village for work in the cities. The village was later adopted by the administrative officer of Jharkhand,” she says.
Today, at least 20 girls of this village have joined school, and a few young women have got government jobs. The village folk have also formed a collective to discuss day-to-day challenges and find solutions.
Voice of indigenous communities
Kerketta was honoured with the Voice of Asia Recognition Award by the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, Thailand, in 2014. In 2022, Forbes India selected her as one of the 22 self-made women of India.
She often uses her words to remind citizens of the indigenous population’s intrinsic role in preserving the country’s environment and biodiversity. Her poems in Hindi and English are at times a raging call on behalf of rivers, forests, and mountains reminding humankind of its imminent destruction; and other times, a haunting recollection of the state’s betrayal of its earliest, forest dwelling inhabitants.
“You wait for us to become civilised, as we wait for you to become human,” she says in one of her poems.
In her non-fiction writings, Kerketta frequently elaborates the significance of legal provisions such as the Chotanagpur Tenancy (CNT) Act of 1908, the Santhal Pargana Tenancy (SPT) Act of 1949 and the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (or PESA) 1996 that have been passed to safeguard tribals, indigenous communities, and their habitats.
“Adivasi people have a relationship with nature. From that relationship, their philosophy of life, culture, language, lifestyle, and spirituality emerge. It is from nature that they also learn the strength of universal values,” says Kerketta. “So, when their environment is taken away from them, everything these people identify with, is affected simultaneously. For a society that is completely cut off from nature and has no alternative to a capitalist way of life, understanding this relationship is impossible.”
(The story has been updated to make factual corrections.)
Edited by Megha Reddy