Displacement and Subalternity: A Study of Ambivalent Identity of Indigenous through Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s Select Writings
https://doi.org /10.5281/zen od o.14974211
Author(s): Swagata Chakraborty
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14974211
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Volume 16 | Issue 1 | Feb 2025
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 16, Issue-I, February 2025 ISSN: 0976-8165
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Displacement and Subalternity: A Study of Ambivalent Identity of Indigenous
through Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s Select Writings
Swagata Chakraborty
Research Scholar,
University Department of English,
Ranchi University, Ranchi.
Article History: Submitted‐04/02/2025, Revised‐09/02/2025, Accepted‐22/02/2025, Published‐28/02/2025.
Abstract:
The present research paper contemplates the age-old system of displacement of the
indigenous people from their self-complacent status and how they become subaltern by the socio-
political and economic domination of the ‘dikus’ (non-Adivasi or elite class). These marginalized
people inevitably confront an identity crisis as they can never seamlessly cope-up with their
transition from autochthony to subalternity. In this paper, the displacement of India’s Santhal
community for the commercial purpose of capitalist power structure is critically analyzed with the
help of Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s depiction of tribal life and their utter exploitation engineered
by neo-colonialism and capitalism. However, the most significant domain captured by this study
is the Adivasi’s confrontation of an ambivalent identity as they, after being uprooted from their
native land and culture, enter into an in-between status of being marginalized and protesting
against subjugation. This study argues that the perturbed condition of the natives cannot be bluntly
defined as silent victims, rather it embodies what Bhabha called the ‘Third Space’, a discursive
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Displacement and Subalternity: A Study of Ambivalent Identity of Indigenous through Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s
Select Writings
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030
term meaning “a hybrid space which essentially subverting the power dynamics of colonial
domination”.
Keywords: Indigeneity, displacement, Santhal, subaltern, hegemony, ambivalence, identity
politics, ‘Third Space’.
Literally, ‘indigenous’ means native or aboriginal, the first people who have naturally
originated and lived in a particular region. They stand for the embodiment of autochthony and
innocence, as well as atavism and wildness. Most of the time these aboriginal people or community
become the victims of urban corporate projects and reductivism. Now-a-days ‘the large
heterogeneous communities of indigenous people’ from different regions of India are clubbed
together as ‘Scheduled Tribes’. Through the autoethnographic portraiture of Hansda Sowvendra
Shekhar, this paper concentrates mainly on the indigeneity, displacement and identity politics of
Santhal community of Chhotanagpur region. History shows that with the advancement of
civilization and capitalism, the aboriginal people are gradually displaced from their autochthony
and become marginalized. The primary objective of this research paper is to examine the
subalternity of the Adivasis as they are subjected to various kinds of hegemonic displacements and
thus subjugated gradually towards the periphery. A minute study of the tribal literature reveals that
though colonization and corporate advancement throw the native people to the backyard, yet they
do not always succumb passively to the oppressor. Rather, by their indomitable indigenous-spirit
they procure a ‘space’ of their ‘own’ and hence, there occurs a question of ambivalence in respect
of the Adivasi identity.
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s fictions have provided a close scrutiny of the Adivasi life as he
writes ‘what he has lived through’. His presentation of Santhal’s life offers an insider’s gaze.
‘Santhal’ is one of India’s largest Adivasi groups. This ethnic identity or ethnic-consciousness of
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the author informs his writings in every bit as he has said in an interview that “I am a Santhal, and
my opinion too should matter”. Sowvendra Shekhar is a medical officer with the government of
Jharkhand and the author of acclaimed novels The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014), My
Father’s Garden (2018) and a collection of ten controversial stories The Adivasi Will Not Dance
(2015). His fictions exclusively evolve from and revolve around ‘Santhal-space’, giving a real
penetrating picture of the tribal world – their social structure, oppression, resistance, colonial
segregation and ‘fighting back’. His debut novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey is
characterized as “the first full-fledged Santhal novel written in English”. The story collection The
Adivasi Will Not Dance (which won Sahitya Academy Yuva Puraskar 2015) was banned in 2017
based on the allegation that the book had portrayed Adivasi women and Santhal culture in a ‘bad
light’. However, the ban on the book was removed later. Actually “it is a powerful provocative
story collection that explores Adivasi identity politics and experience”. (www.jeanspraker.com)
History proves repeatedly that the indigenous community of a land or country are mostly
victimized and overpowered by the colonizers and capitalists in the name of development and the
natives are subsided to the border-line. Santhal, one of India’s major ethnic races, are aboriginal
inhabitants who even precede the Aryans and thus harbour a strong connection with the land. In
order to research the displaced and marginalized status of the non-elite Adivasis, the Spivakian
aspect of subalternity can be resorted. In the essay Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), Spivak argues
that native people or non-elite Adivasis are always ‘represented’ by the dominant elitist’s eyes or
notion. Therefore, the actual ‘voice’ of those subalterns remains ‘unheard’ or ‘muted’ forever.
Subaltern always belongs to the periphery or margin. Even when someone, ethnically or racially
identified as native, starts to speak, it means that person procures a ‘space’ somewhere between
the ‘marginalized’ and ‘dominant’. That spokesman can never be a ‘subaltern’ altogether. A
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subaltern is always marked by resistance and not by ‘voice’. The oppressed condition of third
world women is also spotted by Spivak as ‘doubly exploited’ – firstly by patriarchy and secondly
by colonialism. They are subjected to both kinds of dominations of inner society and outer world.
The wretched subaltern Adivasis are akin to this hegemonic displaced figuration of the third world
women.
The woman subjugation and ravaging of nature are two parallel domains which are instrumental
in portraying the subalternity of the non-elite Adivasis. Their indigenous identity is strongly
interwoven with nature or ecology. Forests or trees determine their lives by providing them with
resources. They even worship trees as their God. It is strongly connected with their roots, religion
and beliefs. This complacent community is uprooted by the colonial and capitalist agencies to
attain commercial gains. With the introduction of modernization their serene eco-friendly lives are
cut from their roots both physically and culturally, because they migrate to earn livelihood by
working in the urban projects and power plants which is opposed to their age-old respectful
tradition of farming and cultivation. The concept of viewing the wretchedness of tribal people
through the exploitation of woman and distortion of nature forms the very premise of
‘Ecofeminism’ which is propounded by the French feminist Francois D’ Eubonne. In this
discourse, two most eminent exponents are Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies who find a parallel
relationship between the hegemonic forces of patriarchy that subjugates women and the colonial
capitalist forces that destroy nature and thus displace indigenous. “The creation of homeless takes
place both through the ecological destruction of the ‘home’ and the cultural and spiritual uprooting
of peoples from their homes” (Shiva 104).
The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014) throws light on the indigenous space of Santhal
community from all the aspects of their socio-cultural, religious and exploited or colonized life.
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With the Adivasi’s inner reality and outer-oppression the novel opens a wide-vistas of aboriginal’s
subalternity. Hansda depicts that hierarchy also exists within their own social periphery as – Majhi
(the head), Naikay (the worshipper), Jogmajhi (announcer) and lastly, Tudu. However, this
hierarchy does not lead to any oppression. In this novel the central character Rupi starts her life
with full of promising possibilities. She is delineated as “once the strongest woman of Kadamdihi”.
Rupi was not only the strongest but also the most beautiful and capable woman. But gradually the
mysterious spell of Gurubari sucks life out of Rupi and takes control over her family. Rupi’s
husband Sido and their eldest son Jaipal completely succumb under Gurubari’s spell which finally
left Rupi bed-ridden.
Rupi birthed her eldest son squatting in the middle of a paddy field, shin-deep in mud and
slush. Soon after, Gurubari, her rival in love, gave her an illness that was like the alakjari
vine which engulfs the tallest, greenest trees of the forest and sucks their hearts out. Now
Rupi, once the strongest woman in her village, lives out her days on a cot in the backyard,
and her life dissolves into incomprehensible ruin around her. (Hansda, 2014)
In the above metaphorical narrative Rupi as ‘the tallest, greenest tree’ stands for native land with
full of mineral and natural resources and Gurubari as the ‘the alakjari vine’ stands for colonial or
capitalist power who engulfs the indigenous or aboriginal space and people. The transformation or
rather deterioration of the central character Rupi is analyzed from both the angles of colonialist
displacement of native people and also the eco-feminist view-point to show the devouring attitude
of capitalist groups and mining companies who take possession over the native lands. “Dams,
mines, energy plants, military bases – these are the temples of the new religion called
‘development’” (Shiva 98). Their unjust and sometimes forceful acquisition of land displaced the
aboriginals from their self-complacent grandeur and socio-cultural status. Therefore, by losing
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their own indigenous-space the ‘once strongest’ inhabitants of land are gradually thrown to the
‘backyard’ of civilization as they are inevitably left with identity crisis and become marginalized.
While reviewing The Mysterious Ailments of Rupi Baskey, Satyen K. Bordoloi interprets that the
non-adivasi hegemony over the Adivasis can be well represented by the metaphor of Rupi’s
ailments under Gurubari’s black art:
The aboriginal tribals of India birthed their civilization amidst a lot of pain and struggle.
Then after, the rest of the civilization and its rival in resources, city-settlers, gave them an
illness that was like the ‘alakjari’ vine which engulfs the tallest, greenest trees of the forest
and sucks their hearts out. Now the tribal people, once the strongest in the world, live out
their days in the backyard of human consciousness, and their life dissolves into an
incomprehensible ruin around them. (Bordoloi, 2014)
In the same way, Rupi birthed her children by enduring much pain and after being victimize by
Gurubari’s spell spent her days lying on a cot in the backyard. Here, Rupi becomes the quintessence
of Adivasi stoicism who after being victimize by neocolonialism attain a distinctive ethno-cultural
identity marked by their quietism.
After the marriage, Rupi with her husband Sidho shifted to Nitra which is a semi-urban place. As
she starts her journey from Kadamdihi village to Nitra she is introduced with a new world of
urbanization which casts ailments upon her by displacing her from a powerful status as an Adivasi
woman to a crippled one. Her physical shifting from village to city is symbolic of the shifting of
her identity from an abled condition to a displaced or diseased position as well. More she becomes
distanced from nature more her ailments increase. It hints at the fact that urbanization sucks life
out of natural native land, weakens its ‘adi-basindas’ and finally displaced them from their
autonomous identity. Urbanization comes by engulfing the naturally resourceful farming lands.
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Here, Rupi stands as a metaphor of Jharkhand or any other newly found native land to which
colonizers look at with greedy ‘rolling-eyes’. A native land with full of its mineral riches always
attracts the out-siders or colonizers who strip off its riches and left its indigenous people capable
of doing nothing. Neither they can continue with their farming anymore as their lands are grabbed
off by the capitalist power, nor they can enjoy urban corporate projects but become only victims.
The aboriginals are automatically displaced from their atavistic autochthony to an endangered
sustainability, just like the ‘once strongest woman’ Rupi’s existence is terribly challenged facing
Gurubari’s mystical spell. In the article Problematizing ‘Indigeneity’ through Hansda Sowvendra
Shekhar’s The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, Amitayu Chakraborty opines that Rupi’s illness
represents the oppression or suffering of marginalized or displaced subaltern Adivasis, and at the
same time her fight with hardships of life and endurance are indicative of their resistance. Rupi’s
defiant and enduring subjecthood is evident in her assertion that ‘Nothing will happen to me’, and
in her constant endeavors to join the workforce in Kadamdihi as well. (Chakraborty, A. 2019)
Woman-question among tribal community is entirely fraught with ambivalence. Hansda creates a
plethora of diverse kind of woman characters in his fictions. Many of them endure immense plight
in their lives as they are ‘doubly exploited’ by both the issues of racial conflict and gender
discrimination. In The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, we find Rupi, Putki, Della, Gurubari,
Dulari and Naikai’s wife who, in a nutshell, unitedly offer a panoramic understanding of native
women’s subalternity and defiance which give them an ambivalent identity status. Putki and Della
enjoyed their youth in their own way; they starkly contrast to the conventional rules of assigning
women a submissive attitude. Naikai’s wife practices black magic, and this ‘dahni-bidya’
symbolizes oppression. It may be that when the witches cast their spell on others it reminds the
age-old intra ethnic oppression and marginalization of Adivasis. On the other hand, this black
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magic picturizes the desperate attempt of ‘fighting back’ of displaced natives, as Dulari very
significantly points out:
“What was mine was being taken away from me. I had to claim it for myself… I had to
help myself… If it meant using dahni-bidya, I was ready for that. I had to retain what was
rightfully mine.” (Hansda 184-5)
Contrary to this defiant attitude, Rupi shows the degradation of the tribal life as she is transformed
from a strong woman to a cripple who needs help all the time. Furthermore, this transformation
can be seen as a representation of metamorphosis of an indigenous being into the ‘other’. And her
shifting status from being dynamic to static is significantly indicative of tribal people’s discursive
cocooned static condition.
The final chapter of the novel, entitled “The Cure? Well, Almost”, with its question mark, leaves
a note of interrogation and ambiguity. Through Rupi’s pain and struggle the author penned down
how the subaltern Adivasis can fight with their unique stoicism even after knowing the inevitable
end at the hands of neocolonial culture and power structure. Thus, they leave a distinctive mark of
their own as the displaced forefathers of modern civilization. What is noteworthy about the tribes
in facing this transition of their own native land into a colonized one is their losing status and an
ambivalent identity formation. To highlight this vacillating position the novel also concludes with
a note of ‘artistic ambivalence’ where Rupi groves between dream and reality, cure and disease,
just like the displaced subaltern natives who gets ‘almost’ cured in their journey from autochthony
to displacement and finally towards a new identity formation. This ambivalent identity of the
tribals contemplates over the liminality that whether these ‘indigenous-space’ of the Santhal
community merges with the marginalized or they still procure their ‘space’ with resistance and
quietism rejecting the idea of ‘other’.
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Hansda’s celebrated story collection The Adivasi Will Not Dance (2015) envisages the poignant
themes of Adivasi people’s loss of land and culture by revealing the bare side reality of tribal life,
their displacement and exploitation by ‘dikus’. Jharkhand Government banned this book for the
allegation of ‘bad’ portrayal of Santhal women. But Hansda argues in his own defence that he
depicts only what is reality. According to Amitayu Chakraborty,
“If the short story ‘November Is the Month of Migration’ disturbingly upholds the perils of
displacement that changed the habitat as well as the livelihood of the people of a colliery
region, the concluding narrative ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ registers an angry
culmination of the sense of loss of habitat, livelihood, culture and agency that
metamorphoses into a subversive rant.” (Chakraborty, A. 2019)
The story offers a clear picture of the impact of establishing a thermal-power-plants which resulted
in displacing Adivasis by forcefully grabbing their lands and uprooting their culture. The
protagonist of the story Mangal Murmu has a musical troupe that perform dances in various
Government programme. The story ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ is based on an actual situation
in 2013 when Adivasi farmers were arrested for giving strong objection against the building of
Jindal Power Plant in Godda, Jharkhand. Then-President Pranab Mukherjee was invited to the
foundation program to set the foundation stone. The story is a lengthy monologue of Mangal
Murmu (a musical artist who was ‘once a farmer’) on the wretched condition of his people after
he is inhumanly beaten up by the police for protesting the devouring of Santhal-land for a power-
plant project. Mangal Murmu, the mouthpiece of the author, speaks on behalf of all the tribals. He
informs the audience that once he was a farmer but now the tribes do not cultivate because their
lands are taken over by mining companies. Thus, urban projects transform the native farmers to
land-less people. Mangal narrates:
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“If coal merchants have taken a part of our land, the other part has been taken over by stone
merchants, all Diku-Marwari, Sindhi, Mandal, Bhagat, Muslim. They turn our land upside
down, inside out, with their heavy machines. They sell the stones they mine from our earth
in faraway places-Dilli, Noida, Punjab. This coal company and these quarry owners, they
earn so much money from our land” (Shekhar 172).
After taking possession of the lands the Dikus displaced the tribes from their own native-land and
make them subjected to sheer subjugation. Those helpless poor people are not allowed to protest
because their voices are muted and they become the subaltern in their own land.
“They pinned me to the ground. They did not let me speak, they did not let me protest, and
they did not even let me raise my head and look at my fellow musicians and dancers as
they were beaten up by the police. All I could hear were their cries for mercy” (Shekhar
169)
Beside these, the Christian missionaries arrive in the Santhal region with their religious motifs to
convert the Adivasis into Christianity. They insist them to worship Jesus or Mary. And even they
try to erase their own native identity by changing their names from Hopna, Som and Singrai to
David, Michael Christopher etc. In this way, the tribes are not only displaced from their lands but
also they lose their culture and face an identity crisis. Thus, they are uprooted both physically and
culturally. “We are losing our Sarna faith, our identities and our roots. We are becoming people
from nowhere” (Shekhar 172). After losing their identity, culture and means of livelihood, the
Santhals are compelled to work in the mining companies and also sell their ‘sacred music’. As
Mangal says, “Our music, our dance, our songs are sacred to us Santhals. But hunger and poverty
have driven us to sell what is sacred to us” (Shekhar 179).
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Hence, when Mangal and his troupe receive the invitation to compose songs and perform dance
before the President in the foundation program of a thermal power-plant they gladly accept the
proposal because this performance would bring them the scope of some earning and also for the
first time they would get the opportunity to perform before the President. But, then they get the
news that for the sake of this project district administration have asked the villagers of eleven
villages to leave their habitat and vacate their lands. Though initially the villagers protest against
such kind of land usurping, but finding no other alternatives they finally succumb to the dominating
authority. Thus, Mangal to his utter disappointment raises a series of questions: “Which great
nation displaces thousands of its people from their homes and livelihood to produce electricity for
cities and factories? And jobs? What jobs? An Adivasi farmer’s job is to farm. Which other job
should he be made to do?” (Shekhar 179). Amidst all these unresolved and unheard questions the
Santhal troupe has to perform happy dances to celebrate the country’s progress in establishing
power projects which would reportedly ensure development, jobs and non-stop power supply in
cities and factories. During this Mangal’s perturbed soul begins to protest by refusing to dance.
Thus, “in the story ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ Mangal Murmu is more likely to resist
oppression than to eulogize victimhood. His eloquence against land usurping is quite clearly
‘heard’” (Chakraborty, A. 2019).
“Johar, Rashtrapati-babu… We will sing and dance before you but tell us, do we have a
reason to sing and dance? Do we have a reason to be happy?… These men sitting beside
you have told you that this power plant will change our fortunes, but these same men have
forced us out of our homes and villages. We have nowhere to go, nowhere to grow crops.
How can this power plant be good for us? And how can we Adivasis dance and be happy?
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Unless we are given back our homes and land, we will not sing and dance, we Adivasis
will not dance. The Adivasi will not -” (Shekhar 187).
Conclusion:
Therefore, this analytical study moves towards an ambivalent proposition regarding the
judgement of subaltern Adivasi’s social and cultural identity, and reaches somehow to a stage
which is marked by Homi Bhabha as ‘Third Space’ where “the meaning and symbols of culture
have no primordial unity or fixity” (Bhabha, 2006, p. 157). Spivak defines that the subaltern
community can be identified by their ‘voicelessness’ but in Hansda’s writings the displaced and
subjugated tribals are not totally muted. They can ‘speak’ sometimes through their struggle (in
case of Rupi Baskey) and sometimes eloquently (in case of Mangal Murmu). Even after being
displaced from their native land, culture, identity and livelihood, the Adivasis do not silently yield
to the margins or oblivion; instead they occupy a ‘space’ in between resistance and protest (as we
find in the final speech of Mangal Murmu) and vacillate between the reality of subaltern
resignation and the dream of their self-complacent autochthony (as we find in the final scene of
The Mysterious Ailments of Rupi Baskey). Hence, Hansda’s representational politics well testifies
to his own statement in an interview: “I am a Santhal, and my opinion too should matter” (an
interview of Hansda with Sujit Prasad on 16th August 2016). And thereby, his representation of
Adivasi identity is a significant departure from the dominant discourse of subalternity and pushes
the indigenous Santhal community towards an ambivalent identity of ‘Third Space’.
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Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. Rawat Publication, 1993.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.),
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