The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories is a collection of short stories by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. It is his second book and was nominated for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2016 and included by Frontline (magazine) in August 2022 in a list of 25 books “that light up the path to understanding post-Independence Indian literature.” As of April 2021, this book has been translated into Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, and Bengali, while the Malayalam and Austrian German translations are forthcoming.
Summary The characters and settings of the stories are mostly from the community of Santhal people in the Indian state of Jharkhand, particularly about Coal mining in India. Prominent themes include the condition of women in a patriarchal society, poverty, middle-class Santhal life, the situation of Adivasi people, organised crime, tensions between traditionalism and modernity, the social damage caused by mining and sex-work.
TitleThemeFirst publishedpp.They eat meat!Prejudice among Hindu people in Gujarat, and the 2002 Gujarat riots.La.Lit1-27SonsThe contrast between a spoiled child and one from a poor background.'Scions ', Northeast Review, 3 (March–April 2013)28-38November is the month of migrationsA Santhal migrant worker doing sex-work.39-42Getting evenHuman trafficking of low-caste Hindu people.43-57Eating with the enemyThe complex life of a domestic servant, Sulochona.The Four Quarters Magazine58-89Blue babyA woman's ill-conceived plan to escape an arranged marriage by getting pregnant beforehand.The Statesman90-111Baso-jhiAn old widow being identified as a dahni (witch).Indian Literature (2007)112-29Desire, divination, deathA woman losing her son to fever.Indian Literature130-43Merely a whoreA sex-worker falls in love with one of her clients and hopes for rescue from her profession.The Four Quarters Magazine144-68The Adivasi will not danceAn Adivasi dance-troupe is commissioned to celebrate the building of a power-plant, but instead protest against it.The Dhauli Review169-87
Reviews and studies Priyanka Tripathi,“The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. IX, No. 4, 2017, pp. 193–196. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n4.r02 Devapriya Roy, 'An unusual five: The reader’s guide to the Hindu Prize shortlist', Scroll.in ([no date]) Namrata Chaturvedi, 'Combating bias', Deccan Herald (1 November 2015) Jean Spraker, 'Review: The Adivasi Will Not Dance by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar' (27 October 2016) Nilanjana S. Roy, 'Short!', Business Standard (4 January 2016) Sudipta Datta, 'The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Dark places', Financial Express (27 December 2015) Amrita Dutta, 'Book Review: The Writer as Political Being', The Indian Express (19 December 2015) Radhika S., 'Review: Hansda Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance is a no-holds-barred account of life on the margins', The Hindu (12 November 2016)
The work has also attracted dedicated scholarly commentary: Arya, A., 'Dismantling the Hegemonic Structure through the War of Manoeuvre: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance as a Dogma of Adivasis', The Creative Launcher: An International, Open Access, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed, E-Journal in English, 2.3 (August 2017), 193–200. Abin Chakraborty, 'Examining Subalterneity in Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar’s “The Adivasi Will Not Dance” ', Postcolonial Text 12.1 (2017), 1–15.
Controversy On 11 August 2017, the government of Jharkhand banned The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories and summarily suspended the author from his job, on the grounds that the book portrayed Adivasi women and Santhal culture in a bad light.Sudipta Datta, 'Who is Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, fighting a ban', The Hindu (19 August 2017). The key complainants appear to have been the ruling party in Jharkhand, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the opposition party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and an academic at Jamia Millia Islamia.Ziya Us Salam, 'A Santhal Suppressed', Frontline (13 October 2017). The government's actions were widely criticised.Sanjay Srivastava, 'What the ban on The Adivasi Will Not Dance tells us about India’s political life', Hindustan Times (14 August 2017).Ruchir Joshi, 'The reader will not dance', The Hindu (13 August 2017).'Dubbed 'porn', book on tribals banned in Jharkhand', The Times of India (13 August 2017).'Writers, Activists Condemn Banning of ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ in Jharkhand', The Wire (29 August 2017). The ban on The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories was removed in December 2017 and Shekhar's suspension was removed and he was reinstated into his job in 2018.
References
External links