A Voice of Resistance of
Tribal Children through the Select Poems of Jacinta Kerketta’s Angor and
Land of the Roots
Karma Kumar,
Ph.D. Research Scholar
University Department of English,
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi,
Jharkhand, India.
Abstract: Indigenous writings are often
opposing, resistant micro-narratives from the margins that convey their pain,
anguish, anger, immemorial suffering, struggles, marginalization and narratives
of resilience. They resist oppression and exploitation. The discourse of
children’s literature in Jharkhand can be cited as one such example.
Conventionally, it is alleged that children’s literature in Jharkhand mainly
revolved around simplistic tales featuring talking animals and mythical
figures, and largely devoid of difficult societal issues such as resistance
against oppression and exploitation of Adivasi children, gender roles, and
identities, which children become aware of at an early age, rarely found space
in children’s literature. To bring home these trends, the authors have
attempted to look at the select contemporary voices of resistance of tribal
children. This research paper aims to analyze the pain and suffering
experienced by Adivasi tribal children in society and their resisting voices
through the selected poems of Jacinta Kerketta’sAngor and Land of the
Roots.
Keywords: Indigenous Writings, Discourse, Gender Roles, Identity
A Voice of Resistance of
Tribal Children through the Select Poems of Jacinta Kerketta’s Angor
Jacinta
Kerketta’s poem Reawakening can be read as a powerful voice of
resistance of tribal children, articulating the psychological, cultural, and
political tensions experienced by young Adivasis caught between indigeneity and
urban modernity. The figure of the Adivasi boy symbolizes a generation
compelled to migrate, where “he skillfully conceals / His ancient history up
his sleeve,” (Kerketta 109) suggesting not merely adaptation but an enforced
erasure of identity under hegemonic urban norms. This concealment reflects what
scholars identify as the gradual silencing of indigenous subjectivity, where
tribal existence is reduced to invisibility within dominant structures; as
Sreelakshmi M observes, tribal narratives function as “resistant
micro-narratives from the margins” that record “marginalisation and tales of
resilience.”1 The poem critiques this cultural alienation through
the metaphor of “borrowed things,” (Kerketta 109) exposing how imposed
modernity produces a “delusive sense of confidence” (Kerketta 111) that “eats
away / At the very roots of his existence,” (Kerketta 111) thereby dramatizing
the internal fragmentation of tribal children who are alienated from language,
songs, and ancestral life worlds. This condition aligns with critical readings
of Kerketta’s poetry as a discourse of displacement and de-territorialization,
where the loss of land and culture becomes central to indigenous suffering and
resistance; as Kumar and Mathew note, her work foregrounds “displacement… and
tribal identity” while transforming lived trauma into poetic protest.2
However, the poem’s final movement transforms this narrative of loss into one
of insurgent recovery: when the boy returns to the village and experiences that
“energies erupt from prehistoric stones,” (Kerketta 111) it signifies a
reclaiming of ancestral energy embedded in land and memory. This reawakening is
not merely personal but collective, suggesting that tribal children, though
momentarily dislocated, carry within them the potential to revive suppressed
histories and resist cultural annihilation. Thus, Reawakening emerges as
a subaltern testimony in which the tribal child’s journey from concealment to
consciousness becomes an act of defiance against assimilation, asserting that
indigenous identity, though wounded, remains regenerative and politically
potent.
Jacinta
Kerketta’s poem An Adivasi Village also can be compellingly read as a
voice of resistance of tribal children, capturing the inner turmoil of an
educated Adivasi youth negotiating the dissonance between inherited indigeneity
and imposed modernity. The boy’s return to the village during the Karam
festival initially signals cultural continuity, yet the abrupt question “Go
back to the city, or return to the village?” (Kerketta 115) precipitates a
profound existential anxiety, revealing the fractured identity of tribal
children who are suspended between two incompatible worlds. The striking metaphor
of a “flood” advancing “from the cities towards the villages” (Kerketta115)
encodes the invasive spread of urbanization, capitalism, and dominant
epistemologies that threaten to submerge indigenous lifeways, aligning with
Walter D. Mignolo’s argument that modernity operates through the suppression of
subaltern knowledges, producing a “coloniality of power” that marginalizes
alternative worldviews.3 The boy’s helpless reflection “How will be
preserved his nature, his essence?” (Kerketta 115) further underscores the
epistemic vulnerability of Adivasi identity, especially in the absence of a
written “ark of ancient treatise or text,” (Kerketta 115) which metaphorically
points to the exclusion of oral, ecological, and community-based knowledge
systems from hegemonic frameworks. However, the poem resists this narrative of
erasure through potent indigenous symbols: the drifting “jawa blossom” and
“karam” branch embody resilience, continuity, and sacred ecological ties. These
symbols function as what Ramachandra Guha identifies as the basis of
“environmentalism of the poor,” where marginalized communities draw upon
traditional ecological knowledge to assert survival and resistance against
exploitative modern forces.4 The climactic act of “planting a karam
Branch / In the midmost of the deluge” (Kerketta 117) signifies not merely
survival but creative regeneration, as the boy envisions the emergence of An Adivasi Village that exists even within the engulfing urban
flood. This reimagining transforms tribal children from passive victims into
active agents who reconstruct identity within and against dominant structures.
Thus, Kerketta’s poem articulates a subaltern counter-discourse in which the
Adivasi child’s consciousness becomes a site of resistance, asserting that
indigenous identity, though destabilized by modernity, possesses the power to
adapt, endure, and re-root itself in new, hybrid spaces without relinquishing
its cultural essence.
Jacinta
Kerketta’s poem If Only Tamarind Were Not Sour! poignantly articulates a
voice of resistance of tribal children by foregrounding the lived reality of an
Adivasi girl whose labour, poverty, and muted consciousness expose the
structural inequalities shaping indigenous childhood. The image of the barefoot
girl carrying “a basket of tamarinds upon her head” (Kerketta 133) immediately
situates her within a subsistence economy where survival depends on fragile,
small-scale trade, yet her effort is met with rejection as customers dismiss
her goods, saying “the tamarind are sour!” (Kerketta 133) a phrase that
operates not merely as a comment on taste but as a metaphor for the devaluation
of tribal labour and produce within market systems dominated by external
standards. Her division of the tamarind “in cups made of Sakhua leaves”
(Kerketta 133) subtly encodes indigenous ecological knowledge and sustainable
practices, which remain unrecognized and undervalued in the transactional logic
of the bazaar. The arrival of the “City women” intensifies this imbalance, as
one of them casually tosses “a meagre two rupees,” (Kerketta 133) reflecting what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
describes as the silencing and marginal positioning of the subaltern, where the
marginalized subject’s voice is not only unheard but structurally diminished
within dominant economic and social exchanges.5 The girl’s quiet
endurance her “eyes fixed in a sad state” and her long wait “from dawn until
nightfall” reveals the normalization of deprivation in the lives of tribal
children, whose labour is both essential and invisibilized. Crucially, the
poem’s closing line “Alas, if only tamarind were not sour!” (Kerketta 135)
captures a tragic internalization of blame, where the child attributes her
failure not to systemic inequities but to the inherent nature of her goods, echoing
what Frantz Fanon terms the psychological effects of marginalization, wherein
the oppressed begin to internalize the logic of their own devaluation.6
Yet, this apparent resignation also carries a latent critique: by highlighting
the absurdity of wishing away the natural sourness of tamarind, Kerketta
exposes the unjust expectations imposed on tribal livelihoods to conform to
external tastes and markets. Thus, the poem becomes a subtle yet powerful act
of resistance, giving voice to the silent struggles of tribal children while
indicting the socio-economic structures that render their labour undervalued
and their identities marginalized.
A Voice of Resistance of
Tribal Children through the Select Poems of Jacinta Kerketta’s Land of the
Roots
Jacinta
Kerketta’s poem Somewhere in This City often read within the thematic
frame of articulates a poignant voice of resistance of tribal children, where
ecological devastation is filtered through the sensitive and ethically alert
consciousness of the young, transforming observation into critique. The
recurring figure of the “disappearing sparrow” functions as a symbolic
surrogate for marginalized tribal existence, witnessing “a forest axed down to
the ground,” (Kerketta 17) thereby exposing the foundational violence of urban
modernity that thrives on the erasure of indigenous ecologies and histories.
This destruction is further intensified by the city’s paradoxical act of
preserving rivers only “in memories,” reducing living ecosystems to aesthetic
abstractions for “the imagination of its future generation,”(Kerketta 17) a
process that reflects what Rob Nixon terms “slow violence,” a form of
environmental harm that is “incremental and accretive… dispersed across time
and space,” and often normalized within dominant narratives of progress.7
The children’s perspective becomes central to the poem’s resistant impulse: as
they watch “playgrounds turn into cemeteries,” (Kerketta 19) the transformation
of spaces of play into sites of death signals not only ecological collapse but
also the erosion of childhood itself, particularly for tribal children whose
identities are intimately tied to land and nature. Yet, Kerketta does not
present these children as passive victims; instead, their belief that “so long
as there remains but one flower on Earth / The butterflies shall not perish”
(Kerketta 19) emerges as a powerful articulation of hope and ecological
continuity. This imaginative insistence resonates with Vandana Shiva’s argument
that marginalized communities sustain “living cultures” that resist ecological
destruction through deeply rooted relationships with nature.8 The
final image children holding a flower while searching for “the graves of
butterflies” encapsulates a quiet yet profound resistance, where memory,
mourning, and imagination converge to challenge the finality of loss. Thus,
Kerketta’s poem reconfigures tribal children as custodians of ecological memory
and agents of cultural resilience, whose sensitive engagement with a vanishing
world not only exposes the failures of urban modernity but also affirms the
enduring possibility of regeneration, making their voice a subtle yet powerful
form of resistance against both environmental and cultural annihilation.
Jacinta
Kerketta’s poem “Sahib! Pray, How Will You Dismiss?” forcefully
articulates a voice of resistance of tribal children, transforming the figure
of the “girl from the jungle” (Kerketta 81)
into a subaltern subject who confronts and destabilizes structures of
power, state violence, and epistemic silencing. The repeated address to “Sahib”
is deeply ironic, invoking colonial authority while exposing its continuation
in contemporary forms of governance that attempt to mask exploitation through
“fancy rhetoric.” The poem’s central anxiety “what should happen if someday / A
girl of the jungle comes to the city / And reveals all truth in her poetry?”
(Kerketta 81) foregrounds the fear of dominant systems when marginalized voices
begin to speak, write, and testify. This act of articulation directly resonates
with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s critical question of whether the subaltern
can speak, where she argues that subaltern expression is often dismissed or
appropriated within dominant discourses; Kerketta’s poem, however, imagines a
moment when the subaltern not only speaks but compels recognition by exposing
“the truth / Which you kept concealed / Under the dust covers of your books.”9
The poem sharply contrasts official narratives with lived realities, revealing
how institutional power sanitizes violence, while the girl’s poetry uncovers
the “misdeeds” hidden beneath intellectual and bureaucratic authority. The
graphic exposure of exploitation “the way your forest guard… lay their
perverted hands on her clothes” (Kerketta 83) and “the way your troops / Break
down doors” (Kerketta 83) brings into
focus the embodied experiences of tribal children who grow up amid
militarization, where even play is corrupted, as “children pick up guns / As if
they are gullidanda,” (Kerketta 83) indicating the normalization of violence within
their lifeworlds. This transformation of childhood into a site of fear and
struggles aligns with Frantz Fanon’s observation that colonial and neo-colonial
violence permeates everyday existence, shaping both psyche and social
relations; he notes that such systems create a reality where violence becomes
internalized and reproduced within oppressed communities.10 Yet, the
poem’s closing assertion “When every girl from the jungle / Will write poems”
(Kerketta 83) marks a collective awakening, where poetry becomes an instrument
of resistance, testimony, and truth-telling. The anticipated dismissal “this is
no poetry / But a news report” (Kerketta
83) is itself subverted, as Kerketta collapses the boundary between art and
reportage, asserting that for tribal children, poetry must bear witness to
lived realities rather than conform to aesthetic expectations of the elite.
Thus, the poem becomes a radical act of defiance, positioning tribal children,
especially girls, as agents of narrative authority who challenge hegemonic
silences, reclaim their voices, and transform poetry into a site of political
resistance and historical truth.
Conclusions
To sum up, Kerketta’s Angor and Land of the Roots collectively foreground tribal children as powerful agents of resistance who negotiate displacement, cultural erasure, and systemic marginalization. Through images of migration, ecological loss, labour, and gendered violence, Jacinta Kerketta reveals how indigenous childhood becomes a site of struggle and awakening. Yet, these poems also affirm resilience, as children reclaim memory, identity, and voice through connection to land and tradition. Ultimately, Kerketta transforms poetry into a subaltern counter-discourse, asserting that despite oppression, tribal consciousness remains regenerative, adaptive, and deeply resistant to cultural annihilation.
Works Cited
Sreelekshmi, M. “Voice of the
Voiceless: A Study of the Loss of Language, Landscapes and Roots in the Context
of Jacinta Kerketta’s Poems.” Ishal Paithrkam, 2023.
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Mathew. “Revitalizing Polemics Through Exile Testimonio in the Select Poems of
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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can
the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism
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Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Grove Press,
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Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard
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Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. Zed Books, 1988.
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Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove
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