The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories

The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2015; ISBN 9789385288647) is a collection of short stories. The second book by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, it was nominated for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2016.[1] As of September 2018, this book has been translated into Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and Gujarati, while the Malayalam, Bengali, and Austrian German translations are forthcoming.[2]

The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories
AuthorHansda Sowvendra Shekhar
CountryIndia
LanguageEnglish
GenreFiction, Short stories
PublisherSpeaking Tiger Publishing Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India
Publication date
2015
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback), E-book
ISBN9789385288647
Preceded byThe Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014) 
Followed byJwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh (2018) 

Summary

The characters and settings of the stories are mostly from the community of Santhal people in the Indian state of Jharkhand, particularly in relation to 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.

Title Theme First published pp.
They eat meat! Prejudice among Hindu people in Gujarat, and the 2002 Gujarat riots. La.Lit 1-27
Sons The contrast between a spoiled child and one from a poor background. 'Scions', Northeast Review, 3 (March–April 2013) 28-38
November is the month of migrations A Santhal migrant worker doing sex-work. 39-42
Getting even Human trafficking of low-caste Hindu people. 43-57
Eating with the enemy The complex life of a domestic servant, Sulochona. The Four Quarters Magazine 58-89
Blue baby A woman's ill-conceived plan to escape an arranged marriage by getting pregnant beforehand. The Statesman 90-111
Baso-jhi An old widow being identified as a dahni (witch). Indian Literature (2007) 112-29
Desire, divination, death A woman losing her son to fever. Indian Literature 130-43
Merely a whore A sex-worker falls in love with one of her clients and hopes for rescue from her profession. The Four Quarters Magazine 144-68
The Adivasi will not dance An Adivasi dance-troupe is commissioned to celebrate the building of a power-plant, but instead protest against it. The Dhauli Review 169-87

Reviews and studies

The work has also attracted dedicated scholarly commentary:

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.[3] 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.[4] The government's actions were widely criticised.[5][6][7][8] The ban on The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories was removed in December 2017[9][10] and Shekhar's suspension was removed and he was reinstated into his job in 2018.[11][12]

References
  1. "Shortlist for The Hindu Prize 2016 announced". The Hindu. October 16, 2016. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
  2. "Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar on Academia". Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  3. Sudipta Datta, 'Who is Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, fighting a ban', The Hindu (19 August 2017).
  4. Ziya Us Salam, 'A Santhal Suppressed', Frontline (13 October 2017).
  5. Sanjay Srivastava, 'What the ban on The Adivasi Will Not Dance tells us about India’s political life', Hindustan Times (14 August 2017).
  6. Ruchir Joshi, 'The reader will not dance', The Hindu (13 August 2017).
  7. 'Dubbed 'porn', book on tribals banned in Jharkhand', The Times of India (13 August 2017).
  8. 'Writers, Activists Condemn Banning of ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ in Jharkhand', The Wire (29 August 2017).
  9. Scroll Staff (December 13, 2017). "Four months after ban, Jharkhand finds nothing objectionable in Hansda Shekhar's book on Adivasis". Scroll. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
  10. Prashant Pandey (December 14, 2017). "Jharkhand: Govt finds nothing objectionable in Santhal writer's book, ban could be lifted". The Indian Express. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
  11. ICF Team (August 17, 2018). "Suspension on Writer Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar Revoked". Indian Cultural Forum. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
  12. Paromita Chakrabarti (September 2, 2018). "Playing with Fire: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar on his first children's book". The Indian Express. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
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