Portrayal of Adivasi from the Margins of Bengal: A Reading of Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar's The Adivasi Will Not Dance

As is universally acknowledged, literature mirrors society which has been emerging out from the churning owing to multifaceted interactions in a civilization. It does not only reflect the popular and so-called easily-visible factors of a society, but also disclose the unenlightened and down-to-earth matters. This present analysis undertakes to manifest the Scheduled Tribes, one of the popular Dalit groups, who are commonly identified as Adivasi. To strengthen my study, I have taken Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s book entitled The Adivasi Will Not Dance. It is a collection of short stories, comprising of ten in total. The background is principally set in a fecund, mineral-rich hinterland and the ever-expanding, squalid towns of Jharkhand in West Bengal. Based on reality, his Dalit perspectives follow no aesthetic pleasure as is the common characteristics of traditional literature. His characterization hinges on distinctive cultural framework and purposeful political experiences which result in severe identity crisis, exploitation, continuous struggle for keeping up existence, superstition and marginalization. The Adivasis confront with deterioration of their indigenous realism day by day under the “hypocrisy of the higher castes” (Bharti 1999), crushing pressure of modernity and capitalism. Providing a rare glimpse of middle-class Santhal life, Hansda has artistically pointed out such inexorable concerns in his short stories that stir our minds to think and feel how the so-called civilized community and modern age take Adivasis into consideration, where they live and into which they are pathetically destined to silently bleed. Carefully avoiding the self-pitying tone, he portrays the lives of Adivasis in general with a view to evoking a fresh and much-needed outlook towards traditional Dalit sentiments and this present study will exhibit those overwhelming issues which are essential and unavoidable manifestation of our own existing society.