Rewriting Adivasi Experience: Contemporary Tribal Concerns in Jacinta Kerketta’s Poetry in Post-Jharkhand Formation Context

Introduction

Adivasi literature has emerged as a significant intellectual and cultural force in modern India, offering alternative narratives that challenge mainstream representations of tribal communities. For centuries, Adivasi voices were marginalized both in literary discourse and in national historiography due to the dominance of upper-caste, urban-centric literary traditions that often depicted tribal life through exotic, romantic or paternalistic lenses. The need to reclaim cultural memory, political identity and historical agency led to the emergence of a strong Adivasi literary tradition rooted in oral knowledge systems, ecological wisdom, collective experience and resistance. Jacinta Kerketta in her poem ‘Ishwar and Bazar’ elaborates what being an Adivasi means:

Closeness to the earth is being Adivasi

Closeness to nature is being Adivasi

Flowing like a river

Being simple is being Adivasi

Rebellion against all relations in and out,

Is being Adivasi. (qtd. in Raj, 2025)

Scholars argue that tribal literature is distinguished by its deep engagement with land, memory, community and lived reality, offering what Sharan (2022) describes as a counter-discourse to dominant narratives by foregrounding the complexities of indigenous identity within rapidly changing sociocultural landscapes (p. 1419).

The sociopolitical context of Jharkhand is essential to understanding this literary movement. The region, rich in forests, rivers and mineral resources, has long been home to tribes such as the Munda, Santhal, Oraon and Ho. Historically, these communities experienced systematic land dispossession through colonial forest laws, missionary incursions and extractive mining activities. Even after the formation of Jharkhand in 2000, a political achievement rooted in movements led by figures like Jaipal Singh Munda, the promised autonomy and protection of indigenous resources remained largely unfulfilled. Studies indicate that the decades following statehood witnessed intensified mining, deforestation, corporate land acquisition and militarization in tribal districts such as West Singhbhum, Hazaribagh, Latehar and Dumka (Gupta, 2022; Rani, 2025). These changes disrupted traditional livelihoods, eroded cultural practices and deepened social inequalities. Gowda and Kariyanna (2021, p. 536) point out that such processes led to the ‘collapse of multiple relationships with land and forest’, fundamentally altering the Adivasi worldview.

This historical backdrop is crucial for understanding the poetry of Jacinta Kerketta. Born in West Singhbhum, one of the most mineral-rich yet socio-economically marginalized regions of Jharkhand, Kerketta writes from within the experiential reality of displacement, environmental degradation and cultural loss. She has written two significant poetry collections, Angor (2016) and Land of the Roots (2018). Later, she published another work titled Ishwar aur Bazaar (God and the Market) in 2022. In recognition of her literary contributions, she received several honours, including the Voice of Asia Recognition Award (2014), the Ravishankar Upadhyay Smriti Award (2015) and the Aparajitha Award (2017). Her poems carry the collective consciousness of a community that has struggled for centuries to preserve jal–jangal–zameen—the triad of water, forest and land that forms the foundation of Adivasi identity. Her writing is shaped by the ecological logic of her community, where land is not merely an economic asset but a spiritual and cultural extension of the self. This worldview is radically different from capitalist and statist discourses that view land as extractable property. As Rani (2025) notes, for Adivasis, the land is ‘the centre of community and identity’, an understanding Kerketta repeatedly affirms through her poetic imagery (p. 27).

Kerketta’s poetry also emerges from a long tradition of Adivasi resistance. Jharkhand’s history is marked by landmark uprisings such as the Tilka Manjhi rebellion, the Santhal Hul of 1855–1856 led by Sido and Kanhu, and the Ulgulan movement led by Birsa Munda in 1899–1900. These rebellions sought to defend the sovereignty of land, forest rights and cultural autonomy. Documents on Sido and Kanhu (Garain, 2014; Tudu, 2019) reveal how they mobilized thousands to resist exploitation by colonialists, landlords and moneylenders. Kerketta’s poems consciously evoke this legacy, embedding contemporary struggles within the continuum of historical resistance. In ‘Arrow of Sido-Kanhu and Fidel’, she recalls them as:

The arrow shot from the bow

Of the times of Sido-Kanhu and Castro

Have still a long way to go. (2018, p. 69)

Through metaphors that recall the courage of Sido and Kanhu, the poetic voice becomes a bridge between past and present, reasserting that Adivasi resistance is ongoing and deeply embedded in collective memory.

Her stylistic approaches further distinguish her as a major contemporary voice. Kerketta writes with journalistic precision, yet her poems carry a lyrical intensity that transforms the familiar landscapes of Jharkhand into emotionally charged symbols. Her use of minimalism, sharp metaphor and oral rhythms creates a voice that feels both intimate and political. Whether depicting polluted rivers, militarized villages or uprooted families, her poetry reveals what eco-critical theorists identify as ‘ecological grief’, the emotional trauma produced by environmental destruction (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018). The ecological destruction in tribal regions, as documented in ‘Forest in the Poems of Jacinta Kerketta’ (Malwika, 2024), shows how environmental loss is inseparable from cultural loss and psychological trauma among Adivasi communities.

Research Objectives and Methodology

The primary objective of this study is to critically examine how Jacinta Kerketta rewrites Adivasi experience in the sociopolitical landscape of post-formation Jharkhand through her poetry collections Angor (2016) and Land of the Roots (2018). The research explores her representation of ecological devastation, gendered violence, cultural displacement, political marginalization and the persistent struggle for jal–jangal–zameen, while also analysing how she reinterprets historical resistance associated with figures such as Sido, Kanhu, Phulo, Jhano and Birsa Munda. A secondary aim is to situate her work within contemporary Adivasi literary traditions and indigenous rights discourses. Methodologically, the study employs qualitative textual analysis, reading Kerketta’s poems through subaltern studies, eco-criticism, tribal feminism, indigenous epistemologies and postcolonial theory. The interdisciplinary approach integrates literary, sociological and historical perspectives, recognizing the oral, experiential and community-centred nature of Adivasi narratives.

Jal–Jangal–Zameen Discourse

The struggle for jal–jangal–zameen has been central to Adivasi political consciousness in Jharkhand for more than two centuries. As Rani (2025) observes, land among Adivasis is not merely a source of livelihood but forms the basis of their ‘community and identity’ (p. 27). This philosophical relationship with land, forests and water stands in stark contrast to the capitalist and statist logic that views natural resources as commodities. From colonial forest laws to post-independence development projects, Adivasis experienced systemic displacement, land alienation and violent interventions in the name of progress. The Subarnarekha Multi-purpose Project (1973), for example, resulted in mass displacement and ecological destruction in Singhbhum due to dam and reservoir construction, while the Jungle Kato Andolan (1978) further intensified the erasure of tribal forests through state-sponsored commercial plantations (Rani, 2025). These historical processes provide the sociopolitical backdrop of Kerketta’s poetry, which documents the ongoing violence inflicted upon Adivasi land and identity in contemporary Jharkhand. In Angor (2016), Kerketta evokes the elemental connection between the Adivasi body and land through visceral imagery. In one poem, she writes,

My body and soul,

Left by claws, dipped in poison,

As they plundered and robbed.

All that others can see

Are my forests, my land

And

The weapons in my hand. (Kerketta, 2016, p. 61)

This intimate metaphor signifies how Adivasi ancestry is rooted in the soil, making displacement a form of ancestral rupture. Her poems lament the intrusion of mining companies, whose excavations tear apart both land and memory. In another poem, she states,

And then dig and drill through the hills

The long-buried iron ages to extract.

And they fail to unearth

For centuries injured and hurt

The spoors of hundreds of nameless villages. (Kerketta, 2016, p. 95)

Such lines present deforestation as an attack on identity and language. Mining thus becomes a metaphor for cultural deletion, echoing observations by Gupta (2022), who notes that industrial expansion in Jharkhand after 2000 accelerated land alienation, ecological loss and cultural disintegration among tribal communities (Kerketta, 2016, pp. 17–18).

Another tribal poet from Jharkhand Anuj Lugun in his poems consistently links land to violence. In Aghoshit Ulgulan (n.d.), he writes,

No One Speaks of Their Condition.

No One Speaks of Forests Being Cut Down,

Of Mountains Being Broken Apart,

Of Rivers Drying Up,

Of Turia’s Unclaimed Corpse

Lying on the Railway Track.

No One Says Anything.

The verses suggest that river pollution is not only ecological degradation but also the silencing of cultural expression. Rivers in Adivasi cosmology carry ancestral memory, yet contemporary development transforms them into toxic reminders of displacement. This aligns with the eco-critical arguments in the poem ‘The Jungle Says’ by Jacinta Kerketta (2018a, p. 77), where studies point out that her writings reveal ‘a deep ecological grief rooted in the destruction of traditional landscapes’ (Malwika, 2024). Her lamentations echo those found in Ho tribal poetry, which also portrays mining-induced displacement as a form of ‘epistemic violence’ (Rani, 2025, p. 28). A report says, ‘those who were displaced due to various projects in Jharkhand, have neither been properly rehabilitated nor resettled. Thus, displacement has resulted in the exodus of the local populace from the State in search of livelihood elsewhere’ (Singh, 2025).

The jal–jangal–zameen struggle extends beyond ecological concerns to the political domain, where Adivasi communities demand recognition, rights and autonomy. Historical uprisings such as the Santhal Hul led by Sido, Kanhu, Phulo and Jhano reflected the determination to protect land from exploitative systems. As Toppo (2024) notes, Sido–Kanhu resisted moneylenders, landlords and British administrators who sought to control tribal land and resources (p. 20). Bengali tribal poet Lakhsmi Maandi in her poem ‘Only One Demand’ (2025, p. 108) invokes this legacy of resistance in her poetry, such as when she writes, ‘You are the original people of India/The land, the water, the forests were yours/Outsiders came/And took away rights to everything you had’, connecting past rebellions with contemporary struggles against mining corporations and state violence. Her poetic invocation of Adivasi heroes situates the present resistance within a continuum of historical struggles, suggesting that the fight for land remains unfinished.

Kerketta’s poetry ultimately presents jal–jangal–zameen as the foundational axis of Adivasi existence. The loss of land becomes synonymous with the loss of identity, culture and spiritual belonging. Her poems bear witness to what Gowda and Kariyanna (2021) describe as ‘the collapse of the Adivasis’ multiple relationships with the land, the forest, and among themselves’ due to state and corporate incursions (p. 536). By reclaiming land through poetic memory, Kerketta restores dignity to a community repeatedly displaced by policies that prioritize industrial growth over indigenous survival. Her poems thus represent a literary form of land rights activism, giving voice to communities whose testimonies often remain unheard in mainstream narratives.

Ecological Aspect

Kerketta’s poetry is deeply ecological, rooted in the Adivasi worldview that perceives nature as an extension of the self rather than as an external resource. Eco-criticism allows a nuanced reading of her poems, revealing how her imagery critiques capitalist exploitation and environmental degradation. According to the eco-critical theory, environmental destruction is inseparable from social oppression, especially for indigenous and marginalized communities (Nixon, 2011, p. 4). Kerketta’s poems embody this intersectionality by portraying ecological harm as both physical and psychological violence against her community. In ‘The Truth Behind Decisions’, Kerketta writes,

Bullet fired from the guns

Of progress, of development

First hit and embed

In the soil’s forehead,

In the jungle’s thigh,

In the village’s spine,

And in the songbird’s eye. (2018a, p. 35)

The personification of the forest underscores its role as a cultural archive, while the images of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ convey industrial pollution and deforestation. This transformation of the forest reflects what Singh and Giri (cited in Rani, 2025) describe as the massive deforestation caused by state-led and corporate-led interventions in Jharkhand (p. 27). Through an eco-critical analysis, the poem exposes how displacement and deforestation disturb the ecological balance and fracture collective memory.

Similarly, in ‘The City’s Nose’, she describes, ‘The soul of Mother Earth,/The sound of the hills,/The pain of time,/The pulse of the soil’ (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 61), casting mining activities as acts of violence. The hills become bodies, and extraction becomes injury. This metaphor resonates with the eco-feminist lens, which argues that the exploitation of nature mirrors the exploitation of women, both of whom are coded as passive resources under patriarchal–capitalist systems. Kerketta’s eco-poetic voice aligns with eco-feminist perspectives because her poems concurrently foreground environmental destruction and the suffering of Adivasi women. Scholars such as Sharan (2022) emphasize that land for tribal communities is a repository of cultural and spiritual significance, and Kerketta’s poems reaffirm this by showing how the destruction of land becomes the destruction of identity.

Kerketta’s ecological critique is also political. She documents how development projects justified in the name of national progress often result in violations of human rights. In one poem, she writes,

The sight of trees they cannot stand,

For the roots of trees-they claim land. (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 163)

This line references the history of forest laws in India, which Guha (1882, cited in Rani, 2025) argues were designed to transfer ownership from tribal communities to the colonial and later the postcolonial state. Eco-criticism helps reveal how environmental policies, while framed as scientific management, often function as tools of dispossession.

Her poems not only critique ecological exploitation but also celebrate the deep ecological ethics intrinsic to Adivasi culture. She writes, ‘With love and care that has nurtured a tree,/Sung lullabies to birds until they fell asleep’ (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 115), reaffirming the relational ontology between humans and nature. Such expressions resonate with indigenous ecological philosophies that view nature as animate and sacred. Her ecological vision aligns with the cultural narratives found in Ho and Munda poetry, which similarly articulate a sacred bond with land and forests (Bodra, 2014; Rani, 2025).

Kerketta’s ecological poetry therefore serves multiple purposes: documenting environmental injustice, challenging capitalist development narratives and asserting indigenous ecological knowledge as a legitimate epistemology. Through her poetic critique, she redefines ecological discourse by centring the voices of those most affected by environmental degradation, making her poetry a significant contribution to environmental humanities and indigenous eco-critical studies.

Tribal Women’s Issues

Adivasi women occupy a central place in Kerketta’s poetic universe because they bear the heaviest burdens of displacement, violence and cultural loss. A tribal poet Nirmala Putul critiques traditional roles of women in ‘Adivasi Aurat’ (Adivasi Women) and says, ‘Their world is limited to the reach of their eyes/Many such worlds exist within this world./They don’t know how their goods reach Delhi’ (Putul, 2012, pp. 12–15, qtd. in Sonker & Anand, 2025). Tribal feminist theories argue that Adivasi women experience ‘double marginalisation’—first as members of a historically oppressed tribal community and second as women subjected to patriarchal forms of control (Sonker & Anand, 2025). This theoretical framework helps illuminate Kerketta’s poetic portrayal of women who navigate the violence of mining economies, the traumas of militarization and the silencing imposed by both state and societal hierarchies. In ‘The Sun Rising by the Bed Side’, Kerketta writes,

O king of the hills!

Why do you not seem

To hear your own daughter scream? (2016, p. 89)

These verses use the daughter figure to symbolize the vulnerability of Adivasi women amid mining devastation. The trembling land is both literal, reflecting blasting in mining zones, and metaphorical, suggesting the instability of women’s lives in a rapidly industrializing Jharkhand. The imagery extends the feminist eco-critical insight that the exploitation of land often parallels the exploitation of women’s bodies. Eco-feminist scholar Vandana Shiva writes, ‘Women and nature have been colonised together, and the violence against both is deeply interconnected’ (Shiva, 1989, p. 38). Similarly, in ‘One Day of Life (Part One)’, Mandi writes,

It was ten o’clock at night.

From the police station

They chased me away like a dog,

Saying I was a woman of loose character. (2025, p. 103)

These are haunting lines that point to sexual harassment, trafficking and violence that Adivasi girls frequently face in market and workplace spaces. Studies in Jharkhand reveal that Adivasi women are disproportionately targeted by various forms of structural violence, including trafficking, displacement, neglect of health and denial of education (Gowda & Kariyanna, 2021, pp. 535–537). Kerketta’s imagery of girls ‘carrying silence’ (2016, p. 131) reflects this social silencing and the erasure of dignity. In her poem ‘Just Look for a Moment’, Mandi also highlights domestic hardship:

When her body was strong,

This helpless woman

Gave her labour to your family.

One section of people

Considers you great, respectable persons. (2025, p. 85)

These lines portray women as labouring bodies who sustain families despite scarcity and environmental destruction. This resonates with ethnographic accounts that describe Adivasi women as primary gatherers of forest produce, whose livelihoods are severely disrupted by deforestation, mining and forest enclosures (Rani, 2025).

The tribal feminist theory also recognizes that Adivasi women historically played strong political roles in resistance movements. Kerketta revives this legacy by referencing figures such as Phulo–Jhano, the Santhal sisters who fought alongside Sido–Kanhu during the Hul of 1855. Echoing this spirit, Sandeep Murarka (n.d.) writes, ‘Phulo and Jhano, you held swords in your hands./You showed courage greater than that of your brothers’. Through this reference, she argues for a feminist politics rooted not in Western paradigms but in indigenous histories of women-led resistance.

Kerketta’s poetry, therefore, becomes a feminist intervention that portrays Adivasi women not only as victims but also as bearers of resilience, protectors of ecological knowledge and inheritors of a legacy of rebellion. Her feminist voice emerges from lived reality rather than academic abstraction, grounding her work in the material conditions of tribal women in contemporary Jharkhand.

Tribal Identity and Discrimination

Caste-based discrimination and class exploitation continue to shape the lived experiences of Adivasi communities in Jharkhand, a harsh social reality that Jacinta Kerketta’s poetry captures with remarkable depth, sensitivity and critical insight. Although constitutionally categorized as Scheduled Tribes rather than castes, Adivasis face exclusion that ‘mirrors the hierarchies of caste society through land alienation, economic domination, and political marginalisation’ (Gowda & Kariyanna, 2021, p. 536). Giving credit to Ambedkar, Mandi writes:

Do you know

For whom you can show off this pomp?

For whom you can take part in worship?

For whom you have gained the right

To enter the temple?

For whom you can walk with your head held high?

For whom equal rights are still alive? (2025, p. 87)

Adivasis often come to recognize their identity as ‘the Other’ through the discriminatory attitudes and perceptions imposed upon them by mainstream society. The poet Toppo writes in ‘Tragedy, a Hope’: ‘But looking at and scaling ourselves with the eyes of others,/We have been drowned in the drowsiness of self-doubt (2022, p. 58). In Angor (2016), Kerketta offers a striking testimony of this structural violence when she writes, ‘during my childhood I had also seen how in our village, innocent, close relatives were murdered by Non-Adivasis’ (Kerketta, 2016, p. 9), revealing how class power often held by dominant-caste groups uses violence to seize tribal land. Her anger deepens as she notes how media and state agencies routinely distort Adivasi suffering. The media portrayed the Adivasis as criminals, and the tribal perspective is absent. She says, ‘I began to think, who will write such stories from our perspective. The newspaper is theirs. The power, too, belongs to them. It was then that it struck me that I should study journalism, and that I should work for the newspapers’ (Kerketta, 2018a), pointing to the epistemic erasure that accompanies social oppression. Such literary depictions align with human rights research showing that tribal households continue to experience systemic dispossession, with development projects leaving them ‘landless, impoverished and subjected to long-term ecological degradation’ (Gowda & Kariyanna, 2021, p. 536). To describe the economic crisis and hunger, Nirmala Putul, in her poem ‘Daastan Tumhari Meri’, writes, ‘Thousands fill their bellies on the plates made by your hands,/But even a thousand plates can’t fill your stomach./What irony’ (qtd. in Sonker & Anand, 2025). Economic discrimination compounds this marginalization; as government reports show, mining belts across Jharkhand exhibit some of the highest poverty levels, where Scheduled Tribes face chronic unemployment, displacement and poor access to education and healthcare (JICA, 2014, pp. 2–6). Kerketta metaphorically captures this class exploitation in the lines, ‘In cities, a piece of coal/Burns, burns …/And then is reduced to ash and cinders./In the villages, an ember/Goes from one stove/To the other/And a fire in every household kindles’ (2016, p. 149), contrasting urban wealth extracted from coal with the precarious survival of tribal communities on the same resource. Scholars of Jharkhand’s political economy likewise observe that loopholes in land laws, weak implementation of PESA and the dominance of contractors and non-tribal elites convert economic inequality into ‘institutionalised discrimination against Tribal communities’ (Shivendu & Pallavi, 2023, p. 3). As Kerketta’s poetry and regional studies consistently demonstrate, caste-based stigma, economic exploitation and political exclusion are not separate axes but overlapping structures that collectively shape the everyday discrimination faced by Jharkhand’s Adivasis. Toppo too denies accepting the mainstream terminology and writes:

Whichever word they addressed us with,

I denied to accept. (Toppo, 2022, p. 115)

Kerketta’s poetry also foregrounds the systemic discrimination faced by Adivasis due to their tribal identity. Drawing from subaltern theory, especially Gayatri Spivak’s (1988) concept of the silenced native, her poems highlight how Adivasi voices remain unheard in the discourse of development, nationalism and modernity. As Gowda and Kariyanna (2021) observe, tribal communities ‘continue to be the most marginalised group in India’, suffering from land alienation, exploitation and violations of human rights (p. 536).

In ‘The Mystery of the Forest Bamboos’, Kerketta writes, ‘And I realised then/The agony of being uprooted from one’s soil’ (2016, p. 85), a line that encapsulates the colonial and postcolonial project of delegitimizing Adivasi belonging. The term ‘uprooted’ underscores the tragic irony that communities with millennia-old connections to land are treated as encroachers by both state authorities and corporate actors. This aligns with academic observations that colonial forest laws dispossessed Adivasis from community forests by redefining them as government property (Rani, 2025).

Kerketta’s poems document numerous forms of oppression: police violence, displacement, caste discrimination and the stigma attached to tribal identity. In ‘In Public Interest’, she writes, ‘it was declared rabid/Before being killed/And I a naxal …/In public interest’ (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 153), illustrating the securitization of Adivasi regions, where protests against mining or land acquisition are criminalized. Studies highlight that militarization of tribal areas, particularly in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, often leads to harassment, custodial violence and collective punishment of villagers (Shivendu & Pallavi, 2023).

Identity-based oppression also manifests in cultural misrepresentation. In an interview, she says, ‘the non-Adivasis who are responsible for looking into the Adivasi issues, often come with pre-determined biases, They don’t have any deep understanding about the Adivasi society’ (Kerketta, 2018b), referring to the exoticized portrayals of tribals in mainstream literature, tourism, films and textbooks. This line echoes the theoretical argument by Oommen (1990) and Guha (1982) that tribal identities are frequently constructed through external narratives that erase their authentic histories and agency. Kerketta’s poetry functions as a counter-narrative that restores dignity, rejecting the dominant gaze. Her poetic resistance resonates with Frantz Fanon’s (2008, p. 218) argument that reclaiming voice is the first step in decolonization, through powerful metaphors, such as ‘There is a need here to write in a language that will be understood by those who are responsible for the conditions which the Adivasi society has to endure, and the reasons for which there is so much conflict’ (Kerketta, 2018b). Kerketta asserts the political power of the subaltern voice and its ability to challenge structures of domination.

Adivasi Cultural Destruction

Contemporary Jharkhand continues to witness rapid cultural destruction due to mining, urbanization, missionary influence, consumerism and state policies that undermine traditional knowledge systems. Tribal poets emphasize that the collapse of Adivasi relationships with land and forest leads inevitably to the collapse of their cultural ethos (Gowda & Kariyanna, 2021). Kerketta writes poignantly in ‘An Adivasi village’, ‘The Adivasi boy now asks himself, … Will he manage to survive?/No ark of ancient treatise or text/He has with him to protect/His existence, his being./How will be preserved his nature, his essence?’ (2016, p. 115). Through this reflection, the poet articulates a deep sense of uncertainty and vulnerability, foregrounding the fragile condition of Adivasi identity in a rapidly changing world. The imagery of the absence of ‘treatise or text’ operates as a powerful metaphor for cultural suffocation, symbolizing the erosion of indigenous traditions, knowledge systems and ways of life. Thus, the poem captures an acute existential crisis shaped by the forces of development and displacement. Language loss is another aspect of cultural destruction. Another poem ‘Death of the Mother Tongue’ states:

Even today, Mother believes

That the death of the mother tongue

Was a mere accident, unforeseen. (2018, p. 21)

Such lines capture how cultural expressions such as dance and music cannot survive without access to ancestral customs. These verses align with anthropological findings that Adivasi festivals—Sarhul, Karma and Sohrai—are intimately connected to natural cycles, forests and agricultural rhythms, and thus erode when land is lost (Rani, 2025). Kerketta (2016) expresses this in the line, ‘They cut the trees and our words fell with them’, drawing a direct connection between ecological destruction and linguistic decline. Many tribal languages in Jharkhand face endangerment due to schooling policies, displacement and migration. Scholars warn that the disappearance of languages leads to the disappearance of oral histories, myths, rituals and ecological knowledge (Sharan, 2022). Her poems thus serve as cultural archives that preserve fading memories and warn against the erasure of the tribal identity. Through them, she performs what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o calls the ‘decolonisation of language and memory’ (1986, p. 108), reclaiming the cultural space from dominant forces.

Political Marginalization of Tribals in Indian Politics

Political marginalization remains one of the defining realities shaping the lives of Jharkhand’s Adivasis, a condition Jacinta Kerketta repeatedly exposes in her poetry. In a similar tone, Lakshmi Mandi writes:

Who knows

Gods in heaven,

Leaders on earth;

This country belongs to them.

If you speak against them,

You must leave the country. (2025, p. 101)

Despite constitutional safeguards, Scheduled Tribes continue to experience limited political agency, especially in regions where mining and industrial projects override community rights. Studies argue that even after the formation of Jharkhand in 2000, non-tribal political elites, contractors and corporate groups increasingly dominated the state’s political machinery, diluting the original aspirations of the Jharkhand Movement (Gupta, 2022, p. 18). Kerketta captures this exclusion sharply in ‘Intezaar’ (Waiting, 2025) when she writes, ‘They are waiting for us to become civilized/And we are waiting for them to become human’, suggesting that Adivasis remain subjects of decisions imposed from above rather than active participants in governance. This poetic critique aligns with studies showing that policy-making in mineral-rich districts like West Singhbhum routinely bypasses Gram Sabhas and violates provisions of the PESA Act (Shivendu & Pallavi, 2023, pp. 2–3).

Newspaper reports from Jharkhand corroborate this reality. It has been reported that more than 70% of mining leases in tribal-majority blocks were approved without full Gram Sabha consent, directly contradicting constitutional mandates (Singh, 2025). Similarly, ‘Pathalgadi Movement, Self-governance, and the Question of “Weak Statehood”’ noted how police repression in Pathalgadi villages during 2018–2019 reflected the widening gap between the tribal electorate and the state apparatus, as hundreds of Adivasi residents were charged under sedition for asserting self-governance rights (Roy & Singh, 2022). Mandi’s poetry resonates with these lived experiences when she writes,

Vote, vote, vote/Everyone forms an alliance./More than work,/It’s money that intoxicates./Before the election, everyone says,/I will stand by you./After winning the vote,/Their rates go up/Everyone knows this./If you go to meet them at home,/They’ll tell you, Come later./There’s no time to listen now,/I’m off to a meeting (2025, p. 76)

These lines express profound disillusionment with electoral democracy that seeks tribal votes but ignores tribal voices. In ‘A Madua Sprout on the Grave’, Kerketta writes:

Who wolf down millions of votes

And lust for ever more green to chew.

‘Win election!’ is the motto they live by

While writing in the agony of hunger

Sugna starves in darkness and dies. (2016, p. 51)

This symbolic participation without substantive influence is a form of ‘subaltern political erasure’, echoing Spivak’s argument that structures of power allow marginalized groups to ‘vote but not speak’ (Spivak, 1988). The legacy of Adivasi political leaders such as Jaipal Singh Munda, who envisioned a state built on tribal autonomy and self-governance, heightens this contrast. Gupta (2022) notes that Jaipal Singh’s dream of a Jharkhand grounded in tribal cultural and economic rights remains ‘only partially realised’ (p. 17). Kerketta invokes this legacy in her lines, ‘The arrows shot from the bow/Of the times of Sido-Kanhu and Castro/Have still a long way to go’ (2018, p. 69), reaffirming the continued struggle for the political ideals that inspired statehood.

Her poems thus constitute a critique of political structures that perpetuate unequal power relations while simultaneously functioning as a call for genuine Adivasi self-determination rooted in constitutional rights, community knowledge systems and the ethical principles embedded in jal–jangal–zameen. Through a convergence of poetic testimony, historical memory and political critique, Kerketta’s work positions itself as a literary manifesto demanding a reimagining of political participation for Jharkhand’s indigenous communities.

Tribal Involvement in Jharkhand Politics

The political participation of Adivasis in Jharkhand has evolved from resistance movements to increasingly structured engagement in electoral politics, as communities recognized the necessity of institutional representation to assert their rights. Historically, Adivasi leadership emerged through uprisings such as the Santhal Hul and the Ulgulan, which laid the foundation for a political consciousness centred on land, autonomy and cultural protection (Garain, 2014; Tudu, 2019, pp. 559–560). This consciousness gradually transitioned into organized politics through the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha under Shibu Soren, whose mobilization against land alienation and exploitative labour systems provided Adivasis their first sustained political platform (Gupta, 2022, p. 17). Contemporary studies show a steady rise in tribal political participation through local governance structures, Panchayati Raj institutions and Gram Sabhas, despite systemic constraints (Shivendu & Pallavi, 2023, pp. 2–3). Yet, as recent studies argue, this participation is often symbolic, constrained by bureaucratic dominance and corporate pressures in mining districts (Gowda & Kariyanna, 2021, p. 536). Kerketta’s poetry captures this partial empowerment when she writes, ‘Those embers smouldering deep within/Will have to be stirred into a roaring flame’ (2016, p. 107), reflecting how electoral participation has not always translated into policy influence. However, the growing presence of Adivasi leaders ranging from village mukhiyas to chief ministers like Hemant Soren signals a strengthening aspiration for self-determination, indicating that Jharkhand’s tribal politics is gradually shifting from resistance at the margins to assertive participation within democratic institutions.

Tribal Voice

Jacinta Kerketta’s poetry functions not merely as literature but also as a collective Adivasi voice speaking from the heart of Jharkhand’s forests, mining belts and resistance movements. In the poem ‘The Weapons in My Hands’, she writes:

We are fighting

For our lands, for our soil,

And to preserve our very being.

A fight you too must fight after me. (2016, p. 59)

Through her writings, the silenced, displaced and oppressed communities articulate their pain, hopes and visions of justice. Her poems become a form of testimonial literature, what Spivak (1988) would call the ‘subaltern speaking’. In ‘Only One Demand’, Lakshmi Mandi writes, ‘With blood-red eyes, tell them:/We are the original people of India./Hand over the power to rule the country to us./We have only one demand’ (2025, p. 108), representing the idea that Adivasis speak through suffering, memory and endurance. This metaphor of burning villages reflects both literal histories of state violence and the symbolic silencing of tribal identity under development policies.

Kerketta’s voice emerges from within the community rather than from an external observer’s gaze. Unlike mainstream writers who often exoticize tribal life, her poetry narrates the Adivasi world with authenticity rooted in lived reality. This aligns with Sharan’s (2022) assertion that tribal literature is a ‘platform for expressing indigenous worldviews, customs, and difficulties’ (p. 1419). Her lines, such as ‘This city shall wake someday,/And demand from you to replace/Its lost peace,/Its lost mountains,/Its true face’ (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 93), reflect the Adivasi historical consciousness that mainstream discourses often overlook. Thus, Kerketta’s poems restore agency to Adivasis, allowing them to define themselves rather than be defined by others.

Her poetry also channels the collective grief of those affected by mining-induced displacement. In ‘Silence’, she writes, ‘This dead silence of their someday/Will devour all in the blink of an eye’ (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 27), suggesting that resistance is born from loss. The dust rising symbolizes Adivasi people standing up despite being uprooted. This resonates with Gowda and Kariyanna’s (2021) argument that tribal communities respond to exploitation through protest movements designed to reclaim dignity (pp. 535–537). Kerketta thus positions herself as a chronicler of these movements, giving literary shape to Adivasi dissent. The poet also preserves Adivasi cultural memory through her imagery of forests, festivals, oral stories and spiritual traditions. In doing so, she becomes a cultural archivist. Her poems serve as what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o calls ‘a weapon of memory’ (2009, p. 72) that confronts the erasures produced by colonial and postcolonial projects. Through her voice, Jharkhand’s tribal identity reasserts itself in the national literary imagination. Kerketta says

My poetry and my writings are my life choices. They are my dedication, my protest. I want to see how this works within society. Writing as an Adivasi woman, itself is a political act in fact. As a result, my poetry and my politics are not really apart. All that agrees with me, is my poetry. (Bhatia, 2023)

In one of her poems, Kerketta says:

There will be come a day

When every girl from the jungle

Will write poems.

To dismiss them what will you say?

What will you say Sahib?

That this no poetry

But a news report, a story,

Isn’t it? (2018a, p. 81)

Michel Foucault’s famous statement, ‘Where there is power, there is resistance’ (1978, p. 95), perfectly explains the underlying spirit of Jacinta Kerketta’s poetry. Her poems portray the everyday struggles of Adivasi communities in Jharkhand, who experience state power, corporate power and social domination through land dispossession, militarization and cultural erasure.

Inspiration from Tribal Legends

Kerketta’s poetry consciously connects contemporary Adivasi struggles to historical movements led by legendary tribal heroes such as Sido, Kanhu, Phulo and Jhano Murmu, Birsa Munda and Tilka Manjhi. These figures serve not merely as symbols but also as ideological sources of inspiration for present-day resistance against corporate and state oppression. In Angor, she writes, ‘While a rebellion of brave Birsa Munda/Slips and rolls down slop of the Dombai Hill, over and over’ (2016, p. 97), expressing the continuity of revolutionary consciousness from the Hul of 1855 to modern struggles over land rights (Kerketta, 2016, p. 33).

Historical documents confirm that Sido and Kanhu mobilized more than 10,000 Santhals to challenge British exploitation, landlord tyranny and moneylenders’ oppression (Garain, 2014; Tudu, 2019, p. 559). Similarly, Phulo and Jhano fought alongside their brothers to protect tribal land from outsiders (Bhagat, 2022). Kerketta invokes these histories as moral foundations for her community. She says, ‘We carry the seeds of rebellion that Phulo sowed’ (Bhatia, 2023), suggesting that Adivasi women continue the legacy of courage embodied by these heroines.

By evoking Birsa Munda, she grounds her poetry in the Ulgulan (Great Tumult) movement of 1899–1900, which challenged land alienation and missionary conversions (Bhagat, 2022). In ‘On the Occasion of Birsa Munda Jayanti’, Suraj Kumar Bauddh writes, ‘The Santhal rebellion,/The Khasi, Khamti, Kol uprisings,/The Naga, Munda, Bhil revolts/All lie confined/In some forgotten corner of history’ (2017), framing his spirit as alive in contemporary activism against mining companies and state violence. According to Gupta (2022), such historical figures shaped tribal political consciousness and laid the ideological groundwork for Jharkhand’s statehood (p. 17). In a conversation, Kerketta said,

There are many books on Adivasi history, and many people have written about that. People of the mainstream society also have written about this. But even then, I feel, there has not been a proper explanation of Adivasi philosophy with and from an Adivasi perspective. (Kerketta, 2018b)

Jharkhandi poet Toppo also points out the biased historiography highlights the need for reception of Adivasi histories in his poem ‘Books Will Have to Be Written’, writing,

Your History

Was neither created in words

On the pages of History,

Nor could it be recorded in the books.

Witness of your struggles and accounts of victories

Are trees, rivers, rocks. (Toppo, 2022, p. 51)

Kerketta aligns her poetic vision with these movements, portraying liberation not as an abstract ideal but as a lived historical process rooted in Adivasi resistance. Through these references, her poetry becomes a bridge between the past and the present, calling on Adivasis to reclaim autonomy, dignity and land.

Kerketta’s poetry also functions as a political document asserting the rights guaranteed to Adivasis under the Indian Constitution and international human rights frameworks. Her work implicitly invokes constitutional provisions such as Articles 14–17 (equality), Article 19 (freedom of expression), Article 21 (right to life), Article 244 (Fifth Schedule) and Article 275 (special grants for tribal welfare). She echoes the spirit of the Forest Rights Act (2006), PESA Act (1996) and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), all of which secure land, cultural and self-governance rights.

In ‘The Weapon in My Hands’, she writes, ‘We are fighting/For our land, for our soil,/And to preserve our very being’ (Kerketta, 2016, p. 59), directly aligning with UNDRIP’s Article 26, which affirms indigenous people’s rights to traditionally owned territories. Her poems reflect the legal and moral demands for self-determination in resource governance. This resonates with Shivendu and Pallavi (2023), who argue that tribal participation in Indian politics is essential for shaping equitable policies (pp. 2–3).

Kerketta also claims educational rights. In one poem, she says, ‘Teach our children the stories buried in the soil’ (Kerketta, 2016, p. 77); she further says: ‘The trees teach him to grow and blossom./To dance he learns from the rollicking rain’ (Kerketta, 2018a, p. 77), which critiques school curriculums that marginalize Adivasi knowledge systems (Verma, 2025). Scholars note that tribal children often face alienation in schools, which erase their cultural identity (Sharan, 2022). The poet therefore calls for the decolonization of education.

Jacinta Kerketta emerges as an advocate for holistic rights in literary, political, educational, economic, social, cultural and environmental by transforming her poetry into a powerful site of resistance grounded in both constitutional values and indigenous ethical frameworks. As she asserts, writing as an Adivasi woman is itself a political act, indicating that her literary practice is inseparable from questions of justice, identity and rights (Bhatia, 2023). Her poems go beyond documenting marginalization; they actively challenge structures of power by exposing displacement, ecological destruction and social exclusion faced by Adivasi communities. At the same time, her reflections emphasize an indigenous worldview rooted in coexistence, respect for nature and the collective right to live with dignity, which stands in contrast to exploitative models of development (Kerketta, 2018a). Her critique of mainstream education and representation further highlights the need for epistemic justice, where indigenous knowledge systems are recognized and integrated. By consciously choosing language as a tool of resistance and communication with dominant structures, she reclaims narrative authority. Thus, Kerketta’s work bridges constitutional ideals of equality, freedom and dignity with indigenous ethics of community and ecology, positioning her as a compelling voice advocating for comprehensive empowerment and rights of Adivasi communities.

Conclusion

Jacinta Kerketta’s poetry, when examined within the sociopolitical context of post-formation Jharkhand, emerges as a significant intervention in contemporary Adivasi discourse, simultaneously aesthetic, historical and political. Her poems transform lived realities into textual resistance, revealing how ecological destruction, gendered violence, cultural dispossession and political marginalization continue to shape the lives of indigenous people despite constitutional assurances. Through an interdisciplinary lens combining eco-criticism, tribal feminism and subaltern theory, Kerketta’s work exposes the systemic inequalities produced by mining economies, corporate exploitation and state neglect, while also foregrounding the resilience embedded in Adivasi memory and cosmology. By invoking the revolutionary legacies of Sido–Kanhu, Phulo–Jhano, Birsa Munda and other icons of Jharkhand’s anti-colonial and anti-feudal struggles, her poetry situates contemporary injustices within a longer continuum of Adivasi resistance and self-assertion (Kumar, 2024). In doing so, she reclaims jal–jangal–zameen not only as ecological categories but also as political and cultural rights intrinsic to Adivasi identity. Ultimately, Kerketta’s poetic voice stands among the most compelling indigenous literary expressions of twenty-first-century India, giving language to silenced histories, dignity to displaced communities and agency to those rendered invisible in dominant narratives. Her work challenges readers, policymakers and scholars alike to rethink the meanings of development, citizenship and justice in a state built on the aspirations and sacrifices of its tribal people.