Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India

ISSN 2321-5437

JTICI Vol.4, Issue 3, No.5, pp. 47 to 52, October 2017

Producing Tribal and Indigenous Knowledges: Testimonies of an indigenous publisher (and her authors)

Ruby Hembrom

Introduction

Production is a process of creation or one that brings something into existence. When it comes to producing indigenous knowledges; what really is the product? Knowledge creators and publishers are in the trade and pursuit of information, knowledge, and culture that has sustained our native societies for millennia—the tangible representation of which is a book, an audio or video file, a piece of fabric, food, a photograph, a sculpture or a painting among others.

As indigenous peoples we are living documents ourselves, so as a publisher I am confronted by the dilemma of transmitting, translating and reproducing what’s organic and breathing into a form that in many ways is limiting. How do you after all market insight, experience, memory and traditions?

Edward W. Said in his book Orientalism says knowledge “no longer requires application to reality; knowledge is what gets passed on silently without comment, from one text to another. Ideas are propagated and disseminated anonymously; they are repeated without attribution; they have literally become idées reçues (ideas received): what matters is that they are there to be repeated, echoed, and re-echoed uncritically.”

But when he says it is there: that’s what we have to negotiate with. The form of our knowledges that exist for indigenous peoples is not congruent with the necessities for survival in the present times. We need to produce knowledges in tangible ways and otherwise and the reasons are not limited to but encompass the whole gamut of preservation, protection, setting records straight, projection of the authentic voice and from the audacity to say—‘you now listen to us, this is who we are and this is how we tell our stories or histories’.

Across the world indigenous knowledge and all it embodies was kept alive through traditions of orality. But more and more, with the indigenous becoming a subject of anthropological and linguistic interest, mediums that modernity considered more scientific to document civilization (such as writing, photographs, audio and video) are taking over. The indigenous are being exposed to these methods and use them either as a substitute or to supplement their traditional ways.

Whichever means of documentation or visualization is used, at the core of it lies language—spoken, written or signed to express that knowledge. For a book publisher, this knowledge is displayed in the printed form in a script that voices the language. However language itself is constantly evolving—it’s imbibing new words and expressions from dominant regional and global languages, losing more complex and specific native words as a way of leveling the ground of language barriers and comprehensibility. The process of mainstreaming and assimilation of indigenous peoples with ‘organized and civilized’ society; both enforced and self-initiated has made us adopt the more urbane languages and allowed them to influence our own native tongue.

This is a reality and with the change and dilution in language, thought processes and meanings change. They become more generic and common. The knowledge, life ways and literature that were once exclusive to a peoples is now becoming everyday and mixed. That may not necessarily be a bad thing or immediately spell doom but it may have alarm bells ringing. We need to question how in preserving indigenous knowledge as authors, writers, scholars, translators and publishers we have used language. Have we modified our syntax and expressions in language so that the non-tribal world relates to what we have to say? Have we simplified our language to ensure conformity and acceptability in the established academic and literary world? Or have we retained what is unique and exclusive to us as indigenous; unapologetically, and left for the world to apply themselves to understand us and our ways.

The liberty and responsibility of knowledge producers is what I hope to explore while answering another important question—are we handing down and preserving for our next generations through publications an adulterated version of who we are as indigenous peoples?

As the founder and director of the first indigenous of and by publishing outfit in India, in the English language, while I needn’t explain what I do or what kind of material I produce to my indigenous brethren, there is a great need to do so with dominant peoples and audience. To them the tribal narratives I produce are steeped in mysticism, wonder and of a lower cerebral order only. That I can and publish scholarly works doesn’t surprise them as much as that indigenous person can produce intellectual material. We are not believed to be thinking peoples.

One of the greater challenges for us has been fighting through stereotypes and prejudices that define Adivasi being. Our first book was in Roman Santali about the Santals as a people, their history and entity. The base of the cover for it is black. One of the printers we took the book to strongly recommended we change the black to a cheery yellow or a bright maroon as “Black is too sophisticated a colour for the very backward Santals”. We stuck to black.

So once you are discovered or identified as Adivasi, the dominant people automatically assume power over you and think they are entitled to tell you what is ‘sophisticated’ for you or not. How did a color become earmarked only for one people?

The distributors of an online book portal refused to sign us on as “Adivasi books are not good”— that without even looking at our books. The stigmatization of Adivasi peoples and their knowledge systems is so deep trenched that any creativity or scholarship is looked at as an exception; a one time, lucky spark of brilliance than a norm.

Tribal literature to the world at large is synonymous with folklore. My concerns are not with the one-dimensional understanding or interpretation of it. My concerns arise from the then derived hypothesis that advanced societies have produced culture, while Adivasis have produced folklore which is a lower form of culture; because it is mythical. Adivasis are thus denied being a people of culture or refused attribution of contributing to Indian culture. In that one premise the importance and urgency of producing Tribal material surfaces.

The need to assert that tribal works is a source of human history, and is not just archaic but contemporary, has now become my mission as an Adivasi cultural documentarian and publisher.

India’s long practice of a literary tradition is traced back to the Vedas and other Hindu religious texts dating around six thousand years. However, documentation of Adivasi life and world ways was undertaken only over a century and a half by the ruling class, be it the foreign colonizers or/and the Indian colonizers, because of their advantage of knowing how to, being literate and understanding the significance of the act. But what they also understood was that history-writing was a way of perpetuating the feudal order and dominion, becoming the only or dominant narrative. How could the powerless challenge what was going down as history? Adivasis did not need to document their literature, scholarship or culture because we were living documents ourselves. But we now need to; to counter dominion. Not only the dominion of the texts of the past, but of the dominion we live in and what is to come. News of publishers being asked to pulp books² that offend religious sentiment as a legal recourse only shows that laws can curb freedom of expression, literature and ultimately alter the pure form of any culture. How Tribal narratives cope with such bullying, gagging and distortion of our histories is a key question.

This situation of supervision, regulation or surveillance of culture just accentuates the need for Adivasis to take up documentation themselves. Literature is not only about describing society but also about challenging it.

The earliest recorded written literature by Adivasis was in translation; most often not from one script to another, but from oral discourse to the written form. In that process of recording, I wonder who was the copyright holder of the text, who was the guardian of that knowledge. Was it the singers and storytellers who in their oration and singing preserve and re-create their community’s idea of itself or was it the person recording the narration for posterity and wider readership who was able to market the literary product. That interests me as a publisher.

I once received a manuscript of wonderful folktales of the Kamar people of Orissa documented by a Non-Adivasi professor from a reputed eastern Indian university; who’d lived and worked among the Kamar’s for over 40 years. I loved the stories and would have loved to publish them. I only had one suggestion before undertaking publishing the stories — if he’d consider writing his name not as author but as compiler and the Kamar storytellers as co-authors. From being just ‘sources’ they have to claim their place in that literary production. We too are not the owners/creators of the folklore but the bearer/s of them and for him to put his name down, as author, was wrong and difficult for me to take. Having the book dedicated to the Kamar storytellers and people was not only not enough, it was gagging, objectifying them and reducing them to a people without agency.

Writing meant having the tools to do so. And this written form was in a native script if it existed; one invented by the necessity of authentic documentation in the native tongue or a universal more dominant script, borrowed to meet the needs.

The significance of a native script in tribal literature or the lack of it never really affected the way culture was maintained. Tribal cultures have been lost for many reasons, and not having a native script is not the main contributor to that.

What really binds the process of creating written tribal literature is language as mentioned earlier. Language as much as anything else defines tribal communities. Speaking the same language means more than being able to recognize and produce the same sound patterns or communicate. The oral tradition is a distillation of the shared community and corporal experience that gives language meaning. In that, the role of language in translation also becomes critical.

So who translates? Is it the literate, the linguist, bi-linguist, or the academic? As much as credit is due to them for their role, we have to look at ways in which regular Adivasis, many who do not read and write, can be included in the process. How can their experience of stories, storytelling and culture be incorporated? They may illiterate but not bereft of stories and knowledge.

Not only are we talking about mediums of knowledge display and presentation but the representative processes of ensuring the origin of the voices remain authentic—whichever script or language is chosen to do so. The expert translators of another’s work need to remember that they act as an extension of the original voice and their allegiance is to the text.

One straightforward reason to producing knowledges and expressing creativity in original text or translation is fuelled by the desire and need to be heard, known and understood worldwide. As indigenous peoples we release our material to translation with the adage that: “If you don’t understand me, I’ll tell it to you in your language. However I can’t guarantee you will understand”.

The other is to announce that Tribal literature can also be a work of literary acclaim. This is a way of claiming one’s space in the realms of literary and scholarly spaces.

This is, claiming our collective place in our species, as human beings, refusing to be forgotten and marginalized.

However, in trying to assert oneself through our writing and translation are we compromising with our language—in expressions and meaning? Are we foregoing special words and terminology and using generic, universal ones, so that the world understands us. Our brand of literature may be diverse and distinctive from other literature, that reading cultures have encountered, and in many cases it will require some extra effort, imagination and graciousness on their part to appreciate it. We may feel burdened or imprisoned by standards of language and be forced to alter to simplify it; but how much is too much? The politics of language and its nuances in translation and publication of tribal literature is one we have to address.

I’ve had to defend one of our Adivasi author’s who writes in English, who has only learnt the language in the last 5 years of his adulthood. I was told “his English writing is so basic, very everyday blog material”. As his publisher and editor, I have the liberty to change the language to suit and meet the so-called erudite standards; but then that would not be him anymore, that would be me. My responsibility is towards the author and his authorship whose simplicity in a foreign language doesn’t take away from the impact of his stories and narratives. This is who we are, this is the literary stage we are at and we have to take pride in it. I am often ambushed by this arrogance in language syndrome. And it is no easy experience.

But as a publisher who’s also going to undertake translation as a tool to promote tribal literature, I’d also like to push for a reversed translation; where what has been considered as universally acclaimed texts will be translated for tribals to read in their native tongues. Adivasi’s are expected to write about themselves and their tribal ways. Why should they not have the liberty to write about whatever, whoever or wherever they want? I’d also like to publish the Adivasi view of the changing world. We have an opinion on worldviews too, why should it not matter? Our traditions and stories are constantly changing. Our stories have changed, sometimes without our consent or ability to understand the process. Our lives sometimes merge, sometimes run parallel, sometimes run ahead, and sometimes fall behind our culture and literature from the past. How are we coping? What do we do to share what our ancestors created with Adivasis born in cities, in other provinces and under quite different circumstances? How do we interpret texts for the new-breed tribals?

There has to be a way we can transmit ourselves into the future without diluting ourselves as indigenous peoples.

As scholars we have to be responsible for our material. Inexperience is no excuse for mediocrity. We are presenting and preaching to a breed of hardcore believers in the conventional and established scholarship. How do we refine our argument, our erudition to challenge that traditionalism and how do we create our own brand of indigenous scholarship?

Do words in the pages of a book do justice to our knowledge systems? If not, it is our responsibility to make them.

Knowledge production for tribal and indigenous peoples has to be a corporal production mechanism, that is creative, sensible and sensitive, where we contribute and collaborate to create the final product. We have to be unapologetic, fearless and proud of what we put out.

From typeset text we have to speak, our voices loud and clear and our brand of knowledges standing the test of time and critique. Silence is not our mother tongue.

Notes:

1. This paper was revised from the original talk from the plenary of the First Congress of the Tribal Intellectual Collective India, held in Shillong between 18–19 September, 2015.

2. Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History published in 2009 by Viking/Penguin was in February 2014, as part of settlement with plaintiff to a lawsuit asking for it to be banned for its controversial content, brought before an Indian district court, was recalled by Penguin India. The book since the controversy and withdrawal and pulping of copies has been published in India by Speaking Tiger Books in 2015.

Selected References:

1. Said, Edward W. (1979), Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books).

2. Evers, Larry (ed.) (1980), The South Corner of Time, (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press:).

3. Guha, Ranajit (1983), ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’ in Subaltern Studies II, Writings on South Asian History and Society (New York: Oxford University Press).

JTICI Vol.4, Issue 3, No.5, pp. 47 to 52, October 2017

Ruby Hembrom is Director, adivaani, kolkata

Copyright @ 2017 adivaani, kolkata