Voices of the Marginalised: Environmental and Social Struggle in Ho Tribal Poems

Abstract

The indigenous community named Ho in Jharkhand traditionally exhibits a profound sense of responsibility towards their ancestral territories and resources, portraying themselves as guardians of their own habitats. Their association to their sacred locations, ancestral burial sites, and culturally significant areas is strong. However, the pre- and post-colonial interferences into the tribal world impacted their social bonds, communal values, and cultural traditions. Therefore, an illustration of this is the initiation of development projects purportedly for the benefit of the Ho community. One such project, the Subarnarekha Multi-purpose Project, was proposed in 1973 and aimed at constructing dams, barrages, reservoirs, and canals in Jharkhand. A dam was planned for construction at a place called Icha near Chaibasa in West Singhbhum of Jharkhand, forcing the clearance of tribal land, which, in turn, resulted in extensive deforestations in the Ho area. Surprisingly, a Jungle Kaato Andolan was also launched by the Government of India in 1978. This resulted in the rise of anti-government sentiments, social exclusion, displacement, detachment from their land, and an identity crisis. Hence, this paper seeks to explore the distressing encounters of the Ho community in Jharkhand during the colonial and postcolonial periods through the analysis of select Ho poetry. The study will employ Subaltern Theory to examine epistemic violence and Frantz Fanon’s concept of mimetic violence. The poems under scrutiny serve as a poignant portrayal of the intersections between government policies, environmental crises, indigenous crises of livelihood and identity, on the one hand, and varied Ho literature that responds to these issues, on the other hand.