‘I write to instil self-confidence and a new consciousness in the Adivasi’: poet Jacinta Kerketta

Jacinta Kerketta is an Oraon writer who works mainly in Hindi. Her poetry, journalism and essays connect memory, land, language and resistance. She writes to reclaim Adivasi people’s right to narrate their own histories, philosophies and futures. Her work also challenges dominant accounts of Adivasi life.

Her journalism documents community conditions, struggles and issues as grounded case studies. Her poetry and stories express pain, laughter, struggle and philosophy. This emotional range aims to build empathy in wider society, correct misconceptions and encourage fresh awareness within Adivasi communities. She also blends Hindi with Adivasi and local languages.

Kerketta insists that writing must grow from experience, field visits and conversations, not imagination or books alone. She sees writing as both witness and responsibility. Through this approach, she hopes Adivasi ways of knowing remain living traditions, while their realities become more accurately understood and remembered.

“Adivasi” is commonly used to mean Indigenous or original inhabitant. It describes a broad range of communities with distinctive histories, languages, cultural practices and relationships with land. The word should not be treated as if it names one uniform people. This general definition comes from established usage, not the supplied article, which discusses Adivasi life without defining the term.

In India, the term generally refers to diverse tribal communities, including the Oraon community to which Kerketta belongs. These communities are spread across different regions and have varied languages, philosophies and traditions. Their experiences are therefore not interchangeable. The article highlights this diversity by discussing Adivasi and local languages alongside Hindi.

Using the term carefully matters because outsiders have often described Adivasi communities through policy, anthropology and development categories. Kerketta’s work instead centres community experience and self-representation. That approach recognises Adivasi people as living communities with evolving knowledge, rather than as subjects defined only by official labels.

Adivasi communities in India are large in number and highly diverse. The 2011 Census recorded India’s Scheduled Tribe population at about 104 million people, or 8.6% of the country’s population. This information comes from established demographic knowledge, not the supplied article, which gives no population figures. The term therefore covers many communities, not a single cultural group.

More than 700 tribal groups are officially recognised in India. They speak numerous languages and live across different regions, with distinct histories, philosophies and relationships to land, forests and rivers. The article’s focus on Oraon experience, Adivasi languages and local languages reflects this broader diversity without attempting to measure it.

Scale matters because generalisations can erase important differences. Kerketta argues that Adivasi communities must narrate their own realities. Supporting varied voices, languages and local knowledge allows writing and research to reflect actual lives rather than flattening many communities into one category.

Adivasi collective memory was preserved for a long time through oral traditions. Songs and folktales carried histories, feelings and knowledge across generations. Memory was not separated from everyday life. It lived through relationships with land, forests, rivers, mountains and the wider community. This made memory active, shared and connected to place.

Women are especially important in this process. Their work in fields and threshing grounds, their care of children, and their close relationship with forests and land create a rich store of memories. They share these memories through storytelling and oral traditions. When books appeared, they recorded memories that had already been expressed orally.

Today, Adivasi writers also document present feelings and critical thoughts, not only the past. Writing therefore extends older practices rather than replacing them. It can preserve collective knowledge while showing that Adivasi traditions are living and evolving. Language, work and community relationships continue to shape what is remembered and passed on.

Kerketta calls memory an “indigenous archive” because Adivasi memory belongs to a living network, not only to individual minds or written records. An Adivasi person’s existence is deeply connected with community, nature and the surrounding world. Land, forests, rivers, mountains and people therefore help hold and shape what is remembered.

For generations, songs and folktales carried these memories orally. When books were later written, they recorded memories that communities had already expressed through oral traditions. A book is thus a form of documentation, while the deeper archive remains collective and relational. Women’s storytelling, work and child-rearing also help transmit this archive.

This view changes how memory should be valued. It includes present feelings and critical thoughts as well as past events. It also resists treating Adivasi knowledge as something finished or stored only in institutions. Writing can support the archive, but it must remain connected to living people, places and practices.

When Adivasi histories are mainly described by outsiders, their realities may be filtered through policy, anthropology or development categories. Such frameworks can make communities appear as objects of study rather than people with their own philosophies and authority. The article presents this as a reason young Adivasi writers are reclaiming the right to narrate their histories and futures.

Language is central to this problem. Kerketta writes primarily in Hindi, but supports blending Hindi with Adivasi and local languages. Understanding the histories and philosophies of both Hindi speakers and Adivasi communities helps preserve distinctions. Her journalism and poetry also address misconceptions by combining documented facts with lived emotion.

The present response is not withdrawal from Hindi or wider society. It is more careful self-representation. Ground-level writing can build empathy, sustain unique characteristics and awaken consciousness within Adivasi communities. Translation and dominant-language writing become more responsible when they remain accountable to community experience and living traditions.

The article presents knowledge as something created through relationships with people, places and lived experience. Kerketta says honest writing depends on a relationship with the community, whether she is offering criticism or documenting events. This challenges the idea that authority comes mainly from distant observers, written sources or institutional research.

Her method is practical. She visits locations, witnesses conditions firsthand and interacts with people. She does not write from imagination alone, and she argues that researchers should not rely only on books. Even fiction can contain ground-level realities. These experiences give her conviction that her work is authentic and supported by evidence.

This approach also recognises that realities change over time. Researchers must return to the field to examine current conditions rather than assume older accounts remain complete. Community relationships therefore become an ethical check on interpretation. They make research more accountable, responsive and connected to the people whose lives it describes.