The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories Explained

The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2015;) is a collection of short stories. The second book by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, it was nominated for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2016^[1] and included by Frontline (magazine) in August 2022 in a list of 25 books “that light up the path to understanding post-Independence Indian literature.”^[2] As of April 2021, this book has been translated into Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, and Bengali, while the Malayalam and Austrian German translations are forthcoming.^[3]

Summary

The characters and settings of the stories are mostly from the community of Santhal people in the Indian state of Jharkhand, particularly about Coal mining in India. Prominent themes include the condition of women in a patriarchal society, poverty, middle-class Santhal life, the situation of Adivasi people, organised crime, tensions between traditionalism and modernity, the social damage caused by mining and sex-work.

Title	Theme	First published	pp.
They eat meat!	Prejudice among Hindu people in Gujarat, and the 2002 Gujarat riots.	La.Lit	1-27
Sons	The contrast between a spoiled child and one from a poor background.	'Scions', Northeast Review, 3 (March–April 2013)	28-38
November is the month of migrations	A Santhal migrant worker doing sex-work.		39-42
Getting even	Human trafficking of low-caste Hindu people.		43-57
Eating with the enemy	The complex life of a domestic servant, Sulochona.	The Four Quarters Magazine	58-89
Blue baby	A woman's ill-conceived plan to escape an arranged marriage by getting pregnant beforehand.	The Statesman	90-111
Baso-jhi	An old widow being identified as a dahni (witch).	Indian Literature (2007)	112-29
Desire, divination, death	A woman losing her son to fever.	Indian Literature	130-43
Merely a whore	A sex-worker falls in love with one of her clients and hopes for rescue from her profession.	The Four Quarters Magazine	144-68
The Adivasi will not dance	An Adivasi dance-troupe is commissioned to celebrate the building of a power-plant, but instead protest against it.	The Dhauli Review	169-87

Reviews and studies

• Priyanka Tripathi,“The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. IX, No. 4, 2017, pp. 193–196. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n4.r02
• Devapriya Roy, 'An unusual five: The reader’s guide to the Hindu Prize shortlist', Scroll.in ([no date])
• Namrata Chaturvedi, 'Combating bias', Deccan Herald (1 November 2015)
• Jean Spraker, 'Review: The Adivasi Will Not Dance by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar' (27 October 2016)
• Nilanjana S. Roy, 'Short!', Business Standard (4 January 2016)
• Sudipta Datta, 'The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Dark places', Financial Express (27 December 2015)
• Amrita Dutta, 'Book Review: The Writer as Political Being', The Indian Express (19 December 2015)
• Radhika S., 'Review: Hansda Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance is a no-holds-barred account of life on the margins', The Hindu (12 November 2016)

The work has also attracted dedicated scholarly commentary:

• Arya, A., 'Dismantling the Hegemonic Structure through the War of Manoeuvre: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance as a Dogma of Adivasis', The Creative Launcher: An International, Open Access, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed, E-Journal in English, 2.3 (August 2017), 193–200.
• Abin Chakraborty, 'Examining Subalterneity in Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar’s “The Adivasi Will Not Dance”', Postcolonial Text 12.1 (2017), 1–15.

Controversy

On 11 August 2017, the government of Jharkhand banned The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories and summarily suspended the author from his job, on the grounds that the book portrayed Adivasi women and Santhal culture in a bad light.^[4] The key complainants appear to have been the ruling party in Jharkhand, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the opposition party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and an academic at Jamia Millia Islamia.^[5] The government's actions were widely criticised.^{[6] [7] [8] [9]} The ban on The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories was removed in December 2017^{[10] [11]} and Shekhar's suspension was removed and he was reinstated into his job in 2018.^{[12] [13]}

External links

• Web site: The Adivasi Will Not Dance on Goodreads . August 13, 2018.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Shortlist for The Hindu Prize 2016 announced . The Hindu . October 16, 2016 . September 13, 2017.
2. Web site: India at 75 - Fiction . Frontline . Anusua Mukherjee and Abhirami Girija Sriram . August 26, 2022 . October 25, 2022.
3. Web site: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar on Academia . August 14, 2018.
4. Sudipta Datta, 'Who is Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, fighting a ban', The Hindu (19 August 2017).
5. Ziya Us Salam, 'A Santhal Suppressed', Frontline (13 October 2017).
6. Sanjay Srivastava, 'What the ban on The Adivasi Will Not Dance tells us about India’s political life', Hindustan Times (14 August 2017).
7. Ruchir Joshi, 'The reader will not dance', The Hindu (13 August 2017).
8. 'Dubbed 'porn', book on tribals banned in Jharkhand', The Times of India (13 August 2017).
9. 'Writers, Activists Condemn Banning of ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ in Jharkhand', The Wire (29 August 2017).
10. Web site: Four months after ban, Jharkhand finds nothing objectionable in Hansda Shekhar's book on Adivasis . Scroll . Scroll Staff . December 13, 2017 . September 2, 2018.
11. Web site: Jharkhand: Govt finds nothing objectionable in Santhal writer's book, ban could be lifted . The Indian Express . Prashant Pandey . December 14, 2017 . September 2, 2018.
12. Web site: Suspension on Writer Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar Revoked . Indian Cultural Forum . ICF Team . August 17, 2018 . September 2, 2018.
13. Web site: Playing with Fire: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar on his first children's book . The Indian Express . Paromita Chakrabarti . September 2, 2018 . September 2, 2018.