Publishing tribal literature
Ruby Hembrom is an Adivasi cultural documentarian and practitioner based in Kolkata. She is the founder of Adivaani (first voices), an archiving and publishing outfit of and by Adivasis (the indigenous peoples of India) started in July 2012 as a non-profit organisation. She is the author of Adivaani’s ‘Santal Creation Stories’ for children, a recast of the Santal Creation myths in English and the prize-winning Disaibon Hul, on the Santal Rebellion of 1855–57. Her documentation initiative emerged as a need to claim Adivasi presence in historical and contemporary social, cultural and literary spaces and as people.
The journey of Ruby as a Publisher, Culture Documentarian of indigeneous cultures is a result of a threshold she had reached in her lived experiences of exclusion and discrimination. As an Adivasi she was confronted by the absence of Adivasis in the spaces around her. Entrepreneurship for an Adivasi like her comes from human ingenuity and human struggle and not from seed funding or any backing. It has been mostly falling back on intuition, resourcefulness. Due to lack of a consistent source of income, she has been paying royalty to her authors in books rather than in monetary terms which they happily agree to as they want the Adivasi voices to be heard. She prefers calling herself a ‘Dependee Publisher’. Her work comes from ‘defiance’- defiance of the stereotypes and marginalisation of Adivasis by the mainstream. Her experience of being told to change the colour of her book as it did not suit the “very backward Santals” had been the tipping point for the birth of Adivaani. She has been using ‘English language’ to publish as a form of defiance.
Adivaani has published a series of books: ‘Santal, Sirjon binti ar bhed bhangao’, ‘We come from the Geese’, ‘Whose country is it anyways?’, ‘ Earth Rests on a Tortoise’, ‘The Santal and the Biblical Creation Traditions Anthropological & Theological Reflections’, ‘Dancing on our Turtles Back’, ‘Crossfire’, ‘Disaibon Hul’, ‘Sosobonga’, ‘Identities and their struggles in North East’, etc. ‘Santal, Sirjon binti ar bhed-bhangao’ was the first book to be published by Adivaani, which is in Roman Santali; it walks us through the entity of the Santals as indigenous people, their being, their lifestyle and their belief system. ‘We Come from the Geese’ talks about how Santals are one of the original peoples; the adivasis of this land. According to her Santal creation stories the Santals were born from a pair of Geesen- Hãs and Hãsil – and used to tell the story of our creation. ‘Disaibon Hul’ is a winner of Printed Children’s Book of the Year 2015, which talks about how year after year towards the end of June, Santal men, women and children make the long walk to the spot where the Santal Rebellion started in 1855.
Adivaani has been instrumental in addressing and challenging issues of non-representation, suppression and appropriation of indigenous cultures. Ruby considers her books to be the entry point to equitable treatment and social justice. She also aligns these books with other organisations through movies, workshops etc to constantly showcase the Adivasi identity from the lens of Adivasis.