Second National Tribal Literary Festival Opens in New Delhi

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs opened the second edition of the National Tribal Literary Festival at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The two-day festival carries the theme 'From Oral Tradition to Contemporary Tribal Literature' and is held during the Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas Pakhwada, the fortnight built around the birth anniversary of Bhagwan Birsa Munda on 15 November, which the Union Cabinet declared Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas.

Who opened it

Union Minister of Tribal Affairs Jual Oram lit the ceremonial lamp along with Minister of State Durgadas Uikey, NITI Aayog Member Dr Joram Aniya, Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti Chairman and Padma Shri awardee Chamu Krishna Shastry, Tribal Affairs Secretary Ranjana Chopra and Joint Secretary Anant Prakash Pandey. Tribal writers, poets, researchers and language experts from across the country took part.

What was said

Mr Oram held that the literature, folk songs, folk tales and oral traditions of tribal languages need systematic documentation, and that lyricists, musicians, folk artists and digital content creators must be drawn in alongside writers. Noting that many tribal tongues have no script and some dialects are close to dying out, he said the absence of a script must not stand in the way, since oral material can be kept alive through other Indian languages. The Ministry, he said, will work with the Sahitya Akademi on this. The Secretary said the festival will now be an annual feature of every Pakhwada, and the Minister of State placed a ten-point framework, called Das Bindu, on the essence of tribal oral traditions, covering folk tales, folk songs, heroic sagas, myths, proverbs, riddles, rituals and prayers.

The day's sessions

• 'Tribal Literature: From Community Memory to Contemporary Expression', moderated by Prof. Anil Kumar Boro.
• 'The Joy of Life: Tribal Poets' Meet', held in two parts and moderated by Prof. Kanji Patel.
• 'Tribal Folklore: Songs, Myths, Tales, Proverbs, Sayings and Oral Narratives', moderated by Prof. Sylvanus Lamare.

K. Vasamalli of the Toda community of the Nilgiris described her work on the endangered Toda tongue, which has only about 2,000 speakers, through radio recordings and a dictionary of 5,700 words built with the International Phonetic Alphabet and a modified Tamil script. A researcher from Arunachal Pradesh stressed that sacred knowledge may be published only with the community's clear permission, while a speaker from Odisha spoke of the Kui language losing ground for want of a script. Day two takes up oral epics, heroic traditions and oral tradition in multilingual education.