Jacinta Kerketta
About the Author
Born in 1983 in the village of Khudpos, West Singhbhum district, Jharkhand, on the edge of the large Saranda forest area on the border between the states of Jharkhand and Odisha. Jacinta Kerketta works freelance as a journalist and in the fields of education and social work. She writes in Hindi.
She is a descendant of the original inhabitants, the indigenous communities of India, who, alongside their various tribal names, also call themselves Adivasis (literally "the first inhabitants"). The Adivasis, alongside the Dalits (literally "the oppressed", formerly called "untouchables"), are among the population groups of India that have been most exploited, oppressed and discriminated against for centuries.
Already in her journalistic work, but even more urgently in her poems, Jacinta Kerketta repeatedly addresses the painful history and the no less painful present of the Adivasis. Her very first individual publications attracted a great deal of attention: the intensity and depth of her language are, as even renowned colleagues note, a novelty in Indian poetry as well. Her poems carry a deeply human message that reveals itself across all categories of her poetry — whether reflections on nature, on the life and survival of India's indigenous peoples, on life in the cities, or on the situation of women. The images and metaphors she uses are never static or merely descriptive; she brings them to life — they shift and change with the message they carry, and the message itself unfolds and merges with the respective image. Jacinta Kerketta knows how to give linguistic and pictorial form to the deepest, most subliminal, unspoken feelings, and thereby to make them real.
Her first individual poems were published in well-known Hindi literary magazines, e.g. in "Parichay" of the Department of Hindi Literature at Benares Hindu University, "Naya Gyanoday" in Delhi, "Yuddhrat am admi", "Shukravar", as well as in poetry anthologies such as "Shatdal", "Retpath", "Samandar men suraj", "Kalam ko tir hone do", "Mati", etc.
Johannes Laping
Awards
For her journalistic work and her social engagement, Jacinta Kerketta has received various awards and grants, including:
- 2014: "Indigenous Voice of Asia Award" for a report, as an Adivasi author, on local Adivasi resistance activities, awarded by the organisation "Asia Indigenous People's Pact", Thailand
- 2014: Award for poetry by the "Jharkhand Indigenous People's Forum" on the occasion of World Indigenous Peoples' Day
- 2014: Award of a UNDP fellowship for her work as a freelance journalist
- 2015: Recognition as a leading young poet with the "Ravishankar Upadhyay Memorial Youth Poetry Award" of the Dr. Ravishankar Upadhyay Memorial Institute, Benares
Book Publications
- Glut. Gedichte Hindi-Deutsch. Translation: Brigitte Komarek-Chhabra and Johannes Laping, Draupadi Verlag 2016 (parallel edition: ANGOR, Hindi-English, adivaani, Kolkata 2016)
- Tiefe Wurzeln. Gedichte Hindi-Deutsch. Translation: Vijay K. Chhabra, Brigitte Komarek-Chhabra, Johannes Laping, Draupadi Verlag 2018 (parallel edition: JADON KI JAMIN, Hindi-English, Bharatiya Jnanpith, New Delhi 2018)
Reading Excerpt: The Death of the Mother Tongue
There – in mother's own mouth – The mother tongue was imprisoned. And the children Grew older And kept demanding its freedom. The mother tongue did not die on its own: It was killed. Yet mother could never grasp this. For the children's hope Of food and more She did everything, Clenched her own teeth together, And so, dreaming of just a few morsels, The mother tongue was torn apart. Even today mother believes The death of the mother tongue Was her fate ....
From: Tiefe Wurzeln, pp. 22–23. With kind permission of Draupadi Verlag, Heidelberg. (English rendering of the German translation; the original Hindi poem and its German translation can be found in the PDF below.)
📄 Download this author portrait as PDF (in German, with the poem also in the Hindi original)