I Named my Sister Silence by Manoj Rupda and Translated by Hansda Showvendra Shekhar, 2023, Eka,
pp 170, Rs 499.
Manoj Rupda’s I Named My Sister Silence has been translated from his Hindi Novel Kaale Adhyaay published in 2015. With a change in the title, the translator Hansda Showvendra Shekhar has also slightly realigned the focus of the book – from a dark episode of India’s recent history to a person whose silence told many tales. The book is the account of an unnamed Gond youth’s life narrated by the protagonist himself. Set in the vicinity of the forests in Chattisgarh, the book starts with an incident in which the young narrator follows an elephant in the deep of the jungle.
Caught in an unfamiliar area, the elephant is attacked and killed by a pack of wild dogs. As the terror stricken young boy witnesses the silent death and devour of the giant animal, something inside him also dies. He returns from the jungle with dominating animalistic instincts of survival. It was also when he developed a fascination with large structures. As he returned home, he found solace in his step sister.
As his village found itself caught in the cross fire between the Maoists and the security personnel, our protagonist escaped from the drudge by virtue of his education. His sister – who silently survived their mother’s abuse helped him to realize the emancipatory potential of education. The sister’s perpetual silence is however deafening. Madavi Irma or Irma Kako’s silence is a symbol of a community rendered voiceless in the face of structural and systemic oppression. Her lack of protests against her step mother’s cruelty and her support for the Maoist movement speaks a lot about the resilience of the Adivasi youths.
The protagonists education takes him to far off places. Working on the cargo ship Jaldoot, he travels to far off places – sometimes carrying weapons or delivering food packages for relief. But he still feels the pull towards his home. Wheat he returns to is however abandoned villages and relief camps. When he discovers his mother acting as a collaborator to the securities, he feels disgust. He is haunted by the blank looks of sexually abused underaged young girls his mother supplies to the army. As he enters the jungle looking for his sister, he comes across a peculiar monolith. Structures have been erected of Special Police Officers (SPO)s and common villagers martyred by Maoists. What infuriates him is the discovery of a monolith with his own name. Numbers of deaths have been bloated to justify the crackdown on the villagers. The names show that both the killed and the alleged killers are Adivasis.
When the protagonist finally meets the Maoists’ he is forced to face the exploitation of natural resources of his home Bastar. He is disturbed that he himself is a part of the exploitative machinery. When he returns to his ship, his captain Alok Datt who often ruminates on the past shares with him similar tales of structural exploitation. An episode of lynching of black Americans accounted by Alok Datt will leave a harrowing impact on the readers. When body parts of black men were auctioned to be severed, it brought out the worst in human beings and what they are capable of. Similarities can be drawn with what the adivasis and dalits faced in India.
As the ship Jaldoot is left with no work, the novel also makes some concluding comments on the onslaught of neo colonialism and the exploitative nature of Indian capitalist state. The present neo colonial regimes have further deepened the social and economic schisms. The gap between the rich and the poor nations as well as people have just widened all across. The erstwhile colonies are still struggling to reach development but continue to be overwhelmingly dominant on the western capitalist nations.
The novel within its limited scope grapples with some of the biggest issues of our times. Resource rich areas are often turned into theatres of conflict and the inhabitants are pitted against each other with the sole aim to enable exploitation. The bounty from such ‘exploration’ however is not divided among the inhabitants but extorted from them. This urgency to explore and exploit and turn everything into a profitable commercial venture is necessitated by a neo colonial regime. The ‘development’ from such regime has somehow left out the lives of many and structural prejudices and hierarchies are still thriving.
Hansda Showvendra Shekhar who has also authored books on systemic exploitation and violence meted out on the marginalized have done an excellent task of translation. The protagonist’s voice is flat and detached owing to the violence that he had to endure. It however also reflects on the importance of education as well as the resilience of the common people. This is an important work of our times.
Parvin Sultana
(Parvin Sultana teaches Political Science in Pramathesh Barua College, Assam)
(The review was published in the April issue of the Book Review Journal)
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