Language of hunger, eco-colonisation

When I started writing poetry in the late 1980s, I confronted a vast tract of death consciousness and alienation. The poets of my time and my language were talking about something which was not at all familiar to my reality or imagination. Most of them were singing in unidentifiable tunes and their images looked too distant. I found my own language to be absurd, meaningless and hard to crack. Our poets and writers were rich with awards; they had the shining laurel over their head and as a teenager I obviously aspired to be one among them.

I started writing by following the trend. But after writing a few, my poems also sounded alien to me. I could not relate myself with my own poems. It would be pertinent to point out that the Odisha of the 1980s was an unending tale of hunger deaths and distress child-selling. Living in the land of hunger, I was singing the song of rootless solitude. Litera-ture of my time was not my own; it had some kind of imported imagination planted in our language. The so-called modernism in Odia literature was a colonial hangover and middle-class hallucination. It had no root in Odia life, livelihood or living tradition.

Odia is one of the ancient languages of India. In a literary tradition of 1,000 years, images were mostly from nature. Life in literature was natural and spiritual. Odia literary tradition was deeply embedded with nature, and poetry was all about the beauty of nature and the struggle of humankind for survival.

The early modernists like Radhanath Roy (whose ode to the Chilka Lake is a classic), Gangadhar Meher (who human-ised nature and made it a constant companion of human emotions), Fakir Mohan Senapati (the pioneer of Odia fiction and extraordinary chronicler of land struggle, colonial exploitation, the infamous “Na Anka” famine of 1866, gender justice and aspiration for freedom), Bhima Bhoi (the poet of universal spiritualism and tribal identity), Gopabandhu Das (poet of freedom movement and messenger of common man in literature), Bhagabati Charan Panigrahi (first narrator of class and caste struggle), Gopinath Mohanty (pioneering voice of tribal lives and existential crisis of tribal life due to tension with modernity and development) and others had set up a solid base for peoples’ literature in Odisha. Somehow, that common ground of literary tradition was completely ignored by the post-independent school of Odia writers.

With the colonial system of education, we saw a new band of writers as modernists. They were fashionably fascinated by the idea of rootless alienation and absurdity. They were more inclined to be like TS Eliot or Ezra Pound, by passing their own roots. Of course, there was an alternative and parallel stream of progressive literature, hugely borrowing from Marxist ideology. Coming back to the 1980s, I must tell the other side of the story, which is paradoxical in this situation. There was ram-pant hunger and distress migration, but there was also a silver lining in the dark cloud. Odias were struggling against the unholy nexus of corporate giants and government to protect their natural resources. There was mass movements in Kalahandi, Balangir and Sambalpur districts to protect the sacred mountain range of Gandhamardan where bauxite giant BALCO was all set to start mining. There was an inspiring mass struggle go-ing against a Government of India-sponsored defence project in Baliapal of Balasore district. People of Puri, Khurdha and Ganjam were fighting against the powerful TATA company to protect the ecosystem of the Chilika lake. Until now, Odisha and her people stood against the mighty forces of corporate and government to protect their ecology, environment and organic system of livelihood.

Odia literature of the 1990s took a new turn, when writers from the mass movements started writing and their pen hit the establishment very hard. Poets and fiction writers of this generation talked about their time and reality with a straight face. There came many fearless voices from various strata of Odia society. The 1990s saw the emergence of a sea of women writers who spoke about gender justice and atrocities against women. A very strong stream of Dalit writings registered its presence in an upper caste literary citadel. In a new turn of history, many of these writers were from the displaced and marginal communities, and victims of mining and mindless industrialisation. From there began the age of activist writers. Voices from the margins came into prominence and their thunder was hard to ignore.

In the beginning of the 21st century, there was already a significant body of literature, filled with subjects like climate justice, fight against forced displacement, and narratives of mass movements from Niyamgiri, Kalinganagar, Puri and Kashipur. Poets like Saroj, Bhabani Bhuyan, the Late Samarendra Nayak, Bijay Upadhyay, Ravishankar, Lenin Kumar, Hemant Dalapati, Sujata Sahni, Debaranjan and many more contributed to Odia literature from the very heart of the mass movements.

Another group of upcoming poets of this generation, though not a part of the mass movement, but active supporters of peoples’ causes, came up with a new stream of protest poetry, which flooded into the very heart of the literary establishment of elites.

In the first quarter of the new millennium, Bhima Prusty, a brilliant fiction writer, came up with two path-breaking novels centered on the theme of climate change and its impact on the coastal lives of Odisha. The first, Samudra Manisha (People of the Sea) depicted the lives of Satabhaya, a cluster of villages submerged in the Bay of Bengal due to coastal erosion. The word Satabhaya means “seven brothers” (here villages). The second novel is Jambudweep (The Jamun Island) that deals with human struggle against the fury of climate change. The people of Satabhaya are the first victims of climate change in Odisha with the sea swallowing the villages of this region and with their submergence, a whole worldview is lost forever. Bhima Prusty captured the lost world of Satabhaya with panoramic details.

On the other hand, the inspiring struggles of Dongrias in Niyamgiri against the mining giant Vedanta, the anti-POSCO (Pohang Iron & Steel Co)movement in coastal district of Jagatsinghpur, the mass movement against Vedanta University in Puri-Konark marine drive and the inhuman killing of protesting tribal in Kalinganagar inspired poets of our time to write against the violent nexus between the corporate and the state.

Devastation of nature and plight of humans have been dominant discourses in Odia poetry and fiction. There is a clear-cut divide between pro- and anti-establishment literatures in Odisha. There is still a group of writers who believe in state and corporate awards and patronage. To be in the good book of the establishment, clearly they love to be “apolitical”. On the other side, there is a group of strong writers who are fiercely political, standing by the struggle of common man and devoted to the cause of human rights and environment.

As a matter of joy, the latter group is becoming stronger; their voices are heard and drawing deep attention from people.

(Kedar Mishra is an Odia poet)

This series explores the most pressing environmental issues through the prism of literature

This article was originally published in the May 16-31, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth