Discuss some of the important issues taken up in the novel Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu.
Introduction - The important issues taken up in the
novel Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu. C.K. Janu is an Adivasi social activist who
belongs to the Adiya comunity of Wayanad, Kerala. She was born in Trissileri,
Wayanad in 1970. Janu is the leader of the Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha (AGMS)
which works for the reclamation of lost lands of the Adivasis in Kerala. Having
had no formal education, Janu learnt reading and writing through a literacy
campaign that was conducted in Wayanad.
She had been an active member of the Kerala State Karshaka
Tozhilali Union, affiliated to the ruling communist party. After being
disillusioned with the party and its failed promises, Janu began to engage in
grass root politics at her own individual level.
Solved PDF & Handwritten
Hardcopy
WhatsApp – 8130208920
Discuss some of the important issues taken up in the novel
Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu. - The text under discussion was published in
Malayalam in 2003 as The Life Story of C.K. Janu and was translated into
English by N. Ravi Shankar in 2004. It is perhaps the first instance of a life
writing from the margins by an Adivasi in Kerala and is thus significant in
nature. Discuss some of
the important issues taken up in the novel Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story
of C. K. Janu.
Literatures from themargins engage in a form of ‘authentic’ representation of the lives and
conditions of the societies and communities situated at the periphery of social
spectrum. It is a kind of rewriting or countering the representations by
mainstream literature.
Thus, literatures from the margin are not merely fictitious
or imaginative but highly socio-political. These reflect the predicament and
existential struggles of the marginalized comunity in the face of hegemonic
oppression. Thus Mother Forest can be seen as providing a short glimpse of the
life of Adivasis, and the socio-political struggles they have been going
through for a long period of time. Discuss some of the important issues taken up in the novel Mother
Forest: The Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu.
The text is in the form of a narrative of recollection. The main body of the text is
divided into two chapters. The first chapter is mostly about Janu’s childhood
and early experiences in the forest. It provides a lucid picture of the
interconnectedness and harmonious coexistence of the Adivasis’ lives and the
forests. It also provides a brief idea about the Adivasis’ first encounters
with the world outside the forest and their initial sense of alienation. This
becomes more and more pronounced in the second chapter. The second chapter
provides details of her adult life and how she groomed herself into a social
activist committed to the cause of her land, the life, culture, livelihood and
the identity of the people of her comunity.
The important issues taken up in the novel Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu.
The Personal is the Political
Janu’s life and struggle can be perceived as an embodiment of
the motto ‘The personal is the political’. She epitomizes a tribal woman who
moulded herself into a committed social activist. Without any formal education
and without the support of any political party, one finds Janu challenging the
state and the mainstream, staunchly fighting for the rights of her comunity.
From her life experiences and her observations of the society
around, she has forged her own path of political struggle through grassroot
involvement and one-to-one interaction with the members of her comunity. No
wonder, she has often been referred to as an ‘organic intellectual’ who has her
class consciousness and who works towards spreading that consciousness among
her people to fight the hegemonic forces.
Stylistics of the text
Commenting on the stylistics of the text, the translator has
stated: “I wanted to retain the flavour of Janu’s intonation and the sing-song
manner of her speech”( Mother Forest p.xi), and hence he experimented with the
language and sentence construction. In the initial sections of the text, the
sentences do not start with capitals, even the ‘I’ is written in lower case. Discuss
some of the important issues taken up in the novel Mother Forest: The
Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu. The upper case is used when something from the
civil society is mentioned, as “Motor Pump”, “Shirts,” etc. Commenting on this
style, Tom Thomas, in his article, “A Green Postcolonial Reading of Kocharethi
and Mother Forest” observes this to be a technique to indicate holism and to
dwarf anthropocentrism” (231).
Women and Comunity
With respect to women, Janu talks about her companions
Lakshmi, Devi and Valli who stay with her and help her in organizing people and
in cultivating crops. She notes that women share a close bonding in her comunity,
and are more responsible in their work than men.
Janu feels that after the encroachment by migrants and forest
officers, the men of her comunity have been bribed and enslaved for paltry sums
of money and plenty of liquor. They neither go for work nor look after the
family, instead they indulge in domestic violence after being heavily
intoxicated.
The important issues taken up in the novel Mother Forest: The
Unfinished Story of C. K. Janu. These
men also work for the forest officers in felling trees. They seem to have lost
a sense of responsibility and commitment towards their families and comunity.
Their carelessness and insensitivity had been one of the prime reasons for the
Adivasis’ immense loss of lands. On the other hand, women, as exemplified by
Janu and her companions, are more committed to the comunity. Janu notes: “Our comunity
can surely grow only through the togetherness of women”.
Solved PDF & Handwritten
Hardcopy
WhatsApp – 8130208920
Later in the text, Janu observes that the Adivasi women’s
lives are very different from the lives of women in civil society: “In our
case, unity in everything emerges from our women. They (our women) have
something in common that shelters us from meaninglessly adopting the ways of
the civil society. They have enough resilience in them to stand for what they
feel is right even though they may have to suffer a lot for it”. Janu herself and some of her friends had walked out of abusive marriage
and now live their lives as independent, self-supportive women, committed to
the cause of their people. She adds that the Adivasi women are used to doing
men’s work in the fields, and this, she feels, empowers them.
Important Questions
Q.1) Comment on the importance of the forest in the lives of Adivasis.
Q.2) What were the signs of changes Janu noticed, on her first trip outside her village?
Q.3) Describe the various changes brought to the Adivasi environment as a result of the arrival of migrants.
Q.4) Explain the reasons for Janu’s disillusionment with the Party.
Q.5) Trace the growth of Janu as a social activist from the grassroot level.
Q.6) From the text, examine the role of Janu in defining the political struggle of the Adivasis in Kerala.
Q.7) Comment on the stereotying of Adivasis in mainstream society and the different ways in which this occurs.
Q.8) Comment on the significance of the way Janu concludes the narrative.
Solved PDF & Handwritten
Hardcopy
WhatsApp – 8130208920
0 comments:
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.