We’re southbound now! Get our books and bully Dileep Raj into serving you some piping hot filter coffee…
To create Adivaani, a publishing house launched by a group of three amateurs to lend a voice to the nation’s indigenous population, months of human planning and perseverance were required.
Although we aren’t really the first or only adivasi publishing house in the country, we are thrilled to receive this kind attention from the media. Thank you, Saju Madhavankutty, from The Times of India – Chennai, for this feature:
Culture cannot be lost. Toys are lost. Coins are lost. Culture is killed. Culture is disappeared. Culture is surrendered. The ones killing culture have names and addresses. Sometimes the assassins hide behind concepts like modernity. Sometimes the murderers speak in code, like development. But there is always an architect and a pilot – a person with a name and address – driving a culture to the brink.
This is a simple fact that is not learned from books but visible in every corner of human existence.
However, this, thankfully, is not a story of assassins.
Just as culture is killed, culture is protected, guarded, and nurtured. Like the assassins, the guardians have names and addresses. In this case, they have an Indiegogo campaign.
Over the past two months, I have read dispatches from adivaani, a fledgling press in Kolkata by indigenous peoples for indigenous peoples. For this Chicano, the story is familiar: the people’s history written by the “other,” the suspicious outsider with the resources to craft narratives that highlight the scandalous and ignore the contributions. Narratives that justify the murder of a culture – murder of the people.
Over time, the people master the tools of the master.
After the manuscript is carefully written, edited, and prepared, the people are confronted with publishers whom politely reject a work based on a notion of “the market” that does not consider the people. Despite a mastery of poetry for millennia, press workers doubt the peoples’ ability to read.
After the ink dries and the pages bound, despite centuries of exclusion, the book sells. Maybe not in numbers great enough to warrant inclusion in the Times list of product exchange. Nonetheless, the people buy. The people read. We see and hear ourselves in a place where there were once caricatures and cartoons.
You know this story. Who are your people?
Raza, are you listening?
This is the story of all peoples fighting to carve out a niche for themselves; fighting for a niche in a world that systematically marginalized the people, offering little beyond menial tasks, hard labor, and poverty. It is not, as they would say, a fight for a place in a world changing around us. That is a narrative written by the “other” and forced onto the people.
There are other ways. There are choices. The “other” offers its pearls at the cost of cultural suicide. Whispered in the peoples’ ear, it is the cost for the dream.
Sound familiar?
There remain other ways.
This is the story of the people, the ones here before the arrival of the “other,” the ones forced from their home and taught it was never theirs.
Do you recognize this story?
This is the story of the child who cannot speak her mother’s native tongue; the boy denied his birthright of history.
Yet this not the only narrative; there always remain other ways.
A father writes his daughter, explaining his dream of a time machine that will forever protect and preserve the culture handed down to him from the people: “Our passion alone cannot drive this time machine, we need fuel, and we need the support of everyone. I am worried and often wonder how we will make it. Then I look at you and when you play and make me laugh, I feel alive again. You inspire me. It’s for you and adivasi children like you that the adivaani time machine wants to preserve this culture legacy.”
We need the support of everyone.
You inspire me.
— George B. Sánchez-Tello
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are only 6 more days to contribute with our Indiegogo campaign… come on, dig in your pockets and purses.
So, finally someone in Delhi. As of today, you can buy adivaani’s books here:
People Tree
Having launched an ambitious venture, adivaani is grappling with the realities of the industry’s stereotypes and the challenges it poses for the start-up publisher, the chief of which is Distribution.
Read the rest at Booksy.in
Dear all,
I had a great grandmother from Sicily and a grandmother from the Basque country. Someone told me I have Chinanteco blood (a very old indigenous people) from my dad’s side of the family … but it doesn’t count, I was raised by my mom’s loving family. So it must be the Basque genes; and that’s why I’ve always been hooked onto travels and indigenous peoples (Basques ARE one.)
The book part is easier: as a child, I found more fun in their company. I was taken away by them to the North Pole, the Caribbean … the Malaysian sea. Adventures were more interesting than school, classmates. They were more interesting than getting to understand why my dad left, why were we poor … until I found books providing the help to understand and answer my own life, the lives of my classmates (as poor as I was, sad like me sometimes).
Anyway, I’m writing this letter not just to explain to you why I’m here, with Ruby and Joy. Or who I am. This letter aims to explain why we do books, and dream wide awake of re tooling history, culture and even the colonial heritage … but, again, that’s a long way from having a Basque grandma in Mexico–who was a racist and hated indigenous people–to India, the adivasis (literally, the first settlers) and adivaani’s time machine:
A time machine for Adivasis
Guilt? Rage? Love? Maybe a little of all those things, but I’ll tell you more: I was 13 when I realized almost none of my classmates would make it to college … but they were not stupid. So I could not understand it: they were poor as I was, and some even better students. They were just talented sensible kids with not too many choices in life.
Helped mostly by common sense (and my own set of genes) I understood there were some things in life that had to be set right. Ok, later on I learned those things should be set right by them, I mean, the people … no need for superheroes, just hard working guys.
In Bolivia, ‘adopted’ by the Aymara, I also learned they had millenial traditions worth to be preserved, guarded, shared respectfully. Like their ancient techniques to dehydrate food or their amazing way to reach consensus in their own way of politics. Mixe, Yukpa, Kharia and Santal peoples have their own as well. All of them have been colonized and harassed for centuries. Their chances to survive in these times rely on their cultures, re tooled and re furnished (so what?)
Back to adivaani, we don’t have the money to print books. The adivasis need support as anybody else and more: indigenous peoples produced most of the practical knowledge to live than we have as a humankind.
Putting some money here is easy. Just don’t buy that latte or that salmon bagel today. I mean, none of our books price is over 4 US dollars. And they are good. So, please, if you have to use your credit card, can I offer you an alternative to Barista or Num Pang? Can you not purchase the last Murakami and help adivaani print some creation stories?
A time machine for Adivasis
I feel sad we only raised 120 dollars in two months (thanks to some great friends.) And I’m almost sure we will not raise 5,000 in less than 20 days … but please put some chips here, you will be placing it on the right bet … we will thank you with all our genes in the near future. Promise!
In hope,
Luis A. Gómez
To my loving daughter Khushi,
You are only 4.5 years young and I am writing to you; for you to understand what your Papa does, about why there are cartons of books around the house and why my phone conversations and other interactions with people revolve around adivaani. Papa is building a ‘time machine’; the adivaani time machine for Adivasis; for us and for our people to travel to the past and carry the adivasi legacy we left behind to the present and the future. Beta let me explain: I started this new place of ‘work’ called adivaani in July 2012 partnering with Ruby and Luis (Remember Luis brought you a handmade arawak toy from Mexico and you have added it to your friend’s circle since then).
We are making books; and through them we want to reclaim our identity in our own terms. Super excited we produced our first ever book in Santali in the month of October 2012. With no proper sales guidelines and strategy we set out. We missed out few occasions where we could have sold our books but such are the challenges of a new venture.
By this time I had already shifted to Pakur, our home: you will not realize this as you see me far too often than when I was in Ranchi. Your mom used to scare me saying that one day you’d fail to recognize me because of my being away from home most of the times. Thank you for proving her wrong.
The start of 2013 was exciting for adivaani as we were busy producing two books together. One is Gladson’s (Remember we went for his wedding and you had a good time playing around). The other you love to look at and make me tell you the story of the geese again and again. Come February the 7th 2013 and we had a terrific launch of the two books at the New Delhi World Book Fair.
Way back in September 2009, when you were only 11 months young, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland on an official visit. Rev. Andrew Anderson, the then presiding Priest of the Greenside Church had invited me to speak on a Sunday morning service about the situation of our people in India. In his introductory remarks, he introduced me as the first person he has known in his lifetime that has his daughter named after him. Khushi (Joy in Hindi); your mom loves me for this, what about you?
‘If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door’…I’ve just re-tweeted this a few days ago copied from an online friend, who by the way also happens to like our posts on adivaani’s website. That’s why the time machine is important.Beta, I am building a time machine and I feel I’m running out of time and resources. Our passion alone cannot drive this time machine, we need fuel, and we need the support of everyone. I am worried and often wonder how we will make it. Then I look at you and when you play and make me laugh, I feel alive again. You inspire me. It’s for you and adivasi children like you that the adivaani time machine wants to preserve this cultural legacy. I do believe and hope that this ‘work’ of ours will fulfill the potential it has.
Your grandpa has donated a part of our house in Pakur to be used as the adivaani bookstore. I am so overwhelmed with his gesture and support. He extended his support without us even asking, and that humbles me. But we need to reach out to everyone and tell everyone who we are what we want to do and how we need their backing.
So we started an online fundraising campaign called ‘A time machine for Adivasis: documenting and tooling our history’on indiegogo in March 2013 to have them support our venture:
A time machine for Adivasis
We’ve been blessed with the response we got; a few people donated money, some want to write about us and some want to keep our books in their library. That’s wonderful! We sincerely hope our campaign succeeds.
March 2013 also had adivaani written about for the first time in Tehelka.
I feel extremely honored to be in the company of such wonderful people who believe in adivaani and us. adivaani and the promise of what it can do is the inheritance I proudly leave for you and adivasi children everywhere.
This is the first ever letter written to you; the first letter of your life. From now on, you have a confirmed seat in our ‘time machine’, just beside me.
With everlasting love and best wishes,
Papa
by Ajachi Chakrabarty
Time machine. That’s how Hembrom looks at her nascent attempt at creating a publishing house for India’s indigenous population: a time machine that documents Adivasi history and culture, fundamentally an oral tradition, before they are forgotten in the wake of modernity.
Read the rest in this week’s Tehelka and in their website as well…
adivaani 