Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s “November is the Month of Migrations”

In contrast to the middle-class urbanised tribals in the previous story, the tribal individual in “November is the Month of Migrations” comes from a vulnerable position in which access to food itself is a struggle. Migration precipitated by desperate necessity results in oppression as well as precarity. The story exposes the multiple layers of marginalisation which Adivasi women endure. Their sexual abuse is normalised to the extent of becoming a routine transaction. Hansda’s unsentimental, unadorned documentary style of writing shocks the readers and exposes the cruel ways in which the Indian state failed the majority of Adivasis who, bereft of their land and forest rights, are reduced to cheap labour for the powerful class. Sites of modernity and progress for the nation become sites of exploitation for the Adivasis. Hansda sharply critiques the postcolonial nation by highlighting the Adivasis’ exclusion from it.