The First Step
PRATAMO PAHACHA
It is hard to find writers and poets among the tribal people, and that is the reason why tribal realities come out very scantly from within the tribal community. Sanskruti Kendra focuses on raising writers from among the tribals so that in course of time there may be some tribal writers and poets who will write about themselves.
With this vision in mind a program named Raising Tribal Writers Program was initiated in 2018. Poems written by tribal youth, students and the educated on tribal theme were collected from all over Sundargarh district and an anthology named The First Step published with 140 poems in it. It was a novel initiative to say the least, and the publication of the book was a matter of great joy for the tribal community.
The unique feature of the anthology was that it contained poems on tribal theme written in eight languages prevalent in this area – Odia, Hindi, English, Sadri, Kurunkh (Oraon), Kharia, Munda and Kisan language. The whole process created a keen interest among the people and there were many more poems than that were published in the anthology. The book was released in January 2019 in a special program named as Adivasi Sahitya Sammelan or Tribal Literary Festival which was attended by hundreds of people.
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Due to the fact that most of the poems were written by first time writers the poems may not bear the highest literary quality, but this was an achievement all the same. The greatest joy of the people on this venture was that literary poems written in so many languages were now available to the people in the form of a book.