HYDERABAD: Cadalfest, a two-day festival filled with activities merging in-depth scholarly work on Dalit and tribal culture with live performances, book reading sessions, film screening and more, was inaugurated on Friday at Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University. CE brings a glimpse of the festival
Cadalfest Hyderabad Samburam 2023, made a second coming on Friday, December 15, 2023 at Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University, Nampally. This two-day festival, first organised in 2022, hosts a unique line-up of interesting events. It has been organised by the research network of Dalit and Adivasi literature, Nottingham Trent University, UK and research centre EMMA at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France, in collaboration with Shaheen Women’s Resource and Welfare Association, Hyderabad Literary Festival, Goethe Zentrum Hyderabad and the hosting PTSU.
CADALFEST (Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival) aims to bring together people from different backgrounds, sharing perspectives through events that include performances, roundtables, exhibitions, readings, film screenings, and dialogues to share research, celebrate marginalised performance traditions, and explore inclusive forms of learning. Magazines, news clippings and periodicals have been put on display showcasing the ‘many lives of the archives’.
The Vice-Chancellor, T Kishen Rao presided as the chief guest of the event. In his welcome note, he said, “Through diverse activities such as performances, film screenings and book readings with research orientation, the folk and tribal culture come to the limelight. I welcome all the organisers, participants and collaborators. I appreciate their efforts in putting up such a vibrant programme. The intermixing of performances, narratives and oral history with research is important because it exposes the urban crowds to the ancient cultures, to make them aware of life in rural and folk domains. I have taken a personal interest in the programme because my PhD also pertains to similar areas.”
Dr Nicole Thiara from Nottingham University and Professor Judith Misrahi-Barak from France coordinated the sessions. The first session titled, ‘Echoes of Thudum’ talked about the Gond life, art and culture. The coordinator, Professor Gudur Manoja and moderator, Professor Jayadheer Tirumala Rao, briefed the audience about Thuti artists, Gunjala Gondi script and Gondi Muggu.
“Gunjala is a village where we found the manuscripts, hence, the name. Gondi written in this script is very easy to learn. People can learn it in just about 25 days and they have been writing poetry in it. We translated this rich Gondi literature in 13 languages including Hindi, English and Telugu,” said professor Tirumala Rao.
Gunjala is a village in the erstwhile Adilabad district of Telangana. Spread across nine states of India, Gonds strive to revive their age-old knowledge systems. Through such an effort, they were able to discover Gunjala script, which is based on a firm regulated format to create alphabets, through their preserved manuscripts.
Informing the audiences about the phenomenal work of Professor Rao, Dr Manjola said, “In 2006, Professor Tirumala Rao was directed to the National Manuscripts library. He found the Gunjala script, which was earlier thought to be part of some other language. He then established a small research centre in Hyderabad and began to work on deciphering and translations. I and my colleagues got involved and we had Gondi Readers published by ITDA (Integrated Tribal Agency), which were introduced to Dalit and tribal schools so that the ancient community could have their own resources. This brought the linguistic framework to limelight.”
Following this, four men in vibrant attire, feet clad in five-layered bells and carrying bucket-like metal instruments took to the centre of an otherwise dull conference room. After a brief introduction, Marapaka Ramesh and his troupe from the Bindla community enthralled the audience with a musical performance.
“The magnanimity of the rich oral narratives of the Bindla sub-caste cannot be matched. Their performance is unique, exclusive and unlike all other oral narratives that take from Ramayana and Mahabharata. This story was based on Shakti purana, which talks about Adishakti as the beginning of creation, describing feminine power and fierceness,” Dr Manjola said.
The musical instrument used by the community is called ‘Jamdika’ or ‘Jamku’, which combines a percussion and string instrument. It is made of metal and leather. The sounds that are produced with such combination are unique. The community also plays important roles in the village social life. In social hierarchy, where brahmins act as priests, Bindla community performs all priestly rituals for the Madigas, who are themselves considered as untouchables. In the traditional hierarchy, brahmins are considered above other castes but here, the power dynamics is reversed and the ritual-performing Bindlas take a lower position in the strata.
As they inherit traditional knowledge systems from their ancestors, they also function as healers, providing medicinal herbs to the villagers. “Besides being healers, they also evoke the deities of the village. Their oral narratives are multi-layered and multi-faceted. The interesting thing is that they carry their knowledges on their tongues, which are transferred from one generation to the next, orally,” said Dr Manjola.
Adding to this, Prof Rao said, “‘Retaining artistic creativity’ of these communities means upholding the traditional art form. Apart from the performances, they have copper plates and palm-leaf manuscripts as part of their heritage.”
Professor T Vijay Kumar of Hyderabad Literature Festival explained that the art form is both the livelihood and part of cultural life of the community. “Hence, for them, their livelihood and culture are not separate things. Preserving art form is part of preserving livelihood and culture,” he said.
The event was followed by a few more engaging discussions such as ‘Songs of Resistance’. The day ended with a musical performance by Shaheen qawwali group, a film screening of ‘Pinjron Ki Udaan’ and reading from Gogu Shyamala’s new novel. On December 16, 2023, the festival will include discussions on Dalit periodicals in Marathi, Bangla and Kannada and more on art, literature and culture.