Representing Tribal Culture and Marginalisation in G.N. Devy’s “Painted Words: An Anthology of Tribal Literature”

Abstract

Ganesh N. Devy (born 1 August 1950) is an Indian literary critic and former professor. He is known for the People's Linguistic Survey of Indiaand the Adivasi Academy created by him. He is credited to start the Bhaashaa research and Publication Centre.He writes in three languages—Marathi, Gujarati and English. His first full length book in English After Amnesia (1992).He has written and edited close to ninety books in areas including Literary Criticism, Anthropology, Education, Linguistics and Philosophy. G. N. Devy was educated at Shivaji University, Kolhapur and the University of Leeds, UK. Among his many academic assignments, he held fellowships at Leeds University and Yale University and has been THB Symons Fellow (1991–92) and Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow (1994–96). He was a Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda from 1980 to 96. In 1996, he gave up his academic career in order to initiate work with the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNT) and Adivasis. During this work, he created the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre at Baroda, the Adivasis Academy at Tejgadh, the DNT-Rights Action Group and several other initiatives. Later he initiated the largest-ever survey of languages in history, carried out with the help of nearly 3000 volunteers and published in 50 multilingual volumes. In response to the growing intolerance and murders of several intellectuals in India, he launched the Dakshinayan (Southward) movement of artists, writers, and intellectuals. In order to lead this movement and to initiate his work on mapping the world's linguistic diversity, he moved to Dharwad in 2016. Devy returned his Sahitya Akademi Award in October 2015 as a mark of protest and in solidarity with other writerssensing a threat to Indian democracy, secularism and freedom of expression and "growing intolerance towards differences of opinion" under the right-wing government. The Dakshinayan movement follows the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. The movement has spread to several states in India such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Telangana, West Bengal, Uttara Khand, Punjab and Delhi.