P. A. Chacko
41 year old Jacinta Kerketta (b. 1983) has etched her name in the literary world as an activist poet, writer, social critic and Hindi language freelance journalist. She has many books, poems, and literary pieces to ger credit.
Belonging to the Oraon indigenous tribe in Chotanagpur (Jharkhand state) in eastern India, her interest goes beyond her own tribe, but embraces the burning issues of various indigenous and other marginalised groups.
A few years ago when she interviewed me for a Ranchi-based newspaper, she was a cub journalist. From then on, she needed more than an elbow room, and graduated to shine as a seasoned poet, author and journalist.
Though diminutive looking , her giant thinking takes on crucial issues affecting the indigenous community. Issues of indigenous identity, development, social injustices, structural problems, devaluation of women and children, gender-based violence, patriarchal attitudes and actions and such other burning issues have become themes of her communicating world.
Equipped with a degree in Mass communication and expertise in video production, she uses her skill daringly and nonchalantly.
Forbes India listed her as one among India’s twenty self-made women. Kerketta has already bagged a few awards: from Hongkong- based Asia Indigenous People Pact ( AIPP), Jharkhand Indigenous People’s Form (Prerana Samman Award), Ravishankar Upadhyaya Memorial Youth Poetry Award, Prabhakar Khabar Aparajita Award, and Foundation of Confederation of Industry ( Women Empowerment Award).
However, as a seasoned social critic, she makes her stand clear when certain awards come searching for her. For example, she recently declined a USAID sponsored ‘Young Author Award’ 2024, organized in collaboration with Room to Read India organisation. She cited the double standard of nations like America and of some organisations in honouring writers and authors who speak up courageously, while such benefactors act as weaponizing agents or supporters of a bellicose nation like Israel to strengthen it in its murderous war killing millions of innocent women and children in Palestine. “How can any honour thrill a poet or writer when such honour has no meaning?”
A courageous stand indeed, and a voice of the voiceless .
The world stands in need of people like Kerketta to stand up and speak up, using their energy for the sake of the downtrodden and exploited.
Jharkhand’s many intellectuals will need to feel like Kerketta the agonies and anxieties of their brethren and put their best foot forward.
“When all the rivers will be dry one day,
In the dead rivers will float
The cadavers of civilizations!”
(From a poem by Jacinta Kerketta)
