![]() ![]() Sukru’s story prefigures death and destruction that would besiege the area more than half a century later, when the Indian government leased out the same land that his family farmed to private firms for bauxite mining, provoking fierce resistance. Nevertheless, he is unable to redeem himself to repay his debts, and the novel narrates this journey with a tragic grandeur.Įvents in recent years have made Mohanty’s book seem not only timeless, but prescient. He is compelled to abandon his content life as a subsistence farmer to become a goti, a bonded laborer, along with his younger son at the sahukar’s. To pay the fine for trespassing in a forest he believed belonged to him and his people, Sukru mortgages his land to a sahukar, a moneylender. ![]() 1 It is a poignant tale of the gradual destruction of a community and an entire way of life in a village in the undivided Koraput district, as seen through one family’s experience. Written in 1945, Gopinath Mohanty’s novel Paraja vividly illustrates the economic transition ushered in by the modern Indian state through the story of an adivasi peasant, Sukru Jani, and his daughters Jili and Bili, and sons Mandia and Tikra. Ranjana Padhi is a feminist activist and writer based in Bhubaneswar, and the author of Those Who Did Not Die: Impact of the Agrarian Crisis on Women in Punjab (Sage, 2012). ![]()
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