जो हमारे लिए जितना बड़ा उमर है उससे ज्यादा बड़ा उमर इस हुकूमत के लिए है हमारे लिए वह एक inspiration है वह एक revolutionary है एक बड़ा scholar है एक ऐसा इनसान जिसने अपनी आजादी अपनी जिंदी बहुत बुझ खुर्मान किया इस मुल्क के लिए, इस पॉम के लिए उसने अपनी आजादी को गिरदी लग दिया ताकि हम सब और हमारी आवाज और हमारी एसासें और हमारे इंतिलाब आजाद रहें और ये किताब हमें मिली बेंदिहा खुशी का वक्त था लेकिन साथ ही ये बहुत गम भी है साथ में के हुमर हमारे पीछ में मौदूब नहीं हो इग्जाम में धानदली, पढ़ाने में धानदली, अध्यापक और कुलपत्यों के चैन में धानदली ऐसा लगता है कि ये जो नया भारत है ये अपने नौजवानों को तालीम नहीं देना चाहता वो नहीं चाहते कि लोग अपना दिमाग को किस तरह से इस्तमार करें किस तरह से वो अपनी बातों को रखें वो नहीं चाहते अगर पिंजडे में बंद बुलबुल की आवाज मुझे अच्छी लगी और उस पर मैं कुछ लिख रहा हूँ मैं इस पिंजडे के बारे में भी लिखूँगा जहां से बुलबुल को गाना पर रहा हूँ अब University हमें यह कहती है, समाशास्त्र के अध्यापकों को कहती है कि आप अपने syllabus में जाती शब्द का इस्तमाल नहीं करेंगे, इतिहास के लोगों को यह कहती है या बाकी जग़ा के विशय के लोगों को कहती है, जेंडर इसका इस्तमाल नहीं किया जाना चाहिए, sexuality तो बहुत ही गंदी चीज है उसका तो उचारण ही नहीं किया जाना चाहिए इसका मतलब सारे syllabus को curriculum को sanitize किया जा रहा है There are very few books I have seen those who teaches you how to go about archive, accessing it, making meaning out of it इस हाथ अपने पुत्रों यहान पर, उम्मर छूकिए कि आप सकते हैं तयारिया लिए कि इस मुखा लगाएंगे की हमारे पासी मात्रा देखने देखा गया रहे हैं ग्राम प्रखाने के ज़रूरत सीधार और जल्कार अंतरइयत सेकर रखा था निसाल में तेरी गणियों के एवधल कि जहां चली है रस्म कोई नसर उठा के चले जो कोई चाहने वाला तवास को लिख ले नजर चुरा के चले जिसमों जाओ बजा के चले everyone is free And on that note I want to invite Vinayak Gill the executive editor of Jabbernaut He is going to introduce us to the book and then it going to be followed by our discussion with a number of panelists. It's like having a press conference. It's like having a press conference. Listen, so I'm just going to give you a brief overview of the book, rather try and summarize it. I'll tell you what, according to me, is the essence of the book and why we chose to publish it. So this is a PhD dissertation written by Omar when he was in JNU, and I think presented in 2018. And we're not an academic publisher, So I thought I'd address that inconsistency right at the outset. And a lot of these readers are not academics. Most of us here are not academics. So the term academic in itself has become anathema in mainstream publishing. We tend to use the term in order to shoot down book proposals. When we don't like something, we say it's too academic, then we move on. So the term itself has become a catch-all for writing that is uninspired, unengaging, and really impossible to read, which I hate to say is true for a lot of academic books. But I realize that this generalization is unfair because every once in a while comes along an academic book that sort of rises above the category as it were and reaches outside the academy and begins to acquire a resonance with general readers, right? And this is a book that gives us deep scholarly insights and at the same time lives up to the highest standards of readability. We chose to publish Fractured Communities because the book passes master and Buddhist counts, rigorous scholarship and readability. The writer has a very unique voice, I thought, and that's, and Venezuela is grateful to encounter an original individual voice in our times. You know, when you're surrounded by the non-voice of the non-writer, the you know the the the deluded novelist or the journalist or the cliche politician the ai chatbot this this language is very similar you know and it surrounds us so uh what you finding here is a voice that is very fresh and original on the level of the prose the sentence and linked to that to that voice is is a is a vision that goes beyond the subject of the book right and that the vision tells us how a particular writer views and interprets the world. The world recorded in fractured communities is the world of the tribes of the Singh Bhuv region in present-day Jharkhand. It tells the story of the very first colonial incursions into this space and the fraud and complicated interactions between between the invaders and the native you know we learn how this interaction how this relationship and this power dynamic evolved over time changing not just the nature of the of the landscape of the region but also the very character of the communities living here so this much for the history but this book has a a larger interest you know it concerns the writing of history and this is where the writer's vision comes in um omer is always acutely aware of the pitfalls and the blind spots of historians art and he's he's very interested in addressing and correcting those um so i read it as a critique of both conservative and liberal modes of uh writing and analyzing history so the writer seems to be telling us that things are not as simple as you think they were right and this is a core message of Fractured Community is to me that history is a complex piece and in order to tame it what the historian needs is something more than access to the right material or the right archive. What the historian needs is an honest voice, a voice that is cogent and lucid and a sympathetic vision that makes room for all kinds of complexities and difficulties and divisions in history. So what this book contains is both the voice and the vision and together they make it a great academic book that should be read I think both within and outside the country. So if you haven't read it please do so. Thank you. Thank you so much Vinay. I want to call upon our panelists for today. Manoj Rao, he is a faculty member at Aru also on Aadhaar Saha. I want to call on Simhan Kundalaj of the founding editor of the Apurva Dhan he is also a faculty at Delhi University Then Professor Prabhu Mahapatra he a faculty former faculty member of Delhi University Arifar Khanam, who is also a journalist, independent journalist, and Sabiha Khanam University. As our panelists join us now, I just want to briefly talk about Ober the historian because a lot of us in the last few years have spoken about the way the fantastic person Ober is and how he's touched our lives in many, many ways. from spinas but he's also been penalized for speaking truth to power but let's speak about umar the historian uh so umar's book fractured communities are devasing histories and the politics of power is a social and environmental history of the state of chanpur uh in the words of ram fuma umar recognizes that history is a branch of literature as well as social science This book was his Ph.D thesis and was written when Umar was still under trial for selection. He had spent some time in jail already and he had been fired upon and now he survived when this was happening. This is also a time when mainstream media, propaganda machinery of the ruling government had demonized him which is why he couldn't travel safely to do his field work. In the last semester of his PhD, he was expelled by the university and had to go to the court to submit his thesis. The same judge who allowed him to submit the thesis later denied him bail. And in these circumstances, he wrote this book and I think it itself puts many of us to shame because with all our privileges, some of us sitting here are still not able to meet our deadlines. So isn't that fantastic in itself? His book is an exploration of the relationship between Adivasi's and the state. He has focused on Sindhu, one of the most isolated and backward areas of Jharkhand, despite being assigned to extensive mining. Umar argues that contrary to the received wisdom which has pitted a homogenous Adivasi society against the state. The state intervened through the fractures within the Andalasi society. Today's panel discussion, I am just going to use a lot of Omar's work and his writings to guide us through the discussion. And so I am just going to first turn to you, Professor Prabhu. Omar analyses how colonialism radically reshaped the natural world.
