Helping the world hear the voice of tribal people

A young woman, dismayed by the isolation of her native tribe, decided to give up a lucrative corporate career and to dedicate herself bridging the gap between aboriginality and modernity. The result was Adivaani– the voice of the tribes.

Ruby Hembrom hated school and was afraid of being termed as worthlessness, but gradually she fell in love with the English language. It was a turning point. Later, she left IBM only to venture into publishing.

She came to Calcutta as a young girl. She grew up in a community of people drawn from various parts of India; many of them tribal people like herself. “By the time I was five or six years old, I could identify other adivasis (tribals),” she recalls. It took a lot of time for her to realize how isolated the community is. They were not part of the mainstream society.

Young Ruby was educated ‘organically’ on her tribal heritage. She picked it up as she, her mother and sisters served tea to first- and second-generation adivasi learners in the theological community where her father worked. They would listen as they harked back to their aboriginality.

However, Ruby believes she had ‘different features’ since her childhood due to her tribe.  She remembers “I was the only dark-skinned child in my class, maybe in even three or four classes,” Her schoolmates would make fun of her. There was one such incident when she was six years old. One of his classmates asked her if she had polished her face each morning along with her shoes. It still stands out in her memory.

No surprise she hated school. She was scared of being perceived as a worthless. “Those sixteen years I grew up with no self-worth, zero self-confidence. I was two different persons. At school I was someone different; someone absolutely insignifi-cant. The initial struggles and the constant battles in school days did have a profound impact on me. I would always try to understand whether I am good or not and even if I knew I could express myself, I was not willing to do so.” Nevertheless, Ruby qualified as a lawyer.

After her school life, her father expected Ruby and her siblings to do things which would help them go back to their roots, but she knew she would not fit in. Life changed when she got a call from a friend asking her to teach English at a language institute “I had no self-confidence. I didn’t know if I could stand in front of people and talk. However, I needed the job so I attended the interview and everything worked well. Then the most remarkable thing happened. I realized I could talk to people. I fell in love with English and the way it could be learned, taught, and spoken.”

After getting three years of experience at the language institute, Ruby switched to the corporate sector. “The BPO industry was opening up and they needed people who would be able to speak in a particular way. So that was something I went into. It was a great advancement in my career. I was placed at IBM Delhi, working and living on my own. I wanted to give my best to the job because I think that was my way of compensating for what I thought I lacked. If I was good at my work, at least there would be some self-worth.”

Ruby excelled in her job, and was transferred to IBM Calcutta. After eight years of corporate life, one day she asked herself what she was doing. “I thought of my people who lack the opportunity of even getting a job. I realised that it was time to go back and help my people,” she says. At the outset, she decided to partner with a friend from Manipur. Together, they both started to impart knowledge and skills that they had learnt to the people of Imphal. “I stayed there for a while. People were every interested in the communication and interview skills we taught, and they came to know about available opportunities.” But the political situation there didn’t allow them to continue their work.

Around that time, in early 2012, Ruby was offered a contract from a publisher. They had Conversational English textbooks, which they wanted to be revamped. Ruby returned home to work on the project. When she realized that she had no prior knowledge about publishing, she joined a course to learn more about it. She was given a long list of names of big publishing houses, writers and authors representing various communities – except her own. “The list did not include a single name from the adivasi community. It bothered me because there were writers from my community, even though they only wrote in their native language. I understood that our stories were confined to our community and others did not have access to them because of the written language. Nevertheless, it was difficult for me to accept that reality. I started making plans on how I could fill that gap.”

Ruby decided to use English as the language for publishing. She met a Mexican Journalist named Luis and one illustrator from Bhopal. “They helped me mould my idea into a reality. We then gave it a name and registered it as a trust because we thought it would make sense to operate as a trust. We had a publishing house called Adivaani, but no books and no money to commission authors,” she recalls.

Ruby decided that she would start with her father’s doctoral thesis. She convinced her father to let her publish it. Though her father had written it, that was the first time Ruby was reading it. She found some of the stories of creation that were part of tribal lore in the thesis. As she read, Ruby felt that she had somehow been cheated of her identity, because the versions she had heard were not authentic. She feared that new generations of Santhals would lose touch with their heritage. So she decided to tell the stories in her own ingenious manner. She broke down the long narratives into smaller parts, and created simple illustrated versions of them.

Ruby believes that it is important to learn and develop skills as per the requirement of the time. As English has become a dominant language, one needs to learn it. There was criticism that she had stepped away from the tribal language and had opted for a foreign language such as English to tell her stories. “You have to learn your masters’ tools to be able to stand in front of them and challenge them. You cannot do it any other way. My intention was never to do away with my mother tongue or replace it with English. The idea was just to make use of the dominant English as a supplement. I wanted the books to be in English because I wanted people to have more access to it” she argues with a strong determination.

“I am just a small speck in this process. I need the grass-roots-level people, the students, artists, teachers, the uneducated, educated, the working class, the intellectuals and others too. I have to find ways to collaborate with people,” she says.

Ruby has come a long way. The little girl, who once felt that she was of no worth, has become an inspiration for her community. Her passion and self-belief, along with the support of her like-minded friends, have helped her achieve a great deal. Her determination will certainly help the world to hear the unheard voices of the tribal people.