When he died recently, the Gondi and Marathi poet Bhujang Meshram was barely fifty years old.

He was from the Gond tribe that once was widespread in the forests in India's central heartland, now divided among the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra and Orissa. They were victims of both the forest policies of the British Raj and the union and state governments of the Indian Republic.

Their land, rich in mineral resources, timber, and forest resources including rare plants and herbs used in traditional Ayurvedic and modern allopathic medicine, were plundered and exploited by an economic and political system that hegemonised them.

As the forests of India continued to shrink, the cultural heritage and the oral traditions of the Gonds were imperilled, too. Gonds now became urban lumpen living on the fringes of a civilization that once traded with them and respected their autonomy.

Bhujang was exceptionally gifted. He was educated in Aurangabad in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. He was inspired by Ambedkar's philosophy and social vision, and converted to Buddhism. He was also inspired by the poetry of Namdeo Dhasal, whom he emulated in his early work. After establishing himself in the front rank of young Marathi poets and writers in the 1980s, Bhujang brought his Gond dialect into Marathi as a part of his literary-political identity, and led poets and writers from other tribes in Maharashtra to found a parallel literary group: the Vidrohi Sahitya Movement (the Rebel Literary Movement).

It was a conscious move to break away from the urban bourgeois Marathi literary establishment that still dominated  book publishing, literary magazines and journals, the regional and central Sahitya Akademis, and the media. The Vidrohis challenged the prevailing hierarchies in society, culture and politics. They wanted their voices to be heard in the yet-to-emerge Indian Republic.

Bhujang Meshram has left behind a book of poems still in the press, and a number of unpublished works that his friends and colleagues may publish as his legacy.

In the death of Bhujang Meshram, New Quest mourns the loss of one of India's contemporary poetic voices. As a small tribute, we reprint here a few selected poems of his. We will pay him a proper tribute by publishing more of his work in English translation in a future issue.

Honorary Editor