Maroona Murmu

I can talk of the subaltern school, they were talking about the diversity, they were talking about the caste question, they were talking about gender, women, but the language that they were speaking, was actually a language that could not have accommodated the people themselves if their voice was not coming up. They were questioning representation, but they were trying to represent people, often mainly milieu, that they themselves never came from. So if decolonization has to happen, it has to happen from the people themselves, whose life are taken into consideration. So they should speak for themselves. Nobody can take my voice and represent me. If that happens, there's a chance of being appropriated because what I speak from a certain locale, certain context, cannot be seen by somebody who doesn't come from the same social location, same ethnic background, or economic background -- so nobody that we can put oneself in the shoes of another person. So I think one has to be very careful because there's a huge chance of appropriating the voice of the indigenous people and trying to represent them. And since I said, it's all about the mind, you cannot get into the mind of another person. So let the person speak in whatever way; it might not become very coherent to you, but it is your fault, it's your ignorance that you are not being able to reach to that person. Trying to create, or have the audacity to claim that you're creating, knowledge out of these people...I believe this is a very dangerous terrain as well, if you do not know where you're putting your foot into.