Congratulations Benitta...!

Media Misrepresentation vs Reality | Benitta Linjo Pozhil

Congratulations to Ms. Benitta Linjo Pozhil for having authored a very profound study on the Media Misrepresentation of the Neithal Community, in her book titled, “Media Misrepresentation vs Reality: Neithal Community through Kadal Adi”.

Giving us all snippets from the Foreword to this lovely book – Dr.Ganesh –

I am very happy to write this Foreword to the book written by Ms. Benitta Linjo Pozhil titled, Media Misrepresentation Vs Reality: Neithal Community through Kadal Adi. I have known Benitta for the past seven years and have had many opportunities to see her as a diligent and dedicated student, who has constantly striven for an interface between Literature and Life. This work by her is extremely germane both to the research world and the world at large as it foregrounds the plight and predicament of indigenous people, which need attention as well as redressal. The book states, with utmost clarity, the misconceptions perpetrated about the indigenous people.

The author brings out the meaningful connect between the landscapes and the indigenous people using the concept of Tinai as explicated in Sangam literature of the Tamils. She quite prudently locates a distinct group of the indigenous people, the fisher folk, with Neithal Tinai, a landscape associated with the seashore. Besides this, she positions the indigenous people within the geopolitical world called the Fourth World. Alluding to Shuswap Chief George Manual’s book, The Fourth World: The Indian Reality, this book deals with the language and culture of the indigenous people focusing on cultural memories and orality which preserves the memories.

The book, then, focusses on the indigenous fishing community which has inhabited this world since time immemorial. It convincingly traces the different trajectories of the lives of the Aboriginals using critical parameters such as Double Colonisation to argue that the non-indigenous be it individuals, governments or corporates have treated the aboriginals with disdain. The author implicates the media in the creation of false constructs with regard to the Indigenous peoples. The book also states that those who undermine these peoples do not realise that the distinct worldview of the indigenous peoples show them as a highly evolved people having consequential ties with the world of nature, which has become the bedrock of their metaphysical view.

The significant part of the book concerns itself with the novel Kadal Adi by Kurumpanai C. Berlin. Published in 2017 by New Century Book House, the novel, the book argues, is undoubtedly one of the best documentations of the Kanyakumari District fisher folk’s life. The book also argues that Kadal Adi is a subversive text that radically questions the false constructs regarding the fisher folk. The author brilliantly argues that the fisher folk share the characteristic features of the sea as they live in communion with the sea. In keeping with deep ecological principles, the book argues for the relevance and importance of the fisher folk in the mosaic of human culture. The book makes out a case for the fisher folk by sensitively appraising their lives and demolishing the false constructs regarding them. Kadal Adi, which is studied in this book, is indubitably a significant contribution to Indigenous Studies,

writes Dr. Ganesh.

On behalf of everyone of us at the Research Department of English, Madras Christian College, Chennai, we extend our congratulations to Ms. Benitta, and we also wish her many many more such delightful academic laurels in the years to come.

PS: Copies of the book are now available on Amazon Kindle, HERE.