Battles of Our Own

by Jagadish Mohanty, Himansu S. Mohapatra (Translator), Paul St-Pierre (Translator)

Jagadish Mohanty’s Battles of Our Own is a rare work of modern Odia and Indian fiction. It seeks to delineate a world that is off the grid. Its action unfolds in the remote and non-descript Tarbahar Colliery—a fictional name for the over hundred-year-old open-cast Himgiri Rampur coal mine in the hinterland of western Odisha. A work of gritty realism in its portrayal of a dark and dangerous underworld where coal is extracted, the novel poignantly reveals the primeval struggle between man and brute nature.

Offering a complete experience of the ‘industrial novel’—face offs between trade unions and management, trade union rivalry, and clandestine deals between enemy camps—this work brings alive Mohanty’s literary genius, which takes us to a world beyond the simplistic binary division between the worker and the master. The novel unravels a complex, fractious, and nuanced picture of the human condition.

This sensitive and evocative rendering by Himansu S. Mohapatra and Paul St-Pierre captures the thrill, beauty, horror and tragedy of this fictional tour de force.

Genres: Fiction, Indian Literature, India

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2022

Reviews

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He was bound to remain in exile in this coal mine for the rest of his life. He was very soon going to become, like everyone else here, a man preoccupied with his own immediate surroundings. He would forget his own identity, the days of his childhood, adolescence, and youth. Pradyumna Mishra would slip out of his memory, leaving only Samaru Khadia behind."

I went into this expecting a novel that does for industrial India what Dickens did for industrial Britain—an aside, I don't care for him at all—but unfortunately, Hard Times this is certainly not. The closest thing to a subaltern main character is a working-class Brahmin young man, the son of a retired schoolteacher, who uses a fake name to impersonate a tribal youth in order to get a job in a colliery. Out of the remaining two PoV characters, one is a meek but idealist ex-trade unionist with a Gandhian vision while the other is a lower rung official with some ambition in the mine who's pushed out of his comfort zone.

So Mohanty is less interested in "conveying the socio-economic condition of the working class" employed in the colliery and more into looking at the petty politicking of the petit bourgeoisie management. The formless masses are much derided for their finicky behaviours, low ideas, and general unawareness of what they want and what's good for them. The worker is shifty and idle, putting in as less effort as possible. Trade unions are political outfits out for profit and work in concert with management. Women barely make it to the page. It is a disarming, if narrow-minded, portrayal of ground realities.



(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[Tushar Marpaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the complicated characters in this story. Maybe complicated is not the precise word. The word is conflicted. The lead characters are dealing with internal conflict. About their identity, their principles and their internal compass in general. I am slowly learning to love the stories where things are not exactly tied up at the end. I love that this is one such book.

I loved the setup of the story. This story is set in a coal mining colony. I grew up in a coal mining colony. So, at least some words exchanged are familiar to me. I could almost breath the coarse air with coal and dust suspended in it.

Translation is excellent. It can never be exactly what the OG author intended, but this was very close to it, I felt. The translators have honored the OG author well.

Definitely recommend for a weekend read.

[David - marigold_bookshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Battles of Our Own was originally published in the Odia language of the Indian state of Odisha in 1990, this English translation was issued as a Penguin Modern Classics in 2022. The novel takes place in a remote coal colliery in Odisha and centres on the power struggles between the miner’s unions and the management, and amongst rival unions. It is an industrial, realist, novel that must have been unique in the time and place it was written. It reminded me of Victorian industrial novels set in the soot-blackened North of England.

Jagadish Mohanty (1951-2013) was a renowned Odia writer and recipient of numerous awards. He was born in a mine and spent a good part of his life working in the coalfields of Odisha, living with his wife, the Indian feminist writer Sarojini Sahoo.

There are two main characters in the book, whose lives intertwine. Pradyumna is a young educated Brahmin who leaves his impoverished family and goes to work in the colliery, living with his uncle, and changes his identity to that of a lower caste in order to get employment as a labourer. Harishankar is a former union secretary who has been ousted by an aggressive rival. He is lured back into politics, to head a new trade union.

I felt immersed in the claustrophobic and remote setting of the colliery, and the gritty conflicts that play out between the two union groups, and their manipulation of and by the management. The book was seamlessly translated. Having said that, I found the two main characters infuriating, and I was surprised by the absence of females in the narrative.

[Mitra Samal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read. The strong portrayal of the characters, the tension in the coal mine and the trade union politics makes it seem more real than a work of fiction. Also brilliant translation, doesn’t seem like it was originally written in Odia.