Resumo de Unheard Voices: Stories Of Forgotten Lives

Harsh Mander's Unheard Voices: Stories of Forgotten Lives (2001) Mander's book portrays some real faces of we, the 'other people of India. It instantly reminds you of the parable of the country man in Franz Kafka's The Trial. The country man who comes all the way before the law, hoping to enter its portals and get instant access to justice. Mander givesKafka's country man a local habitation andreal names.But unlike the sad ending that Kafka's country man faces, (which is true most of the time) Mander portrays lives that struggled and survivedthetrialsbeforethe Government and the Law in India.For those of us who read the book, it makes a difference by motivating us to act on the face of life's larger trials. Mander's protagonistsare individuals who survivedreal instances of pain and struggle on the face of a denial or a violation of human rights in contexts such as development, criminal justice, communalism, caste prejudice, natural and man-made disasters anddisplacement of indigenous people in India. A civil servant turned social activist, Harsh Mandernarrates the real stories of twenty individuals whowere victims ofdisplacement in Narmada dam, Bhopal Gas tragedy and trafficking in women in post-colonial, post-globalised India. The issues addressed in the book may not be new, but what is refreshing and heartening about the bookis the narrative method that Mander adopts. Mander chooses rather to be a medium, a ventriloquist than an author of thecentral characters in these real stories. Mander remarkably succeeds in making unheard, marginalised voices heard with a difference amidst thenuances of human rights discourse in post-globalised India. The narrative technique in effect, seeks to unsettle an unjust legal or political status quo and represents another method of communicating with the law. In other words, these narratives mark a distinct shift from a conventional objective, rational treatment of human rights to human rights as subjective and emotional realities of struggle, survival and empowerment of individuals. It makes a case for the role of emotion in Law's world of reason. Unheard Voices recognises the urgent need toshift gears from the trickle-down state-subject relationship to a lateral state-citizen relationship in our country. As a performative text, it urges forreplacingthe reactive role of the executive and the judiciarywith a proactive role. The text is a good contribution to the world of literature too. The predominant rasa of the book is hope which can motivate us in our darkest hours.It provides for literature a performative text that can motivate social action.

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