Battles of Our Own

"This book is also about the terrible effects of the coal mining industry and what it did to both society and industry. Mohanty is more well-known as an Odia short story writer but this is one of his most important novels. The English translation was just released in April 2022. And though Mohanty wrote in Hindi also, he was quite the literary activist for Odia literature and the language—much like Pandey Kapil with Bhojpuri, as mentioned earlier. A bit about the Odia language: it is one of the official 22 languages listed in the Indian Constitution with many major and minor dialects. And it is also considered a classical language—though this was a hard-won status—with a long literary history. Earliest known inscriptions date back to the 10th century and its older form was used in ancient Jain and Buddhist texts. Unlike many other South Asian languages, Odia was not influenced much by Arabic or Persian. Globally, there are some 50 million speakers. The story features a working-class hero who becomes a martyr for justice but it’s really an ensemble cast of characters from different parts of the country. It’s a deeply political novel about the mining underworld, unionization, caste, class, capitalism, communism, Marxism, poverty, migration. It also addresses existential themes of alienation and identity, man versus nature—you can see influences of Kafka , Camus , Sartre , Beckett . Mohanty’s writing style isn’t lyrical but he does take us into the vulnerable and tormented psyches of the main characters. Where Mohanty excels is in immersing us deep into the world of a colliery, showing what it’s like to be a part of it from every level of its hierarchy, how power begets violence. The book is also a sharp commentary on Nehruvian socialism and the failure of government, labor movements, trade unions, and so on, due to corruption."