Kerang and the Gadaba Adivasis: In Conversation with Dhanu Muduli
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Kerang and the Gadaba Adivasis: In Conversation with Dhanu Muduli

Knowledge TraditionsVisual and Material Arts
in Interview
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Pankaja Sethi

Pankaja Sethi is a textile designer and research scholar based in Bhubaneswar. She has received three Small Study Research Grants from Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum (NTICVA) to do research on the Kotpad textiles and natural dyeing of al in 2009-10, the quilting tradition of Ganjam (2015-16) and the bark cloth of Mahima Dharma in Odisha (2017-18). She did one year extensive research work on Dongria Kondh Adivasi Textiles and Wall Paintings supported by National Folklore Support Centre-Tata Fellowship in 2012-13.

Interview of Dhanu Muduli by Pankaja Sethi, Machkund, Odisha, 2018

Dhanu Muduli,  head master at the State Government Machkund School, shares the social and cultural context of the Gadaba adivasis; how the Gadaba are a self-reliant community, who do everything from cultivating their own food to preparing the cloth they wear. However, with modernisation several changes have taken place within the community and several local traditions such as the weaving of the kerang, the bark cloth unique to this community, have languished.