The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is organizing a two-day National Tribal Literary Festival on November 12-13, 2026 at Silver Oak, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The event is part of celebrations commemorating Janjatiya Gaurav Divas 2026 and aims to provide a national platform for celebrating India's tribal literary traditions while promoting indigenous languages and oral narratives.
The festival seeks to recognize contributions of tribal writers, poets, storytellers, and knowledge holders while addressing challenges facing tribal languages relating to documentation, intergenerational transmission, and wider dissemination. Thematic sessions will cover tribal literature, poetry, folklore, and storytelling, including discussions on ritual songs, myths, folktales, riddles, proverbs, children's traditions, seasonal narratives, and women's oral traditions.
The inaugural session will be attended by Shri Jual Oram (Union Minister of Tribal Affairs), Shri Durgadas Uikey (Minister of State for Tribal Affairs), Dr. Joram Aniya (Member, NITI Aayog), Shri Chamu Krishna Shastri (Chairman, Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti), and Smt. Ranjana Chopra (Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs), along with other senior officials and distinguished guests. The event aligns with the Prime Minister's vision of Viksit Bharat@2047 by recognizing tribal knowledge and cultural contributions as vital to India's inclusive development.
Tribal literature represents an important repository of India's civilisational heritage, rooted in community histories, traditional ecological knowledge, and collective memory transmitted through oral narratives, songs, folklore, and indigenous forms of expression. The festival will explore the continuum from oral traditions to contemporary literary expression and examine the role of oral traditions in multilingual education, language literacy, and transmitting ecological knowledge and cultural identity across generations.
Organized as part of Janjatiya Gaurav Divas commemorating the birth anniversary of Bhagwan Birsa Munda, the festival seeks to honor the cultural legacy of India's tribal communities and reaffirm the importance of preserving their literary and linguistic heritage as part of India's collective cultural identity.