An Interview With Laro Janko
This interview transcript was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-16, Jun-Jul 1983)
Laro Janko is a Ho tribal woman from Ichakutti village, Singhbhum, Bihar. She is a very unusual woman, the only full time tribal woman activist I know of in this belt. For many years she has been working with a trade union leader, comrade P. Majumdar, organizing tribal mine workers. Comrade Majumdar is a man of rare dedication. He came to this area from Bengal when he was a young man, to help organize the tribals into trade unions. That was over 20 years ago. Since then he has made Singhbhum his home, has lived and worked there. Laro Janko was initiated into trade union politics about 10 years ago by P. Majumdar. She is not married. It is very difficult to guess at her age. It could be anything between 30 and 40 years, but she looks young and strong though small built. Over the years she has picked up a lot of communist jargon and therefore at first gives the impression that you will not get beyond platitudes and learnt up answers on class struggle when talking to her. But when I talked to her for hours, I found that she is an incredibly versatile thinker.
She is uneducated in the formal sense and speaks only broken Hindi apart from her own Ho language. She is one of the few Ho women I met to whom I could speak directly without the help of an interpreter. In spite of her broken Hindi, she was amazingly articulate and keenly perceptive. The way her thought process flowed constantly reminded me of a mountain rivulet. No matter how big a rock comes in its way, it somehow veers around it, and finds a way to bound forward. Apart from being a trade union activist, Laro is also secretary of the Mahila Samaj, a women’s organization recently started by her and P. Majumdar.