Supriya Agarwal
Telling Lives: Tales of Oppression
In progressive literature, certain narratives construct life stories exploring historical reality and truth, drawing our attention to a specifically under privileged class of the Indian society. Arun Prabha Mukherjee has called such writings as an "oppositional voice, puncturing holes in the great Indian writing of heroic struggle" (38). The oppression, struggles, assertion and quest of identity of the individual who is the subject matter or the actant of these narratives seem never dissociated from the shape that the system of social relation and history have given him or her. The assertion of the individual structurally appears as an outcry, a denunciation or assertion of an individual as one from within a given social constellation.
Dalit writing voices its experience of untouchability fraught with pain, fear, degradation, inhuman treatment, resentment and anger. It is a grim picture of reality and discrimination that needs to be addressed. Most of the dalit writings are literary forms of social protest and critique is even used to evaluate dalit literature in general as being one dimensional - namely, negative, focusing on revolt only. But that alleged negativity is actually a form of bold, genuine and strongly positive assertion. Repressed and ruined human beings break the status of animal servility to which they were reduced by a shout of protest which signals the birth of a new being. The original inspiration remains as a strong urge to raise one's voice to speak up and denounce as loudly as possible, breaking forever a silence hitherto enforced for centuries.
Dalit writings voice an expression of the third generation of the Ambedkar movement. Dr. Ambedkar’s speech made at Mahad on 25 December, 1927 is a watershed in the history of the dalit movement. On this day Dr. Ambedkar began an agitation by the dalit’s to draw water from the Chavadar Lake at Mahad which was reserved for caste Hindus only. The Manusrmriti was burnt here as a mark of dalit protest against untouchability and the proclamation made was:
All human beings are equal by birth and they shall remain equal till death .…. Our meeting today should keep the image of the French National Assembly before the mind. The road it marked out for the development of the French nation, the road that all progressed nations have followed, ought to be the road adopted for the development of Hindu society by this meeting. (Essays and Speeches 227)
The life history of the authors selected for analysis serve the task of life-history studies which not only expose the experience and requirements of the individual and the community but create a different genre of writing. Over the years there has been a move from the polished biographies and autobiographies of the “great and famous” toward the investigation of more marginalized and subaltern section of society for which such literary self narratives are available. In this view they are meaningful explorations of life which reveal emotional and social realities. These accounts of personal lives reflect culture specific notions of the person or self and are valuable sources for understanding the emergence of modern sense of self, of individualism and self-consciousness as opposed to collective identity. The writings of these writers break the silence imposed by society and history on their condition and give voice to the voiceless.
The voice of the oppressed, “the wretched of the earth,” has been a muted one throughout history, only allowed to speak within the constraining parameters set by the oppressors, one can only speculate how they would have spoken without these constraints. The discourse of the oppressed is full of cautions, understatements and silences. And because the relationship between the victim and the victimizer is so conflictual the discourse addressed to the victimizer may range anywhere from persuasion to total condemnation.
The journey from Daya Pawar's Baluta (Acchhoot) to Limbale’s Akkarmashi (The Outcaste) is the whole saga of dalit social history. In these autobiographies relating to different periods of time and set in different levels of society, domestic and private space is gradually propelled into a vortex of turbulent conflict belonging to the public space, fraught with caste politics and power. The writer unfolds a tale of social truth that bespeaks its own historical reality and they function at individual, social and cultural level bringing the past and the present face to face. Daya Pawar or Dagdu Maruti Pawar born in 1935 has dealt with the atrocities experienced by the dalits or untouchables under the Indian caste system in various forms of literary genres. His autobiography Baluta published in 1978 recounts the experience of an untouchable struggling for a peaceful existence, mentally tormented but incapable of retaliation in word and deed. The autobiography is written as a story by Dagdu Pawar being told to the more literate Daya Pawar with both being personas of the author. The book shook Marathi society and was a autical success - both in Marathi and in its Hindi translation but received considerable anti dalit blowback for its frank exposition.
The book exposes not only severe insult and contemptible behavior of oppressive upper caste persons making hell of dalit lives but the question of hunger and survival also dominates. "Baluta" as it was named in Marathi draws upon the quintessential symbol of the dalit's humiliation for having to beg for leftover food as baluta or his traditional village share as remuneration for performing stigmatized labour. Pawar has characterized his story as a secret that must not be revealed perhaps because of the shame as well as the pain that attaches to confronting the self of which he writes. Pawar plays on the relationship between secrecy and revelation instead of celebrating the autobiographical as an authentic act of self representation. Indeed, Dagdu Maruti Pawar is both a character as well as a concept, he is the secret sharer of Indian society, whose shameful experiences cannot be related without disavowing the pact of caste Hindu secrecy. The narrative progresses throwing light on different phases of life comprising of customs, practices, education, economic realities and gender discrimination. The multiplicity of narrative concerns is unified by the writer's continuous analysis. It is a first person narration of the minority consciousness and their struggle is a matter of inspiration for himself as well as for others, giving an account of discrimination and deprivation as a stage of recognition and assertion, living on the margins of the marginalized as young expendable human material exposed to the harsh realities of life.
The book created a new genre in Marathi literature and the use of language is also not merely of revolt but of a deeply introspecting analytical intellectual. Pawar’s autobiography reflects his active participation in the social, cultural and literary movement on the national level. Baluta is an expression of his contemplative thinking, unwavering, stance, deep understanding and empathy towards social happenings and issues. Due to the oppressive circumstances, he suffers mentally and physically in his personal life, instances of which find place in his writings. The work portrays the infirmities within the civil society permeated with caste and class distinctions and the reader is filled with a sensitivity to the situation and condition of the protagonist, thus creating a new kinship amongst all.
Sharan Kumar Limbale's Akkarmashi published in 1984 is also an acknowledged masterpiece. An emotionally violent autobiography of a half caste growing up in the Mahar community and suffering the anguish of not belonging fully to it. Written in the dialect of Mahar community of Maharashtra it gives numbing account of the humiliation of the community at the hands of an unthinking privileged class. Sharan is haunted by the question of his fractured identity and asks himself: “Am I an upper caste or an untouchable?” The work is a bitter critique of the lack of compassion that the lower castes have endured for centuries. The search for identity in this autobiography is not the identity of an individual but of the dalit community as a whole.
The autobiography expresses the anguish of a growing boy. Limbale tells very heart rending methods of fighting hunger. The dominating theme throughout the book is the dalit's constant battle with hunger. Although Limbale is allowed the privilege of going to school he had to watch the higher caste children eat lavish meals and could only hope that they would be generous with their scraps. When he devoured those previous morsels his mother would yell at him when he got home for being so selfish and not saving any for her or his sisters. His grandmother would eat "bhakari" made from the corn she had dug out of the pile of manure so that her grandchildren would have what little good flour they had. She made incredible sacrifice but her house still went hungry until they were able to beg on a market day or until a good friend received the contract to remove a dead animal. As a child Limbale firmly believed that hunger controlled men and if there had been no hunger there would have been no strife and no war. The caste of a Hindu Indian, Limbale tells us determines everything about his life, including the clothes he will wear, the person he will marry and the food he will eat. Limbale describes the life of a man who suffered not only through this caste system but also through the pain of not even being allowed into the caste system, he was an outcaste. His entire life he lived under the curse of not having pure blood because his mother had him out of wedlock with the chief of the village. His entire life he had watched religion tear people and families apart and he wanted no part of it.
The autobiographies of both these writers clearly show how their lives is completely controlled by the society around them but there is an absence of self pity and basically it is subjective experience. It is the economic struggle, the act of physical survival, the day to day measurement of history which occupies them. Prof. Jasbir Jain in her work Contesting Post Colonialism has talked about such memory narrative and the homogeneity which is there but has raised a very important question that how does one define outer reality? Is it defined and shaped only by the cultural other or does reality also manifest itself in the act of living. The self in dalit writings is constantly in the process of being formed, it is the environment and the external control forces which loom large. Experiencing the pathos and pain which the memory of the actual happenings bring to the writer, the reader feels the shock and a sense of loss at the unaccountable misery borne by some even in the so called progressive time.
Arjun Dangle in his essay "Dalit Literature: Past, Present and Future" points out, that the living condition of the untouchable was shameful. They had no land to till nor could they follow any profession. They did menial work, were treated like animals, lived apart from the village and had to accept leftovers from the higher caste people, in return for their endless toil. Their physical contact was said to pollute the upper caste - even their shadow was said to have the same effect. Hindu religious texts forbade them to wear good clothes or ornaments or even footwear and prescribed severe and humiliating punishment for violating these orders. Even for a basic necessity like water they were helplessly dependent on higher caste good will. The most perverted practice was that at one time they were compelled to tie an earthen pot around their necks so that their sputum should not fall on the earth and pollute it. Another was the compulsion to tie a broom behind them so that their footprints would be erased before others set their eyes on them.
Dalit narratives are not only self portraits but also a social commentary and testimonial which lays bare their suffering. Constructed as the staging of traumatic experiences suffered by the protagonists, beginning in the vulnerable years of childhood, they exhibit the burden of being on the periphery treated as outcastes and looked at with suspicion. The repetitive encounter with injustice burns searingly into the memory of the narrator-protagonist, marking their progress through life, carrying scars of rejection and oppression.
In all the narratives where power operations are at work, the writer unfolds a tale of social truth that bespeaks its own historical reality. Right from Premchand to Sharan Kumar Limbale in all the narratives where community acts as an agency of change or control as in Raja Rao's Kanthapura (1958) or Phaneshwar Nath Renu's Maila Anchal (1954) it is power and caste politics that comes to the fore. It may be a tale of misery and suffering where an individual is crushed by oppressive forces as in Premchand's Godan (1936) or an entire community fighting for its rights against an inhuman social system, the basic reason for discrimination and mistreatment is lack of power and knowledge. Knowledge got through education and exposure gives one the power to struggle. Foucault's concept of knowledge and power gives validity when applied to such situations:
Power and knowledge directly imply one another, that there is no power relation without the correlative constituency of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not pre-suppose and constitute at the same time, power relations. (Foucault 1977)
Commenting on, what is dalit literature, Sharat Chandra Mukti bodh says " a feeling of rebellion is invariably accompanied by an extreme psychological commitment as dalit sensibility seeks to bring about compatible changes in the social consciousness, it is rebellious as well as fundamentally optimistic and revolutionary" (Poisoned Bread, 267). It can be perceived in the present times the dalits are gradually getting integrated in the mainstream of the society and combination of factors like ameliorative efforts of the government, the growing consciousness of the dalits and the changing attitude of the masses has diminished the disabilities and discrimination with the passage of time.
Arun Prabha Mukherjee has compared dalit writers to African, American writers who have depicted social prohibitions, race relations and politics. To quote her:
"Reading Dalit writing and African American or African Canadian writing is painful because they insist on fracturing the universal reader along race, gender, caste and class lives. Dalit writing forces the reader to acknowledge his or her complicity in benefitting from the system that is responsible for the dalit's oppression (63).
The writings which I have tried to examine is a review of the movement of the progressive literature of this period which unfurls various aspects of personal experience and aims to bring about a change. I will sum up by quoting Bakurao Bagul's impressive argument in his essay, Dalit Literature is but Human Literature, "A human being is not inherently, dalit or untouchable. It is the system that degrades him in this fashion. When the system is changed, the human being regains his human essence. Therefore literature that portrays the human being is infact, not dalit literature at all" (289).
Over the years, dalit literature has begun to bring about a change, to enable non- dalits to deconstruct a traditional mindset and puts forward a new and subversive ethic which not only awakens the conscience of non- dalits but which fills all dalits themselves with confidence and pride. Thus it shares its aim with other marginalized and subaltern groups worldwide, reflecting the global literature of oppressed whose politics must be an active one that fights for human rights, social justice and equality. Thus dalit literature can be considered as a reflection in literary and linguistic terms as ‘politics of liberation’. It is a form of movement which aims to bring about change, representing the hopes and ambitions of a new society and new people.
Works Cited
Ambedkar, B.R. "Speech at Mahad". Translated by Rameshchandra Sirkar. Poisoned Bread ed. Arjun Dangle. Mumbai : Orient Longman, 1994.
Bagul, Baburao. “Dalit Literature is but Human Literature” Poisoned Bread ed. Arjun Dangle. Mumbai : Orient Longman, 1994.
Dangle, Arjun. "Dalit Literature : Past, Present and Future". Poisoned Bread ed. Arjun Dangle. Mumbai : Orient Longman, 1994.
Dangle, Arjun eds. Poisoned Bread. Translations from modern Marathi Dalit Literature. Mumbai : Orient Londman, 1994.
Foucault, Michel. Archeology of Knowledge (1969). Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. London, New York : Routledge, 2002.
Limbale, Sharankumar. Akkarmashi (The Outcaste). Translated by Santosh Bhoomkar. New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 2008.
-----. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature : History, Controversies and Considerations. New Delhi : Orient Longman, 2004.
Mukherjee, Arun Prabha. Oppositional Aesthetics : Reading from a Hyphenated Space. Toronto : TSAR Publications, 1994.
Muktibodh, Sharatchandra. "What is Dalit Literature?" Poisoned Bread ed. Arjun Dangle. Mumbai : Orient Longman, 1994.
Pawar, Daya Baluta. (Acchoot). Translated by Damodar Khadse. New Delhi : Radhakrishan Prakashan, 2010.