Tradition, Exploitation and the Expression of Revolt
in the Dalit Autobiographies of Kumud Pawde and Bama
Debayan Nag
Ph. D. Research
Scholar
Department of
English
Central
University of Rajasthan
Rajasthan, India
Abstract:
Dalit
literature is a reflection of the oppression inflicted by the rigours of the
traditional caste system upon the lowest section of the community. The Mahars
of Maharashtra and Parayas of Tamil Nadu are among such communities who have
been the victim of hegemony in different ways. To analyze the expression of
revolt against the established tradition, the paper has taken into
consideration the autobiographies of Kumud Pawde and Bama from these
communities respectively. Each of them provides different expression of this
revolt. Pawde silently but firmly
opposes all religious and ideological obstacles towards her earning a degree in
Sanskrit. Bama, more than directly protesting against the exploitation,
provides a vivid elaboration of it thereby striking the reader’s conscience. As
a literature of revolt, Dalit literature is ‘separate’ in the sense that it
attempts to create a distinct tradition against the one existing for decades.
Keywords:
Dalit; tradition; rebellion; religion; caste; oppression
You
are not a Hindu or a Muslim!
You
are an abandoned spark of the
World’s
lusty fires. (Dangle 65)
These
were the lines from Prakash Jadhav’s poem Under
Dadar Bridge, originally written in Marathi. Steeped in agony and the
burden of an inner sanctum of consciousness and freedom fractured by decades of
tradition, this is one of the many narrative voices of rebellion popularized in
Dalit literature. The liberation from untouchability influenced by the actions
of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was in pursuit of bringing about a social revolution. As
Ambedkar himself said (noted in Poisoned
Bread)
We
must uproot the four-caste system and untouchability, and set the society on
the foundation of the two principles of one caste and of equality… (ix)
The
initiation of the Dalit Literary Movement organized helped the Indian
underprivileged lower caste identify their position in a society, culture and
tradition comprising of language and religion. The reflection of the atrocities
inflicted upon by caste brought forth this new and separate ‘literature of
revolt’ of Dalit writers as Gail Omvedt called in the Preface to Poisoned Bread. But what was this
tradition? How did it go about exploiting one section of society by privileging
another? How was this revolt voiced by the Dalit writers in their ‘separate’
literature? I shall seek to answer these questions by taking into consideration
the aspects of language and religion. I will focus on the narrative form of
autobiography by Dalit writers addressing more specifically an extract from the
Dalit writer Kumud Pawde’s Antasphot and the Dalit Christian woman writer Bama’s Karukku.
The
reason for considering two Dalit texts from separate parts of India – one
Marathi and the other Tamil – was due to the fact that the Dalit movement with
its strongholds in Maharashtra despite losing its efflorescence had a strong
flow in other Indian states and languages as Omvedt stated. The separate minor
communities in the subcontinent follow their individual cultures and religion
but in terms of caste bondage and oppression by white collars, all of them
suffered the same sense of, what Marx called ‘false consciousness’. “Ideology
prevents the recognition of oppression by the oppressed…a veil that prevents
the oppressed from proper understanding” (Nayar 130) of their condition.
Ambedkar referred to the same thing as a caste-feudal bondage stating that this
‘mental slavery’ of seeing the bondage to be their right as the reason that
held the Dalits and untouchable communities backwards.
This
bondage was one of the means of exploitation and Kumud Pawde, in a way,
attempted to break this bondage by fighting for and upholding her true right.
Her form of rebellion was a silent, skeptical one, a deliberate refusal to
accept compliments. Pawde had post graduated in Sanskrit traditionally regarded
to be the language meant only for the Brahmin caste. When she got an assistant
lectureship and later became “a professor in the famous college [Morris
College] where I studied” (Dangle 122) she received several compliments. In Antasphot she stated that after hearing
herself praised, she felt that she was being stung by several gadflies which
made her look askance at the individual who was praising her.
The
reason is that the tradition of casteism made it unsettling for the Indian mind
to combine such a sacred language and the underprivileged Mahar community from
which she originated. This led to her being a victim of a traditional mind that
tormented her using ironic and sarcastic comments:
“Well,
isn’t that amazing! So you’re teaching Sanskrit at the government college, are
you?” or “All our sacred scriptures have been polluted” or even “It’s all over!
Kaliyug has dawned. After all,
they’re the government’s favourite sons-in-law!” (111)
Though
Pawde is writing in post-independent India, this ideology of discrimination is
still strongly grounded and though Dalits have earned their liberation
outwardly, casteism kept their inner self bound by conflict, struggle and
anxiety. So the struggle to break free from tradition and attain her goal
continued even after she earned her place in society. Caste thus became so
rooted to her as a form of social and political identity that forgetting it
became impossible, something she and the other members in her community were
born with. Her form of rebellion was to
reciprocate with the very weapon of oppression that had offended her all her
life and added obstacles during her studies in college. In the felicitation
ceremony at Nagpur on the Vijaya Dashami day of 1971, her introductory speech
in Sanskrit reverberated her mixture of emotions having both a sense of anxiety
and pride
Whereas
our traditional books have forbidden the study of Sanskrit by women and
Shudras, a woman from those very Shudras, from the lowest caste among them,
will today, in Sanskrit, introduce these scholars. (113)
The
response which followed also conceded a reflection of mixed emotions among the
multi-caste audience – the traditionalists were furious conscious of their
defeat whereas she earned respect from some of the acquaintances from her
community.
Kumud
Pawde’s revolt against the orthodox Brahmins did not begin only after her
lectureship. Her whole life was reminiscent of this act of rebellion. Her
curiosity towards learning Sanskrit was not inborn; it was aroused when
uninvited she secretly visited the thread-ceremony of an upper caste
classmate’s brother (115). There she witnessed the Brahminical ceremony in a
pandal, the sacrificial fire and Vedic chants of ‘svaha’ that occupied her. Her
sense of self-respect was infuriated when on discovery she, being a Mahar, was
driven out like a beggar. So is her devotion to learning Sanskrit actually an
act of Dalit vengeance, a desire to stand firm against all odds of conventional
ideology? Or is it a genuine eagerness to learn this elite language despite all
odds? The answer is not completely certain because she did not receive
opposition only from the ivory tower Hindus. There were people from her own
Mahar community who laughed at her interest in studying Sanskrit and who
constantly reminded her of her limitations. This was a result of stubbornly
adhering to those systems of beliefs, the notion that hegemony is legitimate, a
submission to the tradition of upper castes. Therefore it is clear that this
revolt was an individual struggle carried out only by her, what Gramsci would
call a ‘passive revolution’ as he mentioned in Prison Notebooks, because it did not involve “a social group which
‘led’ other groups, but a State which… ‘led’ the group which should have been
‘leading’” (194). Only here it was not the State but the religious structure
which led the ideology of the community.
During
her college period, she experienced more of this stagnant ideology and false
consciousness that shone in the similar attitude of dislike at her receiving a
scholarship, from the peons to the officials in the higher positions. Reformers
from the lower castes mocked her ability to teach Sanskrit – “Government
Brahmins, aren’t they?” (120). The truth is that Pawde was idealistic but not
in the sense she was considered by the then Chief minister of Maharashtra. Her
act of revolt back then was only a means of survival. She protested against the
hypocritical promises of a job as she was starving. When unemployed after
receiving her Master’s degree she presented her case to the Central Cabinet
Minister Shri Jagjivan Ram stating how she was disgusted by the hypocrisy of
the state government and administration for flouting the Constitution.
Kumud
Pawde’s autobiography Antasphot was
reflective of the pangs of Dalit Mahar community who are forced to be made
aware of their caste throughout their life even in independent India. In a
similar manner, Bama, the teacher of Mathematics in Uthiramerur, witnessed and
underwent a similar kind of experience with her family in the Tamil Paraya
community before which made her realize this dormant traditional structure. In Karukku, she heightened in greater
detail the atrocities committed by the Naicker community and violence of
casteism which is the chief reason why I chose this autobiography for the
article. Bama was not an outspoken rebel to the extent Kumud Pawde had been. By
elaborating the horrific events of untouchability and Christianity she
witnessed during her childhood and as nun she rather speaks through the
reader’s consciousness. Karukku makes
readers realize without a doubt what Anna Bhau Sathe, from the untouchable Mang
community of Maharashtra, proclaimed in his poem Take a Hammer to Change the World:
The
rich have exploited us without end,
The
priests have tortured us … (5)
The
sight of her mother vomiting blood after carrying a heavy load, the irrational
beating of the men in her village by hired policemen over the rights of a
cemetery were but some of these instances of ‘torture’. Bama churns this Dalit
rebellion by voicing the oppressive structure.
In
Bama’s autobiography, the Paraya community, mostly agricultural laborers, lived
by fishing, gathering firewood from the mountains and other odd tasks. The
village they lived in had no such works allotted to them for which the Parayas
and their neighboring Pallars had to undertake menial chores and any work they
could find as that was their only mode of earning. Contrarily, the Naicker
community had every privilege that was reserved for the upper caste
Most
of the land belonged to the Naicker community…The post office, the panchayat
board, the milk-depot, the big shops, the church, the schools – all these stood
in their streets. (6-7)
The
existence of untouchability was revealed before her when she witnessed an elder
from their community who was carrying a packet for a Naicker but being
untouchable had to hold it by its string. It was the embedded ideology that
Naickers being the white collars must not touch Parayas to avoid getting
polluted, something mentioned by Pawde too when a friend of hers was warned by
her mother not to touch her or she would not be allowed inside the house
anymore. Bama’s personal struggle with identity began when she questioned,
“What did it mean when they called us ‘Paraya’? Had the name become that
obscene?” (16). She said that only later realization dawned upon her from
Paatti, a relative, the existence of hegemony, the domination not just through
violence but by winning the consent of the upper caste to be dominated. And
here the consent is masked in their being dependent on the Naickers for
survival. As the relative revealed to Bama that they regarded these upper caste
people as the maharajas without which their survival would become very difficult.
In
order to keep the hegemony invisible, it was necessary that the Parayas accept
untouchability as “natural, something inevitable and consider it a good state
of affairs even though what passed in the name of this ideology was clearly
exploitation. And the community would never complain. Most of them accepted the
toil they had to endure as something inevitable and began to see themselves the
way Naickers treated them, what the African American scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois
called ‘double consciousness’. But can the same thing be stated about Bama when
she questioned her identity? By questioning, she did not accept the existing
tradition without doubt and later began acting upon it as a teacher, as a nun
helping the lower class people and for this sole purpose only leaving the
confines of the convent later. Exploitation in the name of untouchability was
heightened when she described the way Naickers gave water and food to the
labourers. The Parayas would be given water from a great height by the Naickers
and they had to receive and drink it with cupped hands. Even the food they were
given were actually the stale and unwanted leftovers from the previous night.
Besides
untouchability, discrimination too existed right from the school level where
the Dalit students were embarrassed being born low, initially denied
celebration for the First Communion. Again in the convent she was identified
not by her education but by being a ‘Nadar’ or ‘Parayar’. As a convent nun, she
realized that all claims of equality in God’s eyes and limitless love were a
mere outward display.
the
Jesus they worshipped there was a wealthy Jesus… When outsiders arrived,
flaunting their wealth…they were treated with one sort of love; if they did not
have these things…I am not sure there was any love at all in this case. (106)
The
upper class Christians used the convent religion as the institution to imbibe
the Dalit class by provoking a blind belief. By highlighting this imposed
devotion, Bama’s attack was directed against this institution of religion by
showing its inner hypocrisy. In the non-linear narrative mode of Karukku she provided a direct response
thereby voicing the need to rebel against these social institutions so that
they are no longer provoked into constant submission, and presenting her firm
belief that there were no one high or low among human beings.
The
Dalit ‘literature of revolt’ was a form of resistance against both the
traditional and socio-political structure established by caste. The
separateness of Dalit literature is due to the fact that it makes possible to
talk in the language of caste that help them break the boundaries of
marginalization. Sharankumar Limbale asserted that all Dalit life and
experiences flow “from a centuries-old hierarchical and hereditary system… with
the concomitant notion of people as polluted and untouchable, which make the
Dalit unique and distinct.” (11) The contemporary discourses of Dalit writings
have been shaped by the autobiographical form that privileges the author as the
one and only proper source of the narrative and truth. Pramod Nayar quoted:
Resistance
literature in every culture – working class poetry, anti-colonial writings or
women’s narratives – has provided ideologies different from the acceptable
ones. (133)
Pawde and Bama through the vast expanse of
their experiences have pointed out the way exploitation stems from a
Brahminical tradition and their act of was in response to the act of creating
this new ideology different from the established ones – the slavery, Manusmriti, dharma or swadharma
referred to by Omvedt – which are the original source of this oppression. Where
they have been successful in problematizing ways of looking at cultural
tradition, building a separate ideology through separate Dalit literature was
not an easy task. Arjun Dangle pointed out “Marathi literary tradition is about
nine hundred years old while that of Dalit literature is hardly sixty to
seventy years old” (I). The separate tradition was in response to an awakened
self of the Dalits, brought forth by this voice of rebellion that encouraged
them to accept new ideas of culture, language and religion.
Works
Cited
Bama, Karukku.
Translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom, edited by Mini Krishnan, 2nd ed.,
Oxford University Press, 2014.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From The Prison Notebooks.
Edited and translated by Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, ElecBook,
1999, pp. 194.
Jadhav, Prakash. “Under
Dadar Bridge”. Poisoned Bread, edited
by Arjun Dangle, New ed., Orient Blackswan, 2018, pp. 65-68.
Limbale, Sharankumar. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature:
History, Controversies and Considerations. Translated and edited by Alok
Mukherjee, Orient BlackSwan, 2004, pp. 11.
Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory:
from Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Pearson, 2010, pp. 130-134.
Pawde, Kumud. “The
Story of My ‘Sanskrit’”. Antasphot,
translated by Priya Adarkar. Poisoned
Bread, edited by Arjun Dangle, New ed., Orient Blackswan, 2018, pp.
110-122.
Sathe, Anna Bhau. “Take
a Hammer to Change the World”. Poisoned
Bread, edited by Arjun Dangle, New ed., Orient BlackSwan, 2018, pp. 5.