Impending
Misfortune of the Dalits: Physical and Psychological Distress of Mahar Tribes
in Selected Texts
Subhadeep Naha,
Student of English Literature (M.A.),
Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University (CBPBU),
Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: The objective of this research
paper is to critically examine the tragic consequences and psychological trauma
endured by the Mahar community in Waman Hoval’s story “The Storeyed House”, while also analysing B. Rangarao’s story “Loneliness of An Ex-Soldier”. Both
stories highlight the enduring, pernicious nature of marginalisation, a
practice that has persisted in Indian society for centuries and continues into
the twenty-first century. People of the Mahar community constantly face
deprivation and oppression by the upper classes due to their caste identity;
they are denied basic rights such as education and adequate housing that are
readily enjoyed by upper-caste individuals. In Hoval’s story, the protagonist
Bayaji’s two-story house is burned down at the instigation of Patil and his
associates. In contrast, Rangarao’s story highlights the forced abduction and
murder of Sumi by upper-caste individuals, intended to intimidate her brother,
an incident that illustrates the brutal exercise of the social class structure.
Through a close analysis of these texts, the article elaborates on the physical
and mental suffering inflicted upon the Mahar community as a result of
entrenched social injustices, particularly upper-caste hegemony. At the same
time, it explores potential avenues for resistance and reform.
Keywords: Marginalisation, Mahar Tribe, Tragic Fate, Psychological
Distress, Misfortune.
“The
purification required is not of untouchables but of the so–called superior
castes.” -Mahatma
Gandhi (90)
‘Mahar’ is a tribal community
recognised as a scheduled tribe, mainly belonging to the state of Maharashtra
and its neighbouring areas. Renowned Marathi short story writer Waman
Hoval’s magnificent work “The Storeyed House” is solely based on a Mahar
family’s physical and mental sufferings. Bayaji, as the protagonist of this
text, invested all his resources to build his two-storeyed house, but due to an
arson, he not only lost that dream house but also his precious life. In the
same way, B. Rangarao tried to focus on the tribulations of the Mahar people by
representing a tribal family in his recently published short story collection “Desperate
Men and Women”, which encapsulates one of the best short stories titled “Loneliness
of An Ex-Soldier”. In it Rangarao, by his deft artistry, accentuates the
miserable conditions of the protagonist Wasudeo Bhivsan Khandare. Both these
stories are largely influenced by the distress of the Mahar people, where
suppression is normalised. Generally, the Mahar tribe comes under the outcast
Dalit group, as the outsiders of the four-fold caste system of Hinduism
consisting of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. It involves the
division of people into social groups (Caste), where assignments of rights are
fixed based on their birth, occupation (profession) and heredity. For this
norm, the upper caste people take advantage of it. Society has some provisions
that may corrupt and demoralise all mankind. The ‘Caste system’ is a
major part of it, which can easily destroy people’s moral beliefs and can be
the cause of destruction.
Hoval’s
literary work powerfully illustrates the oppressive dominance of the
upper-caste Patil, who wields his unethical authority to torment the
protagonist, Bayaji, without facing any consequences. This unchecked power
underscores the aristocracy’s stranglehold over society and exposes the
limitations of the Indian Constitution in protecting the marginalised. For
years, such authoritarian figures have suppressed the proletariat, perpetuating
a stark class divide that subjugates those with little or no power.
While
returning to his village, sixty-year-old Bayaji unexpectedly meets the
domineering village leader Bhujaba but cannot bow to him due to his heavy
luggage. In a fit of rage, Bhujaba sneers, “Do you think that simply saying
‘Namaskar’ makes one a Brahmin?”. (Hoval, 177) Through the lens of
Marxist theory, this encounter exemplifies hegemony, where the powerful assert
their dominance to subjugate the weaker, reinforcing the systemic oppression.
The aristocracy often divides society into two rigid groups— the superior upper
caste and the inferior “slave” class. Based on class hierarchy, they
always expect subservience from the people of lower strata through gestures
like folding hands and saying “Namaste” upon every encounter. This
mirrors the colonial era, where the British rulers treated native people with
disdain, scolding, abusing, or even beating them as traitors when they resisted
or failed to perform assigned tasks. Upon learning of Bayaji’s retirement from
the migratory toil of Bombay and Pune, Bhujaba’s avarice surfaces with
predatory swiftness, his query “How much can a day labourer earn?” dripping
with rapacious insinuation. This interrogation unmasks a toxic brew of envy and
existential peril, where the spectre of a subaltern’s modest prosperity erodes
the landlord’s unchallenged hegemony. Bhujaba’s conduct ignites a fire of
intense resentment within Bayaji; for a fleeting moment, he harbours a desire
for the kind of mental liberation that revenge could bring by imagining himself
striking down his tormentor with that very wooden chest, which held the fruits
of his urban exile. Bhujaba, the village's tyrannical landlord, embodies the
quintessential feudal oppressor; he abuses his power to relegate Bayaji to a
state of perpetual subjugation and degradation, stripping him of his very
identity and dignity.
Bayaji’s
quiet pride in his hard-earned savings secretly excites Bhujaba’s greed,
leading him to plot ways to steal most of the money. When Bayaji returned home,
the look of selfish expectation in his family members’ eyes, hoping for gifts
and trinkets, suddenly transformed into sheer delight and excitement, for he
proudly shared his dream of replacing their old, dilapidated, three-sectioned
hut with a tall, multi-storied house. In this scene, the writer Hoval presents
materialism not as a selfish sin, but as a bold act of rebellion. Bayaji’s
strong desire to live in a grand, respectable house challenges the rich
landlords’ exclusive right to live in an adequate shelter. As the thinker Erich
Fromm might have put it in his book Escape from Freedom, all human
beings harbour this deep, latent yearning for a better life, yet for
people like Bayaji, it is unjustly denied. This makes Bayaji a relatable and
human character, much like Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The
Great Gatsby, whose luxurious mansion was actually an attempt to win social
respect and belonging. (57)
While
Bayaji’s family celebrates this ambitious plan, the village headmen and
landlords grew angry and resentful. They see the plan as an audacious challenge
to their traditional authority and the established social order. When Bayaji
formally inaugurated the construction work, entrusting the task to the skilled
builder Dattaram Vadar at an auspicious moment during the New Year, the act
amounted to a cultural rebellion or an act of defiance against age-old customs.
The news of this spreads rapidly through the village, as wildfire expands
throughout the jungle. This powerful simile carries a sense of coming danger,
similar to how rumours in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart spread
quickly and tear the community apart, just as colonial influences began to
destroy traditional African village life. (33)
As
the walls of Bayaji’s new house began to rise, the influential landlord
Kondiba, who himself owned a towering, magnificent mansion suddenly arrived,
seething with rage. Angrily, he demanded of Bayaji, “By building this house, do
you aspire to attain a status equal to ours?” This question lays bare the
deep-seated fear and hatred harbored by the upper castes against any attempt by
the lower castes to lead a life of dignity. This question lays bare the
deep-seated fear and animosity harboured by upper-caste individuals against any
attempt by lower-caste people to lead a dignified life. Subsequently, under the
guise of offering ‘fatherly’ advice, Kondiba suggests that Bayaji build a
modest, simple house consisting of only three sections and a veranda. However,
whenever Bayaji attempts to offer a response, the true threat emerges with
expulsion from the village and the confiscation of all his possessions. There
is no room for discussion. This complete silencing of Bayaji’s voice
illustrates how members of the upper castes suppress the voices of Dalits or
marginalised (subaltern) communities, depriving them of the right to live with
dignity and to maintain control over their own spaces.
This
situation brilliantly highlights the famous question posed in scholar Gayatri
Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”— marginalised communities are
not inherently silent; rather, those in power deliberately erase or ignore
their voices. Spivak explained how local patriarchal men (brown men) and
colonial powers (white men) jointly worked to legitimize practices like ‘Sati’;
they claimed to be “protecting” women, yet in reality, they were silencing
women’s voices. (73) Similarly, in Bayaji’s story, the combination of
upper-caste men and the lingering colonial-era mindset perpetuates the system
of untouchability that keeps Dalits suppressed. Hoval has shown that this
oppression affects men as well as women; any person from a lower caste falls
victim to this discrimination rooted in birth and skin colour.
Upper-caste
individuals maintain their dominance by skillfully framing inequality as
something natural and ordinary, leading those from lower castes to accept it
without question. In his Prison Notebooks, the Italian thinker Antonio
Gramsci termed this concept ‘hegemony’ or ‘cultural dominance’; the powerful
construct a ‘false consciousness’ that causes the oppressed to willingly accept
the existing system and view any form of protest as impossible or wrong. (79)
This is much like the ruling party in Orwell’s novel 1984, which controls
people’s minds by using ‘Newspeak’, a special language designed to limit
rebellious thought. (31) In Hoval’s story, we witness the workings of this
hegemony, where power is maintained not merely through overt force, but by
shaping people’s beliefs and culture in such a way that injustice persists
unchallenged and the oppressed remain silent.
Despite
the ongoing construction work, Bayaji ignored Kondiba’s warnings. Instead, he
focused on his dream and built a simple room with a wooden floor on the upper
level of the house’s central section. He then joyfully performed the
housewarming ceremony and entered his new home with the high spirits of a
wealthy landlord. Enraged, the village headman (Patil) secretly colluded with
some local miscreants and set fire to the house from all sides. Trapped amidst
sheer panic and terror, Bayaji ran frantically around the burning house like a
helpless wanderer, repeatedly crying out in anguish, “Help! Help! My house is
on fire”. His agonising cries echo the plight of those impoverished workers
whose dreams were shattered in Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, a
world where immigrant labourers lost everything amidst the brutal realities of
the factory and poverty. The burning of the house symbolises the complete
shattering of a poor Dalit individual’s hopes and aspirations. It is a
manifestation of the cruel violence inflicted by the dominant upper castes upon
the weak and the powerless. (Sinclair, 91)
B.
R. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution and a great Dalit leader,
established robust principles of equality and liberty with the aim of
protecting people from such injustice. Yet, the tragic fate of Bayaji seems to
render those promises meaningless and powerless. Overcome by intense agony and
frenzy, Bayaji plunged into the raging flames; despite suffering severe burns,
he did not give up and kept fighting on until he finally collapsed from sheer
exhaustion. This suffering of him culminates in a kind of irrational tragedy,
akin to the meaningless existence of Meursault, the protagonist of Albert
Camus’s novel The Stranger; a state where a person’s actions ultimately
yield nothing but emptiness and the indifference of the world. (46) In the end,
everything such as Bayaji’s dreams, his body, and his future turns to ash. This
represents a horrific violation of a Dalit individual’s fundamental rights to a
home, equality, and dignity. No one is punished for this ‘unnatural death’.
Neither the police nor the courts deliver any justice. This reveals how
upper-caste individuals continue to control the government and the legal
system. This runs counter to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948),
which states that every human being is born free and equal and possesses a
fundamental dignity that cannot be taken away. Through this heart-wrenching
conclusion, the author, Hoval, exposes the false promise of justice in
independent India. Behind the eloquent language of the Constitution lies the
enduring cruelty of the caste system. This story compels readers to confront the
silent suffering and devastation of the oppressed Dalit community.
B.
Rangarao’s work “Loneliness of an
Ex-Soldier” offers a poignant critique of the socio-economic and
cultural adversities faced by Wasudeo Bhivsan Khandare. The protagonist, Wasu,
who hails from the marginalised ‘Mahar’ community, joins the Indian ‘Mahar
Battalion’ and serves the nation with unwavering dedication for fifteen long
years. However, upon returning to civilian life, he is confronted with the
harsh realities of caste-based discrimination and deeply entrenched
conservative social customs. A significant subplot of the story revolves around
Wasu’s sister, Sumi; despite successfully completing her secondary education
and aspiring to pursue higher studies, she faces staunch opposition from her
parents. This reflects a deeply ingrained colonial mindset, one where
patriarchal and caste-based norms govern individual aspirations. Anne
Bradstreet’s restrained yet powerful voice resonates with this kind of concern;
her writings subtly challenged patriarchal restrictions from within the Puritan
framework.
Here,
the issue of women’s education is primarily governed by patriarchal norms; this
exemplifies Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘cultural hegemony’, a system wherein
dominance is maintained not through coercion, but through consent accepted as
the natural order. A parallel can be drawn here with Rabindranath Tagore’s play
Chandalika, in which Prakriti’s mother reminds her of her ‘low-caste’
identity when she dares to love the Buddhist monk Ananda. This moment of
internalised oppression reflects Sumi’s situation; both works clearly
illustrate how marginalised people are conditioned to accept and perpetuate the
subjugation imposed upon them.
Wasu’s
transformation from a retired soldier into a community change-maker essentially
reflects a shift from serving the state to dedicating himself to the service of
marginalised groups. By initiating discussions on politics and social reform,
he fostered a sense of ‘critical consciousness’ among the youth of the Mahar
community. In this regard, he bears a resemblance to Raju—the protagonist of
R.K. Narayan’s novel The Guide, who ultimately emerges as a spiritual
guide for the people of the village of Mangal. However, this gradual awakening
disrupts existing caste-based hegemony. The refusal of the Mahar community to
perform the traditional ‘Johar’ ritual, to beg during festivals, or to engage
in exploitative labour serves as an expression of resistance by a marginalised
group. This inclination towards education and a sense of self-respect
destabilized the socio-economic structure, resulting in a labour crisis for
upper-caste landowners. This assertion of dignity was met with a violent
backlash; measures such as intimidation and symbolic aggression were employed
in an attempt to re-establish dominance.
The
situation became even more complex when fabricated allegations of desecrating
an idol of Lord Hanuman were levelled against Wasu’s followers. Acting as an
instrument of institutional bias, the police arrested innocent youths without
any evidence and subjected them to brutal torture. This incident exposed a
collusion between caste-based power, the state apparatus, and religious
manipulation, where even sacred symbols are weaponised to suppress and control
marginalised communities.
On
his way home from a distant farm, Wasu became very thirsty. Seeing some women
drawing water from a well, he asked for a drink. Just as one woman was about to
pour water from her pitcher, another stopped her, saying, “He is an untouchable
Mahar; he will defile the water in our well”. (Rangarao,84) This scene vividly
illustrates the caste-based prejudices prevalent in India during the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, a situation of which Ambedkar himself, as a ‘Mahar’,
was a victim. Having been denied access to the classroom and treated as a
social outcast, he later declared in his book Annihilation of Caste that
the practice of untouchability had degraded the Mahars to a status even lower
than that of a human being.
The
tragedy reaches its peak when Basu’s only sister, Sumi, never returns from the
riverbank. From a feminist perspective, it is said, “Gender-based oppression is
a pervasive issue. Yet, there lies a deeply ironic paradox within it: the women
who recognise the oppression inflicted upon them are not necessarily the ones
who suffer the most. The true victims are those who, remaining completely
unaware of their own subjugation, silently bear the weight of invisible
chains.” Sumi is the very embodiment of this cruel irony; as an innocent,
oppressed adolescent girl, she was completely unaware of the complex and
oppressive shackles of both caste and gender, a lack of awareness that left her
doubly vulnerable. Although she tried to reassure her anxious parents, an inner
instinct kept warning Wasu of impending danger. Alongside her friends, she
launched a frantic search operation in the area along the riverbank. When all
efforts failed, a boy suddenly pointed towards the riverbank and ran. Sumi’s
mangled body lay there in the mud; her torn clothes, deep scratch marks, and
blood- stained thighs bore witness to the fact that she had been brutally raped
and murdered.
Upper-caste
men took revenge on Wasu by raping and murdering his innocent sister. His
parents are left shattered and numb with grief. Despite his own intense
anguish, Wasu remains adamant about reporting the crime to the police. Yet,
justice remains elusive; the police conduct a perfunctory investigation, return
the body within hours, and take no action against the perpetrators. This
harrowing picture of institutional collusion reflects the brutal reality
depicted in Meena Kandasamy’s novel Gypsy Goddess, where upper-caste
landlords rape and murder Dalits, while the police shield the very perpetrators
of such oppression. Through Sumi’s silent, unacknowledged suffering and the
state’s indifference, this narrative reveals how oppression based on caste and
gender persists not merely through overt violence, but through the normalised
silence that envelops society’s most invisible victims.
Essentially,
the political imperative of ‘unity in diversity’ as envisioned by Ambedkar
forms the central theme of the story “The Storeyed House”. The influence
of ‘micro-politics’ is evident throughout the narrative. Rangarao’s “Loneliness
of An Ex-soldier” skillfully portrays an ex-soldier’s struggle against the
agony of untouchability and a hostile environment; notably, both stories
critique the orthodoxy prevalent within the Indian judicial system. This type
of structural oppression inspired many within the Mahar community including the
renowned Dr B.R. Ambedkar, to embrace Buddhism; through this, they chose a path
to reclaim their dignity and reject the caste-based hierarchy. Inspired by
Buddhist ideals and Ambedkar’s example, many others from the Mahar community
followed the same path, seeking liberation from centuries of subjugation. Thus,
the concept prevalent in Indian society that ‘all are equal before the law’,
has been presented in a completely different, or even distorted, light within
Dalit literature; in doing so, it has opened up a new perspective for readers
to comprehend the plight of the underprivileged in contemporary society.
Works
Cited
Achebe,
Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Heinemann, 1958.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Translated
by Matthew Ward, Vintage International, 1989.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great
Gatsby. Scribner, 2004.
Gandhi, M. K., and R. K. Prabhu,
editors and compilers. Caste Must Go and the Sin of Untouchability.
Navajivan Pub. House, 1964.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from
the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell Smith, International Publishers, 1971.
Hoval, G. K. “The Storeyed House
of Bayaji.” Contemporary Indian Short Stories in English, Edited by Shiv K.
Kumar, Sahitya Akademi, 1991.
Orwell, George. 1984. Signet
Classics, 1950.
Rangarao, B. Desperate Men and
Women: Ten Dalit Short stories from India. Kalpaz Publications, 2013.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Dover
Publications, 2001.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can
the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Edited by
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, U of Illinois P, 1988.