Confronting Life

Publisher: Penguin

Price: Rs 599

Pages: 639

Book: The Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing

Edited by: Ravikumar amp; R. Azhagarasan

Publisher: OUP

Price: Rs 595

Pages: 334

To talk about dalit writing is to speak about the most central and pressing issues in modern Indian society education,law,democracy,urbanisation,to name a few. To understand this changing society from a dalit perspective is the challenge and opportunity put forth in two recent volumes: Penguins No Alphabet in Sight and OUPs The Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing.

It shouldnt be a surprise that Susie Tharu is behind the excellent No Alphabet in Sight,the first of two volumes on New Dalit Writing from South India. She,along with K. Lalita,co-edited the path-breaking,two-volume Women Writing in India. That set of volumes,as I predict will be the case with this new set that Tharu co-edits with K. Satyanarayana,was not a mere historical resource but made history itself.

This first volume of No Alphabet in Sight,which the editors call a dossier to emphasise the range of documents poetry,fiction,social analysis,cultural critique,and political speech is a 640-page tome of works translated from Tamil and Malayalam. These are grounded,textured accounts,whether on the history of slavery in Kerala by Sanal Mohan or in the poetry of M.R. Renukumar that goes: When / I hear / smouldering / truths,/ when / I witness / scenes / that wilt,/ a saw-blade sneers / sharp within.

The 70-page introduction to the volume written by the editors could be a publication in its own right; it carefully plots the significance of writing by dalits after the 1990 Mandal Commission,which began a national debate on caste and the rediscovery of Ambedkar as a national figure. The editors emphasise that caste today is not about the scourge of tradition,but rather,it is a contemporary form of power as it works in renewed and updated forms in modern contexts and institutions. It is so engrained in modern and yes,urban institutions that the beneficiaries upper castes can say caste doesnt exist anymore; actually it exists for them as powerfully as it does for lower castes.

It is significant that the volume has appeared in English,not merely because English is a world language,a language of academe,or one of Indias link languages. It is because English is the language of the Indian elite and large sections of the middle classes,and dalit experience and perspectives are central to the understanding of this middle class privilege. English is one of those Indian institutions from which dalits have long been excluded. In these high-quality,natural-sounding translations,dalit experiences intrude on,and forever change,the English world view.

As the editors state,the caste problem is not something lower castes suffer from. Rather,it is the flip side of the social,economic,and educational infrastructure that enables upper castes to negotiate modern society and its institutions. It is not about the past and historical redress,but rather about what caste has become in the modern world,hidden only for those who already reap benefits from institutions that favor upper castes whether in law,education,the arts or public culture. As the Malayali writer Stalin Rajangam observes,It is a deep-set caste mentality that cannot tolerate these dalit movements new access to power.

The meticulous author biographies that introduce each document are fascinating. They form a kind of protest literature in and of themselves: how dalit lives are constructed with,and against,institutions that oppose them. As Bama states in a speech to university students in Hyderabad,My father was in the Indian Army. I have had the privilege of education. So I am able to come here and talk to you. Had it not been for that,I would not have been here,speaking to you. I would have been working in the fields along with my sisters in the village.

Of the activist and writer Ravikumar,we see that he had a passion for reading newspapers from a young age,but also that he chose to read those papers in hair salons rather than tea shops because of their two-tumbler system. Later,we learn about the formation of his own intellectual history,and the connections he sees between human rights,literature and politics not only in India but in Latin America and elsewhere.

This volume has been researched from the ground up,and culls years of writing and theory from an array of little magazines. This approach reveals much about the natures of literary and political culture. Theatre director and writer K.A. Gunasekaran reflects on one such magazine,Nirapirikai: Each issue was worth studying carefully and after I had done that,I felt as though I had grown a metre taller. …Nirapirikai was not just a written text; it was also the process of discussion a sort of workshop mode in which each issue was developed and then analysed after it had come out.

The array of perspectives in the volume,often in dialogue and debate with one another whether about Marxism,Ambedkar,Periyar,Iyothee Thass or about issues of feminism,violence,land and the competition among jati groups prove most valuable. There is no one kind of dalit voice or experience hardly. By birth I am a dalit; not by writing, explains Cho. Dharman. Thus far, he continues,the depictions have been one-dimensional dalits appear wearing dirty clothes,stinking,easily falling among people given to violence; they are illiterate,coolies without property,submissive,people who struggle only for food and wage. … What we have to do is document the multidimensional dalit,his soul/being/essence.

Ravikumar was an advisor to No Alphabet in Sight,and is co-editor,along with R. Azhagarasan,of The Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing. This book is focused on Tamil writing exclusively,and features many of the same writers as No Alphabet in Sight. However,Ravikumars 19-page introduction on the dry side in comparison to Tharu and Satyanarayanas focuses on the intricacies of caste in Tamilian party politics. The writings in this volume are divided by genre,and the editors give helpful one-page reflections on dalit contributions to each. So,for instance,we read a poem of Bamas,but then,further along,read one of her short stories and in later sections get excerpts from Sangati and Karukku.

Taken together these two volumes offer a complex portrait of contemporary dalit politics that spurs readers on to make their own discoveries and assessments. In the words of Imayam: Good literature should take one into a region of silence. …When confronted by life,tatvam theory fades.