Dalit Literatures in India

Joshil K. Abraham, Judith Misrahi-Barak

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138593275
• eBook ISBN: 9780429952272
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book breaks new ground in the study of Dalit literature, including in its corpus a range of genres such as novels, autobiographies, pamphlets, poetry, short stories and graphic novels. With contributions from major scholars in the field, alongside budding ones, the book critically examines Dalit literary production and theory. It also initiates a dialogue between Dalit writing and Western literary theory.

This second edition includes a new Introduction which takes stock of developments since 2015. It discusses how Dalit writing has come to play a major role in asserting marginal identities in contemporary Indian politics while moving towards establishing a more radical voice of dissent and protest.

Lucid, accessible yet rigorous in its analysis, this book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of Dalit studies, social exclusion studies, Indian writing, literature and literary theory, politics, sociology, social anthropology and cultural studies.

1
Caste Differently*

G. N. Devy

Though better known as a poet, A. K. Ramanujan wrote a curious autobiographical story, ‘Annayya’s Anthropology’ (translated from Kannada by Narayan Hegde), depicting a young man from Mysore going off to Chicago to study anthropology. Like young men and women of several generations over the last couple of centuries, Annayya expects Western education to provide him escape from the tyranny of social traditions. As he drowns himself in books of Western anthropology in a Chicago library, he chances upon a recent book on Indian customs. This book contains a photograph of his tonsured mother as an example of how Hindu widows conduct themselves. It is then that he learns of the recent death of his father. This has been the generic plot of all attempted escapes from tradition by Indians. Another contemporary of Ramanujan, Kannada fiction writer Shantinath Desai, began his literary career with Mukti, a novel of release from tradition. It was hugely successful with the young generation; but his last novel Om Namoh was an empathetic study of Karnataka Jainism. U. R. Ananthamurthy wrote his celebrated Samskara while he was doing research in English literature in Birmingham. Samskara engages with the power and the ironies of traditions going back to the Manusmriti. Sri Aurobindo was sent to England at the age of seven so that he grows up without an iota of influence of Indian customs. He returned to India after acquiring a Cambridge degree without knowing a word of any Indian language. Soon after, he turned to studying Sanskrit and, in an amazingly short time, took to writing profound commentaries on Hindu scriptures and myths. An individual’s uneasy emersion in the caste hierarchy and a precarious existence within dehumanizing traditions have been themes in uncountable novels, stories, plays, films, scholarly works, reform movements and other forms of discursive expression.

This has happened not only to upper caste Indians. The ‘generic autobiography’ of escape-and-return has also been the lot of those who have been victims of the oppressive caste system. B. R. Ambedkar, easily the most educated among the pre-Independence Indians, won a scholarship from the Raja of Baroda, went to the Columbia University in the United States, and then to the London School of Economics and Gray’s Inn to acquire the degrees of Ph.D., M.Sc., D.Sc. and Bar-at-Law. Tragically, on his return to Baroda after studying at Columbia, he experienced how he would not be allowed to forget his caste, and had to leave the city in less than two weeks. As a victim and a crusader, he had to engage with tradition and caste issues for the rest of his life. Such instances are numerous; exceptions none.

The attempted escape and return to the mire pattern can be temporally scaled up to include not just one or two centuries of the colonial era but a couple of millennia. During the seventeenth century, despite having worked ceaselessly to create an inclusive kingdom, Shivaji had to seek benediction from the Kanouj Brahmins. Jnandeva of the thirteenth century, the holiest among the Marathi poets and saints, had to face ostracization for the deeds of his father who had returned from sanyas to set up a family. Besides Shankara in the ninth century who had to face the wrath of traditionalists of his times, even Gautam Buddha had to counter the upsurge of varna-based social fragmentation a good millennium before Shankara’s times.

If oppressive social traditions, the source and spread of which lie in remote antiquity, have come to control and condition our lives without exception for over two millennia, there has to be a logic to their power and authority; there has to be a rationale that can be stated with clarity so that it can be refuted, modified, altered and rectified. The why, the wherefore and the how of varna and jati in Indian civilization need be opened again and again, since they are like festering and mortal wounds that need be cured and healed, or surgically removed. However, despite the unimaginably massive quantity of learned works in all major Indian languages as well as in all major International languages – English, German, French, Chinese, Arabic and others – there is no definitive and widely accepted explanation for the why, the wherefore, and the how of either varna or jati as social and, worse still, as legal conventions.

At the opening as well as the closing of these inquiries, it is customary to point one’s fingers at the Manusmriti or Manu Samhita. Indeed, when one peruses the 2,685 verses of the Manu Code, the single comprehensive statement of the statutes for social regulation in ancient India, one likes to think of the smriti as the fountainhead of the varna/jati ideas in India. They also read as the most definitive statement of gender segregation as well as the human desire to dominate ecology. However, it is far from clear whether the Samhita is a single text composed either by a group of moral legislators – believed to be a tribe called Manava in the north-eastern part of India as it was then – or by a single author believed to be the originator of the Vedic Aryans. It is also not clear if this Manu was the same as the ancestral patriarch of the Aryans belonging to a pre-Vedic era, or whether the one who falls historically between Vedic times and the age of composition of the statutes known as the Brahmanas. The age of Manu is conceptualized differently, ranging from the most orthodox estimate of 1500 BC to the most modest date of 200 AD. Normally, the cross-references in other texts following the rise of a given text, or the lack of such references in the texts of any previous eras, should make the precise dating of a text possible. Similarly, linguistic evidence based on the evolution of meanings and etymological shifts should help one guess, with fair accuracy, the historical period of a text. This method does not work in the case of the Manusmriti. For one thing, the variety of Sanskrit in which it has come down to us through centuries is sufficiently close to post-Vedic Sanskrit – that is, the kind of language in which the Mahabharata has come down to us through centuries. But, without any shade of doubt, the precepts of the Samhita find unmistakable echoes in the main body of the Vedas. Thus, we have the Purush Sukta in the 10th Mandala of the Rigveda. On the other hand, the 97th verse of the 10th section of the Manusmriti is found reproduced, with very minor modification, in the 3rd Adhyaya of the Bhagavad Gita, verse 35: Shreyan svadharmo vigunah paradharmat svanishtuthat; svadharme nidhanam shreyam paradharmo bhayavaha. The meaning is: ‘One’s own duty, even when less attractive, is better than another’s, even if it is more attractive. Death in one’s own duty is preferable over finding sustenance in another’s duty, for the latter is horrible’ (my translation). Therefore, it is quite difficult to settle the precise period for the emergence of the Manu Samhita.

While a mythological Manu is believed to have preceded the Vedic Aryans, and numerous Manus preceded him from the beginning of human time, the version of genesis which the Manu Samhita presents, and on the basis of which it builds its entire social cartography, is several times contradicted by the literature of later Vedic times. The Upanishads, particularly the Taitiriya drawn from the Yajurveda, contains several versions of the genesis describing the process of evolutionary creation – a radical variation on the divinely granted creation – and several aspects of the creation dealing with the spirit, the mind, the consciousness, life and the human body. The Upanishads proceed in their delineation of the process of creation without any trace of influence of the Manu Samhita version of the origin of life and society. The difficulties in deciding the precise period of Manusmriti need not be taken as a plea for not holding it responsible for what it says. Yet, the uncertainty in dating it raises the important question as to whether the Manusmriti merely precipitated what existed as a social and legal practice before it and in its own time, or whether it originally proposed and propagated these practices.

As a text with a relatively more certain historical description, and containing a clear statement of the basis on which ancient Indian social cartography was attempted, the Purusha Sukta of the Rigveda is the most outstanding. It describes the Purusha, the universe (of whom are born the rig and the saman – the Vedas) and later the horses and other animals and goats and sheep. Then, the gods divided Purusha. From the mouth of the divided Purusha came the Brahmin; from the arms came the Rajanya; from the thighs came the Vaishya; and from the feet came the Shudra. Such genesis myths mark early literature, particularly the literature that comes to be seen as scriptural, in every civilization. In the oral literature of tribal communities in India, we come across a variety of such creation myths and stories of the rise of the human species, with a certain moral responsibility to keep the universe going. Every religion is based on its unique genesis story, and every culture or nation finds it nourishing to have its own version of how or where it began in some mythical time. Some claim to have emerged from the Sun; others claim their origin in the Moon; yet others in some distant ocean, or a mythical mountain or forest.

What is astounding is that, in ancient India, the story of genesis was used as a basis for law governing intercommunity relations. The hierarchy of the vocationally high and the low implied in the Purusha Sukta of the Rigveda was taken to mean a prescription with legal sanction. Thus, any attempt in thought, move or gesture to change the hierarchy came to be seen as a sin against Purusha. Later, at whatever date the Manusmriti came into circulation, Purusha of the Rigveda was replaced by Brahma, a deity with whom Vedic lore would not have felt at ease.

The most critical account of the process through which the formulation articulated in the Purusha Sukta came to acquire an irreversible legal sanction is to be found in Babasaheb Ambedkar’s scholarly history of the Shudras. It is important to note that his work Who Were the Shudras? is probably one of the most open-minded inquiry into the history of the idea of social cartography in India. His thesis is that, initially, ancient India had only three varnas: Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaishya.

The Shudras were not a varna but a community of the Solar race. There was a continuous feud between the Shudra kings and the Brahmins. As a result of the enmity, the Brahmins refused to perform the Upanayana ceremony for the Shudras. Due to the denial of the Upanayana, the Shudras, who were equal to Kshatriyas, became socially degraded. (Ambedkar 1970: 242)

This long historical process resulted in creation of the Shudras as a varna. Ambedkar’s book is devoted to establishing the veracity of this historical process. He has done this with a mastery of evidence and argument possible only from the finest of jurists. No Indian who has ever felt oppressed by the continuation of the caste tradition should miss studying Ambedkar’s book. Those who do not feel oppressed by tradition will benefit by it even more, as Ambedkar’s book holds a clear mirror before those of us who are not aware of their own complicity with race, caste and gender discrimination.

Thus, Upanayana was made a privileged entitlement of the first three varnas, and denied to the fourth one. The concept of Upanayana rests on the idea of the possibility of a second birth, though a metaphoric one. In the initial form of the Upanayana, the ritual did not involve the wearing of a Yajnopavita, or the sacred thread, around one’s chest. This practice crept in later – in times when post-Vedic society started reading the metaphoric as being literal. Upanayana was, in its initial days, a symbolic birth – that is, the second birth of a person to the life of both the mind and the body. It was, in its original form, a rite of initiation. Such rites exist in various civilizations in a variety of forms. The Brahminic denial of ordaining a young person with the Yajnopavatia or the denial to perform the ritual of Upanayana came to mean that the possibility of a second birth was foreclosed in the case of the Shudras. This meaning subsequently was provided with justifications. The main among these was the fact of the Shudras having committed ‘sins’ – though sin is not a core Hindu concept – or heinous, lowly or impious deeds. These were known as chandala karma, nicha karma or adham karma. Since the idea of a second birth was associated with the Upanayana ritual, the justification for the notion of adham karma was sought in an imagined ‘previous birth’ – a notion that does not find corroboration in the main body of the Vedas. One of the abiding concerns of the Manu Samhita was how to avoid getting into impious deeds, by following the dos and don’ts in relation to the inter-varna relations. All these prescriptions were heavily biased in favour of those who could perform the Upanayana ritual, biased against those who could not, and starkly severe to those who were denied the possibility of Upanayana altogether. If the Shudras were denied the entitlement to the Upanayana ritual, by a slight extension of the same logic, it meant that they were denied the entitlement to all other rituals. They were, thus, ‘ritually exiled’. If they had been denied the entitlement to rituals because they were supposed to have committed some ‘lowly acts’ in a previous life, then by a more aggressive extension of that logic, they were also destined to engage in all manner of ‘impure’ work in their present life – work such as scavenging, cleaning, skinning and tanning. If there was no theoretical possibility of their rebirth, they had to be despised as being less than human, and therefore seen to be at par with other animals. Therefore, they could be treated as such, without any fear of the perpetrators gaining any spiritual demerits. Given the rise of this kind of metaphysics being translated into social and legal practices, there was no possibility of creating a humane society. The argument for this was closed in India forever.

No doubt the degrading and demeaning effect of such beliefs on their fellow humans must have pained many sensitive individuals throughout the history of India over the last two millennia. In every age, there have been instances of such individuals trying to fight metaphysics with metaphysics: that is, the idea of birth and rebirth against other ideas of life beyond death and salvation; the settled concepts of varna and dharma against new ideas of needs and desires. As the higher varnas found the given social arrangement to their advantage, they kept resisting such reformist moves. However, time and again, internal fission became manifest within every varna, and in each such instance, the arguments used on both sides were analogous to the ones used initially when the Shudras were ostracized. Thus, Gautam Buddha made a powerful attempt to free the Indian mind of the metaphysics that had caused such grievous social engineering.

Panini was, probably, the last major thinker of the pre-Christian era in India who tried to reverse this logic by bringing in another way of accommodating all varnas in the domain of higher knowledge by validating the importance of their speech. However, his attempt came to be interpreted as being legislating rather than liberating. He commented in his Sutrapatha that ‘Alas, there is nothing like a low speech and high speech; it is all a matter of your social position’. During the first or the second century AD, Bharata Muni, who by virtue of being an actor of a lower social class, tried to propose his Natyashastra as the fifth Veda. His treatise received acceptance, but not his community. The author of the powerful play Mrichhakatika, probably the most political play in the history of Indian theatre of the first millennium, was called Shudraka. We know very little about his life, except that he was a king himself. We do not know whether he belonged to any Shudra community, or whether he had adopted a name to indicate his sympathy for the victim class.

After the eighth century, Indian history witnessed the rise of many sects. The early sects arose round the figures of Shiva and Shakti. They originated in the southern regions first. By the eleventh century, the rise of sects had become a nationwide phenomenon. By the end of the fifteenth century, many founders of such sects had already been accepted in public memory as avatars or divine figures. Since the idea of the avatar came to occupy centre stage in the dynamics of sect emergence, Krishna and Rama – the two heroes of the two pan-Indian epics – became the cult figures for many of the sects. This entire movement highlighted the possibility of ‘release’ for any individual, born high or low, thus negating the logic on which the varna system was based.

The eighth to the eighteenth century is the period when the principle of jati became the main principle for social segregation in India. The jatis had no clear metaphysical basis. They were more an expression of difference in terms of language, region, occupation, cultivation practices, food habits and skills. But these differences, once accepted, lead to a particular jati formation, with its identity being invariably expressed in terms of the specific practice of worship. If the metaphysics based on the story of genesis was the basis for varna consolidation, the perception of ‘difference’ leading to a metaphysical view was at the heart of the jati formation process. In one, metaphysics was the cause; in the other, it was the consequence, expressive of the desire of the non-Brahmanical classes to be counted at par.

It is not surprising that, when the colonial Europeans arrived in India, they found the social segmentation utterly confusing. During the seventeenth century, the Portuguese in India followed the practice of describing every community as a ‘tribe’. This term became somewhat less favoured when the British, French and Portuguese started noticing the sharp distinctions between the dominating communities and the dominated communities in India. It was at this time that they began using the term ‘caste’ for the higher classes. The difficulty of the Europeans continued throughout their colonial rule in India, for while they could more easily understand the linguistic, racial and organized theological distribution of Indian society and the economic segregation of the different c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction to the second edition: taking stock, updating, moving forward
• Introduction to the first edition: Dalit literatures in India: in, out and beyond
• 1 Caste differently
• 2 Caste and democracy: three paradoxes
• 3 The politics of Dalit literature
• 4 ‘No name is yours until you speak it’: notes towards a contrapuntal reading of Dalit literatures and postcolonial theory
• 5 Language and translation in Dalit literature
• 6 Negotiations with faith: conversion, identity and historical continuity
• 7 Resisting together separately: representations of the Dalit–Muslim question in literature
• 8 Creating their own gods: literature from the margins of Bengal
• 9 Caste and the literary imagination in the context of Odia literature: a reading of Akhila Nayak’s Bheda
• 10 Questions of caste, commitment and freedom in Gujarat, India: towards a reading of Praveen Gadhvi’s The City of Dust and Lust
• 11 Dalit intellectual poets of Punjab: 1690–1925
• 12 Life, history and politics: Kallen Pokkudan’s two autobiographies and the Dalit print imaginations in Keralam
• 13 Dalits writing, Dalits speaking: on the encounters between Dalit autobiographies and oral histories
• 14 A Life Less Ordinary: the female subaltern and Dalit literature in contemporary India
• 15 Witnessing and experiencing Dalitness: in defence of Dalit women’s Testimonios
• 16 Literatures of suffering and resistance: Dalit women’s Testimonios and Black women slave narratives – a comparative study
• 17 Polluting the page: Dalit women’s bodies in autobiographical literature
• 18 Intimacy across caste and class boundaries in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
• 19 Caste as the baggage of the past: global modernity and the cosmopolitan Dalit identity
• 20 Tense – past continuous: some critical reflections on the art of Savi Sawarkar
• 21 The Indian graphic novel and Dalit trauma: A Gardener in the Wasteland
• Select bibliography