DALIT POETRY IN INDIA – A HOICK WAVE IN INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE.

DALIT POETRY IN INDIA – A HOICK WAVE IN INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Literature has the power and ability to construct and protect the cultural space of various communities. It also plays a vital role in providing more opportunities for self realization of any community by providing necessary information about the cultural, history and customary practices. The greater tradition could be visualized, imagined and witnessed through an effective literary presentation. This leads to the self realization of one’s cultural identity which will make the individual to hold the culture and other identity at the top. It is being adopted as a strategy for social change and social movements by the people in power, since literature possesses a greater value in the political dynamics of any state.

These days discussions are going on the problems of marginalised groups of people all over the world-their social, ethnic, economic and cultural problems. Marginality with all its aspects is indeed a major problem to be reckoned within the world. By and large, most of the marginalised groups, if not all, constitute minorities-religious, ethnic, linguistic or otherwise in different countries. They have sub-cultures in this mainstream cultures or religions. Invariably, they are impoverished people constituting of minority groups. They suffer from economic, social or political impoverishment and find themselves estranged from this mainstream. Their marginality may vary in its degree, extent or intensity. Most countries and cultures have empowered groups at one pole and impoverished groups at the other and between the two, the people having graded power and poverty. The empowered people enjoy greater degree of freedom, social status and security of life. The impoverished people are not free from fear, insecurity and injustice. The form and nature of marginality depends upon the degree of impoverishment-economic, social or cultural. Marginality based upon caste, creed, religion or race is a kind of disability or affliction.

            The causes and circumstances leading to the age-old existence of oppression and despair of the lives of the marginalised class of nation's vast majority of people can be enumerated thus:

I. The self down-gradation of these people since ages, suppressing even the slightest protest against injustice that sought to find a voice.

2. The conditions of abject poverty, unhealthy and insanitary conditions in which these people had been sheltered, but they held a belief that they were accursed to live such lives.

3. Even the minimum rights as human beings denied to them, rendering them incapable of seeing the light of freedom and comfortable living, thanks to the age-old ideology taught to them by the upper castes in India and the white race in other countries, that they were fated to be hewers of wood and drawers of water-mere slaves!

4. The portals of education were never opened for them to taste the power of freedom.

The new category of writing ‘Dalit literature’ has established itself as a new literary movement in several regions in India in the last four decades. Arjun dangle offers a definition of Dalit literature: “Dalit literature is one which acquaints people with the caste system and untouchability in India, its appalling nature and its system of exploitation. In other words, Dalit is not a caste but a realization and is related to the experiences, joys and sorrows, and struggles of those in the lowest stratum of society. It matures with a sociological point of view and is related to the principles of negativity, rebellion and loyalty to science, thus finally ending as revolutionary.”¹ The literal meaning of the word dalit - is one who has been trampled under feet or who has been oppressed, exploited, insulted, humiliated and thrown outside the pale of civic society, i.e., turned into an untouchable, riff-raff of the society. All those who are born in the Dalit community will not be considered dalits; we have to stress the category of ‘Dalit’ as a historical construction. Dalit writing is revolutionary in its aims; the destruction of the caste system and the establishment of equality in the social and political spheres. Dalit critics and writers have raised a number of critical questions about Indian literature and Indian literary history. They identified two of the important functions of Dalit writing. Firstly, Dalit writing attempts to deconstruct ‘the dominant, castiest constructions of India identity’ and secondly’ it constructs a distinct Dalit identity.’ Dalit writing presents a dalit centric view of life and constructs Dalit identity in relation to Colonial identity and Indian identity.

Dalit literature not only subverts the old canons but also believes in creating new ones. It seeks to reject those conventions and cultural norms which not only marginalised the dalit voice and the voice of other oppressed communities including women. It attempts to create a new paradigm, a new set of value adding up to the contemporary cultural scenario. The event of dalit literature could be understood as a part of the mass culture which marks the postmodernist phase all over the world. It reveals the collective consciousness of community whose voice had remained suppressed through the annals of history. Therefore, Dalit text always draws on the archetypal pattern exploring the sources of Indian history. It brings out dichotomy which always existed between the 'high' and 'low' cultures and attempts to deconstruct the old cultural narrative which it finds highly biased and partial. It stands for a new ideology which includes all sort of remapping of a social territory which had several lapses before, and needed to be reorganised. Literature of the Dalits represents an alternative culture, refusing to be a subaltern any longer. A dalit text is subversive, but not necessarily intimidating. It relates itself to cultural context and speaks for the revival of sociological approach to literary arts. It opposes the obsessive concern with the formal accomplishment, the linguistic expertise and the modernist tendency to look for the meaning of the text within the text itself. It inaugurates a new era of cultural transformation in the Indian context, and inevitably reaches out to the global phenomenon called postmodernism.

Dalit literature signifies a new dimension of the concept '- of Marginal literature as used in the general literary canon. Dalit literature is typically Indian not only in its roots but also in its purpose and goal. It is addressed to the entire Indian literary tradition and its fulfilment lies in the total transformation of this tradition. Dalit literature is the postcolonial nativistic movement aimed at the cultivation of creative urges of the masses of numerous castes, tribes and communities condemned for centuries to voiceless existence. Dalit literature is the literature of politics and politics is an Integral part of it, though politics could be defined in whatever terms one would like to define it. For, Dalitdom is the product of politicisation, a process that is going on continuously in every organised society. Dalit literature is not only a literature of protest and rejection, but also a literature of reconstruction of the past. Dalit consciousness has inspired intellectuals to probe the entire Indian history and culture from below. This subaltern historical approach has set in motion a process for the true discovery of India. Dalitness in Indian context is not a monotype reality. It is, in fact, a vast plural concept. Dalit unity in India is full of enormous diversity.

Protest against the established unjust social order and rejection of the entire hegemonic tradition done overtly or covertly, was the main thrust of the modern Dalit literatures in initial stages. But things were changing at a rapid speed and since 1980s, we find internal tensions to which creative minds of Dalits are being subjected. One source of tensions seems to be the ideological conflicts and the second source appears to be the realisation of Dalit cause on the part of non-Dalit sections of the society. Protagonists of Dhamma as propounded by Dr. Ambedkar, the torch-bearers of Ambedkarism, the erstwhile leftists and Marxists, the right-wing intellectuals and almost all the political parties came' forward to appropriate Dalit cause for their own ends, programmes and plans. Dalit literature, Dalit consciousness, Dalit aesthetics, Dalit revolution, Dalit arts etc. all such concepts are thrown in the ideological whirligig. Different ideological views established their own literary canon to admit and to evaluate what constitutes Dalitness in literature. This ideological fervour in post-1980s has certainly affected Dalit literary outputs. From the socio-cultural and aesthetic points of view, this post-80s phenomenon needs to be studied seriously and deeply.

In conclusion, it may be stated that the concept of Dalit literature constitutes a contribution to aesthetics of literature and opens up an ever-expanding world of Dalitness before creative minds of today and tomorrow. This perception is basically a perception of eternal human sufferings and existentialist predicament. Dalits of today may not remain Dalit tomorrow but their place will be occupied by new Dalits. This perception istremendously thrilling and has the potentials for building new monuments and mansions of literary creations. Dalit literature as a ‘I’ literature of marginality is thus destined to become a paradigm of ‘I’ world literature wherein marginality breeds profound awareness of undying human spirit struggling with inhuman condemnation of man by man.

Dalit literature is seen, in the main, as protest against the establishment as commitment to inculcating new values aiming at a new order. There are in it a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, and a lot of hope, too. It breathes freedom. The protagonist, be it of a poem or a short story, is usually projected as a rebel ‘ standing up against subjugation, humiliation and atrocities’ and is also shown at times, as ‘singing intoxicatedly of the dawn of a new life’. The poets are of course in the vanguard of dalit writing. Poetry comes first, followed by other kinds of writing such as autobiography, drama criticism etc. it is not just modern, but a new kind of writing in terms of experience and sensibility, structure and style. The most notable among the dalit poets are Narayan Surve, namdeo Dhasal, Keshav Meshram, Yashwant Manohar, Raja Dhale, Arjun Dangle, J.v.Pawar, Waman Nimbalkar, Arun Kamble, Prakash Jadhav,etc among men and Mina Gajbhiye, Hira Bhansode, Jyoti lanjewar, Mallika Amar Sheikh, Anuradha Gurav etc. among women.

            A dalit poem is unique in the sense that it builds its structural pattern out of Dalit sensibility. It is unusual, exceptional in terms of experience and expression-something alien to the so called Marathi middle-class sensibility. It transfers the themes of isolation, alienation, protest, revolt, struggle for survival, freedom from all sorts of bondage and exploitation, apathy, estrangement and uprootedness, a search for new identity and a longing for human dignity. It is thus a poetry of protest, voicing its opposition to all that is orthodox, traditional and conventional. It is as much empathetic as evocative and addresses itself a new to its reader in terms of startling images and symbols, differently moulded myths and metaphors.

            ‘Priority of life’ over everything else in life what Keshav Meshram claims as a criterion to determine the raison d’etre of dalit literature. For example, these lines from his poem titled ‘Addressing God, on a Day’ ² in which the poet is seen heaping abuses on God, at times in the name of his mother, thus:

                       

Son of a bitch! For a scrap of bread,

                        Will you cut up a cart-load of fire-wood?

                        Will you wipe sweat off your emaciated body?

                        To see father smoke,

                        Will you accept straining?

                        Your brother’s your sister’s muscles?

                        For a gulp of his drink

                        Will you go pimping?

God will not do it, the poet knows it for certain, but a mother-so toiling and loving will, by force, do it. It is with these words, at once ironic and compassionate, that the poem ends. The ending of a Dalit poem is often found remarkable in that it gives a kind of jerk that corrects the reader’s sensibility, in an unusual manner, restoring it a balance. The defamiliarisation, is a poetic process through which a Dalit poem passes.

            Mother-image as a spirit of supreme sacrifice characterizes most of the Dalit writing. The truth of the observation can be witnessed again, in another poem titled ‘Money order’ ³ by Narayan Surve, an outstanding poet in the galaxy of the contemporary Dalit poets. The poem takes the shape of a message dictated to the writer at the post office by an illiterate village woman now living in a metropolis. It is written on the coupon of the money order form and is addressed to her kids saying that they will buy with the money their needs, a frock for one, a shirt and a trouser for another, and finally jilebi for all as a part of festivity. In a concluding note, she reminds them not to forget buying their father a new turban for the one he was wearing at the time she left was reduced to tatters. The money she is sending has been earned by ‘the sweat of her brow’, an honest labour’s fruit, through forced harlotry in the face of gnawing unemployment. Physically, she is removed from them; but mentally, rather emotionally, she is with them, among them. A careful, loving mother to her kids, a devoted, constant wife to her husband- that is what she is. Sincere and faithful, and more importantly, committed to them all as a member of the family. The poem thus offers a revelation of and an insight into what we refer to as ‘new morality’ in these days. One can see the same mother-image in Waman Nimbalkar’s ‘Mother’ ⁴ and Jyoti Lanjewar’s ‘Mother’ ⁵, but with a variation on theme and in perspective, viz. the one treats a personal, private experience in a conventional manner and the other has a social dimension to it, projecting a new awakened consciousness.

            Namdeo Dhasal’s poem ‘Hunger’ ⁶ may be seen as a piece of orchestration, for the meaning is born out of its musical pattern. Its theme is: only those who have experienced such self-consuming, other hunger know what it means, how painful and incapacitating the state is, something beyond the reach of the middle-class sensibility. Hunger is seen here as a multiple poetic reality and the poet toys with it on physical, mental and emotional levels. Namdeo makes us visualize ‘the gold-threaded struggle/between the snail of pain/and the sea’ and then becomes, all of a sudden, self-introspective, as in the following rhetorical question.

                        If we have not made ourselves a tidy life,

                        What right do we have to quarrel with flowers?

Hunger on physical level is an awesome, hateful calamity bringing in its wake emotional devastation, but the poet keeps his attitude towards it deliberately frivolous despite all seriousness,

                        Here’s our manhood before you now

                        Let’s see who wins this round

                        You are we?

But, then, manages to come out in his own real self, saying, most outspokenly, in abusive terms,

                        Then we will screw

                        Seventeen generation of you

                        Hunger, you and your mother.

The phenomenon of hunger is, thus, first presented in realistic terms and then carried further on into the world of fantasy and, finally, brought back to our workaday world of reality poeticizing all this in terms of images, similes and metaphors.

            Persecution is naturally a very common theme of most Dalit poetry. For e.g.  ‘The Single Arm’ ⁷ by Tryambak Sapkale or ‘Broken Men’ ⁸ by Daya Pawar depict the theme of persecution. The first poem narrates a fanciful and yet dramatic situation; it is a word picture in which the poet’s son is seen as cutting out ‘the attacker’s arm’ from his shoulder, of course, in the picture story. The offender’s ‘sliced off’ arm shows now as dangling even in its uplifted posture, alarming the world that the days of man’s persecution by man are numbered. Similarly, the other poem by Dayar deals with Worli Riots, using as its central image a maimed soldier from the Mahar Batallion who wonders why he was crippled for the country that attacks his people.

            Love for India is another common theme of a number of Dalit poems; it is perceptible, directly or obliquely, in the doubts or reservations in the course of poem. A sense of belonging is what pervades most of the poems under reference here. One may read, for example, Keshav Meshram’s poem entitled ‘In Our Colony’ ⁹ which puts a question how their houses stand in the outskirt of a village. The answer is ‘like foot-prints of cattle in the mud’. In her poem ‘Caves’ ¹⁰ Jyoti Lanjewar questions the relationship between the land and the people. She is seen asking ‘How did we get to this place/this land which was never mother to us’. Similarly Uttam Kolgaonkar, too, is straightforward in his poem ‘House’ ¹¹ narrating the precaurious condition of his house in the slums; he says

                        He was born here,

                        But didn’t belong here.

Moving away from the immediate local context to the distant global context, Bapurao Jagtap, in his poem ‘This Country is Broken’ ¹², addresses his brethren, in a tone of pain and anguish mixed with sarcasm, asking them to abandon this land and settle elsewhere.

                        Where, while you live, you will have

                        a roof above your head,

                        and where, when you die, there will at least be

                        a cemetery to receive you.

           

Of late there are a number of Dalit women poets, who have contributed to Dalit poetry, in General, and feminist writing in particular. Among the Dalit women poets, we have Mina Gajbhiye placing ‘battle’ over ‘song’. In the teeth of Hindu opposition, Mina in her poem ‘Bodhi Tree’ ¹³ seeks to sow the seeds, but in an anxiety-ridden state says;

                        I am doubtful,

                        Will at least one seed sprout?

                        Bodhi tree.

Subversion of the established history and myth characterizes most of the Dalit writings; for example Hira Bansode in her famous poem ‘Yashodhara’ ¹⁴ a masterpiece, compares ‘the darling of her heart’ Yashodhara to ‘a dream of sharp pain, lifelong sorrow’. Anuradha Gaurav’s poem ‘Request’ ¹⁵ refers to the Hindu custom of offering children, particularly, females to Khandoba. Such girls after they become major are turned to devadasis, that is, prostitutes for all practical purposes. The poem is an open, severe, attack on the devilish, unethical practice. In the end the poetess urges;

                        Don’t wash the stinking rags of our lives

                        We are naked already.

                        Don’t strip us in front of the whole world.

           

All these poems together may be seen as a new voice of women poets among the Dalit poets. In the words of Eleanor Zelliott, “their voices are strong and varied, echoing other Dalit themes but adding new images, new perspectives and new languages”¹⁶.

            To conclude, Dalit poetry may be said to centre around man. Its history of the last twenty-five years or so may be seen in the words of P.S. Nerukar, “the pilgrimage of Mankind towards a brave new world bereft of suffering, suppression and exploitation”¹⁷. For in his poem titled ‘Karl Marx’ ¹⁸ he rightly announces, as he does in his speech;

                        Now we alone are the heroes of history,

                        Of all the biographies too-henceforth.

REFERENCES:

1. Arjun Dangle, ed., Piosoned Bread , Bombay, Orient Longman Publishers, 1992, p.21.
2. Keshav Meshram, ed., Vidrohi Kavita, Pune, Continental Prakashan Publishers, 1978, p.25.
3. Ibid., p.34.
4. Arjun Dangle, ed., Piosoned Bread , Bombay, Orient Longman Publishers, 1992, p.28.
5. Ibid., 35.
6. Keshav Meshram, ed., Vidrohi Kavita, Pune, Continental Prakashan Publishers, 1978, p.41.
7. Arjun Dangle, ed., Piosoned Bread , Bombay, Orient Longman Publishers, 1992, p.36.
8. Ibid., p.37.
9. Ibid., p.40.
10. Ibid., p.41.
11. Ibid., p.43.
12. Ibid., p.44.
13. Kashinath Ranveer, ed.,The Downtrodden India, a journal,pp.71-73.
14. Arjun Dangle, ed., Piosoned Bread , Bombay, Orient Longman Publishers, 1992, p.45.
15. Kashinath Ranveer, ed.,The Downtrodden India, a journal,pp.77.
16. Ibid., p.80.
17. Narayan Surve, On the Pavements of Life, Bombay., Lok Vangmaya Griha, 1973, p.61.
18. Ibid., p.31.