Celebrating Protest

Date:01/05/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/lr/2005/05/01/stories/2005050100260600.htm
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Literary Review


DALIT LITERATURE

Celebrating protest

RAJA SEKHAR VUNDRU

Namdeo Dhasal was a pioneering poet, who inspired an entirely different literary imagination.


In a wholly racialised society, there is no escape from racially inflected language, and the work writers do to unhobble the imagination from the demands of the language is complicated, interesting, and definitive.

- Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

INDIAN society, with its history of oppression of Dalits, often fails to recognise the Dalits' contribution to the repository of Indian literature through their distinctive criticism of the inhuman social system.

Recently it came closer to redeeming itself a bit, as the Sahitya Akademi, while celebrating its Golden Jubilee, presented its Golden Jubilee Life Time Achievement Award to a Dalit poet, Namdeo Dhasal, who symbolises the essence of Dalit protest poetry. Dhasal with his unique style revolutionised the Marathi literary landscape and inspired a whole movement of Dalit literature in the rest of the Indian languages.

Unprecedented creativity


Dhasal was one of the founder leaders of the Dalit Panthers movement, which flowered into a renaissance of Marathi literature with an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among Dalits. It draws a great parallel to the Harlem Renaissance of 1920s of the Blacks in America and the Panthers drew immediate inspiration from the Black Panthers movement and black poetry. The Dalit literary movements in all Indian languages posed a tremendous challenge to the existing literary imaginations with Telugu Dalit literary movement of the 1990s being the latest example.

Dhasal's writings represented the anger and reflected the untouchable's protest voice against oppression and societal discrimination. His first collection of poems Golpitha (1972) took Marathi literary circles by storm and broke all the rules of traditional Marathi literature. Golpitha, named after a red light district of Mumbai city, caused an uproar for its vivid language where Dhasal employed common (vulgar) language used in the red light area, shocking the traditionalists.

... I am headless body of a rat with a pyramid rising above me
Meat and fish
Rice and eggs
Bootleg liquor and flowers of white champak
Kisses, embraces, coital postures, jewels,
And beds, and a house with a leaking roof,
And the rhythm of a lullaby.
I am squeezed: in my yearning
Feminine beauty flowers
The Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci
In the service of A-B
Rain driving down in sheets, a dying cigarette,
A dehydrated dancing girl,
Contrasting colour harmony
I too have poverty as my own piece of land... .

(From Golpitha; translated by Dilip Chitre.)

Dhasal's works include Moorkh Mhataryane, Itihasatil Apaphavya, Khel, Priya Darshin, Ambedkari Chalawal, Tuhi Iyatta Kanchi, and two novels, Negative Space and Hadki Hadawala. Dhasal, like other writers, was inspired and frequently invocated Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, whom the Dalit literary movement recognises as the father of Dalit literature. This is one on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar:

You are the one
Who dances from shrub to shrub like the butterfly
Of the new year and emit rays of light.
Who goes on expanding like railway lines
Who unnerves the foundations of universities
who travels from freedom to freedom.
You are the only one, charioteer of our chariot
Who comes amongst us through fields and crowds,
And protest marches and struggles.
Never leaves our company
And delivers us from exploitation
You are the one
The only one.

(From Golpitha; translated by D.B.Karnik.)

The first introduction of Marathi Dalit literature to English readership came through the Times of India, Weekly Supplement on November 25,1973. Anthologies edited by Arjun Dangle (Poisoned Bread, 1992), Eleanor Zelliot with Mulkraj Anand (1992) and Eleanor Zelliot's From Dalit to Untouchable (1996) later carried translations of Dhasal's poems. His poetry featured exclusively in Journal of South Asian Literature (1982 &1989); Bulletin of concerned Asian Scholars and Translation journal in 1989. He was invited to the International Literary Festival in Berlin in 2001. Interestingly, one can find a lengthy account of Namdeo Dhasal in Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul's India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). He was awarded Padmashri in 1999.

While I write this at night
it's three o' clock
Though I want to have a drink
I don't feel like drinking.
Only I want to sleep peacefully
And tomorrow morning see no varnas.

(From the poem: "Ambedkar:1980", in Tuhi Iyatta Kanchi; translated by Asha Mundlay and Laurie Hovell.)

Dhasal's career has its own turn of events. The Maharashtra Government continued to persecute the Panthers for their militant ideology. But Dhasal accepted the literary award of State Government for Golpitha, which created cracks among the Panthers. In 1974, the Dalit Panthers split. His political career took him to Congress Party and later, surprisingly, to the Shiv Sena, against whose ideology Panthers waged a war.

The United States celebrates its Harlem Renaissance: one of the most pungent literary attacks on racial discrimination. It gratefully accepts the Renaissance as a great cultural and literary event and made it a part of the nations' consciousness. Why was the Indian nation deprived of the great contribution Dalit literature has made to the literary landscape, as great literary works are languishing for want of translations?

Lothan Lutze of Germany and Laurie Hovel McMillan of the U.S. did basic work translating Namdeo Dhasal poems. Dilip Chitre, a long-time friend of Dhasal and translator, Jayant Karve and A.K. Ramanujan have played significant roles. All the translations we have were due to their individual efforts. No concerted move to translate the voluminous writings of Dalit literature into English and other languages was initiated by the literary academies.

Deserves to be known


But as the great vehicle of Dalit literature inspires generations, it is time for the celebration of the protest, in its true spirit of pain and agony in being a Dalit. Dalit literature deserves to be known to the world, to the children, the elders and the Generation Next of this country. In a multi-lingual India, it is time we have all the translations into all languages, in our hands.

As Namdeo Dhasal, one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century watches from the mixed scented lanes of Golpitha, Dalit literature is flowing into the 21st Century mixed with blood, sweat and anger, flowering into greatest poetry that this country is producing now.

(Raja Sekhar Vundru is an IAS officer presently working as a Director, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Govt. of India, New Delhi. The opinions expressed are his own and does not represent the government's.)

Response

http://www.mail-archive.com/zestcaste@yahoogroups.com/msg00703.html

Dear friends,What Dr. Rajshekhar Vundru, himself a very able literary figure, says about the poetry of Dhasal is true, indeed. One must read at least his "Golpitha". There can be no doubt about the literary acumen of Dhasal or his poetical ability. But the real reason of his getting the Sahitya akademy award is his nearness to Shivasena, rather than his poetry. That is the general feeling among the Ambedkarites.The old firebrand Dhasal is gone. Now only the Shivasainik in him is alive, which is not of much use to the Dalit cause. There is hardly any enthusiasm about his award among the Ambedkarite circles. I do not know about the Shivasena circles.They are trying for unity of Shiva sainiks and Bhim sainiks, we hear. Good Luck to them!Thanks!

Dr. K. Jamanadas =======

At 03:49 PM 5/7/2005 +0000, you wrote:Message: 1 Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 03:37:26 -0700 (PDT)

From: Tarun Udwala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Subject: Celebrating protestCelebrating protest http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/05/01/stories/2005050100260600.htm

DALIT LITERATURE

Celebrating protest

RAJA SEKHAR VUNDRU

Namdeo Dhasal was a pioneering poet, who inspired an entirely different literary imagination.

Beyond Protest

Date:07/08/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/lr/2005/08/07/stories/2005080700330600.htm
Literary Review

Beyond protest
RAJA SEKHAR VUNDRU

As the social profile of the African-American community changes, so does its literature. The Harlem Book Fair reflects this transition.


The buildings in Harlem are brick and stone
And streets are long and wide
But Harlem is much more than these alone,
It's a dream you keep dreaming again.
It's a tear you turn into a smile.
It's the sunrise you know is coming after a while.
That's the heart of Harlem!
Langston Hughes, `Harlem, New York' (1945)

THE African-American literary extravaganza, Harlem Book Fair, is held every July in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City to celebrate life through books. The Seventh Harlem Book Fair was held on July 23, 2005 spanning the entire West 135th Street on the Malcolm X Boulevard, Lenox Avenue. An estimated 60,000 adults and children thronged the Book Fair which had more than 350 stalls, including nine of them in the Food Court selling soul food.

Golden era

The Fair is located adjacent to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, established 80 years ago to pursue the dreams of Harlem Renaissance (1910-1927), which was the golden era of black expression in fiction, poetry, drama, music and art. The Renaissance produced great poets like Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, authors like Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, and inspired a generation to the civil rights movements lead by Martin Luther King Jr. and the revolutionary movement of Malcolm X.

The summer heat and sticky tar on the 135th Street mingled with the bursting crowds in the Fair as book readings echoed through Harlem. On July 22, the annual Phillis Wheatley (first African-American author to be published, in 1773) Awards were presented to poet Gordon Parks and author Rosa Guy.

Even though Toni Morrison received the Nobel prize in 1993, Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale (1992) had taken the literary scene by a storm and the black middle class identified itself with the new novel. With the book market surging ahead, there was a resurgence of African-American writing in the 1990s.The publishing houses responded by creating special imprints for the growing black middle class interest. Simon & Schuster has Atria Books and Washington Square Press imprints. Random House has three: Harlem Moon for Doubleday, One World Books and Villard and Strives Row (named after two blocks in Harlem).Time Warner has Walk Worthy Books; Kensington Publishing has Dafina and HarperCollins, the Amistad imprints. The Penguin Group and St. Martin Press have created a special line-up of books. All big publishing houses were sponsors of the Book Fair and competed in attracting visitors to their stalls.

Market clout

Studies showed that African-Americans spent at least $175 millions in purchasing books in 1991 and readership has grown exponentially in the last decade. The Book Fair reflected the great change from "everybody's protest novel" to the urban pulp fiction of popular culture, which has taken over black writing. The urban lifestyles of material success, the social milieu of the new century, the changing outlook of the younger generations on sex, sexual orientation, romance, possessions and fame emerge in the writings after 1991.

The big publishers play on the demand, delivering hundreds of titles every year. The fiction deals with crime, sex, romance and violence, attracting the urban reader. For instance, HarperCollins' imprint sells Black Romance titles of best-selling author Beverly Jenkins (Something like Love, Taming of Jessie Rose); Mysteries by Valerie Wilson Wesley (When Death Comes Stealing, Where Evil Sleeps). Black-owned enterprises chip in. Urban Books Publishing has the category "best street fiction" and Triple Crown Publishing the "Simply Gangsta" fiction. As the market expanded, Faye Childs in 1991 created Black Board African-American Bestsellers List, the equivalent to the New York Times Bestsellers List. Oprah Winfrey's Book Club selection became another route to the bestsellers list.

Going it alone

The most endearing of the Book Fair were the 70-odd self-published authors with their books displayed on small tables, selling briskly. Rebecca Simmons for instance, wrote three novels and published them using her own company, Diligence Publishing. The Book Fair offered workshops on self-publishing, guerrilla marketing of books on the Internet and powerful authorship lessons to sell more books. Most of them draw their inspiration from E. Lynn Harris, who self published and marketed his first novel, Invisible Life (1991). It sold 10,000 copies at book clubs, black beauty salons and black-owned bookstores before Anchor Books acquired it.

Lynn Harris, 51, who went on to write seven more novels for Random House, is one of the highest selling authors in United States today. His novels Not a Day Goes By (2000) and Anyway the Wind Blows (2001) debuted at No.2 on the New York Times bestsellers list. His novels candidly portray the pain and passion of middle class, professional African-Americans in today's society. The Fair also offered motivational and self-improvement books, like the bestseller Chicken Soup for the African American Soul, the other major genre that is on demand.

Emerging concerns

The emergence of the African-American mass market popular fiction with the rise of "pimp drama" and "chick-lit" was one of the concerns debated in the seminars organised simultaneously at the Book fair. Issues like black arts movements, black political writing and black poetry, the hip hop culture in writing, Urban fiction and Erotica and the emergence of a New Harlem were also discussed in these seminars.

As the great poetry of Langston Hughes still reverberates in Harlem streets, poets like Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton and Yusuf Komunyakaa carry forward the torch of the literary heritage of the African-Americans. The Harlem Book Fair is a unique literary exposition of a humanity whose slave narratives, protest novels and poetry, blues and music tell a painful and passionate story of a civilisation now poised to enter the Second Renaissance of its literary prowess.

Raja Sekhar Vundru is an IAS officer.

1857: The untouchable story

Published in Times Of India, New Delhi, 25 August, 2005

1857: The untouchable story
By RAJA SEKHAR VUNDRU

Any historic event properly dramatised would make a good film, be it
Clive of India (1935, USA) or Mangal Pandey — The Rising (2005,
India). The transformation of the military history of the Sepoy
Mutiny into the social history of the First War of Independence has
already taken a good deal of historians' time. Still, the underlying
facts need re-examination.

On February 11, 1857, Major General J B Hearsey, commanding the
Bengal Presidency Army reported an incident from Barrackpore to
Colonel R J H Birch, military secretary to the East India Company: A
high-caste Brahmin sepoy was stopped by an untouchable khalasi
employed at the ammunition depot. The thirsty untouchable sought
some water from the Brahmin's lota. The Brahmin sepoy refused, as
the untouchable's touch would defile the vessel. The khalasi taunted
the sepoy, "You think much of your caste, but wait a little, the
saheb-log will make you bite cartridges soaked in cow and pork fat,
and then where will your caste be?"

Soon, the rumour about the cartridges for the new Enfield Rifle
spread in the Bengal Army. The high-caste Brahmin sepoys who
dominated the army refused to use the new cartridges. The Muslim
sepoys were equally enraged.

Unlike the Bombay Army, which had a predominance of untouchable
Mahars (with a pre-colonial military history) or the Madras Army
with its Pariah and Mala untouchables, the Bengal Army had a high
presence of Brahmins. Lord William Bentick in 1826 was highly
critical of the Bengal Army, which had only a few low-caste sepoys,
and was an inefficient and expensive army.

Sir Charles Napier, the commanding officer of the Bengal Army in
1850, noted that if high-caste Hindoos were to opt between their
caste and military discipline, they would sacrifice the latter. Fear
of loss of caste prompted the Bengal Army's high-caste sepoys to
refuse to travel overseas, bury their brethren in the war fields and
eat food cooked by low-caste untouchables (who were traditionally
the company's cooks with no qualms in handling beef and pork).

B R Ambedkar, from a Mahar military lineage, argued in the 1930s
that the British established its rule in India with the help of
valorous untouchable soldiers. The Bengal Army, which fought the
Battle of Plassey, was largely composed of Dushads. The Anglo-
Maratha wars, which let the British into western India were won by
Mahars of the Bombay Army. The Madras Army, which defeated Tipu
Sultan in the south, was of untouchable Pariahs and Malas.

But the social composition of the company's army changed after
the British raised 74 regiments of Native Bengal Infantry, between
1757 and 1825. High-caste Hindoos chiefly Brahmins, drawn from the
military labour markets of Awadh and Bihar, dominated all these new
regiments.

Soon the British realised the role of caste vis-a-vis
loyalty, valour and discipline. Hence they recruited 24 regiments of
Punjabi Infantry between 1846 and 1857, mostly from untouchable,
Mazabhi Sikhs to balance the caste composition of the army.

For sepoys like Mangal Pandey and other high-caste men, caste
came before their military career. Biting cartridges coated with cow
fat was a dreadful prospect that led to loss of caste. Such fears
ignited the Mutiny or the First War of Independence. Caste and
religious loyalty once again took precedence over military
discipline 127 years later, when a few Sikh soldiers deserted Indian
Army after the 1984 Operation Bluestar.

But the savage massacre of British women and children on July
15, 1857 by sepoys at Bibi-Ghar, Cawnpore, which Karl Marx compared
to the practices of the Christian Byzantine Empire, was a pointer to
the ritualistic killings done by high caste men when confronted with
a threat to their caste. A modern day analogy would be the
butchering of lowcaste women and children by Ranvir Sena.

Finally, it was the untouchable Mazabhi Sikh soldiers who broke
the sepoys' siege of Delhi on September 15, 1857. The Mahars and
Pariahs from Bombay and Madras armies were pressed into service.

A re-reading of history could even bring out poetic justice in the
great historic moment — events that began with the refusal of water
to an untouchable by a high-caste Brahmin sepoy, were put to an end
by untouchable soldiers. So much for the `rising' of Mangal Pandey.

The writer is an IAS officer.

The Caste of Corruption

Published in Times Of India, New Delhi. 4, October, 2005

The caste of corruption

by

RAJA SEKHAR VUNDRU

During the days of Mandal agitation, those opposed to the extension of reservations to other backward classes (OBCs) devised ingenious arguments against the Mandal argument.

Inspired by them, young girls attempted suicide, young men tried to immolate themselves and many protested by polishing shoes (to display their loss of status, since shoe-shining is the job of an untouchable).

In August 1990, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) lost its pro-Mandal resolution in the university general body meeting. The union resigned. A few days later, some of us left JNU for the LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, to pursue our careers in the civil services.

When north India was burning, we were being trained to be agents of social change. One guest lecturer at the academy, Rajinder Singh of Delhi University, told the 300-odd trainees that all scheduled caste and scheduled tribe officers who got in through reservation in the civil services were corrupt. The learned professor explained that since the reserved category officers came from poor economic backgrounds, they couldn't resist the temptation of money.

In their valiant attempt to stall Mandal, anti-Mandal groups projected SCs and STs as corrupt, thereby trying to suggest that the OBCs would also be similar. The logic was with more such reserved categories entering services, the administration would be in grave danger of being infested with corrupt people.

Not much has changed. Caste still gets raked up when corruption is debated. Even today, if one black sheep among the lower castes is caught for corrupt practices, his or her caste gets chastised for the individual's doings.

Take the example of a news report in Times of India dated October 2, 2005, on the recent CBI raids against a scheduled tribe officer. "For somebody who entered the IRS in 1977 citing social and economic backwardness, he seems to have done quite well for himself since then", the reporter comments.

The single biggest recovery of cash from a civil servant was made in May, 2005 from an officer in the anti-adulte-ration cell of petroleum ministry. He belonged to a caste traditionally engaged in business. It would have been absurd if newspapers referred to his caste and concluded that business castes by tradition are expected to make profits and the officer was merely pursuing his caste occupation even as a civil servant.

Unfortunately, the media indulges in similar comments especially when officers in the reserved category are caught in the wrong. The UP IAS association's famous lists of most corrupt officers were never discriminatory. One of UP's former chief secretaries, who topped that list, belonged to a land-owning caste. Two Delhi Municipal Corporation officials who were raided in the last few days belonged to upper castes. The famous accused included a vice-chairman of DDA and a chairman of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).

The list of officers accused of corruption available on the CVC's website is also non-discriminatory. The spectrum of caste names on those lists, fortunately most of them decipherable, are inclusive of all castes. It is a different matter that the most common defence of officers from land-owning or ruling castes accused of corruption is they have no reason to be corrupt since they own hundred of acres and assets back home.


Can their rich or land-owning background absolve them of their crime when caught? Or does social and economic backwardness make others guilty even before they are accused of corruption? Since most of the officers who come through reservations hail from families which have meagre or no assets, should they be branded corrupt by default?

Unlike in the Centre, reputation of officers is vividly on display in the states. Men and women of honesty and integrity are admired and revered, sometimes feared. We have officers in the police, forests, income tax, customs, and railway services from scheduled castes and tribes, landed castes, business caste and upper castes with impeccable reputations for honesty and efficiency. In our caste-ravaged society, corruption is one institution that is casteless. Integrity has no social or economic origins; it is the individual's choice and conviction.

The writer is an IAS officer.