Books / Portraits Magazine | Jan 27, 2014 http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?289220  Namdeo Dhasal (1949-2014) Appraisal The Pitiless Seasons Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal lived and died raging into the night Raja Sekhar Vundru “Mercy-grace-peace do not touch Golpitha.” —From Vijay Tendulkar’s introduction to Golpitha On July 9, 1972, Dalit writers Namdeo Dhasal, Arjun Dangle and J.V. Pawar met in Bombay and established the Dalit Panthers, a radical militant outfit that sprang out of Maharashtra’s Dalit literary movement. It was the silver jubilee year of India’s independence but the Panthers observed a ‘Black Day’, with black-flag demonstrations all over Bombay, protesting the exploitation and oppression of Dalits. That same year, Golpitha, a collection of poems by Bombay taxi driver Dhasal, had created a storm that was to blow away the traditional Marathi literary citadels, while also establishing Dalit poetry as a distinct stream of literature in the country. Golpitha, named after a slum area in Bombay, created an imagery, vocabulary and landscape completely unknown to Indian literature and set the tone for a new Dalit expression: “My everything amber Sky alchohols in the glass Let breath reel stagger Let snake-vines keep the beat move shake The raga of gutter-ganges Let the donkey under your skin bray Let flow the pain, the dark serpent, the charging boar Let the balls sizzle An honest beast in your torch Now is yours Sell cheap faith-in-Christ, family plan your vulgarity Kick this heavenly virtue, this fatherly atrocity This poor promising puking lamb Crumpled-paper-Pandurang-dindi goes on singing Winding The sweet notes flute Juhu beach fragranced A quarter jingle jangles Daug­h­ters wed between their thighs Uncle Uncle Little Star Str­­u­mming The delicate guitar of impurity Listen to the dainty ankle bells Come come come come God Crush the frogs in the earthenware pot Blow out the lamp Of the ump­teen generations Suck, drool over the pelvic bone My esse­nce droops drunken Why pull it up For everyone in front of everyone the wine filled glass.”  (From Amber in Golpitha) Dhasal continued in the anthology: “Made so beggarly it is nausea to be human Cannot fill shrivelled gut even with dirt Each day just supports them as if bribed Not a sigh slips through the fingers of day’s plenty as We are cut down.” Ambedkar scholar Eleanor Zelliot says, “Nothing is sacred to Dhasal, except possibly his own creative gift and the memory of a man (Dr B.R. Ambedkar) who believed in the creative powers of his own untouchable people.” “The Lord of the people is never ugly He is from among men True Holy Beautiful Babasaheb Ambedkar Is true, holy, beautiful Otherwise this book has no meaning I write all this night It’s three o’clock Thought I want to have a drink I don’t feel like drinking I only want to sleep peacefully And tomorrow morning see no varnas (From Tuhi Iyatta Kanchi, 1981). As a tribute to Ambedkar, Dhasal wanted to, not dream, but wake up and see no caste in the country. He went on to defy caste in the 10 volumes of poetry and three volumes of prose that was to pour out of him. Even as the Dalit Panthers fragmented very quickly into distinct streams, the poet in him was in fervour. Dhasal was  prolific; recognition came in waves too. The Maharashtra government awarded Golpitha, and Dhasal’s acceptance of it did cause heartburn among the rest of the Panthers. There was even talk that he’d become part of the establishment (an allegation that never really went away, what with his column for Saa­mna). But that award got him noticed in the English media. On November 25, 1973, the Times of India’s weekly supplement introduced Dalit literature and Dhasal’s poetry to the reading public. Meanwhile, Zelliot, who was editing the Journal of South Asian Literature, included his translations and an essay by Dilip Chitre in an issue (1982), Laurie Hovell published him in Translations (1986), and V.S. Naipaul wrote about him in his India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). A Padma Shri also came calling in 1999. But the biggest award, to Dalit literature and to Dhasal, was the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Lifetime Achievement award in 2005. The late Dilip Chitre, his long-time friend and translator, published a collected works in 2007, Namdeo Dhasal: Poet of the Underworld, Poems 1972-2006. For Indian literature, Dhasal announced early on the beginning of the breaking of literary shackles and caste barriers. By the time he left us on the streets of Mumbai, he’d set the Dalits on the road to literary freedom, their wea­pon the choicest of words to flay an oppressive society with. (The author is an IAS officer) Click here to see the article in its standard web format