Abstract:
Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography Joothan is not an armchair reading, it’s absolutely excruciating in its perusal. It represents the ebbs and flow in the life of a Dalit in Indian society deconstructing its social pyramid. Representation is very subjective and a politically loaded word. It’s completely in the hand of a writer what he wants to serve to his/her reader, what he selects and how he constructs. Dalit literature is the product of Dalit consciousness for their rights and identity. It rewrites history and aims to present literature to support human life and deconstruct the dominant views of the dominant. Violence becomes all the more dangerous and heinous when it is organized and exercised through an institution. Caste hierarchy in India is one such form of violence which generates a performative force and victimizes brutally the marginalized outcastes. One can find several cases reported of ragging in colleges and instances of bullying too even in modern India despite Anti-ragging Cells. The maximum number of cases are due to the social pyramid and practice of caste hierarchy though many remain unreported. The dual combination of institutional violence and student abuse in the field of education system specifically on the basis of caste problematizes many other issues and challenges constitutional values too. This paper is an attempt to explore the areas of institutional violence in the educational organization and interrogates teacher’s behaviors for student abuse through Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography Joothan.
Key Words: Joothan,Omprakash Valmiki,Violence,student.
Violence becomes all the more dangerous and heinous when it is organized and exercised through an institution. Caste hierarchy in India is one such form of violence which generates a performative force and victimizes brutally the marginalized outcastes. One can find several cases reported of ragging in colleges and instances of bullying too even in modern India despite Anti-ragging Cells. The maximum number of cases are due to the social pyramid and practice of caste hierarchy though many remain unreported. In independent India, education is one of the rights given to all Indians to assert equality. Institutional violence can be seen very close to the idea of structural violence as coined by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung. Structural violence is a concept for a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Violence can vary in its severity, justification, consequences, and in the intentions of the perpetrator. Abuse of a student by a teacher occurs when a teacher violates a student's rights or endangers their safety and well-being. Caste system and its enactment instills learned performative violent behavior and is a product of an intricate social structure which may be reformed and prevented. Institutional violence is often exercised in public space which is either biased or based on race, caste, class or religion. The dual combination of institutional violence and student abuse in the field of education system specifically on the basis of caste problematizes many other issues and challenges constitutional values too.
Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography Joothan is not an armchair reading, it's absolutely excruciating in its perusal. It represents the ebbs and flow in the life of a Dalit in Indian society deconstructing its social pyramid. Representation is very subjective and a politically loaded word. It’s completely in the hand of a writer what he wants to serve to his/her reader, what he selects and how he constructs. Dalit literature is the product of Dalit consciousness for their rights and identity. It rewrites the history and aims to present literature to support human life and deconstruct the dominant views of the dominant.Undoubtedly,,Dalit literature has created a firm ground to raise their voice and resist against the power-politics in the form of caste hierarchy yet Joothan is the record of painful experience of a Dalit life in the immediate post-Independence time. Autobiographies are the representative of real-life experiences of a person that provides us first-hand knowledge of his or her struggle for survival. Literature is the mirror of society. This is the simplest ever written definition of society. Nonetheless the role and function of literature do not exhaust here as it also records human history and refines the theory of human mind.
Prof. Waman Nimbalkar says that Dalit literature is a product of Dalit consciousness dealing with a kind of rejection and acceptance. The system of caste division and caste hierarchy sounds absurd for a person who does not belong to India but for an Indian it changes the meaning of life and his or her social status completely regardless of one's talent and human rights. Since ages the Caste system which is based on birth in a particular family determines one's fate and generates a tremendous vacuum in the social and cultural life of Indian society leaving behind all its declarations to be an emerging superpower on the International level. Every society in human history was divided or witnessed a sort of class conflict and discrimination but in Indian society caste decides one’s class keeping aside its democratic and constitutional values if not everywhere. The word Dalit gained currency as a self-chosen, proud name with the early 1970s development of the Dalit Panthers and Dalit literature. In fact, Dalit literature empowers Dalit community and gives them confidence and self-esteem. It does not portray Dalits as victims but as victorious who struggle against all the oddities of life and overcome the hurdles.
Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is an autobiography which has very universal appeal despite the urge shown by the writer to consider it a personal narrative. It’s very powerful in its depiction of violence and atrocities against Dalits based on caste. The traditional meaning of Dalit is ‘oppressed’ or ‘downtrodden’ though the meaning has got fresh currency in the contemporary time as it has been stretched to include numerous population who have been oppressed, exploited and thrown on the margin of social life. Many Dalit writers opine that Dalit is not a caste but it’s the realization of the caste and it works as a performative force in the enactment of the practice of caste hierarchy.
The social pyramid described through the myth of labour division sounds completely irrational and illogical. It says that Brahmins are born from the head of the creator,Kshatriyas from the shoulders,Viasyas’ from the thighs and shudras from the feet. This order does not only determine their birth history but it also defines and explains their social status.Ati-shudras are not at all a part of this caste structure but they are outcastes. They were given menial work and were supposed to live at the outskirts of mainstream society. Omprakash Valmiki’s narrative in Joothan problematizes the caste biased violence and tries to represent the violence against Dalits.
One can understand and define the genre of autobiography as someone’s life story written
by that person. An autobiography often includes the date and place of birth, stories from
childhood or a young age, and may include a difficult time in one’s life or great
accomplishments. While it is not necessary but most autobiographies are written in first-
person. In an autobiography we often get a certain timeline of the writer as he starts
narrating his life story. Sometimes one may start from childhood days or probably one
starts from adulthood and then progresses toward the past and then the present days. A writer
of an autobiography also provides a lot of information about his family and relatives and
the friends which shape his or her personality and thoughts. In the course of action
stories related to a specific incident which proved a turning point also often included by a
writer of this genre. Association with some people who influenced his mind and
stimulated his consciousness to direct his energy to something productive and fruitful
also find place in the narrative without which one’s autobiography remains incomplete.
One may ask a question as why we should give importance to an autobiography as its
completely one-man story and life narratives vary from person to person and from place
to place, and moreover why we should consider an autobiography as a part of serious
literature. We can comprehend this query as an autobiography becomes very valuable if it
represents not only a life narrative of a person but it presents life an entire community
and this holds good in case of Dalit autobiography.
It becomes all the more important for a reader to understand the meaning of the word caste and its associated ideas. The system of caste ws not just to classify the division of work or labour but it was a carefully crafted pyramid to locate the privileged for their own purpose.
Caste denotes Jat,Jati or varna too. Surinder S Jodhka in his book Caste states,
“The orientalist presented a rather simplistic view of the caste system. They theorized caste as a hierarchical system through the idea of varna as a substantive category where the Brahmins were always placed at the top of the hierarchical order, followed by Kshatriya,Vaishya, and Shudra. The untouchable communities were outside the formal hierarchy but their status also followed this neat hierarchical ordering derived from the logic of purity and impurity” (7-8)
The major problem with casteism is its hidden undertone of purity and impurity. Those who are from high caste are pure and all those who are outcastes are considered as impure or untouchables and unseen able and unapproachable as well.B. S. Cohn also adds some idea in this context to understand the issue,“…there was no regional variation and no questioning of the relationship between prescriptive normative statements derived from the texts and the actual behavior of individuals and groups. Indian society was seen as a set of rules which every Hindu followed.” (7-8)
Omprakash Valmiki is a pioneer of Dalit writing in Hindi literature. He was born in Mujjafarnagar in UttarPradesh in an outcaste community. Hence his autobiography unpacks the trials and tribulation of being a Dalit and his hardship to establish his identity as a critic, poet and Dalit writer. This autobiography in fact travels through a vast arena of episodes loaded with disturbing narratives of several incidents of humiliation, torture and insult and all biased with caste hierarchy. His other works are Sadiyon Ka Santaap (1989), Bas! Bahut Ho Chuka (1997), Ab Aur Nahin (2009) short stories, Salaam (2000), Ghuspethiye (2004) Dalit Sahitya Ka Saundary shaastra (2001) and a history of the Valmiki community, Safai Devata (2009), Do Chera is a play written by him. They all tell the tale of the excruciating life of Dalits in Indian society and their doomed fate dominated by the social pyramid.
Joothan is an autobiographical narrative of the life of Omprakash Valmiki which does not exhibit the experience of a person but instead reveals and debunks the practice of untouchability in the post-independence Indian society. Run Prabha Mukherjee is the translator of the book from Hindi to English. She writes;
“For the first time, a book was calling a spade a spade, not mincing words, not softening the truth, a truth that was so horrible that I had buried it deep in my consciousness…….Joothan had unmasked the lies and falsehoods of the social order I had grown up in, insisting that I confront my caste comfort and caste privilege.”(135)
Joothan is the most celebrated autobiographical narrative in the realm of literature of resistance and Dalit studies as well. It is not so that the experience of Dalit life in Indian society has been portrayed for the first time in Valimiki’s narration but it represents a Dalit’s life from a mere victim to a victorious one. Writers like Premchandra,Mulk Raj Anand and many more have also depicted the hardship of being a Dalit but their articulation remains a sympathetic one and does not shock the society and its longstanding norms and standards from their roots. Valmiki states:“ If the non-Dalits are unfamiliar with the burning miseries of Dalit life, it is because of the distance between Dalits and non-Dalits that has been created by the Indian social order. When they do not know the reality of this Dalit life, whatever they write about it will remain superficial, born out of pity and sympathy, and not out of a desire for change or repentance.” (34)
Valmiki’s Joothan challenges the hegemony of Caste and its hierarchy. Its in fact explores the Dalit consciousness to the process of exploitation and formulates a literary canon to empower the oppressed anywhere and everywhere across the world. Valmiki’s finger is pointed towards discrimination which is the root cause of any sort of social evils. He also traces the enactment of performative force of caste-based discrimination in the institute like school and in the field of education too. When an educated person performs the practice of untouchability and violates the personality of a person and hampers the growth of an individual it is identified as violence. It is not something unique in the narrative of Valmiki but very obvious in educational institutes where students are not only discriminated against and misbehaved by teachers but they also become victims in the hands of other students who belong to the privileged caste in the form of ragging and bullying. Valmiki’s autobiography becomes significant to study the concerns towards Dalit students are marginalized, exploited and excluded as well. Intellectual nepotism does not allow them to mingle in mainstream society and to acquire knowledge also. They are rejected everywhere and the stigma of caste follows everywhere wherever they go whether its school or college or work place or society in general. There is a lot of hue and cry over reservation and financial support provided to them by the government nevertheless it has given a lot of opportunity to them too but until the behavioral pattern of the people will not change there would never be a casteless society.
Violence and atrocities against Dalits are a common affair nowadays which can be found every now and then exercising in our society. Valmiki’s Joothan tells the story of numerous episodes of humiliation and insult in the educational institutes. The power of caste is practiced to shatter the confidence of Dalits who manage to get education though are not given space to live with esteem. They have to negotiate their identity and often have to conceal their identity of being a Dalit. Surname becomes an issue for them if they try to establish their identity and gain respect.
“Foucault attests that force relations composing “power” are “both intentional and nonsubjective.” Richard Lynch notably criticized Foucault on this point because he sees the proposition as contradictory: if an act is intentional (exercised), it must also be subjective because it is enacted by a subject. However, this misses the depth of Foucault’s argument, which he unravels a few sentences later: “There is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives. But this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject.”24 Subjects try to control the acts of others (or one’s own) but lack the ultimate ability to foresee or govern the outcome, i.e., the subject is only ever partially autonomous. In an interview towards the end of his life, Foucault even adopts a vocabulary that reflects Arendt’s by stressing that some particular end can be affected by other subjects: In this case, unexpected acts “are results that are adapted to different uses, and these uses are rationalized – organized, in any case – in terms of new ends.”
Power has no limitation and it demands the owner to be all the hungrier to subjugate people to pacify its appetite. People become all the greedier for power, wealth, resources which results later adopting violent means in achieving their aims by hook and crook. Criminals use violence in robbing and on raping their victims because there is no other way to perform their violent intentions. Violence is sometimes used as a tool to acquire a desired goal and final solution to many problems in human life and sometimes, as the only remedy to sort out anything and everything. It is also used to oppose what we disfavour or dislike. Violence is deplorable mainly because it is randomly executed and is directed most often at the innocent or ordinary people who are totally unprepared for it. Violence shakes the framework of morality because it amounts to doing things to people without warning, mercy or remorse. Violence signifies injuries of many kinds and degrees caused to a person (or any living thing) by another person or persons with manifest motives. It is blind, irrational and dissolving emotion that spurs on man so that he not only commits violent acts but is even zealous to justify his extreme violence. Sometimes people do not know how to tackle a situation or words, or an act and they find violence as an appropriate means to be used to react in certain conditions. It is used in schools and families to maintain discipline and punishment.
The narration of the autobiography starts with the description of the space available for Dalits. Contrary to the rosy picture of nature as usually found in Indian literature or anywhere else Valmiki presents the unpresented slums where Dalits are supposed to live according to the social pyramid. It says: “on the edges of the pond were the homes of the Chuhras. All the women of the village, young girls, older women, even the newly married brides, would sit in the open space behind these homes at the edges of the pond to take a shit. Not just under the cover of darkness but even in daylight.” He makes an excruciatingly thought-provoking comment later,” the pigs wandering in narrow lanes, naked children,dogs,daily fights, this was the environment of my childhood. If the people who call the Caste system an ideal social arrangement had to live in this environment for a day or two, they would change their mind.” (1)
Omprakash was the youngest among all his brothers and one sister who died in lack of food. His father was in fact an epitome of true spirit of rebellion and resistance against caste hierarchy and its atrocities. He decides to send his son to a school. When Valmiki enters the school his suffering starts as a child. He was discriminated against and punished by the teacher just because of the label of a Chuhra. “The ideal image of the teachers that I saw in my childhood has remained indelibly imprinted on my memory. Whenever someone starts talking about a great guru, I remember all those teachers who used to swear about mothers and sisters. They used to fondle good looking boys and invite them to their homes and sexually abuse them.”(4) Valmiki’s concern is not just for Dalit students but he had a vast vision to identify the sexual violence against students. The sight of physical and verbal violence is also disturbing done by a teacher in the premises of an education institute where institution violence of caste system and punishment in the name of bad performance or learning becomes an awful combination to victimize an innocent child. “The headmaster had pounced on my neck, he dragged me out of the class and threw me on the ground. He screamed: ‘Go sweep the whole playground…. Otherwise I will shove chillies up your ears and throw you out of the school.’(5)
Violence breeds only violence. When the mind of a teacher is so polluted with unhealthy thoughts and violence what it can teach to its students and if it teaches what it has then the problem becomes all the more serious as it would sow the seeds of revenge and performance of caste atrocities too. The degree of trepidation is quite high in all these descriptions which is not a fictional story but a true account of his own life experience as a student.
Further we come to know how Valmiki with strong determination continues to struggle though his studies came to a halt after the death of his eldest brother. He made some friends after rejoining school and started performing excellently. Though “I was kept out of extracurricular activities. One such occasion I stood on the margins like a spectator. During the annual functions of the school, when rehearsals were on for the play, I too wished for a role. But I always had to stand outside the door. The so-called descendants of the gods cannot understand the anguish of standing outside the door.”(16) During the examinations also he was not allowed to drink water from the glass rather the peon used to pour water for him. Discrimination and untouchability are seen in every layers of life that have offered only thrones the life’s staircase of a Dalit. This reminds us of Langston Hughes’s poem “Mother to Son” where a black woman is giving a piece of advice to her son in racist society. The pain and trauma of being a black in American society is very much similar to the suffering of a Dalit in Indian society.
Education is key to awake human consciousness. Caste system failed here as it did not consider this very perspective of the human mind which can be revived through the miracle of knowledge. Dalits were deprived of education and thus a long trajectory of suffering and miseries interlinked to hurl them in a space where they were exploited by privileged caste for their own purpose. When the flames of education start melting the cocoon of ignorance then there starts an urge to interrogate and rewrite history. This is evident when Valmiki also realises the futility of incomplete history. “… Master Saheb was teaching the lesson on Dronacharya. He told us, almost with tears in his eyes, that Dronacharya had fed flour dissolved in water to his famished son,Ashwatthama,in lieu of milk….but what about us who had to drink mar? How come we were never mentioned in any epic?Why didn’t an epic poet ever write a word on our lives?”(23) The reaction of the teacher after hearing the question aggravated the anger in him and he lashes the student not only physically but emotionally, mentally and verbally as well.
Master Saheb screamed, Darkest Kaliyug has descended upon us so that an untouchable is daring to talk back.’……He ordered a boy to get a long teak stick.’Chuhre ke,you dare compare yourself with Dronacharya…..Here, take this, I will write an epic on your body. ‘He had rapidly created an epic on my back. Reminding me of those hated days of hunger and hopelessness, this epic composed out of a feudalistic mentality is inscribed not just on my back but on each nerve of my brain.” (23)
The behaviour and attitude of the teachers which is considered a noble profession gets derailed with licence of punishment in educational institutes. Violence based on caste is a serious concern though it is not always paddled only in the form of caste performative force rather it can be seen getting practised by teachers in the name of education and teaching. “The teachers of Tyagi Inter College,Barla,thrashed the boys with kicks and fists. These kicks and fists were not those of a teacher but of a goonda.How could a teacher beat his pupils so heartlessly”,(55) states Omprakash Valmiki. The other instance we can see when violence takes the form of indifference of a teacher towards the curiosity of a student. Valmiki narrates his experience that he wanted his teacher to explain some mathematical queries and his teacher remained absolutely cold instead he gave his household works to him to get that done. He was also not given good marks in practicals he shares. “I always got poor marks in practicals, whereas my written exams were always graded high.” (56) This exposes the ugly side of education system too in our country where discrimination decides who should be treated how and how much. Talent and curiosity of a student are tossed up in the sky recklessly by the teachers because they are the licensed operator of institutional violence and atrocities.
Valmiki shares his father’s opinion here who was always under the impression that education only brings or improves his caste, he was unaware of the fact that caste decides class in Indian society and it can never be changed until we change the behavioural pattern of the teachers and students in school, colleges and universities. “He constantly said that I should improve my ‘caste’ by getting an education. He did not know that ‘caste ‘cannot be improved by education. It can only be improved by taking birth in the right caste.” (58)
Omprakash Valmiki’s perspective is not only to tell the stories of atrocities in the field of education but he has proudly mentioned some names in the autobiography where he has praised some people from privileged class who encouraged his achievements in education and celebrated too. Though there are instances when Omprakash comes to know the teachings of the Gita,he was intrigued by the action of Krishna and asked questions to his teacher. Instead of giving a satisfactory answer to gratify the curiosity of a student the teacher behaved with a caste-ridden attitude. “I could fully grasp the Gita’s exposition on the importance of Karma. What I did manage to grasp was that Krishna was inciting Arjun to go to war; that he was persuading Arjun to kill his kit and kin……I wanted answers to the questions bobbing inside my head. Whenever I dared to ask my school teachers to answer my doubts, I got punished. They beat me up, gave me lower marks in the examination. The taunts of my teachers and fellow students pierced me deeply. ‘Look at this Chuhre ka, pretending to be a Brahmin.”(61-62)
Another instance is all the more excruciating when he states,” When I spoke to him about any problem, academic or personal, he would, first of all, make me aware of my being; Bhangi’. At such occasion, I felt that it wasn’t a teacher I was facing but an illiterate feudal lord, drunk on his arrogance.” (63) When a person has to suffer and face episodes of violence, humiliation and insult every now and then in one’s life he is destined to be a victim of mental breakdown and trauma and this is what happens with Omprakash too, “I was normally afraid of corporal punishment and lived in a state of permanent nervous tension.” (64)
Teaching is usually taken as a noble profession and a teacher holds a dignified and respectful place in the life of a student and in society as well. But these caste-biased attitudes and behaviour saturated with violence would definitely change the meaning of a teacher.
“I felt that even though this man has a master’s degree in mathematics, he is a coward. He did not have the courage to drink water from my hand. I began thinking of Chandrapal and Shravankumar. They were not very bright in their studies, but they were wonderful human beings. They were my beloved friends who were unafraid of losing caste. These assaults of untouchability have ripped me apart time and time again.” (65)
After the sensitive perusal of this autobiography of Omprakash Valmiki we are exposed to the reality of our society and cause of many episodes and instances of violence in the education system and in the Universities and colleges where caste based violent behaviour and atrocities in the classrooms by teachers gave us new chagrin to ponder over the Institutional violence and student abuse. Moreover, we need to train the teacher to behave appropriately in the classrooms in the schools too where all the students irrespective of their caste should be treated equally. Arun Prabha Mukherjee has rightly mentioned, “Valmiki’s work, I hope, will be read in the spirit that remains true to his vision for literature,Joothan speaks eloquently both about his love for literature that empowers the oppressed and his disdain for literary standards based on apolitical aestheticism. As a writer, Valmiki wanted to awaken us to the inequities of the social environment that had excluded him and millions like him, kept them ‘outside the door’.Joothan’s popularity with readers in India and abroad is living proof that Valmiki succeeded remarkably in breaking down the tall walls of denial that had occluded our vision for so long.”(139)
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