Abstract:
Literary narratives from their inception have been opening their different branches or wings to embrace human consciousness about the socio-political realities of life and in this attempt, short stories also play an indispensable role in the delineation of fragments of the total reality and thereby bringing about radical changes and reformative actions. It is not an overstatement to mention that majority of the Indian Dalit short stories are the literary manifestations of antagonism being felt by the Dalit people against the upper caste Brahmins in India. Any kind of endeavor to assess Dalit literature necessitates the process of taking into account the intricate web of social, economic and political context without which dealing with issues of untouchability and oppression would be a futile attempt. Literary works replete with Dalit consciousness are closely coupled with the dormant but internally active hope and aspiration for self-determination of a group of people who, as untouchables, seem to be wounded by social, political, economic and cultural disparity. The three significant short stories like Avinash Dolas’ “The Refugee”, Bandhumadhav’s “The Poisoned Bread” and Amitabh’s “The Cull”, highlight the position occupied by the Dalit community in the pastoral areas specifically the Mahars a well-known Dalit caste belonging to Maharashtra and their respective fights for carving out the identity in the so-called upper-caste dominated Indian society.
In this paper, despite the pains and the afflictions being experienced by the individual characters in these short stories, an attempt has been made to show that there lies a common thread that binds their fate to one particular issue. i.e. suffering which is attributable to the social concern rather than an individual problem. To deal with this issue close reading methodology has been used in the paper.
Key Words:Dalit, Caste system, Society, Equality, Oppression and Food
Introduction:
It is evident that whenever there is oppression and tyranny in the history of human civilization there lies inevitable forces to counterbalance it sooner or later. If we ponder on the development of the human society we are destined to encounter different kinds of atrocities being perpetrated upon those sections who are deceitfully excluded from the system of knowledge and subsequently disempowered by the privileged sections from all kinds of sources that can generate basic necessities of life. In this tug of war between oppressed and the oppressors to climb the ladder of progress, the oppressed sections get smashed from all directions; even the society and the political system sow the seed of discrimination utterly sweeping them away to a cocooned world perceptively considering them as untouchables. Such a world seems to be possessed by the Dalit community Mahars belonging primarily to Maharashtra, who, being burdened with the problem of the caste system, have been persistently raising their voices especially against the system of untouchability.
In this paper, the three noteworthy short stories like Avinash Dolas’ “The Refugee”, Bandhumadhav’s “The Poisoned Bread” and Amitabh’s “The Cull”, draw attention to the positions occupied by the Dalit community in the pastoral area particularly the Mahars and their respective fights for carving out the identity in the so-called upper-caste dominated Indian society. All these works are realistically responding towards demonstration of a malicious caste system that has been overtly or covertly thriving in our country for hundreds of years teaching us a lesson that the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity as enshrined in the constitution appears to be futile to a certain degree in some places owing to the disproportionate function of it. It is a bitter truth that “although the constitution of India has abolished the caste system, it still lingers in all walks of life with its grasp as firm as ever in the minds of people”(Khan 312). Dalit people are ‘fringed’ who are seen to be kept on the periphery denying their voices to be heard and the fundamental human and civil rights to be enjoyed. The classification of castes is the “ monstrously stigmatized system thrust on Indian society conspiratorially with a hegemonistic intention by the Brahminized Hindu religious order”(Sudershan 60).
The three stories have unearthed the fact that even though the Mahars come forward from the historical baggage or burden of being outcaste and become assertive in their position in the society, yet inside the shell of the community of their rural surroundings they do not seem to be able to think of ascending another walk upward in the societal ladder. All these selected short stories are close surveillance of the declining conditions among the untouchables living in isolated rural areas. These stories try to cater to the knowledge that a specific dominant caste is not only to be blamed for fuelling the prevalence of caste-based division; the problem lies in the socio-economic and cultural arrangements that seem to necessitate such divisiveness creating an uncanny ambiance among human beings. To ward off such a predicament, there is a need for utmost changes of those arrangements; blaming the dominant class without considering the core of the problems will be an unproductive attempt only. To quote S.P. Punalekar
Caste or community does not pollute or criminalize society. It is rather the other way around; it is society, meaning its social (economic) institutions and the underlying cultural system, which upgrades some members at the cost of others, i.e., by degrading them, by dehumanizing and marginalizing them (qtd. in Khan 319)
The caste monopolization of wealth, power and social life plunders and defaces the village social fabric by segregating it based on caste and untouchability.
Unfolding the despicable destitution of the subjugated Mahar community, Avinash Dolas’ “The Refugee” startles the readers with the very first line—“Go away from here, my son”. Just owing to the “quick temper”, the protagonist in the story, a twenty-one-year-old Dalit boy, Santu is fired angrily by his mother and asked to go away from the village. Santu has shown some real courage to stand against the sordid practice of the caste system and helped a woman getting few drops of water from a well belonging to a high-caste family. Owing to this confronting attitude, he was severely beaten up “like a piece of iron sought by someone for no particular purpose, heated, hammered, pounded flat at will....enduring blow after blow of the hammer (“The Refugee” 216). After that, the whole village had to face the enrage of some upper-caste goons intimidating to incinerate the whole Mahar community of the place. Being apprehensive of the larking danger upon the entire neighbourhood Santu had to respond to the decree of her mother and left the village with a dispirited mind without looking back once to his parents. With burning anguish against the barbaric caste system, he moved on to an unknown destination becoming a stranger for everyone:
His father was not his father anymore, nor was his village his village; and the mother who gave him birth couldn’t call him her son anymore. His mind burned with the thought. All of them were alien to him. He was an outsider among them — an orphan (216)
He was completely broken, shedding tears with silence. But the tragedy is that the tear of a Dalit boy is “just water, saltwater”(216) the value of which is not reciprocated by the society in any form. A “surge of anger passed like lightning through his head” and he spoke to himself, “My name itself is a curse”(217).
Articulating the sense of alienation and seclusion being felt by a Dalit individual in the society is well-marked by Debojoy Chanda as follows:
Dalit can...perhaps be said to occupy a position which is closer to that of an internally displaced person— a person disowned by Brahminical touch and recognized in [him] internal displacement as a figure that the United Nations would term an ‘invisible citizen’ of India. (44)
Santu has been forced to leave his village only to find himself as an invisible citizen even in his own country. Being evicted from the caste Hindu-dominated area he found himself unchained from the burden of caste system accepting the prospect to start life afresh only to feel substandard or inferior to the predicament of a refugee from Bangladesh met in a train even in his own country. Santu started considering himself as an unfamiliar person whose predicament does not allow him to articulate his own right as a human being. The incongruity is that the Indian state is granting unrestricted shelter to millions of refugees coming from Bangladesh but a son of the soil like Santu has been arbitrarily deprived of his national identity being reduced to an ‘invisible citizen’ only just because he is compelled to be fitted into a position as ordained by the theory of Varnasharams practiced in India without considering its relevance at present time.
Santu started pondering on the whole incident in the train that truly reflects the bitter truth of Indian society where, in the name of caste, perpetual harassments are thriving overtly or covertly the solution of which is in the hands of the society itself. But the misfortune is that people seem to be least concerned about the mobility of the wheel of the society which is being managed by rigid and established socio-political institutions. The story ends with a couple of fascinating lines that offer a chance to humanity to conscientiously introspect and to call into question the subsistence of the caste system even in today’s post-postmodern world.
On the one side, there was BanglaDesh in turmoil and on the other, the community of the Mahars, in agony. One homeless Bangla Deshi was going back to his relations after twenty years. And one Mahar, even after twenty years, was homeless in his own country. (220)
“The Poisoned Bread” by Bandhumadhav, is detailed contemplation on the deep psychological wounds being borne by the life of a Mahar family in Maharashtra under the evils of the caste system and the subsequent retaliation. The title itself indicates the toxicity of this system that has snatched away many innocent human lives. The story sheds light on the gradual changes that have occurred in the society with time; the grandfather Yetalya Aja in the plot is the embodiment of submission, acceptability and surrender towards the caste-ridden social structure while Mahadeva, the grandson is the emblem of an audacious voice with resistance and revolt towards the system. The old generation, owing to the lack of awareness of their rights, behaved submissively though a sense of anguish was being nourished by them. As Yetalya laments in front of his grandson Mahadeva,
“Do you think I feel happy about being suppressed by the landlords and the rest of the villagers? I too want to retaliate and have a good fight for the humiliation and injustice they have been piling on us. But, my boy, I am helpless! I see no end to this suffering.”(“The Poisoned Bread 151)
Before embracing death, Yetalya Aja has shown the ultimate way of freedom from the clutches of the upper-caste people who throw only ‘poisoned bread’ to be eaten by the Dalits:
“I can only say: never depend on the age-old bread associated with our caste. Get as much education as you can. Take away this accused bread from the mouth of the Mahars. This poisonous bread will finally kill the very humanness of man.” (“The Poisoned Bread” 153)
It is true concerning the Dalit community that “the poisonous bread, they eat, have denied the very humanness of man, and degenerated them to mere animals or even worse than that” (Kumar 16). They are merely considered as boots and chappals by the dominant caste; even if, according to an upper caste character Bapu Patil, a dalit individual, “like a Mahar or a Mang gets educated, no one will ever call him a Brahmin. A Mahar is a Mahar even if he passes L.L.B and becomes a barrister....one should always keep to one’s own position.” (148-149). For him, “God intended to have a definite hierarchy when he created the Brahmin, the Maratha, the fisherman, the weaver, the Mahar-Mang, the Dhor and the cobbler in that order. Everyone must abide by this scheme and act accordingly” (149). On the contrary to these opinions held by the upper caste individual, Mahadeva, who is educated and aware of their rights, has started raising voices against discrimination. He argues logically to support equality of all individuals in the society and says, “Aren’t we also made of the same flesh and blood as the rest of you? We too are born after nine months in our mother’s womb”(149). The story culminates on a note of optimism where Mahadeva displayed an unflinching attitude towards an imminent revolution as an indication of striking back the very essence of caste-based fortification kept alive by the dominant caste in the society. He said, “They inflamed me with a sense of fury and disgust, prompting me to retaliate” (“The Poisoned Bread” 153).
Similar kinds of Dalit consciousness is also unfurled in Amitabh’s “The Cull” that depicts that the extreme indigence in the society of the Dalit is the reason for the hegemonic nuisances of the caste system of the upper caste people who unscrupulously manipulate food consumption keeping Dalit people away from the hierarchical arrangement of foods forcing them to get un/satisfied with some filthy and putrescent foodstuff. The sheer discrimination against the Dalits in case of food consumption is rooted in the fact that “the upper caste people have full access to the hierarchy of food needs and their choices of food habits succinctly related with the notion of purity”(Dhabak 115). They consider themselves as befitting to have quality foods as they are supposed to be on the top of the caste arrangement.
The story says that when the news of the death of the Timaji Paul’s cow got spread far and wide in the village of the Mahars, everyone started pouring into the place “like hens fluttering out of their coops when the shutters are opened”(191) so that they can obtain some shares of it as “for the whole last months there had been nothing, nothing at all” to eat properly. Even utter poverty and lack of food have intensified their struggle for existence. The story depicts that the struggle is not only for humans but also for animals like crows, vultures, and dogs.
The village becomes a battleground not between the Dalit Mahars and the caste Hindus but between animals and fellow community members to seize a part of the flesh of the dead cow. The vibrant portrayal of different animals eating the flesh along with the perpetual craving of the Dalit community of the village to have their own pieces from the same source symbolizes how the latter has been seen as no better than the animals. The privileged castes do not hesitate to visualize both the marginalized people and the animals waiting to gobble up the fleshes of the same cow, considering them as occupying the same hierarchy in the social ladder. The supremacy over the lands as prime sources of production and subsequent control over the foods produced in those lands facilitate the self-proclaimed legitimization of both of the entities—food and land—on the part of the upper caste that leads to the loss of livelihood for the Dalits. Being deprived of the fundamental requirement of a person i.e., food, they started filling their thin tummy with musty pieces of food items as well as deceased animals as if they were not human beings. In the story “The Cull”, this scene is exhibited pitiably where only pieces of cow bones have become the apple of discord among humans as well as animals.
The three stories as discussed above have a common thread that binds together the wretched living circumstances of the Mahar community in the pastoral areas who seem to have plunged into unending servitude, illiteracy and ignorance. What appears to be a matter of grave concern is not the caste system itself but the hegemonistic overshadowing approach of the dominant caste being sustained by the social, political and cultural institutional practices. To bring about a drastic change into the prevailing perceptions about the segregation of human beings on the basis of caste, there is an utmost need to look into the social fabric of our society. Because “the state of dalit consciousness is essentially social. That is to say that though human experiences and the undergoing of feelings are personal and subjective the condition of dalit consciousness is social and objective”(Boruah 331). The sense of alienation and oppression as shown in “The Refuge”, “The Poisoned Bread” and “The Cull” are diverse and unique in each of their literary presentations. But the binding force among the three is undoubtedly the caste system, the consciousness of which is essentially social. Literature is considered as the mirror of society and these Dalit literary works are simply upholding the caste-ridden rural society of India. It is a matter of paramount misfortune that the pastoral settings of India which were considered by Mahatma Gandhi as the heavenly abode where the real India thrives have ironically become long-lasting breeding grounds of mutual hatred, injustice, barbarism, illiteracy, prejudice and servitude. This caste stratum is a “monstrously stigmatized system thrust on Indian society conspiratorially with a hegemonistic intention by the Brahminized Hindu religious Order”(Sudershan 60).
The provocative writings of the three short story writers that come under the category of Dalit literature are the embodiment of a kind of concealed anguish that challenges the societal scaffold of the caste system. But their literary efforts are to invoke a sustained revolutionary change. It is not radical retribution against those who perpetrate the entrenched system but a methodical attack on the seemingly unshakable societal framework that catalyzes these dodgy norms of deprivation being set for the weaker section of the people. It is well said that “ Dalit literature is neither a caste literature nor a literature of vengeance and not a literature which spreads hatred but it is associated with Dalit movement to bring change”(Tayyab 133).
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it can be noted that all the three writers have successfully visualized the customary practices of the caste-system thereby help readers in the process of realization of one’s position in the society because the suffering of those people is attributable to the social concern rather than an individual problem. Dalit is actually an awareness of the diverse experiences, joys and sorrows, as well as skirmishes of individuals forced to be inhabiting in the lowest fragment of society as a silent community. Therefore, there is an utmost need to reframe the socio-cultural thoughts of human beings. If the perception of the society about the caste system gets changed then certainly the hegemonic skeleton will topple down involuntarily leading to the formation of a society based on equal rights and dignity to everyone. It is the time to discard the ideology of hegemony and embrace that of humanism. Let us decolonize our mindset from the legacy of casteism as adherence to such beliefs do no good for humankind. Let's clean our society dispelling away the entire caste-based prejudices and make room for all to breathe the air of freedom and happiness.
References:
Primary texts:
- Amitabh. “The Cull.” translated by Asha Damble. Poisoned Bread. Arjun Dangle. Ed. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1992. Print.
- Bandhumadhav. “The Poisoned Bread.” translated by Y.S. Kalamkar. Poisoned Bread. Arjun Dangle. Ed. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1992. Print.
- Dolas, Avinash ““The Refugee”. translated by Y.S. Kalamkar. Poisoned Bread. Arjun Dangle. Ed. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1992. Print.
Secondary texts:
- Boruah, Alimpa Bhuyan. “Bandhumadhav’s “The Poisoned Bread”: A Mapping of Dalit Consciousness.” IJELLH. Vol.3, Issue 4: 2015. Print.
- Chanda, Debojoy. “In Search of Other Worlds: The Dalit in De Facto Statelessness in Avinash Dolas’s ‘“The Refugee”’.” Refugee Watch. Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group: Kolkata. Print.
- Dangle, Arjun. Poisoned Bread. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1992. Print.
- Dhabak, Mahamadul Hassan. “Hunger and Masculinity: Exploring Subordinate Dalit Masculinity in Select Dalit Autobiographies.”Body Politics: Rethinking Gender and Masculinity. Tanmoy Baghira & Ananya Mukkherjee. Eds. Akhand Publishing House: New Delhi, 2021.Print.
- Khan, Ali Ahmed. “Identity Crisis in Dalit Short Stories from Maharashtra.” AWEJ, No.1, 2013. Page No-313-320. Print.
- Kumar, Vijay. “Starvation, Victimization, and Accusation of being Dalit: A Study of ThePoisoned Bread by Bandhumadhav.” Online International Interdisciplinary Research Journal.Vol.09, 2019. Print.
- Sudershan. E. “The Untouchable Wretches – A Critical Exploration Into Dalit Subalternism.” International Journal Of Multidisciplinary Educational Research. Vol.1, Issue 5(1), November 2012.
- Tayyab, M M Abu. “Positions of Dalits in the Indian Social System.” International Journal of Pure and Applied Researches; Vol.1, No.1: 2015. Print.