Abstract:
Dalit writing engenders visions of alternate discourses within the dominant order seeking to amend Indian sensibility, sensitizing the Indian psyche to the varied structures of social, political and cultural oppression ingrained deeply within its social matrix. Dalit visions seek to unveil the premises of oppression and explore avenues for liberation. The experiences of violence, oppression and segregation which find a strange congruence in the lives of the backward castes and the untouchables, urged Dalit writers like Baburao Bagul to defy the assumptions of caste, class, language and gender that the Hindu patriarchal framework takes for granted, and sought to re-examine popular conceptions of caste and gender in post independent India. Placed within the context of an emerging modernity in a post colonial cultural scape, Bagul’s When I Hid My Caste examines the lives of the marginalized, rendering a voice to the dissent, revolt and anger that colour Dalit responses to the oppression that they endure as the internal Other in an intensely hierarchical and inegalitarian structural order. Bagul explores the myriad ways in which lived experiences of caste domination, gender discrimination, economic and sexual exploitation and patriarchy work in collusion to create intensely personal narratives of victimization and rebellion; concurrently resisting attempts at the legitimization of hegemonic structures of Hindu orthodoxy.
Key Words: hegemony, hierarchy, gender discrimination, fragmented identity, marginalised Other
The intensely hegemonic structure of the Indian social order with its insistence on and imposition of brahmanic dominance has dangerously jeopardized secular discourses in language and culture. Dalit writing engenders visions of alternate discourses within the dominant order seeking to amend Indian sensibility, sensitizing the Indian psyche to the varied structures of social, political and cultural oppression ingrained deeply within its social matrix. Dalit visions seek to unveil the premises of oppression and explore avenues for liberation. The influence of Marxism and the principles of Dr Ambedkar gave voice and course to the deep rooted anger and revolt brewing within their tortured souls. The Dalit Panthers deliberated on the cultural and economic disparities and struggles central to the Dalit experience and sought to capture the quintessence of proletarian Dalit living. Dilip Menon observes that violence was constitutive of Indian society, particularly in the maintenance of a hierarchical Hindu order. Caste violence, according to him, which manifests itself in the daily humiliation and killing of dalits, is the central faultline of contemporary Indian society (vii - viii). Menon regards this casual brutality and organized violence that Hinduism as an intensely hierarchical and inegalitarian structural order practiced towards its subordinate sections as the deployment of violence against an internal Other defined primarily in terms of inherent inequality (x). These experiences of violence, oppression and segregation which find a strange congruence in the lives of the backward castes and the untouchables, urged writers like Baburao Bagul, Namdeo Dhasal and Daya Pawar to defy the assumptions of caste, class, language and gender that the Hindu patriarchal framework takes for granted, and sought to re-examine popular conceptions of caste and gender in post independent India.
Baburao Bagul burst on the Indian literary scene with his path-breaking collection of short stories, When I Hid My Caste (Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli Hoti), in 1963. Bagul gave a voice and a tongue to the parched and singed experiences of the marginalized. His diction and style unleashed a veritable storm, shocking the aesthetic sensibilities of readers of traditional romantic Marathi literature, thereby shaking the very foundations of literary Marathi. He emancipated an entire generation of Dalit writers from its shackles and inspired them to experiment with novel forms of self expression and render unsullied voices and fresh hues to their lived experiences. The revolt, pain and dissent that characterized their lived experiences became the defining aspects of the Dalit literary terminology. The ten short stories that form the collection When I Hid My Caste bear testimony to the anguish and trauma of living in a stratified social order where each day is a story of survival and resilience. The powerful diction reveals the instinctual, savage responses of a class of humans writhing under centuries of inhuman subjugation and tyranny. Bagul lays bare the life of his people before the public gaze so as to jolt the conscience of the privileged class, indifferent, unsympathetic and insensitive to the sufferings of the less privileged. Bagul’s characters represent the internal Other, pitted against the upper-class Hindus, basking in the euphoria of independence and the rule of the people.
The tropes of escape, travel and the freedom granted by anonymity (Menon xiii) are explored in When I Hid My Caste. It narrates in first person, the excruciating experiences of a man who arrives in Mumbai to join the Railways. He hides his caste and later when his caste identity as a Mahar is revealed, is brutally beaten and robbed before he is eventually saved by another of his own caste. The very memory of the incident ignites a furnace in his heart. He laments the plight of all those humans who are born as Dalits in this haven of democracy called India: “If and when they are, they must bear such sorrow and such disrespect as would make death seem an easier option, making a cup of poison a Dalit’s best friend” (116). He confesses that the bitter experiences have filled him with “a rage, sharper and more cruel than a sword” (116). He had alighted in Mumbai dreaming of a wonderland of happiness and contentment. The respect and admiration that his clean and tidy looks and eloquent and chaste Gujarati evoked increases his confidence. When Ranchhod questions him about his caste before renting out a room for his stay he defiantly introduces himself as a Mumbaikar, a citizen of the new Bharat, who fought the good fight and freed India from bondage and was her strength now in the path ahead. “The people whom Manu rejected, whom he would have consigned to the dust-heap, who brought this great country its freedom, were those from my city”, he proudly claims (123). He describes himself as someone who is ready to give his life in the defence of the right. He considers post-independent Indians as creators of a new nation where citizens were not branded as rich, poor, untouchables or Brahmins. He asserts that divisions based on caste had in the past relegated our rich nation into a beggar state and that they should not commit the same mistake again.
Bagul gives his readers a glimpse of the post-independent democratic idealism that had instilled such hope in the hearts of the marginalized. Kashinath Sakpal, another employee who belonged to the Mahar caste, epitomizes the outrage and revolt plaguing the minds of the outcastes. He defiantly challenges his tormentors to an open fight, invoking the clauses of the Constitution. The protagonist, meek and passive in his manners, considers himself as one of the “great worker-warriors”: “My hands are the wheels of Bharat’s progress” (123). When he is chastised for talking to the ‘untouchable’ Kashinath he retorts that the five basic elements in their ideal forms were untouchable and implies that the so called ‘untouchables’ were as fierce, wild, elemental and pure as the elementary forces of nature. But the poverty of his home forces him to continue with the masquerade and conceal the secret of his caste. “But I could not bring myself to accept the disrespect that would follow any revelation of my caste” (128). However, the protagonist is plagued by guilt as he is forced to visit and dine with the Brahmin at his residence. As the brahmin’s wife, Saraswati, touches his feet he feels the burden of his caste heavily upon his soul. Even as he dreams of inscribing a new nation with the language of freedom, the yoke of untouchability is ingrained deeply in his spirit. Bagul neatly captures the empathy that Saraswati feels for him as he is lynched by his former mates. Kashinath rescues him threatening his attackers with a knife and admonishes him for silently taking the blows. “When was I beaten by them? It was Manu who thrashed me” (135) is all he has to say, bereft of all hope of emancipation from a destiny set in motion centuries ago by the indomitable Manu.
Jai, the central character of Revolt, rebels against being a bhangi, and doing the caste-enforced work of clearing human excreta. With his powerful rhetorical skills acquired as a result of his education, he is intent on denying the wishes of his father on his deathbed to make his son a bhangi: “. . . when I finish my education and I am as wise as Socrates, I am going to destroy this inhuman practice of untouchability” (91), the dreamer and idealist in Jai has high hopes for his future even as his idealism plunges his home into poverty and deprivation. When his father points out the helplessness of their situation he refuses to give up his education for the job of a bhangi and carry filth on his head for the rest of his life: “Why did you let them light these lamps of independence, knowledge and humanity inside my mind?” (92). He vehemently denounces the dharma that ordains a bhangi’s son to be a bhangi: “I will not heed such a dharma. If it has given us only this poverty, this deprivation, then it behoves us to reject it” (93). The persecution is unbearable for him and detests living the “contempt-ridden, insult-filled life of a prisoner” (94). However Jai makes a bonfire of all his dreams and becomes a bhangi with the resolution of a martyr. His parents are tormented with guilt, shame, anger and self-hatred for doing something criminal to their beloved son. His mother, Bhani, pleads with him: “It’s not work meant for you. It’s for unlettered folk like us. It’s for those who are already broken in mind, body, nose, forehead, broken everywhere, broken and dead” (99). Jai is engaged in an emotional battle where he pits himself against his dharma and his nation. His heart wrenching wail, “Maa, break my fingers…cut off my hands…slash open my body, throw away my corpse” (103) is that of a class of people whose “minds had been murdered long ago by Manu” (103), the flame of revolt raging in full might in his mind and spirit.
Bohada features Damu, the village mahar, a ‘polluting outcaste’, who demands a Narasimha song in defiance of the entire village and the fierce patriarchy it represents. In spite of the upper caste men’s best efforts to thwart his desire Damu pays six hundred rupees and wins the song. His poverty-stricken world does not deter him from fulfilling his heart’s desire as the conduct of the Narasimha song is a means of inscribing his revolt in the minds of his oppressors. Doning the masque of Narasimha, Damu “…danced, he fought and in a state of rudra, divine rage, he shook the village to the foundations” (31). The village headman, Ganpatrao Patil decides against having any more bohadas in future, which until then was a privilege reserved only for the upper caste Hindus. The sanctity they had for centuries attached to the ritual song is tainted once a mahar masquerades as Narasimha, the divine avatar. But Damu’s act instills hope and confidence in the Mahars: “Next year, we will dance as the five Pandavas. And then let them bring down death or destruction, it will be all the same to us” (32). Bagul portrays Damu as the incarnation of dissent and revolt as he stands against the village powers adamant on enforcing the hegemonic social order.
Bagul’s description of the Ethiopian in Gangster is remarkable for the brute force the language exudes. He is the incarnation of an angry demon with small red eyes set in an iron-coloured face and bone-white teeth. He pounds the ribcage of the staircase with his footsteps. As he enters “peace evaporated from the room …it began to darken with fear” (44). The urgency with which he grabs the money from the Bohri treasurer reveals the storm raging in his wild heart. The slap of his slippers “ate up the distance as this magnificent iron-chested man, black as night, his hair curly, his face thrust forward, stormed down the road, as if he were a wild animal about to pounce on its prey” (45). All his life he had been shunned by women on the grounds of his appearance wherever he went. He detested being an animal driven by lust and hence stayed away from them. But Jayantiben had sought him out and come to him on her own accord, weeping and babbling for help when the “entire slum feared him as if he were a fiend. And yet, alone, in the night, this petite, fragile widow had stood in the house of an ogre and had had the gall to ask something of him” (48). He had for the first time experienced the power of a woman’s tears, her helplessness. Bagul captures the effects of her sorrow and desperation on the Ethiopian’s iron heart with a powerful image: “And then, just as the crowbar of the first rays of the sun cracks the dark boulder of the night and allows the light to flood through, her weeping broke his shell open” (49).
Bagul’s description of the gangster in powerful prose, exuding the brutality and sheer animal force of his being is unparalleled. Each stirde was a ‘pounce’ as the Ethiopian headed towards Jayantiben’s hut where preparations were underway for her mother’s last journey. “Seeing him, the hut lost its courage” (49) but he throws the swollen packet of money in front of a wailing Jayantiben and feels the storm in his heart subsiding. He offers his shoulder as one of the corpse bearer and walks at a crisp pace as the old woman’s body bounced along in an indecorous fashion, as if it would slip and slide off the bier any moment. But the gangster had experienced the awakening of a human being inside him. He had been unloved and exploited all his life which had turned his heart to stone. But the widow fearlessly approaches him for help in and the woman’s raw emotions and her helplessness awakens the human in him. He reaches inward and discovers himself. For the gangster the entire episode becomes a journey of self realisation. He had escaped the huge calamity of succumbing to the storm in his heart and feels the joy coursing through his veins.
The four young Mahars in the Dussehra Sacrifice represent physical agility, determination and courage that make them fearlessly take on the God of Death. The bull is a manifestation of the brute force of nature and any miscalculation meant certain death for the Mahars. If the bull crossed over to the neighbouring village, then the village head would claim the bull and the sacrifice, “hitting it on its forehead and symbolically shaming the Mahars too” (60). Hence the very honour of the Mahar community was at stake and the young men risk their lives to pull the bull back into their own territory. They wanted to avoid the shame and disgrace they had endured the previous year by losing the bull to the neighbouring village once again. Bagul’s language exudes the animal power and brute force of the combat between the bull and the Mahars. Deva, who finally tames the bull seemed like the incarnation of Yamraj with his blood-stained face and victorious eyes. The Mahars had encountered death, fought it and emerged victorious. The story is a tribute to the unflinching courage and bravery of the Mahars even in the face of imminent death.
In her path-breaking treatise The High-Caste Hindu Woman, Pandita Ramabhai condemns with great precision that the Sanskritic core of Hinduism was irretrievably and fundamentally patriarchal and anti-woman: “Those who diligently and impartially read Sanskrit literature in the original, cannot fail to recognise the law-giver Manu as one of those hundreds who have done their best to make women hateful beings in the world’s eye” (29). Gail Omvedt observes that even after her conversion to Christianity, Pandita Ramabhai continued to retain many brahmanic habits, particularly vegetarianism, “as a symbol of her Indian identity” (26) arguing that “the complete dependence and ignorance of women had been the cause of the present day degradation of the Hindu nation” (26). Ramabai rebelled against the gender discrimination inherent in the Hindu social order. Omvedt quotes her conversion testimony to point out Ramabhai’s deep mistrust of scriptures and the Dharma Shastras which unequivocally preached the subjugation of women. According to her all the sacred epics, the Puranas, the Shastras, the poets and the preachers of the modern times and the orthodox high-caste men agreed unanimously upon the fact, “that women of high and low caste as a class, were bad, very bad, worse than demons, as unholy as untruth, and that they could not get Moksha as men” (Kosambi 63). The material and cultural scape of post-independent India had laid out a pattern of life for its women that bound them simultaneously to the manacles of patriarchy and caste hegemony. Bagul pays rich tribute to the indomitable spirit of womanhood in the face of atrocities in many of his stories. He meticulously lays bare the raw emotions raging inside them, placing them in life-threatening situations, impressing upon his reader the absurdity and utter meaninglessness of their perpetual struggle against the dominant social order.
The story Pesuk presents the plight of a woman, Savitri, denounced by her husband on charges of adultery, a sin she deferentially commits when her husband threatens her with widowhood. In spite of her sacrifices to give her useless husband a son, she is tormented and tortured by her husband. His inhuman cruelties had turned her as evil as a ghost. She had “the strength and power of Mother Ganga . . . the kind of truth and beauty that is as immortal as the sun” (109). She becomes the sixth wife of the wealthy high-class Kshatriya, Jaidev because her father too was dazzled by the wealth of the man and moved by the poverty of their home and the pride in their caste. But once his masculinity had been proved, Jaidev subjected her to abject torture as he realised that he had no use for her or for her child. As she tries to escape with her son and her son’s father, she is caught, humiliated and taken out in procession. The child and its father are spared. But Savitri had to endure the wrath of an entire village. Her head is branded, nose broken, breasts cut off and entire body devastated. Jaidev asserted his masculinity by punishing the woman who had sinned in order to become a mother at his insistence so that he could settle all doubts regarding his masculinity. As long as her son is alive, she hid herself in the hills. The moment Jaidev kills her son, “born of her immeasurable sacrifice and of her terrible ordeal” (112), she turns herself into a monster. “She was now devoid of humanity, she was like an animal with a bestial cruelty” (111). She detested humans as she had no need of anyone or anything. Her son’s death sets her free: “She became as destructive as a storm . . . as merciless as the monsoon” (112). Like a being possessed, she dug up corpses and cut off their noses. She launched attacks on men and their noses and the legend of the pesuk who haunted men began to take shape. She went after men persistently like a “ghost relentless in her pursuit” (112). But when Jaidev dies, Savitri does not cut off his nose and commits Sati and ends the enimity forever. Bagul hails her as the treasure trove of humanity and the epitome of Indian womanhood: “The heart of a woman is a complete marvel. It is unparalleled, unequalled. It makes life rich and beautiful, as the dawn adorns the day” (104). She sacrifices her life on the funeral pyre of her husband to ensure his happiness like a loyal wife in spite of all the atrocities committed on her.
The wrestler in the story Monkey holds his wife Sakhu responsible for the lust he feels for her. He is tempted to break his vows of celibacy before the wrestling match and his shame combined with his fear of his mother’s wrath fills him with intense hatred for his wife and wishes her dead. Instigated by his mother he beats her up brutally. The wife had been lured by her curiosity and the attraction she had felt for the man. But a respectable girl like her could never voice her heart’s desires and hence with the blind worship a Hindu woman offers her husband, Sakhu endures the beating. The sight of her bruised and bloodied body infuriated him further and he threw her around here and there “as a dog might throw a rat” (69). He was like a monkey trained to obey the commands of his mother unquestioningly. After losing the match, he becomes the laughing stock of the ten villages. His mother pins all blame on Sakhu and her seductive advances. Angry and ashamed she orders her son to murder the woman who had won, who had cost him the match. The story ends with the “trained monkey” sharpening his axe to “murder the victor” (70). Sakhu is a victim of both gender aggression and domestic violence. The mother-in-law and the husband are representatives of patriarchy that subjugate women and destine them to a life worse than hell. Women like Sakhu suffer silently and succumb to their terrible fate without as much as a whimper. Bagul’s female characters represent the twin states of woman as tormentor and woman as victim. The man is the medium through which violence is inscribed on the body of the woman. He is nothing but a trained monkey that dances to the tunes of patriarchy, devoid of conscience and empathy.
Bagul’s Prisoner of Darkness, is an empathetic portrayal of a kept woman, Banoo and her son who loathes her for what she is. When Ramrao Deshmukh dies his son Devram is overcome by a desire for revenge and decides to murder his father’s widow and “the will to murder gave his body a new velocity; his back and his biceps seemed to writhe like snakes trapped under his skin” (2). The unbridled fury of the hot-headed youth was in full flame. His desire to murder Banoo was kept in check for twenty years by his fear of his father. But his desire to annihilate her is coupled with his desire for the young, beautiful widow of his father: “He wanted to kick her voluptuous, beautiful, tender young back; his hands itched to grab her ankle-length, silky-black hair and shake her senseless” (2) The villagers and his wife, Kamala are convinced that Banoo had bewitched Devram out of a mania for money. They believed that she was an evil spirit that had taken the human form. They desperately long to strip her naked and burn her alive in her husband’s funeral pyre for she is a whore who has “soiled all notions of caste and creed” (6). Banoo had loved old Ramrao so dearly that she had strangled her maternal instincts and kept her own son, Daulat at arm’s length. Daulat now roamed the streets as restless, mad and angry, attacking anyone who questioned him with an axe. Banoo flees the wada in order to protect her life and character while the entire village watches her, taking in her beauty and stunned by the pathetic sight of the woman they deemed to be a demoness. The men were hungry to lay their hands on her and Banoo runs for her life, like “a bird maddenend by the forest fire of their words” (11), calling out to ‘Daulat’ for help.
Banoo did not place much hope in Daulat as he had always considered her a sinner. He had detested her all his life and did not even let her shadow fall upon him. He was repulsed by her exhibition of maternal love and even beat her up when his anger got out of control. Banoo feared that her son might lead these lewd men in their taunts and abuse and even try to murder her. Banoo’s life for the past twenty years unspooled before her eyes as she runs desperately to save herself. She had existed only as Ramrao’s lover, an object of lust. She had not been a wife or a mother. She is haunted by guilt: “Each day of Daulat’s childhood turned into a demon now, dancing before her eyes, hurting her dreadfully with accusations of neglect. Her life was burning, her guilt was screaming: ‘Daulat!’” (13). Her screams fail to move the hearts of the onlookers; “the more she screamed, the more vitriolic was their abuse” (13). Strangely enough, Banoo realises that she had subjected her son to the cruel atmosphere of the wada and the tradition-encrusted village where the constant taunts and torments to which he had been exposed to had driven him mad: “The insults had warped his mind. The contempt had sealed his mouth. And enduring all this had turned him violent” (13). But as Devram tries to rape her in front of the whole village, Daulat emerges and stabs him to his death. The villagers rain blows on Daulat’s head, intend on killing him before anyone else became the next victim of his knife. The story ends as Banoo struggles to free the knife from Daulat’s grasp. With the word ‘Aai…’ on his dying lips, Daulat’s stricken life ebbs out of his body and mingles with the dark night and a desolate Banoo is left o the mercy of the vicious crowd. Both mother and son, because of their low-caste lineage are represented as victims of their social circumstances. There is no hope for redemption as these prisoners of darkness, strangled in the dual clutches of caste hegemony and patriarchal subjugation.
The prostitute Girja in Streetwalker prays for success in her trade at the grave of Haji Malang. She was badly in need of money to go to the village and to buy medicines for her sick son. She entices men in the streets and succeeds in luring a customer. The man gave her money willingly and she “made her body into a stone and bore the terrible pain he inflicted on her. . . . gave over her body to the satisfaction of every one of his twisted desires” (42). She is used, cheated and robbed of all her money. Her defeat was complete as the owner of the restaurant had not truthfully revealed the contents of the telegram from the village. Her son had died and the mother was frantically selling herself for money for his medicines. Her chances of seeing her son one last time hangs in the balance as she would have to sell herself again to find the money to get herself to the village. The story is a poignant reminder of the sad and pathetic state of women who live in the indecent fringes of a male-dominated world. Their bodies are sites of inhuman violence and exploitation. Like the mother in the story “maddened by love, burned by her own sorrow” (43) they are prepared to endure heartless brutality for the sake of their children.
Bagul pits one woman against another in Competition where the older woman, Yamuna who sells bananas in front of the factory fears losing out to the competition raised by the young and beautiful, Chandra, her nephew’s wife, who enticed her customers with coquettish movements and captivating laughter. Chandra was aware of Yamuna’s compassionate heart as it was the old woman herself who had helped her set up this business beside her. But as she desperately tried to make money to keep her ailing husband alive, Chandra is left with no other choice than earning the displeasure of the woman who had been kind to her. Yamuna held her responsible for the decline in her business and rained abuses on her and calls her a prostitute. Chandra ponders: “I am the daughter-in-law of a royal family and I behave like a prostitute for my husband” (73). The mild and melancholic Chandra had changed completely, behaving like a streetwalker, to sell her wares and return home with the much needed money. She gave each man separate and individual cause for hope but never went beyond open flirtation.
Yamuna, on her part, had been a motherly figure treating everyone with kindness and concern. The decline in her revenues prompts her to attack her daughter-in-law mercilessly and invites the wrath of the male clients upon her. Chandra is grateful for the support of Kishan and had wanted to accept him “with all the lust of her young body” (79). But the grateful eyes of her husband, his welcoming smile and the admiration and worship he showered on her makes her feel like a sinner: “To calm her mind, she would dedicate herself to saving him with even greater intensity. That his tuberculosis should be defeated was her goal” (79). She needed more money and she forced herself “to become uninhibited . . . tried to please the male clients with her ploys and artifices” (79). She used to take the money they offered and would disappear at the most opportune moment, their cravings unfulfilled. But even as she earned more, peace eluded her. The dangerous game she played with these men would lead her to shame and disgrace. When all her attempts to reason with Chandra fail, Yamuna brings in her son’s young and beautiful wife to sit beside her. Chandra tells the old woman that she would now have to turn herself into a real prostitute to keep her husband alive. Her words torment the old woman who returns the next day without the daughter-in-law. She realises that she has to honour the devotion Chandra has for her husband and feels ashamed that she had forced her son’s pregnant wife to such dishonour to thwart Chandra’s business. Yamuna is filled with remorse: “I could not see your young life, its suffocation, because of my anger. I could not see how you were burning through the day and night” (88). She withdraws her herself from the competition and the two women are reconciled in the end, each appreciative of the goodness and virtue in the heart of the other.
Bagul explores the myriad shades of femininity in his stories, placing his female protagonists in tiring, humiliating and exploitative circumstances. Some of these women exhibit resilience and courage in the face of adversity, while others succumb helplessly to the hegemonic patriarchal forces. Bagul’s writing is noteworthy for its raw portrayal of characters and life situations. Shanta Gokhale in her introduction to Jerry Pinto’s English translation of Bagul’s collection Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli Hoti (Why I Hid My Caste) observes: “He is a mix of Gothic poet and expressionist painter” whose sentences “twist and turn through aggressive clauses or come at you like battering rams in short, blunt strokes” (ix). The Ethiopian gangster, the Mahars Shiva and Deva, the wrestler, Devram, are all formidable men who exude brute physical power representative of the elemental forces in nature. Bagul baffles his readers with the sheer force of his narrative; the violence, pain and suffering transforming itself into instruments of revolt, resistance and dissent. None of his characters seek approbation; they seek acceptance and release from tyranny. Bagul’s writings are an informed response to the complexity of the socio-cultural constructs that have dictated the terms of Dalit living. Gokhale notes that Bagul places his characters well within “the very eye of this social storm in order to follow their inevitable hurtling towards ends which are often tragic but occasionally also triumphant. Placed thus, the characters are neither black nor white, certainly not perverse, but purely and simply human” (xi). They are ruthless, passionate and spirited, challenging the set notions of bigoted hegemonic Brahmanism.
Shared experiences of oppression, marginalisation and resistance had fuelled the fire of Dalit articulation. The subordinate castes possess “an independent, autonomous culture that rejects any semblance to the structures of Brahmin thought” (Menon xii). The nascent revolt against Hindu feudalism that had deprived them of power, wealth and social status for centuries manifested itself in a passionate cry for social emancipation and reconstruction of their fragmented identities. Bagul places Dalit lives in the context of emerging modernity and post colonialism. Dalit writing, undeniably, has been conferred with a narrative of its own-one that radiates aspiration and confidence. Lived experiences of caste domination, gender discrimination, economic and sexual exploitation and patriarchy work in collusion to create intensely personal narratives of victimization and rebellion; concurrently resisting attempts at the legitimization of hegemonic structures of Hindu orthodoxy. Often hailed as the epic of Dalits, When I Hid My Caste is a pulsating and poignant enunciation of the inequitable and humiliating Dalit experiences, as well as a brilliant exhortation to rebel against the set notions of caste, class and gender through creative self expression.
Works Cited:
- Kosambi. Meera. “Indian Response to Christianity, Church and Colonialism: Case of Pandita Ramabai.”, Economic and Political Weekly Women’s Studies Supplement, vol. 27, no. 43/44, October 24-31, 1992, pp 61-71.
- Menon, Dilip M. The Blindness of Insight: Essays on Caste in Modern India, New Delhi: Navayana Publishing, 2006.
- Omvedt, Gail. Dalit Visions: The Anti-caste Movement and the Construction of an Indian Identity. New Delhi: Orient Longman Private Limited, 1995.
- Pinto, Jerry, translator. When I Hid My Caste: Stories. By Bagul, Baburao. Introduction by Shanta Gokhale, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger Publishing Pvt. Ltd, 2018.
- Ramabai, Pandita. The High-Caste Hindu Woman. Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1982.