To read history is to engage in the onerous task of liberating from the past. The Dalit literary genre, almost always in the nature of self-writings, are always indebted to their past experiences even as they draw strength from the contemporary times. The Adornian concept of the cultural scars that make or mar the literary genealogy is prominent in Dalit aesthetics. Notwithstanding the fact that the repressed histories of cultural solidarities impact both globalisation and localisation, and internationalisation and indigenisation, the trajectory of Indian Dalit consciousness shows how the utopian visions that girded the movement are often lost and erased. The paper attempts to analyse the Dalit autobiographical literature as to show how the identity-driven text often read with naked presentism is “history” only in a very limited sense. This protest literature almost always in the form of life-writings robs of the texts’ potential of mapping history, and as such reading history in the genre becomes a slippery problem as for Dalit autobiographies.
The autobiography as a genre comprises descriptions, reflections, comments, explanations, interpretations and episodes all held together by a continuous stream of narrative. It generally concerns the self; however, the outer world is taken into account as one’s self-hood is shaped and moulded by external forces. The hybridity of the genre in relation to such topics as subject/object, self/society, private/public, and fact/fiction has infected many who have taken to this genre. The writer of one’s own life is a historian to a certain extent and in that autobiography is the history of the individual (Olney 36). It is both historical and meditative, narrative and reflective, a history of life recollected and interpreted. As a personal history, an autobiography is a way of appropriating and making sense of the self; and as a study of the self, it presupposes a history in which it is produced. But the Dalit autobiographies by the virtue of their concerns and locale is more of a historiography and less of history.
Dalit literature has its origins in the humanism of protest literature. The basic facts of Dalit stigmatized existence, social exclusion, violent atrocity, and dire poverty have generated a resistant discourse against the failure of historical progression. The caste as a deep structure implies a surface structure of repression, resistance and rebellion. Kancha Ilaiah reads Dalit writings in the framework of Hegelian dialectics of master/slave binary. Life writings are an elaborate and cumulative response to Dalit self-assertion. “The relationship between these forces in the form of thesis and anti-thesis has resulted in producing a synthesis but it is a mutilated synthesis. It is unnatural for a section of human beings to acquire the role of antithesis and continue to play that role always” (Buffalo Nationalism,113). He looks optimistically at the unfinished and inevitable teleology that will eventually challenge a false and degraded synthesis. It is a matter of gratification that a handful Dalit texts have been inspired by this idealism.
It is a discernible reality that over the decades Dalit literature in India has evolved into a strong medium for the community to express its angst, emotions and experiences in words. The Dalit autobiographies differ from other types of literature in that they portray Dalits’ devaluation and serve as an intellectual propaganda for creating socio-economic and political awareness. Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, the architect of the genre, taught his people the empowerment can be actualised only through education. His work, Gulamgiri (Slavery), reveals a heroic readiness to expose the evils of caste system and advocates the emancipation of the Dalits from the subversive undermining system. Babasaheb Ambedker’s clarion call to educate, unite and agitate in order to enlighten and endow the Dalit collectivity called for a radical jolt in the system. He decalared: “The Hindus wanted an epic, they sent for Vyasa, who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted the Vedas, they sent for Valmiki, who was an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a Constitution, they have sent for me” (qtd. in. Ramabadran, Sudarshan et al). Yet, how far the Dalit reinvent themselves as to fit in the grid of modernity is a contested terrain
Of the corpus of Indian Dalit autobiographies, a few prominent needs mention. Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke portrays the struggle of Mahar community with Brahmin and the other upper caste people as the blind beliefs and superstitious practices of the Mahars. Joothan: An Untouchable’s Life, autobiography of Omprakash Valmiki presents the struggle between Chuhra and upper caste Tagas of Birla. Laxman Gayakwad’s The Branded: Uchalya gives a searing picture of casteism, superstitions, poverty, police torture and oppression by the thigh caste and mill owners. Sharankumar Limbale’s The Outcaste: Akarmashi furnishes a third person narration about untouchability. Siddalingaiah’s Ooru Keeri is a reminiscent of distorting the hunger and humiliations of Dalits in Karnataka. Vasant Moon’s Vasti (Growing Up Untouchable in India) is about Mahars as victims of poverty, caste atrocities, legal and social injustices. Bama’s Faustina’s Karukku and Sangati articulate the double effacement of women in patriarchal and caste-ridden society. The landscape of these texts is quite literally littered with the subtle vocabularies of manipulation, coercion, and menace. These and several autobiographical writings reveal that the central focus is always on personal/community lives.
Almost all Dalit Memoirs foreground the vicious history of vernacular and visible caste prejudices. This scripting of “othering” portrays bodies that come to bear the distinct marks of oppression, discrimination and exclusion. The very titles of numerous Dalit autobiographies carry the mark of stigmatisation, subjugation and poverty – Joothan (the leftovers of upper castes’ food), Upara (outsider), Uchalya (thief or pilferer), Akkarmashi (half-caste or bastard) and Dohra Abhishaap (twice cursed). Some of the translations added to the woe by avoiding a literal translation or by attaching a subtitle, as for example, Vasant Moon’s Vasti, originally meaning neighbourhood or community, becomes Growing Up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography; Valmiki’s Jootan gains the subtitle “A Dalit’s Life”; and Urmila Pawar’s Aadyann translated as “The Weave of My Life” has an added title of “A Dalit Woman’s Memoir”. These and such labels seem to constrain the texts to contexts; and the writings sink down under the burden of the title. Perhaps, the configurations can be gauged only one reads the side by side with Dalit writers’ proclamations.
A comparison of the African Americans with that of Dalits would reveal how the vernacular becomes the universal in the history of the United States while it is not so in India. While W.E.B.Du Bois the leading spokesperson of the African American Struggle, inspired by the internationalist and anti-imperialist dimensions of the movement, used the “colour caste” banner to mobilise all the Blacks, whether be they slaves or not. But the foremost Dalit intellectuals in India used narrow concepts to define the plight of their people. Phule described the Dalits’ condition as Ghulamgiri, meaning “slavery” and Ambedkar transcoded the racial segregation as “bahishkrut samaj”, meaning “outcaste community”. These and other semic codes reveal the popularising concepts of Untouchables, Depressed Castes or Scheduled Castes. Mahatma Gandhi blessed them naming “Harijans” (children of god), but many of them expressed their displeasure at the patronising quality of the name. The Dalits, literally meaning “crushed” and “ground down” continued to be metaphorically the wretched of the earth. The Dalit as a labouring body, on whose body the whole edifice of economy and society has been built, became doubly subalternized in the female body. While upward social and economic mobility is prominently visible in America, it is not so prominent in India. The philosophy of modernity including a belief in the scientific and social progress, human rights, justice and democracy failed to impact the Dalits as it did for the African Americans.
A juxtaposition of the subaltern struggles in India and the United States will reveal the specificity, complexity, and integrity of the history and politics of the building of these diverse struggles. The concept of “communalism” in India – the notion of religious communities - perennially damaged the progress. The logic of caste and race resulted in a messy and hostile environment. Both Dalits in India and African Americans in the United States have been visibly stigmatized groups, long marginalized and disenfranchised. However, the democratic practices in both the countries were different. While the United States advanced the quest for full citizenship, more equal political and cultural opportunities, greater social justice, and recognition of human worth, the reality in India was far from the vision. Though the official discourse of both countries emphasised tolerance and openness, India failed to translate the ideal into reality. The Dalits in India have remained trapped because of historical and social realities. Poor economy and the restricted opportunity of escape from the stranglehold of caste shored by religious sanction wrecked the very fibre of Dalits. The passionate commitment to local and individual rights in American political discourse can never be seen in India. This is not to deny the persistence of narrow-mindedness, bigotry and intolerance in America.
The Dalit autobiographies by way of grappling with experience, truth-telling and accurate representation robs the fictionality of the genre to a certain extent. This undermining of fictionality rather prevents a complete narrative reconstruction of the self as a result of social and historical forces. However, it must be admitted that these writings often overlap with the memoirs, testimonies, political participation and the demand for human rights. The writings are in the nature of recording event or incidents of the person or the society. Restraint of the play of imagination is the norm. The narrations by the virtue of its fidelity towards reality seldom indulges in the exercise of fancy. The stories are marked by indomitable courage and guts for realising upward mobility of generations. Frederic Jameson reads autobiography as a symptom of postmodern crisis: “… one more private language among others: reduced to the telling of the truth of a private situation alone, that no longer engages the fate of a nation, but merely a single locality” (131). Thus it not incongruous to argue that Dalit self-writings do not neatly fit into the autobiographical genre or documented Dalit histories.
The Dalit memoirs, particularly those of women, present a clash between patriarchal practices and democratic aspirations. Shared political perspectives produce commonalities in Dalit autobiographies. Dalit literature seeks to establish the dignity of the untouchable person through powerful words (Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature, 26). He observes: “The experience described in Dalit literature is social, hence it is articulated as collective in character. Therefore, even when the experience expressed … is that of an individual, it appears to be that of a group” (36). However, the Dalit writings scattered around the nation are varied with heterogeneous differences. The life-writings often appear to focus on trifling matter making the texts inhabit the domain of the merely ordinary. The everydayness and repeatability of racial and sexual humiliation robs of space for concerns in the domain of history. What is lost in the narration of individual aspiration, success and social mobility is an appreciation of the historical conditions that make or mar the movement. There is persistent tendency to expel the political question from the personal domain, and to locate in the realm of state.
A metanarrative critique of Dalit literature reveals that the radical nature of the genre can be attributed to several streams of thoughts and movements, the prominent being, Black Panther Movement, Buddhism, Communism, Dalit Pantheritism, Naxalism, Nationalism and Negritude. Cultural seclusion, economic deprivation, political exclusion, religious apartheid and social segregation added to the woe. The irony of history is that these movements have not served the Dalit well. The genre gathered momentum after Independence but failed to live up to the expectations as a consequence of the collapse of the promise of Nehruvian democracy, the apparent marginalisation of the group due to the mass conversion to Buddhism and the splintering of Ambedkar’s own political movement. The question of gender is almost minimized thereby obliterating Dalit women’s voices. The diverse and heterogeneous nature of the identities add to the risk of misrepresenting the “Other” and history. The fact that Dalit texts almost always delineates the trickery, manipulation and deceit of upper castes against Dalit is responsible for a discursive demystification by virtue of converting mystery and chicanery into transparent discourse. C.D. Nagaraj laments that realism fails to properly incorporate “lower caste cosmologies” (224). The Dalit writers in their struggle to position themselves within and against, as specific competing positions in a certain grind, attempt an essentialist account of Dalit subjectivity. And this can be defined in contrast to the ruling elites, and hence they fail to account for the whole history. The Dalit writers are always in the realm of prejudice, and the fact that the resources of modernity and democracy are kept away from them reserved because of their difference prove detrimental to their striking a balance between histories and History.
Dalit literature poses the challenging task of choosing a paradigm for deciphering the text. If Dalit texts seem indifferent to be properly historical or/and, particularly nationalist, where shall we place them?. Shall we position them in the project of subaltern recovery ?. If we are to abide by Kancha Ilaiah’s proposition that Dalit historiography is a history of white pages (227), then we have to read them as a corrective to the history of upper-caste elision and fabrication. Such a reading would be a reductionist exercise in plummeting Dalit literature to an agenda of historical resurrection, representation and revision. Dalit realism is a product of a strange historical moment; simultaneously revolutionary and pedagogical. The implicit danger is that historical realism insists on collectivity and radical individualism while asserting a kind of post-historical consciousness. Instead of reducing the antagonism to simple agonistic exercise between castes, efforts must be made to create a historical space worth participating.
The failure to reinsert Dalit cultural traditions into the Protest Movements as also literature has been at the root of wreck of Dalit consciousness. It is still a sad reality many contemporary subaltern literary forms have been delinked from the realm of the folk, the vernacular and oral. Thus Dalit writing still remains belated and anachronistic, and even revivalist in its return to referential values. Dalit realism is often projected through the fractured lens of caste, not to speak of its form. As such, the reflection provides only a contorted and lop-sided reality. There is enough of the pitiable figure to elicit sympathetic gaze. Though Dalit literature has been able to overcome the historical constraints of confusing, contradictory and damaging conditions of life to a limited extent, much needs to be accomplished. Though Ambekarite ideals inspire new Dalit bodies, the ideal is indeed in danger of being forgotten. A reinvention of the historical is imperative to inscribe the Dalits’ verve and stamina. Many have lost their lives in their struggle for a utopian world of freedom, fraternity and equality, but purposefully expunged from the annals of history. The basic premises about representation of reality, mimesis and veracity have to be challenged as to place the Dalits against national history. The trend of deconstructing quasi universalism should gain traction to demonstrate the strength and guts of the Dalit folk.
The Dalit self-writings offer different readings of ethnography, trouble the basic notions of community and collective, shed light on intertextuality and attempt a symbolic reinsertion of the casteized figure. It is a visible reality that the Dalit texts continue to project a peripheral realism and sometimes skewed to the extent of being wedded to the symbolics of upper caste power. Though the backward castes have often become the perpetrators of violence against the Dalits in the post-liberal India, yet the narratives continue to target the upper caste. They are hooked into categories of subjectivity structured in the hegemonies of caste. The subaltern critique is still in a fossilised position and the thick emotionalism implicit in the various shades of the seemingly progressive left sometimes seem to adulterate the facts. The abstract citizen of the Enlightenment, a citizen with a body that is no longer felt as a burden, is still a distant reality. An alternative sensibility of the prospect of self-help and progress, as found in African Americans, is to aligned with the progress of history. One way of addressing this issue is to acknowledge that Dalit autobiography and personal narratives should transgress the Hegelian motif of tarrying with the negative with a view to accept our ability to consummate act of assuming the “non-existence of the Other”.
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