“Dalit Conciousness”

From the translation of Tamil and Malayalam Poem M. Kingston Thomas M.Phil Research Scholar Jamal Mohamed college Trichy Dalit Conciousness , literature about Dalits, the oppressed class under the Indian caste system

who play an important and distinct role in Indian literature. The primary motive of the Dalit

literature is the liberation of Dalits. Dalit consciousness was found since 11th century onwards ,

with works like Cekkilar’s Periya Puranam which documents the Dalit life. Chennaiah, the

cobbler, the 12th century Dalit saint Kalavve challenged the upper caste in the following words:

“Those who eat goats, foul tiny fish: Such, they call caste people.

Those who eat the sacred CowThat showers frothing milk for Shiva:

Such, they call out-castes”

The prominence of Dalit literature emerged as collective voice after 1960,The thoughts of Baba

Saheb Ambedkar remain a persistent source of inspiration of struggle and emancipation in Dalit

literary imaginations. As Omprakash valmiki writes, ‘Dalit chetna obtains its primary energy

from Dr Ambedkar’s life and vision, all Dalit writers are united with respect to this truth.’

The emphasis on the concept of Dalit consciousness is a search for the subject position.

To study the subject position of Dalit consciousness, we need specialized tool to analysis the text

Written by dalit writers, which encourage the readers to understand the position of the subject.

Even after the Post - Colonizing, Hegemonic power structure still persist in the minds of upper

class. When the subaltern comes into the foray and speaks on behalf of the oppressed against the

social injustice which keeps on happening with the marginalized groups of Indian political

system. Need to ask a famous question ‘Can the subaltern Speak?’ posed by Gayatri

Chakravorty Spivak reference to the colonizer- colonized framework, has been answered by

Dalit literary crictics in the changed context of the caste-based social-cultural and economic

structure of hindu society.The element of Dalit subalternity speaking to high caste through the

literary metropolis has made Dalit consciousness more poignant.

The Tamil and Malayalam poet have galvanized the Dalit consciousness in their respective Poem

,which address the social injustice which they have seen and experienced. The works of

P.Mathiyalagan, N.D.Rajkumar ,Sukirtharani, S.Joseph ,Raghavan Atholi, Sunny kavikkad

,M.B. Manoj,Rekharaj, M.R. Renukumar and many others have created an identity which cannot

be left aloof. The poem of these poets have authentic flavor, and have a severe lineage with

cultural, myth, and historical phenomenon The Poetic diction applied by this poet has to

appreciated and should be studied further to understand the true plight of the oppressed class.

From The Translation Of Tamil Poem

The poems of Mathivanan has the impulse of his caste identity, Mativannan is a certified

radiological assistant and works at the Perundurai Sanatorium. Poetry, Mathivannan says, ‘is my

life. I write essays because there is no one else in my community to do this, and the present

context demands it.’ He has two books of poetry, Nerindhu ( The strangled One, 2000) and

Namakkidayilana Tholaivu ( The DistanceBetween Us, 2005). In his poetry and essays

Mathivannan strongly voices the contemporary concerns of the arundathiyar community.

In The Beginning There was hatred

Translated by V.Geetha

In the beginning there was hatredBorn of inequity.

Love came in the middleAnd from its very inception,

Was set against the meek…………….

In this poem the poet voices the state of oppressed class where the poet argues that, from the

beginning there was hatred against the Dalit class who were born of inequity. Hatred has

become a devoid substance of human race, Even though Love has come in the middle, and from

it’s very inception the hatred was against the meek.The Dalit class are the once who cannot look

at the world themselves through the eyes of hatred. In a superior context the hatred plays a

major role in the hands of the Righteous of the upper caste who doesn’t wants to come out of the

order which is being followed years together. This poem on subtle reminds the consciousness of

the poet who wants to break the lineage of differences in the minds of people.

Born in 1950 in Perambular District, P. Mathiyalagan, lost his mother in his early life, he had to

figure things out for himself and think independently. The family economic condition were

strained but his maternal grandfather had been a writer in the British government and was a

landlord in the village, so there were books in the house and the young Mathiyalagan read

extensively. Mathiyalagan mentions several milestones on his way into dalit polities: the crisis

around the Sri Lankan Tamils that let too a group leaving the party; the Ambedkar centenary; the

water created by Nirapirikai in the late 1980s; his reading of K.Daniel’s novel panchaman, which

is the first dalit novel in tamil. Daniel’s work raised questions like: Dalits are criticized by

everyone for drinking; why should we also do so? Literature is only interested in atrocities; we

also need to celebrate dalit life. Mathiyalagan began to think about the differences and about

casteism in public life, in political organizations and even in the family. There is always the

question of who should work among dalits, who will have only tea and bread in some areas, who

may marry whom. A real inter-caste marriage, he says, is that of a dalit with a non-dalit.

Mathiyalagan in his poem Trained Dogs gives a sorry state of oppressed class sufferings in the

hands of upper castes’ here the poet compares the Dog as a symbol of oppressed class of dalits.

Where we can understand how a street dog is treated by his master and the street dogs qualities

are entirely different from those of the breed dogs, the street dogs are under subjugation and

every time they look for someone to help or someone to feed . The dalits have been exploited

for long time in the name of Varnasarama. So what we understand from this poem is the dalits

are still under a bondage which makes them distinct from others.

N.D. Rajkumar Born in 1966, one of the seven brothers ‘who had no sisters’ Rajkumar is a

kannian, kannians are scavengers , his father N.K.Dhivakaran was Manthravatham or medicine/

witchcraft. Rajkumar learned the traid from his father and once he assaulted his teacher from

then he was a drop out.According to Rajkumar ‘Tamil Dalit Poetry used too be a poetry of

suffering, of pain and sorrow. Now it has become a poetry that challenges and threatens. It’s a

rowdy poetry; a poetry that curses and woos with the same word, a poetry whose music is

wrested from abuse. I am the one who made that change. I pulled poetry down and gave it the

smell of the earth and of my scavenger brothers. Mine is not exalted writing about exalted

beings . It is a writing that works with shit. That is my life and also my poetry. My scavenger

poems forged a revolution in Tamil Poetry. These poems come from the food we eat, the way

we work and speak and love, the way we call out to our gods inn an abusive tongue, they come

from our culture, our language, our habits … I celebrate dalit folklore, practices, politics,’ says

Rajkumar who is well aware that he is considered the most powerful Tamil poet writing today.

Listening to this feisty artist expound on his sophisticated new poetics, it is difficult to imagine

that he is a school dropout and that at one point he actually felt disadvantaged by the lack of a

formal education. In his poem one can find the authenticity of the Tamil culture and the portrayal

in a best form.

Oh, you devil,I have caught you at last

and nailed you to the neem tree.

But on another nightwhile I was deep in sleepyou cracked the tree open

and came out

to play the magical witchery:You licked the live blood

and laughed softly.

I called upon the mantrasin your name, in mine,in the name of the Onewho created both of us

to imprison youin me.

Today, my love,you are my angel.

Sukirtharani was born in 1973 in very small village of about twenty families, The family was

poor . with acute poverty with Rs 100 earning from his father a month was spend on only food

nothing else. Despite this she came first in her class. Sukirtharani says that the other children

would not share our food, but they wanted us to eat theirs. The uneasiness of being “SC”

students never left us. I heard the term “ Harijan” in 1985/86 for the first time when I was in the

ninth standard.’Sukirtharani poem are filled with high volatile sexual diction , were the poet

admits openly. I began to think and write about body . First I thought about the feelings.

Tolkapiyam mentions eight kinds of feelings. All eight kinds of feeling come from the body; on

had to liberate ones’s feelings, one’s body from male domination. Second, the body is the object

of sexual violence, it is a place of violence;it is also the means of labour . I made this work into a

project. One can think about Dalit women and the double violence they experience in relation to

each of these areas.

The poem ‘Pariah God’ echoes the consciousness of the Dalit Identity, one of the thought

provoking poem which gives a greater insight of agony which have been undergone by the Dalit.

in this poem the poet bravely but forth’s question.

Pariah God

Translated by Meena Kandasamy

You say the heat that sears side Is a pariah sun.

You say the beak that steals The worm-ridden grain spread out to sun

is a pariah crow

you say……………………………

If this is how everything is named ,What is the name of that Pariah GodWho walks the earth blood-thirsty?

From The Translation Of Malayalam Poem

Joseph was born in 1965 in Kottyam, into an artisan family. He is Christian by birth, but his

family was communist, so he was raised without any contact with the church.In 1970 he was

attracted towards the Naxalite movement, but he watched from a distance. Though drawn to it,

Joseph has not been directly involved with Dalit movement. ‘As a Christian , I am a disguised

Dalit’ he observes,, adding , ‘My name, my culture, has no palce in the movement which is

concerned with Hindus and their sorrows’. Though he does lend his support (and name) to

specific causes, he feels poetry is poetry; it should not be gripped by a movement. ‘Poetry is the

space of ambiguity, dreams…..’ His leaning is towards a generalized subaltern outlook. ‘ I have

taught and lived among tribal children, fisher-people, blacksmiths. My poetry is about all these

people who are “outside” the mainstream. It is a world that is not found in Naxalite poetry .’

Joseph Poem often deals with people belonging to costal and hill region and their day to day

activities where’s the subaltern people belong to. His first book, kautha kallu (Black

Stone,2000), carries many poems that reflect on identity. ‘My father is stone worker.’ He says,

‘and I too have worked stone. A stone is concrete thing, but it is a concrete thing, but it is also

loose. I depict my life on stone.’ His latest collection, Identity card (2006), carries several love

poems. The title poem is about a dalit Christian boy who falls in love with an upper-caste girl.

He loses his identity card. When it is found , her eyes fall on the entries in the red ink, indicating

the stipend he receives as a Dalit. The card and the stipened – is a caste mark, and it costs him

his love.

Identity Card

Translated by K. Satchidanandan

In my student daysa girl came laughing

Our hands met mixingher rice and fish curry

On a bench we becamea Hindu-Christian family

I whiled away my timereading Neruda’s poetry;

and meanwhile I misplaced my Identity Card.

She said,returning my card:

‘the account of your stipendis entered there in red’

These days I never look ata boy and a girl lost in themselves.

They will part after a while.I won’t be surprised even if they unite.

Their Identity Cardswon’t have markings in red

Raghavan Atholi is one of the most important poets and sculptors of kerala.He uses the red

laterite, traditionally worked by stone- cutters and masons and widely used as building material

in Kerala, as the medium for his sculpture in which he creates mythic figures of his community

using a new, and often heroic, idiom. His poems are distinctive in their forceful depiction of the

lives of Dalits.Raghavan was born in Atholi in 1957 as the son of Thannimel Parotti and

Kandathi.

Kandathi

Translated by T.M. Yesudasan

There , by the garbage in the street,She sits. Sweating.

Guts burning with hunger.

In her hut,wick-lamp burnt dry,

she sits. Alone,In the dark,

Meal untouched.She curses the sun

That left, carrying fair dayInto darkness.

Still weeding at sunsetFor the until-dusk wage, see

How she crushes stoneWith bare hands.

Furrows ploughed and seeds sown,Watered with sprouting tears;

Men yoked with bullocks,Generations that staggered and fell,

Sons gone astray,Clans made extinct,Treacherous goals,

Tilled fields,Bountiful seeds,

Whose granaries did they fill?

This poem Kandathi refers to poet’s mother. The women working in the rice field (kandam) and

the poet represents his mother as dalit women who undergoes the wrath of slavery. We need to

understand the context on which the poet has written this poem, because of the slavery

administered by upper caste on the dalit have made greater stride to come out of the shackles

which is being happening for generations . This poem gives us glimpses of the acute slavery

experienced by the downtrodden.

M.B Manoj was born in1972, in Erattayar, a village with a predominantly dalit and nadir

population, in one of the most backward areas in Idukki district. Both his parents were

agricultural labo0urers with no schooling, but active in the communist movement, he has three

younger brothers, one of who, is a Buddist dharmmachari. Manoj’s poetry has appered in

several mainstream and little magazines such as sameeksha and pachakuthira.

Rocks

Translated by K. Satchidanandan

Each solid rockIs a dark- skinned man

Who can grow only slowly,Like the rock.

Each broken stone is a lifeLike a crow from a flock

Scattered by a hurled stone

You can see his eyeOn the ruined stone,

Can see his glass-like teethCovered by cockle,

His……His chest receives the rain,His back supports the sun.

On each broken stoneYou will see a piece of his bone.

Its hues and lines areMarked with his blood.

The springs are his tears.

Each solid rock isa dark man, growing.

The above poem gives true picture about the Dalits in kerala who are being exploited and used or

seen as Rocks

To conclude

The writing of these poet gives a sound clarity on the consciousness which they have being

focusing for long time in their respective poem , one has to understand subaltern asking question

on the caste ,color ,satus,culture and religion. The prime motive of these poet are of portraying

the state of human apathy towards the ones own people who are being ruthlessly ignored in

distinct context, we need understand the point which is being put forth by these poet based upon

the difference which they have undergone for a period of time where everyone was looked with a

vivid approach, In the name of caste, the habit’s of the dalits have hidden and were not give a

chance to expose the true state of affair in their daily life. All we know about dalit on whole as

the symbol of class who according to Gayatri Spivak are the subaltern element of the society,

whose views and their thoughts have to be given due respect. Furthermore the subaltern are the

once who are the true natives of geography, a careful study of all this poet will give bigger

picture about dalits who are being marginalized for centuries. The tamil and malayam literature

have identified the consciousness of segregation which was classified by the hegemonic people

who wanted the subaltern to be in subjugated state and are not in open minded form to welcome

the consciousness which are being put forth. Dalits protest against the disparity, to write about

dalit and their life experience one has to be Dalit at first. In a interview Meena Kandasamy a

English dalit poet says…While my poetry challenges mainstream narratives, I have been using

biography as a tool to retrieve our lost history. If caste oppression is 2000, or 5000 years old,

then our history of resistance is as old as that too. If they can celebrate their victories, we can

celebrate our victories too. I essentially think that our history of resistance has been bulldozed

away, it has been erased. What is imperative is that we reconstruct it, we draw our hope and

sustenance from it. This year, a biography of Kerala’s Dalit revolutionary leader Ayyankali was

released. Would you believe it if I said that he pioneered the first workers’ strike in the history?

Ayyankali was a civil rights’ champion, he established the rights of Dalits to use public roads.

He dressed much more stately than caste-Hindus at a time when Dalits were forced not to cover

themselves above the hip or below the knee. He entered the People’s Assembly as a

representative of the Pulayar people even as the caste system kept up with its craziness and

maintained that Pulayar people could pollute at sixty four feet away. History plays a central role

in my writings.

What links the various dalit texts written in different languages is the sense of awareness of the

injustice of the caste system as well as of the social and political institutions that sustain it. These

poems not only raise important questions but also narrate ability of the people on the margins to

fight against all odds. In short, dalit literature express the anxiety , desire, and pain of centuries

of caste struggle, and the creative visions of social justice put forward by writers of the dalit

movement should inspire and shape the consciousness of the local and transnational participants,

in battles against all oppressive and exploitative system

References:

1. Dr Jugal Kishore Mishra, A Critical Study Of Dalit Literature in India

2. K.Satyanarayana & Susie Tharu, ‘No Alphabet In Sight’ New Dalit Writing From South India,

Penguin New Delhi India.

3.Meena Kandasamy in Conversation with Ujjwal Jana“The struggle to annihilate caste will be

victorious”: Postcolonial Text, Vol 4, No 4 (2008)

4. N. D. Rajkumar, “Panirendhu Kavithaigal,” Dalit 4 (1998):. Translations from the Tamil By

Anushiya Sivanarayanan, world literature today • may–august 2004 • 59

M. Kingston ThomasM.Phil Research ScholarJamal Mohamed collegeTrichyMob# 918903280848Email address: kingston.thomas@gmail.com