Abstract
The book for the review is Speak, Memory: Oral Histories of Kodaikanal Dalits, written by Alexandra de Heering and published by French Institute of Pondicherry in 2018 without signifying a price tag on the book (However, on the publisher's website, price tag has been displayed. It is INR 1200). According to the author, the book was the outcome of his research based on oral narratives from one of the Dalit of Tamil Nadu state of India. It is said that the author’s yardstick to the reading of the central problem of the research was ‘the oral history of Cakkiliyar jati of Kodaikanal’. Anyhow, the topic is a good endeavour, but the question before the reviewer is: Whether the researcher did justice to the subject of his reference or not. For answering the question, a grassroot level analysis of the book is indispensable. Here, without any hesitation, any reader of the book can say that the researcher followed a partisan and segmental approach throughout the narrative towards the research problem. It is doubtful that the book intended to create a Dalit–non-Dalit divide in the contemporary Hindu canvas of the South, very specifically of Tamil Nadu state (p. xvii).
The author followed oral history or oral narratives; thus, it attended the social question of inter-jati relations, that is, of the Dalit society and non-Dalit only, that is, the social relations between the Dalit jatis and the rest of the societies of the respective area. The other sides such as cultural contribution, social capital, sign system, sub-jatis and intra-jati relations of the Dalit community of the proposed study were not accounted or even noted as a passing reference in the entire narration. So the intention of the research is a bit doubtful. The core chapter of this treatise is Chapter III, ‘A Bridge Between Those Times and Today: The Period of Changes at Puduputtur and Villpatti’, with a cover-up of 145 pages out of 359 pages of the book, which is exclusively to congratulate the masqueraded conversion agenda of the Jesuit Padres in the respective area. Therefore, the centre of the book is the exaltation of Jesuits and their art of religious conversions.
Sweeping social changes are taking place all over the nation since its independence. It is true that since the time of independence, the centre and the state governments along with Hindu social and charitable organisations are moving in this direction of ensuring social justice and equality of opportunity to all, irrespective of birth, religion, region and other petty considerations. The researcher claims that the recent changes in the respective jati are the outcome of Jesuits intervention since 1991 (p. 184). No doubt, all this is the part of general socio-economic changes of India since its independence. The biggest shortcoming of the study is that the overall Indian or Tamil Nadu’s current social scenario was not accounted or even mentioned as a passing reference anywhere in the study. The study failed to assess the historic journey of the country, in general, and that of Tamil Nadu, in particular, from its primitiveness to modernity. Hence, readers’ first estimation over the book under review is that it is not an independent study based on available or generated facts but based on predisposed objective in all perspective.
An impartial reading of the book is necessary. So, reading the content of the book with a prima facie view point is indispensable. First of all, the researcher had conveniently stayed away from taking into account the background of the historical and geographical reasons of the Indian jati construct. The book is presenting a lot of information and facts. Most of them are half-baked truths and far away from current realities. The book is silent on the democratic set-up of the nation which begins from Village Council (Grama Sabha) to the Indian Parliament and above all constitutional guarantees, legal institutions and legal protection granted to all, particularly to the backward and marginalised sections in this regard. In the name of oral history, the author of the book is trying to make an alternative history from the so-called ‘void’ with a certain pre-conceived notions that the Hindus had no history. Hindus had a written history that differed from the Herodotus methodology.
To the specific Indian situation, oral tradition of history is applicable not only to Dalits but also to all the Hindu jatis of Hindustan. While considering the oral history, each and every jati, without the difference of upper or lower jati, in Hindustan had good old days in their account. While discussing the case of the Cakkiliyar jati of Kodaikanal, the researcher bypassed this aspect with some specific intention. One who goes through the narration of the book may create an impression that all the current developments or progress amongst the Cakkiliyar jati of Kodaikanal are the outcome of the pursuit of the Jesuit Padres. The efforts of governments and Hindu charitable organisations were well ignored in order to create a space for Jesuits in the present transformation amongst the various subaltern jatis of India. The author skilfully tries to substantiate this aspect. But this is far from the reality.
As mentioned earlier, the author conveniently evades the role played by democratic institutions along with resurgent Hindu community in general through their charitable institutions. Hence, the relevance of the study and its textual publication is to be enquired. The payment of agriculture labours through kind was an age-old Indian system. When this practice started, Indian economy was not a fully cash-oriented market economy or cash rich. It continued for a long term. By the 1970s, it began to change. However, the author wilfully ignored this noticeable aspect (p. 184). But the author through his book claims that with the efforts of the Jesuit sponsored organization People’s Education and Action in Kodaikkanal Hills alias PEAK, all the present changes among the Chakkiliyar jati were taken place. The book says it flowingly: ‘They do not speak of their first encounters with the PEAK staff of the “Shembagannur Fathers”…, on interviews with two people with Villpatti Challiliyars in 1991: Fr. Arockiam and Fr. Stephen Jo’ (p. 223). ‘Soap, soup and salvation’ is the motto of Christian missionaries all over. So 1991 endeavour of the Jesuits was a calculated and the part of collective efforts of the Indian missions of total (enmasse) conversion of subaltern Hindu jatis to Christianity (see CMI Vision of Education, Cochin, 1991).
The author attempts to confuse caste alias Varna and jati. Jati is a specialised occupational group. In all the four Varnas, there were jatis based on unequal relations depending on their occupation in their respective space. The jati and Varna are a bit complex in the Indian scenario. The researcher (author) miserably failing to identify its difference remains as the main setback of the study. Here the researcher (author) miserably failed to identify the difference between caste/varna and jati in the Indian (Hindu life) scenario is the main setback of the text. The book, from the beginning to the end, is totally silent or unaware of this aspect of Hindu race specific. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the book has no price tag or index. Similarly, the book is either academic or scholastic piece in the point of view of history. The main objective of the work is to extend moral support to the Christian missionary conversion enterprises and to propagate before the world that India is still a land of unequal social relations.