Book review: Sharankuma Limbale and Jaydeep Sarangi (Eds.),Dalit Voice: Literature and Revolt

In India, we have Dalit literature since the late 1950s or even going back to the nineteenth century. Perhaps these writers have achieved something by non-violent means, in not only creating awareness of their plight but also encouraging others to follow them. But I believe that we could use Dalit for the literature of all suppressed and oppressed people in the world, the Afro-Americans in the United States, Rohingya in Myanmar and all minorities, the children and women around the world, all who are suffering, despite all the world religions who claim to care for these people.

Dalit voice: Literature and revolt is an anthology compiled by Sharankumar Limbale and Jaydeep Sarangi. True literature is always in revolt, against the society, culture, religion, politics and against literature itself. The book talks about the unmentionable issue of the inhuman socio-religious treatment of a section of mankind. The subject is unmentionable because those who are guilty of the inhuman act are aware of the wrong they are doing and are ashamed to discuss or admit it. There are still others who do not accept their wrongdoings, or that their actions or inactions are wrong.

The book traces the history of the Dalit movement and the revolt by the writers to create and develop a Dalit literature. It covers the works of Dalit writers from many regions of India, from Punjab to Bengal and Tamil Nadu, facing different degrees of oppression and suppression but with the same pain and suffering faced by their people. It exposes the misconceptions that in regions like Punjab, there is no caste suppression or oppression. While in most other regions, the Dalits are openly treated as subhumans—trying to call themselves subalterns, identified by different caste labels—in other regions where the religious practices or social norms do not recognize castes, the people still suffer—they are the have-nots, the landless, who are enslaved by the landlords.

When Bama comes out with the plight of the female among the untouchables, she also exposes the pathetic and inhuman treatment even a Christian nun faces among the followers of Jesus Christ, including the ‘touchable’ priests and nuns. Meena Kandasamy also brings out the plight of the untouchable woman. When Joshi Barbara writes,

A nasty joke, a quick and sudden hug a slap upon your heavy buttocks. You are cornered like an easy prey. They enjoy the delicious most touchable flesh of an untouchable girl. You moan and become a mother—mother of a bastard. They button up the trousers and take a plunge in the Ganges. (p. 18)

These few lines describe the plight of the Dalit woman, throughout history. The ‘touchable’ male is absolved of any sin with the dip in the river. Jaydeep Sarangi’s long interview with Bama gives fresh insights into Dalit feminism. Jaydeep is successful in bringing out Bama’s inside out. What a life!

The same issue is faced by the untouchables who had embraced Islam, as with those who embraced Buddhism. In a majority Hindu region, being a low-caste Muslim is a situation we cannot even imagine, and even to think how a woman or a girl child would feel. This is what F. M. Sahashinde describes in his poems. The Dalits in Punjab had to face the Brahmanization of Sikhism as explained by Neha Arora. Ashok Gopal mentions the first Dalit autobiography of the cricketer Vithal Palwankar, written in 1948. It is a book that we should study as to how Vithal managed to enter such an exclusive domain and gain the admiration of all. Articles on Bangla and Odiya Dalit writings are eye-opener for Dalit studies. I am sure scholars will get to know many unknown terrains of cultural silence for decades.

In the end, what we find is that everyone throughout history had failed to correct the inhuman treatment of fellow human beings. From Mahavira, Buddha, Ashoka, down the line to Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar, all failed. Had Babasaheb tried to get the high-caste Hindus to accept and follow Buddha Dhamma, he would have been more successful. Dalits converting to Buddhism or Islam or Sikhism did not help these helpless people. They still remain as ‘Scheduled Castes’, with just an added religious label. Even Chritianization of Hinduism failed to address the Dalit issue, while Brahmanization of Buddhism carried over the caste conflict among the Buddhists too.

A question we have to ask ourselves, and the male Dalit writers should ask themselves, is how we treat our own women and the girl child. Have we given them their freedom and their rights or are we ready to grant them? Let the female Dalit writers first fight for their own emancipation from their own men, from their suppression and oppression: Begin their revolt at home, before stepping out to revolt against the village.

Dalit writers have been publishing for over a century, not only the Dalits but the non-Dalits—the people of the ‘unscheduled castes’, the ‘touchables’—too have been reading them. But have we really read and accepted all these writings for what they really are, for the message in them beyond their literary value? We have appreciated the autobiographical and biographical works and admired their success despite all the obstacles they faced. But what we need now is to study why the other siblings in such families, why the other children in such villages, failed to overcome the same obstacles. What kept them back. We have to find the cause or causes, we have to find ways and means to motivate these other children, to guide and help them too to overcome the obstacles.

Dalit literature needs to take a new turn, to aim at the literate Dalits and to motivate them to pull the rest of their people out of the purgatory. It is pointless to keep on about the suffering, inequality and inhumanity of the rest of the society. This all-encompassing book will help the Dalit children to help themselves than to try to reform the non-Dalits.