sotosay

Are all works of dalit literature about being dalit? Or women’s literature about being woman? These questions have often been raised and answered in varying tones. What is at issue, as I see it, is the very validity of these questions. Of course we are familiar with how these categories are at once enabling and traps. They are enabling as long as the category of dalit / women offers a space for assertive mode of representation. They are a trap as the denomination perpetuates a ghettoizing attitude and remains condescending. So we say Mr. Dhasal is a dalit writer and then wrap him up in the velvet title so as not to allow his poetry to have any bearing on the ‘Marathi’ or ‘Indian’ poetry.

Aniket Jaaware has argued somewhere that Dhasal is preeminently a modernist poet. He would say that he is modern as well as modernist unlike many of the ‘mainstream’ modernist writers. The crux of his argument is that being modern requires not only a poetics but also a politics that holds onto and asserts modern values like equality and fraternity. Now, I believe, Aniket here is offering a valid reason for breaking open the shell of categories and bring Dhasal (for example) onto the stage to upstage establishment appropriation of modernism that simultaneously would keep Dhasal (and such) out.

Thus the politics of categories of dalit and women in literary discourses is one that aims at restriction; further such categorizations also allow the ‘mainstream’ from remaining unaffected by what is happening in these ‘categorized’ discourses.

There is however one more reason why these categorizations are unproductive: unlike such literary categorizations as progressivist, modernist, expressionist etc. dalit and women are categories based on identity. Here, the literary discourse ‘names’, on the basis of identity, a form of discourse that ideally aims to dismantle the logic behind such identities.

Now, if we take into account the problematization of the discrete notions of gender, caste, class etc. then too we would head in the direction of dismissing these categories as unproductive. It is therefore important to see that dalit literature / women’s literature / queer literature are modes of altering the very status of the condition of the literary discourses. That is, ones which put the established modes of literary discourses under duress to make them more political.

It is in the way these set up a negotiating relation with the so called ‘mainstream’ discourses that their politics is most explosive, and not in being just and realistic representations of their ‘supposed’ identities.   

Sometime back I was elated to see a poem by Wole Soyinka in the undergrad syllabi of an Indian university. My elation was cut short when I glimpsed at the annotation attached to it. The editors made no reference to racism, or even faintly hinted at the political undertone in the poem. I only laughed at the sense of decorum the editor’s must have observed. The poem was “Telephone Conversation”. It is significant that in certain societies at certain times, literary representation cannot keep the political in between the lines. There are times when a writer is necessarily a politician of sorts. In 19th and early 20th centuries, in the Indian subcontinent, while the poets were prone to lyricising personal responses to mother nature and stuff, most of the novelists took their vocation to be social-political commentators. Dalit literature including poetry as well as women’s writings show similar trends – personal is the political and all that. But about the African writers there is one more important aspect that Olabode Ibironke brings out well in his article “Chinua Achebe and the Political Imperative of the African Writer” (Journal of Commonwealth Literature). The African writer is not only an intellectual but also a champion of political struggle. Let us not forget the years Soyinka spent in jail. Or Achebe’s No Longer at Ease anticipating the coup. (I dont mean this is true only of the African writer).

Here is an excerpt:

The major African novels have portrayed serious concern for and deep understanding of the political situation in contemporary
Africa. This penchant for political representation is because, unlike his/her first-world counterpart, the African writer occupies the unique position of not only cultivating an intellectual and aesthetic tradition, but also bearing the burden of being actively engaged in the championing of a political struggle, which is deemed absolutely important if literary production is to bear any semblance of relevance to the life of the society.

As for the imperative of the writer Achebe had once said:

The worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self-respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost. There is a saying in Ibo that a man who can’t tell where the rain began to beat him cannot know where he dried his body. The writer can tell the people where the rain began to beat them.

 

While Achebe’s point has the colonial condition as its context, there is no reason to believe that this responsibility ends with self-rule and that the writer’s role in raising political consciousness becomes any less important. If at all, it deepens further, I would say. That is why, while Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart focuses on the conflict with the colonizer, his second novel No Longer at Ease talks of the corruption of the indigenous. So, the imperative to tell the people where the rain began to beat them continues.

What ails democracy in
India? As a question this is cliché. But if one looks around for answers, not too many answers would be counted as sane. One is either a eulogist or a cynic. Or a balancer without insight. The argument offered by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen has the advantage of concrete categories that admit statistics and at the same time attends to contemporary conditions. We see that in
India democracy as a political form is rendered lame by the socio-cultural situation that perpetuates all barbaric forms of social existence even as modernization takes place. As Ambedkar said, until social equity is not achieved, political equity becomes not only meaningless, but potentially dangerous. The various separatist movements in
India are related to the iniquitous conditions. Surely the simmering anger against social inequity gets articulated as a desire to break the surface peace. This is only one of the elements that feed the million disturbances in
India. But this is also an ancient one and has the power therefore to wage the most resilient of battles. Lest we listen and change.An excerpt from DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN
INDIA by Dreze and Sen from: Journal of Asian and African Studies, 37(2):6-37 (http://www.desitterpublications.com/desitter/books/povertysafety_toc.pdf) 

The main limitations of Indian democracy do not relate so much to democratic institutions as to democratic practice. The performance of democratic institutions is contingent on a wide range of social conditions, from educational levels and political traditions to the nature of social inequalities and popular organizations. Democratic practice in
India has often been deeply compromised by a variety of social limitations inherited from the past. To illustrate, consider one of the most basic democratic freedoms−the right to vote.
India has an impressive electoral system (monitored by an independent Election Commission), which has proved its credibility and resilience on numerous occasions since independence. Voter turnouts in
India are also quite respectable by international standards, especially among underprivileged groups. However, the right to vote is not a momentous freedom when voters are so poorly informed that they are unable to distinguish between different political parties, as is still the case in some areas today. Similarly, while Indian elections are formally “free and fair” in most cases, their effective fairness has been compromised by nepotism, the criminalization of politics, and pervasive inequalities in electoral opportunities as a result of disparities in economic wealth and social privileges.Another example concerns the legal system. An impartial and efficient judiciary is indispensable for genuine democracy.
India’s legal system has sound institutional foundations, which incorporate basic democratic principles such as impartiality, secularism, and equality before the law. In practice, however, its functioning is, in many ways, at variance with democratic ideals. For one thing, the legal system is virtually paralyzed by a backlog of millions of “pending cases”−about 30 million according to one estimate (Debroy 2000). Legal proceedings can take years (if not decades) to be completed, and are often far from intelligible for the average citizen. For this and other reasons, legal protection tends to remain beyond the effective reach of most, especially the poor. In fact, the legal system can also be used as an instrument of harassment (rather than as an efficient means of dispensing justice). Those at the receiving end of the system can end up suffering terrible injustice. For instance, undertrial prisoners (there are some 250,000 of them in
India at this time, according to the Home Ministry) often languish in prison for years without any legal recourse.