About Namdeo Dhasal

Dilip Chitre is a poet of significance both in English and Marathi. He is a painter too. His contribution as a translator is also great. Of his translations,, two noted works are his translations of Tuka in Says Tuka and his translations of the Marathi Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal. Tehelka had published an interview with Chitre about Dhasal in 2007. The interview was conducted by S Anand of navayana. Read the complete interview here. One of the questions Anand asks relates to the perennial question of the obscurity of the poem and their political stance. I like the way Chitre answers it.

 

S Anand: There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you, Dilip. His political followers — as you’ve told me — when he’s in hospital, there are some two hundred Panthers outside. Do they read his poetry, do they have an understanding of it? Or is there a split between Namdeo the poet, and this other, political, person?

Dilip Chitre: I don’t see it as a split in Namdeo; it’s the one-sidedness of his multiple audiences. His Dalit audience sees him as a charismatic leader, but they may not possess the literary sensibility demanded by his poetry. He’s not someone like Gadar, who will write these very simplistic poems, and some of them rank bad poetry, and express revolutionary sentiments and rouse people and so on. A middle-class person approaching his poetry does not know the Dalit situation, he does not even want to know. So he misses part of the poetry…

Namdeo dares you, as a reader, and as a translator. There’s something I describe as aesthetic subversion. Namdeo subverts bourgeois sensibilities, and that’s what appeals to me. A subversive act tries to undo the entire system on which your values are based. Namdeo is a guerrilla poet. In one phrase, one line, he’ll juxtapose dialect and the slang of Kamathipura with European references in very sophisticated Marathi.

 

Dalit English Poet – Meena Kandasamy

Recently I came across an exciting voice in Indian English poetry: Meena Kandasamy. I first read her poems in a blog and found about her through blogs, her own as well of others. This is an indication in itself that blogging is beginning to be the dominant medium for accessing poetry. Blogging has several advantages in this respect as it unshackles the poets from being dependant on publishers or magazines. It is as democratic as is currently possible. More and more poets, despite their background, can find their  readers without being subjected to the humiliating process of the publishing industry.

Meena Kandasamy has some interesting things to say about blogging. She is a Dalit writer from Tamilnadu who writes poetry in English. She is also an active translator. Her blog makes for interesting reading. A new voice in the field of Indian English Literature, she is very articulate about the aspirations of the dalits. One of her recent blogs was insightful. Here she talks about blogging, caste oppression and women. Here is an excerpt:

Big media houses which own the major publications rarely give opportunity to Dalit (ex-untouchable) writers, and there’s an absence of Dalit/anti-caste writers who write in English. The elitist writers want to write the feel-good stuff, India Shining myths, and that’s the work that gets into print. So, I wanted to tap the power and enormous outreach of the internet: how anyone can write and be read/heard in the virtual space. I was not writing because anyone was commissioning me, I didn’t have to follow other people’s diktats, I could speak my mind. Google and tagging ensure that I can get heard without having my own column in any newspaper. Sometimes its helped me bring some happenings to light—such as the recent inside story of Dalit students being beaten up at a law university in Chennai (the mainstream media merely reported it as a “clash” at first) and so on. Blogging on feminist issues, with a caste perspective, was also something that I set out to do, because feminism in India forgets that caste exists at all, and that women at the bottom of the caste hierarchy do suffer more.

Since the cost of establishing alternative media in India is extremely high, activist groups have taken to the Internet in a big way. There is a hunger to use the potential of this media, and human rights defenders are doing it the right way. The campaign to free Binayak Sen; the exposes on state terrorism, fake encounters and police atrocities; the virulent speed in which fact-finding reports can be circulated; the ease with which the LGBT community in India came together and organized their shows of strength in every major city—these have all been possible because of the digital sphere and the space for social networking, discussion and dissemination that it allows.

She has another blog where she has posted several of her poems. She has published a collection of her poems called Touch. Kamala Das wrote the forward where she calls Meena an exciting writer. Believe her. Or decide after reading her poems. One of them is ‘Becoming a Brahmin‘:

Algorithm for converting a Shudra into a Brahmin

Begin.

Step 1: Take a beautiful Shudra girl.
Step 2: Make her marry a Brahmin.
Step 3: Let her give birth to his female child.
Step 4: Let this child marry a Brahmin.
Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 six times.
Step 6: Display the end product. It is a Brahmin.

End.

Algorithm advocated by Father of the Nation at Tirupur.
Documented by Periyar on 20.09.1947.

Algorithm for converting a Pariah into a Brahmin

Awaiting another Father of the Nation
to produce this algorithm.

(Inconvenience caused due to inadvertent delay
is sincerely regretted.)

While this poem is a frontal attack, there is a nuanced poem which is rich in irony yet trenchant in its critique of the caste system – varna system.

TOUCH

Have you ever tried meditation?
Struggling hard to concentrate,
and keeping your mind as blank
as a whitewashed wall by closing
your eyes, nose, ears; and shutting out
every possible thought. Every thing.
And, the only failure, that ever came,
the only gross betrayal—
was from your own skin.
You will have known this.

Do you still remember,
how, the first distractions arose?
And you blamed skin as a sinner;
how, when your kundalini was rising,
shaken, you felt the cold concrete floor
skin rubbing against skin, your saffron robes,
how, even in a far-off different realm—
your skin anchored you to this earth.
Amidst all that pervading emptiness,
touch retained its sensuality.
You will have known this.

Or if you thought more variedly, about
taste, you would discount it—as the touch
of the tongue. Or, you may recollect
how a gentle touch, a caress changed
your life multifold, and you were never
the person you should have been.
Feeling with your skin, was
perhaps the first of the senses, its
reality always remained with you—
You never got rid of it.
You will have known this.

You will have known almost
every knowledgeable thing about
the charms and the temptations
that touch could hold.

But, you will never have known
that touch – the taboo
to your transcendence,
when crystallized in caste
was a paraphernalia of
undeserving hate.

Photo from: Meena Kandasamy blog.

 

Dalit Poetry in Kannada III – Moodnaakadu Chinnaswamy

There are some excellent dalit poets writing in Kannada these days. I don’t have too good an access to the latest dalit poetry emerging in Kannada as my visits to Karnataka are not vary frequent. I try my best to get as much as my friends can send me. Continuing my earlier posts, here and here, I present a translation of another Kannada Dalit poet. This time another well known name: Moodnakadu Chinnaswamy. I am familiar only with a few of his poems and they are very good. Here is one ‘Footwear and me’ in my poor translation. I read it in a magazine and can’t find that copy around me. So I am a little unsure if this is the complete poem or if I managed to translate only a fragment. I am sorry, I haven’t done enough homework on this. But I promise I will soon rectify this deficiency. I also don’t have a picture of the poet M. C. If anybody has one, do share, please….

Footwear and me

* Moodnaakadu Chinnaswamy

When I go to the temple

The footwear is not left outside

It is I who is outside

Shoes on cobbler’s feet

Makes as much news as when

A man bites a dog

Taking off the shoes

Everyone’s feet

tread all over me

I am a plant:

and they just don’t realize

that under their feet are my roots

Like a crane craning her neck

to the dried up lake’s spring

I stand on my toes

and peep in to steal

as much of god’s form as I can see

 

Namdeo Dhasal, ‘Kamatipura’

I think the most important 20th century poet of India has to be Namdeo Dhasal. I am nobody to make the judgment, but that is my gut feeling on the basis of the poets I have read and read about. No wonder that another poet whom we all want to turn to has translated him with so much love, Dilip Chitre. His book on Namdeo Dhasal is published by Navayana and is a must buy. It has several of Dhasal’s poems and photographs. A kind of a basic reader for Dhasal. Order it from navayana or flipkart.

from: literaturfestival.com

“Kamatipura”

(translation: Dilip Chitre)

The nocturnal porcupine reclines here
Like an alluring grey bouquet
Wearing the syphilitic sores of centuries
Pushing the calendar away
Forever lost in its own dreams

Man’s lost his speech
His god’s a shitting skeleton
Will this void ever find a voice, become a voice?

If you wish, keep an iron eye on it to watch
If there’s a tear in it, freeze it and save it too
Just looking at its alluring form, one goes berserk
The porcupine wakes up with a start
Attacks you with its sharp aroused bristles
Wounds you all over, through and through
As the night gets ready for its bridegroom, wounds begin to blossom
Unending oceans of flowers roll out
Peacocks continually dance and mate

This is hell
This is a swirling vortex
This is an ugly agony
This is pain wearing a dancer’s anklets

Shed your skin, shed your skin from its very roots
Skin yourself
Let these poisoned everlasting wombs become disembodied.
Let not this numbed ball of flesh sprout limbs
Taste this
Potassium cyanide!
As you die at the infinitesimal fraction of a second,
Write down the small ‘s’ that’s being forever lowered.

Here queue up they who want to taste
Poison’s sweet or salt flavour
Death gathers here, as do words,
In just a minute, it will start pouring here.

O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.
— A lotus in the mud.

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10554

The Marathi original:

 

Dalit Poetry in Kannada II

One of the contemporary Kannada poets whose work I am amazed by is N K Hanumantayya. He has two collections so far: Himada Hejje (Snow Steps – 1998) and Chitrada Bennu (Picture’s Spine – 2006). There was an unnecessary controversy in Karnataka around 2004 about eating beef. At the time Hanumantayya wrote a poem titled: ‘Becoming a cow by eating cow-meat’, an excellent poem, which caught the attention of many and NKH began to be liked by poetry lovers. One such is this blogger.

Hanumantayya’s poems are written in standard dialect. His is not the dialect-based poetry. He is also a very frequent user of symbols:

On this ant

I placed my heavy step

And lifted it after a while.

The ant is still moving. (‘Spine of the Picture’)

Check out this from ‘The image in ant’s maw’:

While asleep in the night’s dark cave

She opened her eyes to the sound of dewdrops falling

Like the stars smiling on darkened bones

NKH sees all the small beings. He is alert to the living beings that we take for granted. While in the ‘Spine..’ poem quoted above he goes on to thank all these tiny beings whose life is forever casually endangered by our activities, his poems also frequently show gratefulness to ’soil’. Creatures populate his imagery. Here is a fine little poem ‘Firefly and me’:

That night unable to sleep

I stepped out

The courtyard was filled

With fireflies.

Their light made me

Sweat and scream

One of my favourite poems is titled ‘Elephants that melt in earthworm’s mouth’. Here it is in full:

A sculptor

Carved on a mustard seed

Hundreds of elephants and howdahs

And twisted his moustache proudly

And laughed at time rotting

Before that mustard seed.

A small bird

Flew down the electric line

And ate the mustard seed

Shattered, the sculptor

Opened his eyes

There was a mustard plant

Before him

At its bed the elephants and howdahs

Were melting in an earthworm’s mouth.

Violence is common motif in these poems. Often the poems invoke the violence meted out to the community over the ages, sometime to violence in the daily lives of people, creatures. There is sadness about the pervasiveness of violence. Therefore most poems also have macabre images. The author’s preface begins thus:

On this black back

Day and night a cold hurt runs

Are all the dirt-snakes

Sleeping here?

Is my corpse rotting

Every moment?

Nataraj Huliyar who has written a preface to NKH’s Picture’s Spine says that these poems seem to have emanated from the “lonliness, struggle, sadness, bitterness, survival instinct, masochism, and the violence borne of relationships”. The book also has a blurb by Ananthamuthy who says, “these are poems to be read carefully. They have the ability to expand our cognitive ways apart from enriching our emotional world”.

I think the promise that these senior writers find in NKH is justified by the quality of his poems. He is a poet who cannot be read in a hurry.

 

Dalit Poetry in Kannada

It may not be an exaggeration to say that in the recent past much of the notable poetry in Kannada has been Dalit poetry. The modern dalit poetry in Kannada burst into limelight in the 70s and after with writers such as Siddalingayya. It was also the heydays of DSS (Dalit Sangharsh Samiti). Among the ones that are my favourites is Govindayya. One of his celebrated poems is “A, B, C and …”

Photo: Abdul Rasheed

First and foremost this poem, like much of dalit literature reveals a self-deprecatory gesture. This gesture is an acknowledgement of the suffering endured by the parents, or by extension, being endured by the dalit community. Secondly, it celebrates the access to education and the change made thus possible. Thirdly, it records the systemic nature of opression. The inhumanity of such treatment however has not robbed the mother and father of the ability to find joy. The world continues to be inhuman, yet the dalit life-world celebrates the little joys of success, strength and freedom.

The following translation is only a draft, in need of refinement. Suggestions welcome. If you want to listen to Govindayya reading his poems, including this one,  go here.

Opening my eyes when I began stirring my limbs:

In my mother’s eyes in the dark hut

A hearth was ablaze

Setting his black limbs to the fire

Father breathed through beedi

As lives were in a boil in the boiling gruel

When the feet that had

Crawled-stood-walked within mother’s nest

Halted inside the ischool walls

The up-twisted moustache on father’s black cheek

Fell down to the brahmin master’s feet

Father and mother’s hopes got entangled

With the letters A, B, learnt on the dark board

So did our village, colony, cemetery;

In the well of skeletons

I found a few words

As I descended in further search

The questions that came up

Sprouted limbs and khaki dress,

Large moustache;

I dissolved in darkness!

Still,

On the crooked walls of the ancestral hut

That day when I formed A, B, C

The kisses that mother showered on me are still on my cheeks

The small coin that father gave is still on my string-belt.

 

Dalit Autobiography in Kannada

Siddalingayya’s Ooru Keri is one of the most important dalit autobiographies in Kannada. Other notable ones include Arvind Malagatti’s Government Brahman, Ramayya’s MaNegara and Govindaraju’s Manavilladavara Madhye. I think Siddalingayya’s autobiography is important not only because he is an important dalit poets in Kannada. I think his book has a larger importance for dalit literature as a whole.

from: lifevisionkcftc.org

Among dalit autobiographies we see two distinct types: autobiographies by those who are already notables in the society; by those who became notable because of the autobiography they have written. Siddalingayya was already an important public persona – an established kannada poet, a mass leader, a major figure in the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti (DSS), – unlike some of the Marathi authors of autobiographies, who came to obtain social notability through their autobiographies.  In this respect autobiography is not the means through which individuality is claimed by Siddalingayya.

Ooru Keri means ‘neighbourhood’ roughly, it refers to residential colony anyways. In this respect it is similar to Vasti an autobiography by the Marathi writer Vasant Moon. It has been pointed out by many that dalit autobiographies, contrary to other autobiographies, focus on the collmunity rather than the individual. That is, an autobiography also becomes ethography as it were, but one from within.

The remarkable feature of this book is that it is less a record of pain and suffering than of joy and success. The reader will perceive the oppression that Siddalingayya and his community go through but the author makes the reader see the power of dalits too. Dalit solidarity, struggle become frequent motifs here. No wonder in his afterword to this book D R Nagraj speaks of the ‘power of poorman’s laughter’. The reader of this book is repeatedly invited to laugh out at the naughtyness of the protagonist, or his friends, at the humorous side of occurences.

While the narrative does not trivilise the experiences, it nevertheless does not become a record only of the power of victimisers but tells how dalits wrest power for themselves. Importantly it relates the determination and the commitment of the dalits to shape their own life even when they are caught in highly subjected situations.

The language used is standard kannada unlike some of his revolutionary poems which use dalit dialects. It has been translated into English by S. R. Ramakrishna and published by Sahitya Academy. Availability is thus an issue. But you can easily get it on Flipkart here.