Paper 202: Indian English Literature – Post-Independence

 Assignment

Paper 202: Indian English Literature – Post-Independence

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, M.K.Bhavanagar University.

Vachchhalata Joshi

Vachchhalatajoshi.14@gmail.com

Roll no – 20  

Words: 2954

Paragraphs: 24

Topic: casteism in India and Meena Kandasamy’s one-eyed

Introduction to the Hindu Caste System

Caste is about dividing people up in ways that preclude every form of solidarity, because even in the lowest castes, there are divisions and sub-castes, and everyone's co-opted into the business of this hierarchical, silo-ised society.

Arundhati Roy

 

 The caste system in India is not a modern phenomenon. Rather, it traces its origins back to the pre-Christian era. The word “caste” derived its origin from the Spanish word “casta,” which signifies a “race” or a “social class”. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word “caste” means, “One of the hereditary social classes in Hinduism that restrict the occupation of their members and their association with the members of other castes.” Over the course of its history, the Indian society has witnessed a state of class stratification or what can be called "the Hindu caste system." Such a system is principally rooted in religion (Hinduism) besides being based on the division of labor.

As mentioned above, casteism is embedded in the major religion of India, i.e. Hinduism. It is Brahma who originated casteism in Hindu society. In her book, Phule Ambedkar Movement (2002), the Dalit woman writer, Minakshi Moon, argues, “The birth of caste hierarchy is from the Brahma; Brahmins are born from the mouth of Brahma, Kshatriyas from the arms of Brahma, Vaishyas from the thighs of Brahma and Shudras from the foot of Brahma” (87). According to Hindu beliefs, Brahma is considered to be the Lord of creation and goodness. He is the Lord of Lords as well as the first member of the Hindu Trinity

Brahma

Vishnu

Mahesh

However, there is a fifth caste, the Dalits, who officially do not belong to the four main castes mentioned above. In the eyes of the Hindu upper castes, those Dalits are considered socially degraded members of Indian society. They are also called the “untouchables” or “outcastes”. In his book Report on the Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes.

Regrettably, the Hindu Caste System revolves around two main concepts: purity and pollution, with purity ascribed to those of the higher classes (the Brahmins at the top) whereas pollution to those of the lower classes (the Dalits at the bottom). In its literal sense, the Free Dictionary tells us that the word “untouchable” means “a member of a large formerly segregated hereditary group in India having in traditional Hindu belief the quality of defiling by contact a member of a higher caste”. According to this definition, the untouchable is not permitted to touch any member of the higher social castes lest he/she would defile or pollute them.

It is worth mentioning that the despicable act of untouchability is a byproduct of casteism. In this, Gurusamy argues that untouchability “is prompted by the spirit of social aggression and the belief in purity and pollution that characterises casteism” (17). Accordingly, the Dalits are considered polluted people as well as the lowest class in the caste order. They are assigned the jobs that are related to anything impure such as “removing human waste (known as ‘manual scavenging’), dragging away and skinning animal carcasses, tanning leather, making and fixing shoes, and washing clothes” (17). Dalits are obliged to reside outside the village lest their physical presence should pollute the real village.

Whereas the higher caste Hindus live in well facilitated houses, the Dalits’ houses are both “inferior in quality and devoid of any facilities like water and electricity” (Gurusamy 18). Compared with the highercaste Hindus, Dalits are not allowed to use the wells used by the Hindus, go to their barber shops or enter their temples. With regard to jobs, they are paid less than the higher-caste Hindus, and rarely promoted. At schools, Dalit children are assigned to clean toilets and to eat in separate places. Moreover, the level of casteism touches the names given to them. To illustrate, Dalit children are given such inferior names as “Kachro (filth), Melo (dirty), Dhudiyo (dusty), Gandy (mad), Ghelo (stupid), and Punjo.

The 1950 National Constitution of India had issued enactments that legally abolish any practice of untouchability. However, those measures have not had a positive impact on the reality of daily life for most Dalits as the Indian government frequently tolerates oppression and open discrimination aimed at this group. In the year 2000, some official reports announced the murder of 486 registered cases of persons “belonging to scheduled castes besides 1034 cases of rape” (Chakraborty 39). However according to the 2008 reports, the numbers “have shot up to 626 and 1457 respectively” (39). In case a Dalit member violates any of the unjust rules set by the upper castes, the entire Dalit community “will face some punishments that often take the form of “denial of access to land or employment, physical attacks on Dalit women, and the burning down of Dalit homes”

 

Meena Kandasamy as a poet

Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy born in 1984 is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and India.

Meena published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy. From 2001-2002, she edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media Network.

She represented India at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program and was a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. She writes columns for platforms like Outlook India and The Hindu.

Meena Kandasamy: A Freedom-Fighter Dalit Poet

“No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived.”
― Meena Kandasamy,

 Indeed, the practices of oppression and untouchability exercised against the Indian Dalits had produced in such Dalit writers as Meena Kandasamy both the rebellion and the desire of death for freedom. However, which type of freedom do they aspire to accomplish? The answer is freedom from all forms of injustice and suppression. Such Dalits dream of being liberated from the prison of subjugation and suppression to fly freely in the open world of freedom.

As Activist

Meena works closely with issues of caste and gender and how society puts people into stereotypical roles on the basis of these categories. She has faced threats for her fearless criticism of the Hindu society, to which she says, "This threat of violence shouldn’t dictate what you are going to write or hinder you in any manner.”

In 2012, a group of Dalit students of Osmania University, Hyderabad, organised a beef eating festival to protest against the "food fascism" in hostels. The right-wing student group Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) staged protests against the event and organisers. Meena attended the festival and spoke in support of it. She faced incessant abuse online as a result. The Network of Women in Media India (WMNI) released a press statement condemning the attack on her.

 

 Meena Kandasamy, based in Chennai, is an emerging poet, fiction writer, translator and activist. Her first volume of poems Touch was published in 2006. Her poetry has won many laurels in poetry competitions. Her translations include the writings and speeches of Thol.Thirumavalavan, leader of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal or Dalit panthers of India, and the poetry and fables of Tamil Eelam poet, Kasi Anandan. She is one of the 21 short fiction writers from South Asia featured in an anthology published by Zubaan, New Delhi. At present, she is working on her doctorate on caste in the Indian language classroom. There is fierce and exuberant wit and wordplay in Meena‟s works.

The Indo-Anglian poet, Kamala Das, is all praise for Meena‟s verse that “she wore a fabric rare and strange, faintly smudged with the Indianness of her thought that saw „even the monsoons come leisurely stroking like decorated temple elephants‟” in her foreword to Meena‟s Touch. The poetics of „an angry young woman‟ as Meena Kandasamy describes herself is filled with relentless militant assaults on the structures, customs and conventions which have persistently been used to justify and then gloss over Dalit subjugation of various kinds. Her poetry collections Touch and Ms. Militancy not only touch upon aesthetic considerations and sensual human bonds of affection or desire but refers to the rigid hierarchies of caste that relegate them to a sub-human level as their mere touch is considered to be polluting to the upper caste people. The present paper analyzes the subjugation of women in the select poems of Ms. Militancy under which Back-Street Girls, Dead woman walking, Fire-walkers, Ms. Militancy, Princess-in-Exile, Moon-gazers and One Eyed are discussed and analyzed.

 

Maintaining equality is a major issue expected in the world at the present time. The treatment of inequality prevents the peaceful atmosphere of a society. Inequality prevails because of the discrimination among people related to the class, caste, race and gender. Meena Kandasamy brings out some of the literary works that express caste, class, and racism and also brings out the depressed condition of the marginalized people especially the Dalits who live among the exploited people.

Meena Kandasamy is a Chennai-based, contemporary poet, fiction writer, translator and activist. She articulates the voices of her own community, her own country to which her forefathers belonged at a given point of time or history. She tries to recreate the lives of her community native to her and makes her voice heard in the dominant discourse. She finds herself marginalized on the psychological level and suffers from a split self. She presents herself as a Dalit woman writer and retells the Tamil myths by feministic and anti-caste perspectives.

Meena Kandasamy approaches the state of her birth as an outcast and she tries to scan the inside with open-mindedness and neutrality. Her literary output treats all shades of identity crisis such as alienation, marginalization, despair, readjustment, assimilation, adaption and adoption. Her writings are essentially autobiographical and mostly her protagonists and the significant characters are marginalised people especially the Dalits. Her works centre on the complexities, the extraordinary range of possibilities, situations present in Indian family life whereas her themes, however, remain universal - love, loss, separation, heroism, despair ,Happiness, untouchable, etc. The poems of Meena Kandasamy offers contrapuntal readings of Indian multiculturalism, readings that give scope for alternative views of a whole ensemble of marginalized attitudes – cultural, political, social and literary.

The Dalits have very few opportunities to alter their fate because the society, which is controlled by the elite class, closes the options like education, awareness and equal rights to elevate their position. Meena Kandasamy always sketches the vulnerability and struggle of subjugated human beings in her poems. In her works Meena Kandasamy delineates the continued existence of oppressive structures of caste, class, and race and gender domination within the boundaries of the secular Indian democracy. She has designed her poems in such a way to incorporate the marginalized, the voices of the Dalit community.

Meena Kandasamy’s poem “One-Eyed” was published in Ms. The poem talks about Dhanam, a little girl who feels very thirsty, touches the pot and drank a glass of water from the pot to quench her thirst with her “clumsy hand”. The learned teacher in the school slapped on the little girl’s cheek especially for breaking the rules. The concept of untouchability is practiced mainly against the lower caste as well as the lower section people. They are the worst sufferers. As they do not have the political and economic power to fight against the upper class people’s supremacy, they mutely accept subjugation. They do not have the voice to express their conditions and portray themselves before the world. Even the inanimate objects surrounding her feel the pitied condition of the girl:

“The pot sees just another noisy child

The glass sees an eager and clumsy hand

 The water sees a parched throat slaking thirst” (One-Eyed)

Even the pot, glass and water take pity upon the girl. These inanimate objects feel for her and they allow themselves to quench her thirst. In reality, the Dalits are not allowed mingle with the public and they are not allowed to touch vessels, or any other items used by the upper caste. They have to use separate vessels, pots, glasses, etc. Dhanam in the poem is a submissive girl. She does not even react to the upper class supremacy. But she sees a kind of world which is torn into two. The poet pathetically concludes the poem as:

“Dhanam sees a world torn in half.

 Her left eye, lid open but light slapped away,

 The price for a taste of that touchable water” (One-Eyed)

 Water is a natural resource and it never gulps but sacrifices itself to all creatures in the world. But some human beings divide water for the upper caste and water for the lower caste. It is very nonsensical to think deeply about the classification and caste system which still prevails in some places. Meena Kandasamy has concentrated on the pessimistic image of her land, gives an insight into rural India and mentions the atrocities committed on the untouchables. The children of the low castes were denied the right to drink water with the other; Dhanam was slapped severely when she drank. What is the price for tasting that untouchable water? It is nothing but a slap and for that particular reason her one-eye is damaged. She sees the torn world but not a complete one. In her eyes, the world seems to be partial one and it shows partiality to a particular group. Meena Kandasamy reveals that the weight of social pressure operates to confirm in each case their extreme subordination despite whatever personal effort may be applied towards upward mobility on the part of the untouchables or towards autonomy on the part of the woman. In an interview with Sampsonia Way Magazine, Meena Kandasamy remarks, “My poetry is naked, my poetry is in tears, and my poetry screams in anger, my poetry writhes in pain. My poetry smells of blood, my poetry salutes sacrifice. My poetry speaks like my people; my poetry speaks for my people.” (Mitsu 1)

Meena Kandasamy vehemently condemns and criticizes the devilish practice of casteism and savage treatment of the untouchables in the name of supremacy of the caste Hindus who, according to Hindu mythology are supposed to be the most cherished children of the Brahma, the Supreme Soul. It is the hypocrisy of the Hindu tradition which renders the untouchables as born of the feet of the Brahma, therefore regarded as the lowest in social hierarchy. In the surrounding villages also the low castes underwent untold sufferings. Meena Kandasamy recounts the brutal and inhuman treatment given to the little girl of this caste. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, “Education is a panacea” but here in this poem the reader could see that an institution corrupts the little child. According to Meena Kandasamy, the school, hospital and the press violate the rules. The social pictures of Meena Kandasamy look ironical and depressing, but they have a message to be shared with the readers. The contrast involved has to be well understood by the readers who want to comprehend what Meena Kandasamy suggests about the relationship between art and society. Her artistic device of contrast gives real insight into the way of the Dalits healthy adjustment in Indian society at a time when other options are available to them. Time passes, things change but the fate and struggle of the untouchables and subalterns do not change. They remain stagnant at the same point where they were before independence. The representation of the Dalits in her poem is realistic, putting aside many controversial issues. Symbols and images are used adeptly by Meena Kandasamy in her poem. She gains maturation as an artist of excellence, significance, relevance and consequence. The style of Meena Kandasamy’s writing is like that of E.E. Cummings, a familiar American poet who is known for small letters in his poems. Meena Kandasamy’s poems are characterised by both ethnocentric and minority discourse features. Naturally, her poems clearly portray the anxieties, alienation and feeling of insecurity of a modern day Dalit.

Meena Kandasamy voices for the unvoiced especially for the Dalits. Human beings are born equal in dignity and rights. But basic rights such as right to live, right to protest, right to express oneself, right to live safely from violence and torture, etc. are being denied to the marginalized communities. They continue to endure the evils of bonded labour system with their poverty and literacy. The Government of India plans and introduces welfare schemes in paper but could not uproot it completely in effective practice. The benefits of the schemes are pocketed by the politicians and bureaucrats. The concepts of equality, fraternity, liberty, and democracy in Indian context seem to be illusory for these unfortunate layers of the society. Even the inanimate objects have life and see this world as one, but the treatment of the Dalits are dissimilar.

Exploring Casteism and Untouchability in Meena Kandasamy’s Touch

The poems in Touch exemplify Kandasamy’s intention to establish an autonomous and forceful identity for the untouchable Dalits. They attempt to “strike an emphasis to institute a separate voice for the oppressed” (Marjory 90). Kandasamy’s Touch demonstrates the class struggle between the oppressed (the lower caste) and their oppressors (the higher caste). Her approach here is confessional like that of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Langston Hughes whose poetry expresses extreme moments of personal experiences. Kandasamy’s poetry explores a variety of “subjective possibilities and relates them to her own identity and sociological formulation. It arises not out of reading and knowledge, but out of active engagement in real life.”

References :

https://jsh.journals.ekb.eg/article_242649_803d5bfcda71ccb4b29d3575d1fce4fe.pdf.

“Savage Treatment of Untouchables in Meena Kandasamy's “One-Eyed.”” Language in India, 9 September 2019, http://languageinindia.com/sep2019/mkuliterature2019/rathi.pdf. Accessed 4 November 2022.