Arts » Magazine
Published: March 13, 2010
Updated: March 13, 2010 15:42 IST March 13, 2010
Colours of discrimination
By Harsh Mander
Dalit literature of our times, born out of lived experience and art,
is a significant contribution both to the collective social conscience
and to our notions of aesthetics.
The best of art for me is that which speaks — in various forms and
voices — of the lives of dispossessed people, of the ways they live,
cope and overcome; and of dreams and visions of a better, fairer,
kinder world.
Among the most moving reminiscences of a dispossessed childhood that I
have encountered, for instance, are in a new genre of dalit
autobiographies. Close to my heart is Sharankumar Limbade's
autobiography Akkarmashi. Limbade begins with memories of a school
picnic to a forest near his village. The dalit children play and eat
separately embarrassed in front of their upper caste classmates by
their stale dry rotis, chutney and a dried fish. They can smell the
delicacies from the other group: fried paranthas, delicious laddoos,
fresh spiced vegetables, gujiyas and so much else. Some girls feel
sorry, and give them some vegetables, careful not to touch them.
Limbade is embarrassed by their pity. When they have eaten, the
teacher asks the dalit boys to gather the leftovers in an old piece of
newspaper. They can barely wait to eat the scraps, which they attack
as soon as their classmates have walked ahead. When he returns home
that night, his mother asks him sourly why he did not also bring some
of the leftovers home for the rest of the family to taste.
Gripping record
There are many days when his sisters sleep hungry. His mother makes do
with water, his grandfather with puffs of tobacco. They all await his
grandmother Santhama, who goes from house to house to beg, the aanchal
edge of her sari outstretched in which people throw their leftovers.
He waits impatiently. Why is she taking so long? Why has she not
returned? When at last she comes home, she opens out her sari edge to
reveal a variety of stale half-eaten foods from the homes of the upper
caste wealthy folk of the village. But, to the little boy, it seems as
though his grandmother stores a little piece of heaven everyday in the
aanchalof her sari.
His grandmother gathers cow dung to sell. She looks for undigested
pieces of grain in each cow dung heap before she tosses it into her
basket. She washes these pieces of grain in the village pond, dries
them in the sun, and grinds these into flour. She finally kneads these
into rotis that she roasts only for herself, as she feeds the family
with brown millet rotis. The little boy suspects that his grandmother
must be eating something special, and snatches a piece from her plate
one evening. He bites into it and immediately retches. It tastes like
cow dung. He wonders then how his grandmother manages to eat the cow
dung rotis so calmly every evening.
L.S Rokade fiercely laments the injustice of unequal birth:
Mother, you used to tell me
when I was born
your labour was very long.
The reason, mother,
the reason for your long labour:
I, still in your womb, was wondering
Do I want to be born-
Do I want to be born at all
in this land?
Where all paths raced horizonwards
but to me were barred…
I found also many poems in dalit literature in India expressing
gratitude for their mother's efforts to help the children survive
through intense self denial and deprivation. Poignant and universal is
a poem by Jyoti Langewar, which could be addressed to every mother in
the world who feeds and raises her child amidst challenges of great
want:
I have never seen you
wearing one of those gold bordered saris
with a gold necklace
with gold bangles
with fancy sandals.
Mother! I have seen you
burning the soles of your feet in the harsh summer sun
hanging your little ones in a cradle on an acacia tree
carrying barrels of tar
working on a road construction site…
I have seen you
sitting in front of the stove
burning your very bones
to make coarse bread and a little something
to feed everybody, but half-feed yourself
so there'd be a bit in the morning…
I write of a woman condemned by her caste to carry human excreta on
her head; of a child who grows up on the harsh city streets; of a
mother who has to teach her child the lesson of how to live with
hunger; of a small child who recalls how murderous mobs slaughtered
each member of his family; of the hopelessness of bondage; of people
who are dispossessed from their forests and lands. Each time I write,
I carry a little of their suffering in my own body and soul. But I
have still not lived their suffering. Therefore my writing can never
achieve the authenticity and significance of writing of those who have
themselves lived with want and social humiliation.
Precious legacy
A great deal of the world's finest literature and art — much finer
than anything that I have been capable of — is created by men and
women of empathy and social conscience, who are unable to look at
injustice and suffering, and then just turn their faces away and close
their hearts. Their art constitutes some of the most precious legacies
of human civilisation, because they represent the struggles,
strivings, and aspirations among all peoples in all ages, for a world
of justice and kindness. But what is even more extraordinary about
dalit literature and art is that it is written directly by people who
have themselves lived through the enormous suffering of want, of empty
stomachs, of discrimination, insult and shame as a way of life. And in
the same lifetimes they have not only been able to break off these
chains. They have also acquired the skills, language and idiom, to
communicate these to people who have never slept hungry, or been
shamed or forced into humiliating occupations and social practices
because of their birth. Therefore I regard this to be some of the most
significant contributions both to the collective social conscience and
to our notions of aesthetics.
The K.R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minority Studies, Jamia Millai
Islamia, Delhi, recently organised an outstanding exhibition of
paintings by dalit artist Savi and his students. It was imaginatively
curated by his comrade of nearly two decades, Lokesh Jain, who
successfully used painting and theatre to initiate a dialogue with
students about inequity and discrimination.
Savi has developed his iconography over 22 years, influenced by the
experiences of lived discrimination, Buddhist aesthetics and
Ambedkar's teachings. He combines on the one hand brush strokes that
are bold and confident, even sometimes deliberately chaotic, immersed
in the colours of suffering, despair and rage. He locates within these
some of the most astonishingly delicate line strokes. His is a unique
eclectic imagery.
In Savi's oeuvre, we encounter the anguish and anger of dalit people
who have suffered millennia of social discrimination. We share with
his dark and brooding images, the burdens of centuries of humiliation
of devdasis, or women who are 'dedicated to the gods' and used for sex
work by men of what are called higher castes. Savi's compassion and
anger is not in any way sectarian. He suffers equally with the
survivors of the Gujarat carnage of 2002, and of religious communal
violence, and the fires that burnt their lives, inflame the canvases
of his paintings as well. And interspersed among his images are the
homeless on city streets, devalued and lonely, with only the sky for a
roof, and the pavement for a bed.
None of Savi's paintings is portrayal of helpless suffering. Each
canvas is illuminated by human dignity and the spirit which survives
the most daunting odds. In his work, there is uncompromising
resistance against injustice and inhumanity. Savi's colours and line
strokes are shorthand for hope for a better, kinder future for all of
humanity. And for this, he deserves our admiration and gratitude.
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