21 Tamil Dalits in Search of a Literature

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South Asia Research

DOI: 10.1177/026272800202200102

2002; 22; 21South Asia ResearchM. Kannan and Francois Gros

Tamil Dalits in Search of a Literature

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a small group around Tamilavan.At the beginning of the 1990s the word dalitwas in widespread use in Tamil, but not without reservations, since even in itslocal orthography of talit, the term is of Sanskrit origin and Tamil intellectualsare nothing if not linguistically touchy. Moreover, acceptance oftheword vaguelyimplies consciousness of participating in a movement that concerns India as a

whole.From various perspectives, Tamil ideologues set to work to examine the political

equation of religious minorities with those rejected by the caste system; theyreferred back toAmbedkar, champion of the cause of the untouchable, whosecentenary in 1991 had opportunely brought his writings to mind.3 The outbreakof dalit literary inspiration is thus very recent and its promulgation through themedia even more so; further, it is in a state of ideological confusion which can beclarified only by attention to the emergence ofthe phenomenon and the limitationspeculiar to it. The current tendency towards drowning specific aspects of it inwhat might be called dalit sensitivity (taken here to mean modish, and conformingto the concept ofpolitical correctness or self-censorship as it appears in journalismand anthropological discourse) is appropriate to the Tamil literary temperamentwhich is naturally sober and tends to half-tones. If a writer, dalit by sympathy and

origin, turns away from the ideological free-for-all because of his or herhumanisticvalues, fashion forces and official literary circles will elevate the writer in thename of the uncompromised values he or she espouses, thus paradoxically com-promising them.

In 1994 Pumani, a writer belonging to an untouchable caste, a dalit by birththough not always eager to be so identified, received a literary price awarded byAGNI (Awakened Group for National Integration, a Tamil organisation in Madraswith a national network of Congress orientation run by the authors Malan andSivasankari,AGNI also means fire). On that occasion he read a text, later pub-lished in Putiya Parvcai (a now defunct bi-monthly literary magazine managed byM. Natarajan, who was closely involved with local politics at that time), a signific-ant satirical allegory, Ellm prfccampalattirkuttll (All for the Dates...).

In a village of the karical (black soil) country, on the verandah of his house, aman of some culture is waiting for the rains. He strikes up conversations withpassers-by, first a salt merchant who is also a Sangam poet whom he admires.

A DalitAction Committee, which became the Dalit SahityaAkademi, had existed in Bangaloresince 1977, led by V. T. Rajshekhar Shetty, archivist, journalist and author of Dalit Movement inKarnataka, Madras, 1978.2 On the whole we could define Dalits as people belonging to castes which, in one way or theother, are subjected to untouchability and are sidelined by the dominant castes. Dalit Politics:ADraft Manifesto, Pondicherry, 1994, p. 24.3This was also the occasion for the publication of a Tamil version of his works; from 1991, more

than 15 volumes at the end of 2000. We note that in 1992, it was on 6 December, the day on whichthe memory of B. R.Ambedkar has been celebrated for years, that Hindu fundamentalist groups(BJP, RSS, VHP) demolished the Babri Masjid inAyodhya thus adding, for minorities, a doublesignificance to the date.4

PutiyaP&amacr;rvai, 1-15 March 1995,

pp.9-11.

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What an amount ofknowledge! Knowledge...where can one buy that...? repliesthepoet as he goes his way. He then meets theAlvar poetessAndal ofpure Vaish-navite lineage: How does sheknow so much about the cowherd women and theirwork? Maynt I write about other people? Who said I am nothing but anAlvar?She leaves him dumbfounded. Face to face with Subrahmanya Bharati and his

donkey, he questions the relevance of an image in one of the Tamil poet laureatesprose poems. The reply is, You are too big-headed; its the heart that ought to bebig.... The rain comes and with it the croaking of frogs, an image of our societyfamiliar since Socrates. They croak in Tamil, discreetly Brahmanism; more force-

fully Dravidianism; even more strongly feminism, territorialism (regionalism,chauvinism of the birthplace reserved for the sons of the soil), structuralism;in a hoarse voice traditionalism; in a more confused tone, dalitism, with manyvariations, a veritable cacophony: tatalittu, the dalits on themselves; atalittu,non-dalits on the dalits; pitalittu, the backward castes on the dalits; mutalittu,the forward castes on the dalits....A date-seller comes along who, according tocustom, trades his fruit for old utensils. The villager is possessed with a littlehumanism which he doesnt want to exchange but would prefer to have enhanced.The merchant knows nothing about this and grumbles about such an unreasonableindividual. Left to himselfthe man confesses :all his life he has tried to learn and

understand but everyone has repeatedly told him that he knows nothing.An oldschool teacher reassures him, quoting from Ecclesiastes and putting Candide intopractice: Qui auget scientiam auget dolorein (He who increases knowledge in-creases sorrow). Ill go back to my garden. He proclaims categorically when thedate-seller comes back, The truth is, I know nothing.Are you satisfied?

Faced with this caricature, the scepticism of the writer, whether feigned or dis-illusioned, acting as a perfunctory anti-intellectualism, sets up a barrier behindwhich he can take refuge and disrobe with an appearance either of modesty or ofhaving been wounded. What can be concluded from this? Is there, will there everbe, a Tamil dalit literature?A comparison with other dalit literatures is unavoidable but the numerous worksabout these make for brevity. It was Marathi literature which first drew attention

to the term dalit and to the literary genres which, towards the end of the 1960s,were expressing its essence, with Eleanor Zelliot, Gail Omvedt and otherAmeri-cans calling themselves ConcernedAsian Scholars. If the first dalit literary con-ference, which passed almost unnoticed, took place only in 1958, the movementdid not lack antecedents to vindicate it, from the Buddha himself and, more mod-

estly, the medieval devotee mahar Chokhamela, to more modern exponents ofsocial reform such as Jotirao Phule (1829-90) and to those authors, often linkedto the peasant literary renaissance, who drew their inspiration and language

5Bibliographical details in Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on theAmbedkar

Movement, Delhi, 1992; Gail Omvedt, Dulits and the Democratic Revolution: DrAmbedkar andthe Dalit Movement in Colonial India, New Delhi, 1994; also, two anthologies, Mulk RajAnandand Eleanor Zelliot,AnAnthology of Dalit Literature, New Delhi, 1992, andArjun Dangle, ed.,Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature, Madras, 1992.



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from the land, such as S.M. Mate (1886-1957). The Maharashtrians also had beforethem the prestigious example of one of their own people, B.R.Ambedkar, who

helped to engender an untouchable consciousness in response to the Gandhiancampaign of 1933-34 in favour of Harijan, and who attempted to popularise alarge-scale political ideology through the Republican Party whose fragmented

pan-Indian vision never managed to evolve into a genuinely unifying reality (vari-ous factions may gather for the sake of elections only to split up again immediatelyafterwards) butwhich, with great difficulty, made some inroads into Maharashtrain 1966.

It is therefore not surprising that the brilliant young generation of Marathi dalitsin the 1960s took theAmerican Blacks as their model, gave a literary turn to their

commitment and founded the Dalit Panthers in Bombay in 1972. Their pro-vocative language often lacked grace, but never intensity.6 Gujarati literature fol-lowed suit with some difficult debuts before beginning the exploration ofa patternwhich was often to be copied: a rearrangement ofpoetic forms linked to song andfolklore and a foray into subaltern mythology, chosen as an alternative to theweight ofclassical Hinduism. Several English translations from Marathi appearedin Tamil Nadu well before the Tamil translations based on them. Like some other

texts also translated from Marathi but into French (by Guy Poitevin) they weretestimonies rather than works of imagination, chronicles rather than artisticallyconceived texts, lived experience rather than poetic experimentation, and a supply-ing ofmaterial for the study ofanthropology rather than a renewal of the literature.

A politically aware public drawn from universities in India and abroad kept themovement at arms length though without hesitating to overvalue it; its linguisticimpact is incontestable but current trends in academic studies of dialects do notseem to have taken this into account. Beautiful poems and some blasphemousoutbursts appeared in Marathi although the prose cannot be compared with thatof certain Bengali texts, such as those by Mahasweta Devi

6 The language of these writers is one of lament, doubt and scorching rage.And the body of the

work is of immense value since it is onlynow

that the Dalitshave

begunto

express,thanks to

individual talent and education, for the first time in history what none but they could have everknown. To that extent, this literature takes its pride ofplace on the literary scene. Latika Padgaonkar,Profiles in Shadow, The Book Review, No. 18, 10 October 1994, p. 35.7 For easy reference, see Gujarati Dalit Literature, Indian Literature, No. 159, January-February1994, and Punjabi Dalit Literature, Indian Literature, No. 185, May-June 1998.8 FromArjun Dangle, Dalit ilakkiyam: Pkkum varal&amacr;rum, trans. Ti. Cu. Satasivam, Madras, 1992,to Pinuttai eritt&emacr; veliccam, an anthology of Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil writings chosen and trans-lated by Indiran, Madras, 1995, a brilliant all-rounder and officer of the Indian Bank, quick toreclaim his dalit identity when that became fashionable. SahityaAkademi published two Englishtranslations of Marathi dalit autobiographies: Laxman Mane, Upara: Outsider, trans.A. K. Kamat,New Delhi, 1997 and Laxman Gaikwad, Uchalya: The Branded, trans. P.A. Kolharkar, New Delhi,1998.9 In English see Kalpana Bardhan. Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants and Rebels, Berkeley, 1990.Since she received the JnanpithAward in 1996, at the end of 2000, 11 books by Mahasweta Devihave been available in English.



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In Dravidian languages, writers in Kannada seem to be the most prolific, withDevenuru Mahadeva, Govindayya, Chandrashekhara Patila, Baraguru Rama-

candrappa, SaraAbubakkara and, above all, Siddhalingayya, who appears tokeep a distance and to denounce certain ambiguities.&dquo; More balanced of late,Siddhalingayya has discovered that being a revolutionary involves more thanwishful thinking and that works by writers in revolt fall flat,

beinglimited by a

language of class struggle, which is international, homogeneous and entirely anti-septic, and by a narrow imagery. This is the international poetics of poverty andof the proletariat, additionally boxed in by a mainstream that has come to becapable of absorbing various degrees of rage. The political statement of the dalitsmay be represented today, at least in north India, by the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) of Kanshi Ram, but where is its cultural statement? If the dalits lack the

capacity and the necessity to create their own myths there is nothing to distinguishMarxist poetry from dalit poetry. For this creation to take place, two pitfalls haveto be avoided: that of becoming closed up in the aesthetic structures of folklorealone and the complete adherence to stereotypes of dalit imagination, both ofwhich are equally ineffective in terms of political realism.&dquo; The aura of myth,resorted to for the sake of its prestige, is thus a common leitmotif in dalit literature.

In Telugu also,an

ideal prescriptionfor a

perfect dalit, written bya

militant intel-lectual of the movement, Katti Padma Rao,~ draws its inspiration from the bloodof the victims of Karamchedu,14 certainly, but also from the Indian materialist-

philosophical tradition of Charvaka, perceived as egalitarian, as well as from popu-lar art and culture, from songs of fishermen, shepherds, launderers and barbers,and from burrakatho, jakkcslakatha, jcamulakatha theatre, but apparently, neverfrom any particular genre of modem literature. This is all the more surprising inthat this literature demonstrates a high level of social and political consciousness

10 Her novel Cantirakiri &Amacr;rrankaraiyil, Tamil trans. Ti. Cu. Satasivam, Madras, 1994, with anintroduction by Toppil Muhamed Miran, the most representative Tamil Muslim writer thoughnot one who was involved in the Dalit Movement. Since 1996 more translations of Kannada dalit

literature have appeared in Tamil: Putaintak&amacr;rru, Coimbatore, 1996; Siddalingayya, rum C&emacr;riyum,Coimbatore, 1996;Arvinta

Malakathy,Government Pir&amacr;manan, Coimbatore, 1998; Devanuru

Mahadeva, Pacittavarkal, New Delhi, 1999.All the texts have been translated by Pavannan.11One should not reduce the word dalit to signify only a caste. "Dalit" should symbolise sufferingand pain rather than becoming a symbol of exploitation. It should bloom as a symbol which functions

against exploitation, cruelty and atrocities. The meaning emphasized by the word dalit ought to beinsult, shame, insecurity, rebellion. There are some progressive literary intellectuals and elitists

among dalits. They must use the word without any real dalit consciousness; neither do they have

any dream for or about dalits. The real dalit issues and problems are quite removed from them.Nirappirikai, No. 2, October 1994. pp. 30-31.12 See D. R. Nagaraj, From Political Rage to CulturalAffirmation: Notes on the Kannada DalitPoet-Activist Siddhalingaiah, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 16--26 andidem, The Flaming Feet:A Study of the Dalit Movement, Bangalore, 1993.13 Katti Padma Rao, Caste andAlternative Culture, trans. D.Anjaneyalu, Madras, 1995.14A village in the south coastal district of Andhra Pradesh where, on 17 July 1985, six dalit Christianswere killed by members of the upper caste Kamma community. This incident provided a rallyingpoint for the dalit movement inAndhra Pradesh.



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and the political life ofTamil Nadu. 11Appearing towards theend of the nineteenth

century, the movement first reflected the progressive values of Congress policiesand had, at the same time, a strong regional background: Periyar, a Congress dis-sident, was the hero of the Self-Respect Movement. During the 1930s, however,it was less Gandhian values that counted and more the ancient southern gapbetween the Brahmins and the non-Brahmin high castes,&dquo; that is, Sudras, as distinctfrom Harijans. Local and peripheral, the Dravidian movement of protest andopposition, of alternative and counter-culture, hostile to the centre, to Sanskritand to Brahmins certainly has qualities that give it a resemblance to the Dalitmovement, but only by analogy. This is confirmed by two tracts very recentlyrediscovered by Tamilnadan who projects them as forerunners of Tamil dalitliterature. The first, Shanmugam Pillais Pppttikkum Par.aicdkkum natantaalankdraccantai (6The Ornamented Fight between a Brahmin woman and aParaiyar Woman )18 is in the form of an ornate dialogue, between a Brahminwoman and a paraiyar woman in which the latter exposes the hypocrisy of theformers values and attitude, in the same mode as that of Aritasars well-known

Irucamaya vilakkam between two women as to the relative merits of Shaivismand Vaishnavism. The second tract (Wn61a vicittira parci t((i, t6tticci paraiyan

pclttu (The Paraiyan Songof Totti and Totticci in the

Strangeand Wonderful

Parsi Style)19 is a song in which a paraiyar remonstrates with the upper castesabout their ignoring of his noble origins in their mistreatment of him. Withouthaving any significant direct impact upon serious literature, the Dravidian move-ment was nevertheless to exercise considerable influence upon the language byoffering a neutral, standard and syncretic idiom as an alternative to the Brahman

16 Classical: Eugene Irschick, Political and Social Conflict in South India, Berkeley, 1969; andidem, Tamil Revivalism in the 1930s, Madras, 1986.Accessible:Anita Diehl, Periyar E. V. Rama-swami, Bombay, 1977. Close to texts: S. Saraswati, Towards Self-Respect: Periyar EVR on a NewWorld, Madras, 1994. See also a review of S. Theodore Baskaran, The Message Bearers, Madras,1981 by Franois Gros, Bulletin de lcole Franais DExtrme-Orient (hereafter BEFEO), No.

70, 1981, pp. 291-303. In Tamil see S. V. Rajadurai and V. Geetha, Periyar: Cuya mariy&amacr;taicamatarmam (Periyar: Self-respect and Equal Justice), Coimbatore, 1996; and idem, Periyar:

August 15, Coimbatore, 1998. For a good, short summary of Rajadurais thesis in English, see V.Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai, Neo-Brahmanism:An International Fallacy?, Economic and Political

Weekly (hereafter EPW), Vol. XXIII, No. 3-4, 1993, January 16-23, pp. 129-36; and for an elabor-ation of the same see idem, Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Dass to Periyar,Calcutta, 1998.

17Essentially the caiva v&emacr;l&amacr;lar which may be translated roughly as small landowners (pillai), andsecondly mutaliy&amacr;r, of the regions of Tondaimandalam, Thanjavur, Tirucci and Tirunelveli, attachedequally to Tamil and to vegetarian diet (caivam). For an apologia of their role, and implicit responseto the works of Irschick, seeA. R. Venkatachalapathy, Tir&amacr;vita iyakkamum v&emacr;l&amacr;larum, cuyamariy&amacr;taiiyakkakkattam 1927-1944 (Dravidian Movement and the Velalar during the Self-respect Movement,1927-1944), Madras. 1994, and a review by T. Paramasivan in K&amacr;laccuvatu, No. 12, 1995, pp.51-52.18 Cf., Tamilnadan, Kavikk&omacr;, Chennai, 1999: Shanmugam Pillai, P&amacr;pp&amacr;ttikkumParaccikum natanta

alank&amacr;raccantai, Thanjavur, 1929.19 Vin&omacr;ta vicittira parci t&omacr;tti, t&omacr;tticciparaiyan p&amacr;ttu, Thanjavur, 1929.



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dialect, not identifiable with any caste, and tending to reduce the percentage ofSanskrit vocabulary from approximately 60-70 per cent to 20-30 per cent without,however, sharing the exclusiveness of the Pure Tamil movement. It rather pro-vides, through cinema and political propaganda, a fluid language, capable ofemotion and, indeed, of sentimentality, a dramatic spoken language, forged for

andby dialogue (films, novels, theatre) and debate. Even though satirised latterly,this language, an instrument in the conquest of power, the language ofthe writer-politiciansAnnadurai and Karunanidhi, will not fade out any more than will myth-ical references to the past and to its literature. It is forceful enough to affect the

imagination but insufficiently profound to have lasting significance.The coming to power of the Dravidian movement and the uncontrollable caste-

ism of the upwardly mobile backward castes, who benefit from quota and resei-vation policies prejudicial to the interests of the dalits, can only induce the latterto seek an identity independent of the Dravidian establishment, if not actuallyorganised against it.The recent and very powerful Hindu revival, which confirmed its triumph with

the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1999, is substituting for the historicalmyth of the antique Dravidian culture faced by anAryan invasion, a new myth of

Hindutva, a unique entity which regroups several millennia within a single com-munity oflanguage and culture including all Hindus from Brahmins to Dravidians,leaving out only the tribals and dalits who have never been integrated, and the

dissidents who are converts to Islam or Christianity.As in the case of the earlier

myth, the Hindutva one is based on unproven archaeological and linguistic argu-mentation- the Sarasvati river archaeology, and Sanskrit-oriented reading ofIndus seals.2 The myth will, nevertheless, function as long as Sanskritisationcontinues to be identified with the social promotion oflower castes. It provides aperfect ideological cover for the unificatory obsession of the majority because itleaves the minorities with no alternative to integration into Hinduism other thanthe violence, which it is the duty of the political majority to prevent.

Slogans have more impact than poems, yet the emergence of a dalit Tamilliterature is perceptible. It is a literature with an unfurnished memory; it is subaltemand it lacks the prophetic charisma of established cultures. It employs a morecolloquial and popular language, which it uses even in narrative prose. Mattersare further complicated by the fragility that fringe groups are prey to, the ephemeralnature ofreviews and magazines, the uncertain agendas of ideologues, the exces-sive place given to poorly assimilated foreign references and, lastly, the far fromnegligible creative impact of the Tamil writers of Sri Lanka, traumatised by theirinternal conflicts and forced emigration. 21

20 See Michael Witzel and Steve Farmer, Horseplay in Harappa, Frontline, 13 October 2000, pp.4-14.

21 Little is said about the importance of the caste of the Tamil militant nationalists of Sri Lanka,perhaps because the Tigers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the dominantmovement, bastion of v&emacr;l&amacr;la (the majority population in Jaffna since the era ofArumuka Navalar,

before 1900),and of

karaiy&amacr;lar (casteof the famous

leader Prabhakaran)have

practically eliminated



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In Quest ofAncestors:Ayotti Das Kaviraja Pantitar,A Neo-Buddhism beforeAmbedkar

The dalit is without influence and is defined by his nakedness, standing as hedoes as the last and interchangeable link in the chain of social organisation. The

dalit has insufficient cultural weight to interact with the Indian cultural renaissanceof the twentieth century which is Hindu in essence and functions by negating,silencing or assimilating any attempt at alternatives or dissidence. The dalits havethus been tempted to create ancestors for themselves as well as an ideologicalpast. In Tamil Nadu the contribution of the paiicamar (the fifth caste, the out-castes, strangers to the four uarna}, through the construction of a militant non-Brahmanism within the reformist nationalism of the final decades ofthe nineteenth

century, is today revivified by dalit ideology as the foremost expression of theirconsciousness ofcaste.Although now forgotten, tlie path and the theses of AyottiDas Kaviraja Pantitar (hereafterADKP) have had a distinct impact.&dquo;

all other caste divisions in their ranks. For more details see Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, TheTamil TigersArmed Struggle for Identity, London, 1993. Caste feeling remains strong, however, tosuch a point that Sri Lankan emigrants regroup according to that criterion. There are, increasingly,incidents between the LTTE on the one hand, and the Muslims and the Tamils of the interior (calledt&omacr;ttatamilar) who are always inclined to try and gain recognition of their rights by means otherthan armed rebellion. These last were represented in the present coalition government by the ministerThondaman (d. 1999). Further, the approach to the problem is changing:

(i) Dalit awareness inspires an intense effort amongst Sri Lankan Tamils to chronicle the move-ment against untouchability with a more critical evaluation of popular Tamil leaders; see thearticles by Paranthaman, Sarinihar, No. 168, March 1999, No. 169;April 1999, No. 170;May 1999, and Tamilarasan, Exil, No. 5, January-February 1999, and No.6, March-April1999. Further, now the Tigers are forced to recruit from the dalit castes still remaining in SriLanka; this change in the composition of forces fighting for Eelam is reflected in their ideo-logical views. Lastly, abroad it is Hindu culture and the caste system which prevails in thename of Tamil culture, thus maintaining the traditional religious dominance of Jaffna (BrianPfaffenberger, Caste in Tamil Culture: The Religious Foundations of Sudra Domination in

Tamil Sri Lanka, New York, 1982) against which dalit awareness and protest may even belabelled a betrayal of the Tamil cause.

(ii) The present situation of Tamil Muslims, when they are forced by the LTTE to evacuate theirhome areas, puts them in a quandary between continuing to play an undefined role in thestruggle for Eelam and moving towards a separate territory for themselves. This furthertaints the image of the Tamil independence movement as being responsible for a persecu-tion of a minority within a minority. See Muhammed Salim, OruCirup&amacr;nmai cam&umacr;kattinpiraccinaikal (Problems of a Minority Community), 4 vols, Colombo, 1997-98.

(iii) The aruntatiyar, the lowest among the untouchables who migrated in the recent past, facethe problem of their caste not yet being registered in Sri Lanka. Discussions are currentlygoing on about their position vis--vis the Tamil independence movement. See the fortnightlycolumns byAruntatiyan, Talittiyakkurippukal in Sarinihar, 1998; andA. Marx, interviewwithAruntatiyan,Elucci talit muracu, September 1999.

22 V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai, Dalits and Non-Brahmin Consciousness in Colonial Tamil Nadu,EPW, Vol.

28,No.

39,25

September1993,

pp.2091-98. We thank S. V.

Rajaduraifor

lendingus all



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ADKP, a paiicamar, was born in 1845 in a village in Coimbatore district and

spent his youth in the Nilgiris. Nothing is known of his formative years, althoughthere must have been some contact with British residents and it is known that he

came under the influence of a guru whose name he adopted as his own pseudonym,the only name by which he is known.ADKP had a glimmering of Indian andwestern philosophies in Sanskrit, Pali and English. Midway between being a panditand an autodidact, he quotes indifferently from classical Tamil texts in the best

editions, in those days quite new, and from compilations that are apocryphal andvery little criticised. He was married and his son, Pattabiraman, followed in his

footsteps. His brother-in-law Rettamalai Srinivasan, was a well-known figure in

politics and participated in the famous Round Table Conference in London in1930. He may have known and even influencedAmbedkar.ADKP, adhering to

Advaita Vedanta, founded anAdvaitananda Sabha in the Nilgiris in 1870 with theaim of thwarting the noisy proselytising of Christian missionaries; then, in 1881,he founded the Dravida Mahajana Sangam whose first conference on December1881 proclaimed a positive charter along the lines ofthe Self-Respect Movement,in favour of the rights and social status of the paraiyan- to be called thereafter

Pfirva Tamilar (the ancient Tamils). Its conclusions, addressed to Congress andMuslim leaders, produced no echo in spite of the creation, in 1886, of a journal,Tiriivitap pantiyan.ADKP was closely involved with the Theosophical Society and, along with

Annie Besant and Colonel Olcott, founded a school for paficamar in Madras; he

accompanied Olcott to Ceylon in 1898, discovered Buddhism and in 1902 afterhis return to Madras, founded the Chakya Buddhist Sangam in Royappettah, anactive instrument of propaganda. The National Congress of Surat, in 1906, put anend to his remaining illusions about mainstream politics; in 1907 he started aweekly magazine, Oru Paica Tamilan, One 1aisa Tamilan, later Tamilan (at thedemand of its readers).After his death in 1914. his son managed the magazine fora year, after which it was started again by G.Appaduraier at Kolar Gold Fields,at least between December 1926 and June 1934.A trust, Sri Siddharta Puttakacalai,continued to publish as low-priced booklets his texts, and texts of the Self-RespectMovement right up to the end of the 1950s. The influence ofADKP is even moremarked in a brochure by Maduraiyar which reaffirms the connection between thebattle for self-respectand a Buddhist past.21 In other cases, such as M. Macilamani

Mutaliyars Varuna pata vilakkam (Explication of the Differences betweenCastes),24 the original reference to Buddhism vanished and was replaced by the

~-~--

.

the primary source material of his own study, which was otherwise inaccessible to us. V. Revathyalso kindly allowed us to consult her M.Phil dissertation, The Emergence of Dalits in Tamil Nadu:

A Study of Leadership and Ideology, Department of History, Pondicherry University, 1994,published (in Tamil) as Tamilakattin talit araciyalmunnotikal, Pondicherry, 1997.23Aka-Pura camayankal (Interior-Exterior Religions), Kolar Gold Fields (hereafter KGF), 1935.24 This is a text from the late nineteenth century, but was first published in Tamil in 1925 by KGF.



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conflict between Shudra and Brahmin. The references to E.V. Ramasami Periyarand to the Self-Respect Movement are obligatory.

In order to appropriate Indian history,ADKP begins with a radical and sub-versive deconstruction of Hinduism: for the paraiyar no compromise is possible,neither historically, with the Brahmins, nor politically, with the reformist nation-

alism of the Congress, and not with the Muslims either. Moreover, neither Islamnor Christianity can profit from this alienation. The hypothesis of secularism inthe western sense is not even envisaged. Buddhism remains the only form of pro-test and dissidence that allows the paraiyan both to affirm and to light up hissubjectivity.All that remains is to accumulate arguments for the pa_raiyar beingthe first dwellers on Indian soil and for Buddhism as their natural ideology: Indiais the land of Buddha, whose names it bears - Indirar, he who has mastered thefive senses (iraliriyam) and Varada, from which are drawn India and Bharat.The Brahmins of today are nothing but false Brahmins, arya mleccha, barbarianinvaders, appearing late on the scene and substituting themselves for the genuineones whom they then reduced to the condition of paraiyan; these perfidious im-

posters are all in disguise. It was the naivety of the Orientalists themselves, startingwith Max Muller, that caused them to accept the texts and myths as given, therebyconfirming the occlusion of the authentic Hindu religion. Such, in substance, isthe content of Intirar 18ca carittiram (The History of Indirar Desam),25 and ofYatrttapirmafla vitantavivaram (The History of the Real Brahmin),6 and ofVsapirmafla vtantavivaram (History of the False Brahmin ),:0 presented inthe form ofbrief question-and-answer catechisms,28 and ofan indigestible scientificcompilation, Purvattamilo!iym puttaratu ativctam (The Original Veda of theBuddha, Light ofAncient Tamil), first published during his lifetime as tracts insupplements to his journal.&dquo; The other half of what we have been able to consultof the works ofADKP reinterpret or reclaim on behalf of his primitive Buddhisma certain number of the glories of Tamil, tacitly annexed by Brahmanism. Hestarts with Tiruvalluvar, the author of Tirukkur.a!, ,0 and continues wth the Tirukkuralkatavul vlttu;31 (read tiri [three] kural in conformity with the tri-pitaka); he adds

the popular poetessAuvaiyar,whose

poemsbear

witnessin favour ofthe

Buddha,texts with gloss byADPK32 and then goes on to tackle Sh~va-Kapalishvara in thesanctuary of the temple at Mylapore, who is interpreted as being the Buddha with

25 Intirar t&emacr;ca caritt&imacr;ram, 2nd edn. KGF, 1957.26

Yat&amacr;rttapir&amacr;mana v&emacr;tantavivaram, 2nd edn, KGF, 1932.27

V&emacr;sapir&amacr;mana v&emacr;tantavivaram, 2nd edn, KGF, 1932.28 Puttam&amacr;rkkavin&amacr;vitai (Questions andAnswers on Buddhism) 5th edn, KGF, 1955; Viv&amacr;ka vilakkam(Explanation of Marriage), 4th edn, KGF, 1926.29 P&umacr;rvattamiloliy&amacr;m puttaratu &amacr;tiv&emacr;tam (The Original Veda of the Buddha, Light of Ancient Tamil),Madras, 1922.

30Tiruvalluvar varal&amacr;ru (History of Tiruvalluvar), 4th edn, KGF, 1950.

31Tirikkural katavul vlttu (Tirukkural, Invocation to God), 3rd edn, KGF, 1950.

32Sr&imacr;Ampikaiyamman aruliya tiriv&amacr;cakam (Tirivacakam given by SriAmpikaiamman), 1st edn,KGF. 1927, completed inSr&imacr;Ampikaiyamman varal&amacr;ru (History of SriAmpikaiamman), 4th edn,

KGF, 1929.



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32

his begging bowl;33 next, the sacred ash,34 as well as the symbols of worship andthe figures popular in Tamil devotion and imagination, such as the guardian ofthe cremation grounds, the King Harishchandra and the god Murukan whom heturns into a monk.35An evaluation ofADPKis difficult.Aside from

his magazine, nothingof his

that was published during his lifetime was available from the time of his deathuntil the 1990s; yet the posthumous and continuing success ofhis works is remark-able. Numerous booklets were reprinted, often in as many as five editions, upuntil the 1960s. From 1993, his works have been exhumed and interest is againfocused on him from two complementary points of view: as the conscience of theTamil dalit and as a precursor of the neo-Buddhism of Ambedkar. In 1999, twocollections of his works have been published, one by the Dalit SahityaAkademi,Madras, and another by the folklore unit of St Xaviers College, Tirunelveli underthe titlesAyotti teap papjitar ciratc~n_aikcal andAytti tacar cintanaikaJ respectively,two volumes each so far. His struggle remained ineffective, however, since henever really abandoned the ideological sphere for that ofpolitics, notwithstandinghis contacts with that world and especially with two politicians, - R. Srinivasan

(1860-1945) and M.C. Rajah (1883-1947)-

both members of the Madras Legis-lative Council whose roles in the promotion of the untouchables are known

throughout India.A general study by G.Alyslus36 throws some light on the history of this TamilBuddhist movement between Madras and Kolar Gold Fields, and traces the linkwith Ambedkar through a book by P. Lakshmi l~arasu, The Essence of Buddhism,for the third edition of whichAmbedkarwrote the Preface.37Aloysius consistentlyomits the name of R. Srinivasan, though he quotes from his short autobiography38probably because of Srinivasans well-argued opposition to conversion to Buddh-ism initiated by Olcott andADKP and proposed, later, byAmbedkar.Althoughwell documented,Aloysius book loses itself in verbose ideology of programmaticpartnership between Tamil Buddhism and the Dravidian movement. The authorlacks the distance which alone could provide a pan-Indian perspective, as foundin an early article byAdele Fiske .39 That perspective is the only one by whichmay be measured the incompatibilities between traditional, renunciatory Buddhistorganisations with roles for the clergy, Indian and otherwise, and the republicantrend. Much as these two groups may work together in, for instance, certain social

33Kap&amacr;l&imacr;can carttira &amacr;r&amacr;ycci (The Enquiry of the Skull-Bearers Story), 3rd edn, KGF, 1932.14Vip&umacr;ti &amacr;r&amacr;ycci (The Enquiry of the HolyAsh), 3rd edn, KGF, 1932.35Ariccantiranpoykal (Harishchandra Lies), 5th edn, KGF, 1950; Sr&imacr; Murukakkatavul varal&amacr;ru(The Birth of Monk Murugan), 3rd edn, KGF, 1930.36 G.Aloysius, Religion as Emancipatory Identity:A Buddhist MovementAmong the Tamils underColonialism, New Delhi, 1998.37 Madras,1907;Ambedkar wrote a preface for the third edn, Bombay, 1948.38One of its undeniable practical points is the exhortation of the untouchables to stick to theirvalues in order to keep intact the privileges given by the colonial government.39A.

Fiske, ScheduledCaste Buddhist

Organisations in J.Michael

Mahar, ed.,The Untouchables

in Contemporary India, New Delhi, 1998.



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33

welfare programmes, the republican viewpoint continues to see Buddhism as anideology, whether politically oriented or not, which may be effectively opposedto Hinduism, in the form into which the latter has been welded by the uppercastes in their own interests. Moreover, in todays Tamil Nadu ADI~Ps vision hasbecome inadequate; the dalit Christians are no longer a model nor an object ofenvy to others, and Buddhism is excluded since it too has become a stigma, not

forgetting that Sri Lankan Buddhism has its own caste system. The most recenttemptation has been Islam and conversions of dalit villages have been frequent,from Meenakshipuram in 1981 to Kootharampakkam, 90 kilometers from Chennai,very recently. In the light of the incidents in Coimbatore in 1998, fresh suspicionis cast on any such conversions while it is debatable whether the Muslims are

really eager to join forces with the dalits.Dalits today, however, still manifest a disrespect for, and questioning of, the

Hindu gods that was a hallmark ofADKP.40 We note the most sensational formsof this in the ostentatious blasphemies of Periyar, who belongs to the same intel-lectual family as those who editedADKP after his death, and in the more subtleform of the discreet negativism touched with the humour of Putumaippittan, thegrand master of modern Tamil in whom there is a resurgence of interest lately. Tocredit the Kannada author Siddhalingayya with having introduced dialogues ofdown-to-earth and rational intimacy with the supernatural world of gods andgod-desses, in hisAvataragalu in 198 1, is to forget that at the meeting in Madras 40years earlier, between God and Kandasami Pillai over two cups of coffee, in thecelebrated short story by Putumaippittan, the Creator was accused of total inabilityto adapt himself to the world in which his host was struggling.Already, gods andgoddesses were having to fight for survival. The political tone is certainly differentbut in the long term the like-minded draw together, and it may be that some typeof secular humanism will attract sympathy, especially outside India, from thosewho support the fight against intolerance, but probably still without producing aworkable solution for the dalits.

A 1)etonator with a Long Fuse: The Massacre of I~ilvenrnani, 1968

In 1933 Henri Michaux believed that the caste system would not survive Indian

Independence; yet, 20 years on from 1947, in the east of Thanjavur (today NagaiDistrict), the revolt of the 90 per cent dalit farm workers against their mirasdartook a violent turn at the approach of the monsoon: with strikes, reprisals with thecomplicity of the police, and three murders of communist cadres CPI (M), theNaxalite menace was seen descending from Bengal and Telengana onto the fertiledelta of Thanjavur. On the night of25 December 1968, a punitive expedition was

40 See the theoretical works of Raj Gautaman, or his humourous piece ... p&amacr;v&amacr;tai avat&amacr;ram (Incar-nation as Pavatai),Tinamani cutar, Special Issue on Dalit Literature, 31 December 1994, an amusingand original caricature of a popular heroic ballad but also an example of the artificial creation in-spired by subaltern ideology.



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34

sent out by a big landowner, the president of the association of rice farmer of thedistrict, Gopala Krishna Naidu, against Kilvenmani, a village ofpallar and paraiycardalits. The men fled; 16 women, five old people and 23 children, terrified, shutthemselves in a hut. They were surrounded and burned alive, all 44 of them.

Twenty-three people were charged. In 1976 the Supreme Court of India upheld

eight convictions; onlyfour were

eventuallyeffective.

GopalaKrishna Naidu

was assassinated in December 1980. The progressive Dravidian governmentand the press maintained discretion. The searching enquiry by theAmerican anthro-pologist Kathleen Gough was published in India 20 years later. 41 Incidents of thisnature still happen; skirmishes on a lesser scale are frequent enough to hold theattention of the more sober sections of the press.42 The extent of the deliberatemassacre of Kilvenmani is an example the memory of which is still in evidence:a memorial on the site; a theme for reflection and motivation for leftist militants3

and, lastly, a literary theme whose treatment is of direct interest because of the

perspective it provides on the preoccupations of Tamil writers at the time whenthe Dalit Panthers ofMaharashtra were springing up and making their literaturehappen.What is most striking is the absence of immediate reaction to the massacre at

the very moment when all extreme forms ofNlarxist-Leninist-li~aoists were vyingwith each other vociferously in intellectual circles, and when the image of theangry young man, personified by the Hindi film actorAmitabh Bachchan was

bursting onto the Hindi cinema screen. Numerous communist poets versified onthe class struggle; others, more refined, disputed over poetry (cf. the eight numbersofthe literary journal Nafai). It was left to a Brahmin, Gnanakkuttan (bom 1938),living in Madras, deeply rooted in his Vaishnavite cultural tradition as well as inthe metre_offormal poetry, yet disturbed by innovation and critical to the point ofsarcasm of the heavy sentimentality of progressive Dravidian politics, to write ashort poem in 1969,&dquo; in 13 edgy lines which build towards a calculated effect in

41 Kathleen Gough, Rural Change in South-East India: 1950s to 1980s, New Delhi, 1989, pp.

186-89, 446-62;and idem, Rural

Societyin Southeast

Asia,New Delhi, 1981.

42Sandhya Rao, S. Viswanathan, T. S. Subramanian, Dalits and the Politics of Caste, 2 parts.

Frontline, 1 December 1995, pp. 106-11, and 15 December 1995, pp. 75-80, a detailed enquirywhich concludes that ... it would take more than a stringent law such as the Protection of Civil

RightsAct to alter attitudes nurtured over centuries ... casteism and prejudice against Dalits werenot just alive but practically rule everyday life. The memory of Kilvenmani is evoked by one ofthe interviewees, the local secretary of the CPI(M). It was reawakened by the massacre of dalits bythe police on the banks of the river Tamraparani in Tirunelveli in July 1999, and which was equatedby the public and the press with the infamous massacre at Jallianwala Bagh; cf., S. Viswanathan,Police in the Dock, Frontline, 24 September 1999. Kilvenmani is again used as a plot in the docu-mentary novel by Solai Suntara Perumal, Cennel (Red Paddy), Tiruvarur, 1999, written in theThanjavur (Tamil) dialect and from the classic Marxist perspective of class struggle rather thanfrom a dalit point view.43 W. R. Varadharajan, Venmani, Madras, 1978, 3rd edn, Madras, 1989.44

Reprinted inAnru v&emacr;ruKilamai (That wasAnother Day), Sivagangai, 1976, and in M&imacr;ntumavarkal (ThemAgain), Madras, 1994, p. 6.



16/46

35

the last one. It airily skims over an anonymous area without apparent emotionand with a feigned detachment; only the title gives the key to understand, and animpetus to become indignant, to whomsoever might take the trouble. Is this thensimply a mechanical and dispassionate stylistic exercise?

Kilvenmani

Huts of plaited palm leaves,Which seemed to be the pregnant womb

Of the supine earth,Were turned into a forest of ashes.

When the dawn came in smoke,The people of the village came and gathered,They said: these were sparrows. -

They said: these were children.

They said: were these women?And these were the cows of the herd.

Of all that burned that nightThey found the remains,Except of one thing: civilisation.

(our translation)

Nobody any longer feels like being grateful to a Brahmin for having looked beyondhis agraharam or the office where he works in Madras. Even the choice of theTamil term nkarikam (civilisation), which expresses not so much fundamental

humanity as cultural refinement, was seen here as a contrived understatement

inappropriate to the situation. Nowadays, people are less aware of the mastery ofthe author than they are of his apparent coldness.A rather constrained poet,Gnanakkuttan did not have the necessary gift of communication.Where was the event to find its Zola? In 1975, while the guilty verdict quashed

by the Madras High Court was in abeyance in the Supreme Court, there appeareda novel, Kurutippunal (Streams of Blood), by Indra Parthasarathy, the pen nameof Ranganathan Parthasarathi, again a Brahmin, who had been writing for 15

yearsand was a lecturer in Tamil at the

Universityof Delhi. He was known in

progressive literary circles for short stories andnovels severe towards the hypocrisyof the bourgeoisie, Tamil and otherwise, who reigned in Delhi, and also for hismastery of the art of tracing, through tortuous and introspective dialogues, theintimate innermost secrets of his protagonists. In 1977, one year after the SupremeCourt decision, the novel was honoured by the Sahitya Akademi.A seventh editioncame out in 1992. Kilvenmani is not named, but the story is the same:

Gopal, born in Delhi of an inter-caste marriage, his father a Naidu and his mother a Brahmin,teaches sociology in Delhi. Frustrated hy the atmosphere in the capital, he goes back to his an-cestral village near Thanjavur.A friend, Shiva, a man of science, comes to spend his leave withhim. The two intellectuals-in-exile lodge with a communist school-teacher Ramaiyya and havetheir meals in the eating house of Vativelu. Vativelu is the illegitimate child of a concubine ofthe father of Kannaiya Naidu, the big landowner who wants to knock down the eating house, a



17/46

36

haunt of communists ofbad reputation. The confrontation between the feudal oppression of theNaidu and the Harijans who are fighting for their dues forms the core of the conversationsbetween the two men. They involve themselves in the struggle to the extent of talking to the

appropriate officials and to a minister; they are shocked by the apathy of these people. Gopalattempts to intervene with the Naidu on behalf of Vativelu, but the interview turns into an

exchange of insults on their respective births. Gopal is found beaten unconscious behind thehut of a pallcar prostitute called Pappatti; it is a

frame-up,guaranteed to lose him his reputation.

He complains in vain to the police. The eating house is demolished and Vativelu and Pappattidisappear. Further complaints are ineffective; even the minister, titillated by the story of Pappatti,will do nothing. The Naidu makes an accusation: a communist plot, masterminded from outside,has incited these day labourer riff-raff against him, a good citizen. It emerges, however, that theNaidu is an impotent voyeur who is forcing Vativelu and Pappatti to couple while he watches.In the action mounted to free them, a guard is killed and the police arrest the schoolteacher. Hisfriends try to take charge of the agricultural workers cause but Naidu breaks the strike. lets

Pappatti be savagely killed by his henchmen and accuses Gopal of the murder (a recurringtheme in morality scandals: men of higher castes are always supposed to be fascinated by womenof lower castes). Shiva is arrested as an accomplice when Gopal and Vativelu flee to Nagappat-tinam. They return too late to circumvent the plans of the Naidu who has already attacked the

village. But they are in time to see his men throwing back into the filames the women and chil-dren who have taken refuge in a hut then set on fire by the Naidus men under the indifferent

eyes of the police. Gopal, laughed at triumphantly and contemptuously by the Naidu, vomitsinto the canal whose clear waters enchanted him when he had arrived and in which, today, hesees a stream of blood reflected, wide enough to swallow the whole village....

The massacre occupies one page out of 231: the streams of blood, designated inmore popular terms by iratta vejJam (flood of blood perhaps not literary enoughto serve as a title but certainly direct) which swallow up the village are themselvesdrowned in the waves of intellectual rhetoric on the subject of class struggle andthe role of the Communist Party. The actual protagonists are host the bonded agri-cultural workers wanting to break their chains but, first, the boss who oppressesthem to compensate (on a Freudian model, quite derisory and devoid of socialdimension) for his physiological impotence, and then the idealists who attempt toorganise the workers and in so doing discover them, as they discover theaesthetic charms ofthe village after the sophistication ofDelhi (without, however,

sharing their language, their labours or their limitations). Every subtlety of sub-jective analysis is given to these intellectuals. Cut off from the rural world, theylose their illusions because they happen to be there at that time. Though theyreceive a number of blows, they remain strangers to the reality over which theypore searchingly while it remains impenetrable to them. This point of view, thatofthe outside observer, subtle, sympathetic, doctrinaire and ultimately passive, iswithout a doubt the most common stereotype and persistent curse in contemporaryimaginative Tamil fiction, issuing mostly from the urbanised middle-class withwhich it shares its language, ideas and myopic vision.

Legitimate emotion and revolt can be felt to vibrate in quite another register.77kkuJiyal (The Firebath ) is an anonymous ballad in the form of the Tamil heroic

poetry of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, which has the untouchables as

protagonists. The language is modern, the style sentimental and romantic and the



18/46

37

declamation geared to moving the listening public to tears and to putting across adirect revolutionary message, as this brief excerpt shows:

On that day, the enslaved people were crammed together, crunched up in corners and clad in thecold wind. On that night the earth was like an immense burning ground, the mountains toweredlike funeral pyres, the electric and telegraph poles stood like crosses. The sky, which had takenfrom her forehead the beneficient sign of the moon, was as empty as the heart of a widow. The

trucks of the bosses, crueller than Yama (the god of death) and their henchmen, charging like aherd of buffalo, were advancing as if the darkness had legs; the bicycle chains were like thelasso of death around this abandoned hamlet, helpless and without hope. Beneath the hooves ofthese crazed buffaloes, the population of Venmani, precious and dear as the pupils of our eyes,scattered like grains of rice and ran and crammed themselves into a hut, full to the brim like asack of jute. The dwelling, gigantic and demonic, opened its mouth, offered its lips and satthere, indistinguishable from the shadows that rejoiced at having swallowed their prey. Petrolcame down in a heavy rain and the hut was plunged into a sea of gas. The henchmen all aroundlike a wall of flesh, firebrands everywhere, were there to dance their cruel dance of ghouls. Onthe look-out round the hut, the brands hissed in their poisonous fury and threw themselves uponit, beating at it. Then the snake bit the hut with his tongues of flame and the roof took fire andcrackled. Masters, bosses, mad dogs, you who chop up the body of Venmani like firewood, whobuild a pyre and set light to it, in years to come, if indeed the years continue to roll on, this firewill bum and will become the pyre you have yourselves built for your own funerals.

This song has been circulated for 10 years or so among extremist groups, infavour of an armed revolution, in order to help sensitise their recruits to the in-justices and cruelties of the system. It was published in 1985 as a simple pamphletof 18 pages of text and 20 pages of an introduction signed by Eritalal (The Fire-brand),45 telling the story of the agricultural workers of Thanjavur and callingfor vengeance for themassacre of Kilvenmani. It is not by chance that this sole,authentically dalit, inspirational text is also the one most directly modelled, andnot without talent, upon a genuine popular tradition with all the power of itsimages, refrains and rhythms.

Unidentified Dalits: Explorers and Marginal Figures

The literary failure to rise to the challenge of Kilvenmani, even more strikingtoday since the memory and the symbolic weight of the episode has been made soimmediate, emphasises the political immaturity of middle-class literature, con-ditioned by the limitations of its public and those of a cultural heritage that excludesthe dalits.At the same time, however, good writers are opening up avenues, theirtalent or their sensitivity inciting them to explore new subjects without their everdreaming of claiming the label of dalit.An example is Pumani (mentioned earlier),who belongs to the group of regional authors from the extreme south of TamilNadu called karical after its black soil. Without romanticism,or tragedy, Pumanihas described the confrontation of the poor with their poor soil due solely to the

45 Recently reprinted under the authorship of Navakavi, Venmani (Venmani), Sivagangai, December1993, for the 25th anniversary of the Kilvenmani massacre.



19/46

38

existence of a countryside without recourse or hope: dry land, haunted by povertyand scarcity, a land of cotton and millet, ofherds without pasture, of fallow landswithout shade, denied irrigation, progress or education for the young. Prose asarid as the soil is used as a scalpel, starting with such titles as It Hurts and TheOrder of Things. A first collection of short stories, Vayi[uka! (Ihe Stomachs),46bypasses the Marxist formula of oppressors and oppressed with humour in whichthere is, however, little leniency.A first novel, Pa~-caku (L,ater On),47 describeswith clinical precision and without pretension the life of a family of cobblers, thelowest of untouchables. The implacable rigidity of the system is suggested onlythrough the austere quest for a little love and humanity on the part of the outcastswhose protest limits them to living the inevitable without complaint while remain-ing unresigned.A second novel, Vekkai (VVaves of Heat),48 tells of the inner con-flict of an adolescent in a family of small farmers, progressively driven to thebrink of violence when his elder brother is killed in the course of a long drawnout confrontation with the big landowners who want to take away the familysland. The limits of Pumanis narrative technique are apparent: mechanical plot

links substituted for real plotting, description, automatic and without individuality.The suffocating dryness of the observation quenches the passions and engenders

monotony. A dryauthor who writes

very little,Pumani is

unlikelyto

gainwide

popularity, but he has been able to create his own style even at the risk ofbecomingtrapped in it. Free of all political allegiance and resistant to any affiliation, hewould have been insistently wooed by the dalits had not a third novel, in 1985,asserted his position as an independent writer. Naiv8jam (Ritual Offerings9describes the degeneration and the sufferings of a Brahmin who survives in apoor agraharam by leasing his land to low-caste farmers who mercilessly exploit

. and despise him. This novel is the height of treason from a dalit point of view.Pumani however eschews self-criticism; his third collection of short stories

(1Vrurikcal, Crushed ),5 and his recent works reaffirms his direction: with a little

humanity and much disrespect, his peasants remain genuine and so does theirlanguage.

G. Nagarajan (1929-81) was the most marginal of contemporary writers. He

was a Brahmin and an atheist, a militant Marxist who broke with the CommunistParty, a sensitive and brilliant professor of English (he left an unpublished novelin that language), an adulterer, smoker of ganja and other drugs, alcoholic andbohemian. He chose to live apart from his peers, whom he never ceased to defy,in order to be closer to the teeming crowds in city streets and slums, the migrantsfrom villages in search of work, those untouchables, whether genuine or not, who,as prostitutes and pimps, are constantly harassed by the police and who are withoutscope or future. His ghost still seduces authors whose short stories make ofhim a

46 Pumani, Vayirukal, Sivagangai, 1975.47 Pumani, Piraku, Sivagangai, 1979.48 Pumani, Vekkai, Madras, 1982.49 Pumani, Naiv&emacr;tyam, Madras, 1985.50 Pumani,Norunkal, Madras, 1990.



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39

mythic figure of rebellion and catharsis in their imagined aspirations towardsrevolution.51 The theoreticians for their part compete in prattling about him

according to a borrowed intellectual schema, non-linear and post-modem, and ofuntenable analogies between the man and his legend (as for instance, with JeanGen6t), but continue to ignore his works which, rare and somewhat inaccessible,deserve better.A recent reprint has not changed the situation in any noticeable

way.52 He published several short stories in his lifetime but only one collection,Kantatum kittatum (Seen and 1-leard), two short novels Kurattirreutukku and N!aimarrum oru nale ( Tomorrow isAnother l~ay ),53 which the author presents likethis:

It is the life of an ordinary man. The base acts you would have committed had you dared, theboldness you would have shown had you been forced to it, the sicknesses you would have

caught had you been tempted and the infamy that would have marked you had you fallen: theseare what his life is made up of. You need not know what tomorrow will be like for him. For, forhim as for most of us, tomorrow is another day.

For the first time a troubling reality enters Tamil literature: a marginal societywhich is so close to the establishmentthat it sticks to its skin in an unsettling way.The two societies are linked by many synaesthetic correspondences and reflecteach other at deep levels ofTamil culture and tradition but are unable to help eachother. Nagarajan is there, listening for these liminal voices which speak of them-selves and dream among themselves, surviving on the edge of the abyss. He neithernarrates nor judges; invisible, he lends them his language, the language ofMadurai,and his style which is direct, lucid, responsible and aware of bearing the derisionofthe world. That insubstantial branch ofhumanity, dwelling on the edges withouthope, consecrated to death and nothingness, throws in the face of establishedorder, through the fraternal engagement of the writer and his revealing presence,a question which that order can no longer hide from.

Indian literature is full of the glamour of palaces and temples. It takes a strongcharacter to introduce therein the excitement ofthe fringes and the powerful imagesrequired to rivet attention on the distress of the humbled. Coming, like Pumani,from

the blackearth of

Kovilpatti,Pa.

Ceyappirakacam (whoalso writes under

the name of Suriyatipan), has succeeded in drawing from everyday local customsa telling image of discrimination: pallar women are not allowed to wear flowers

51Asokamittiran, Viral inMuraippen (finger inMuraippen a kinship term for prospective or

potential bride/fianc), Madas, 1984; Dilip Kumar, Aintu rupayum alukku cattaikk&amacr;rarum (FiveRupees and a Man with a Soiled Shirt), in M&umacr;nkil kuruttu (Bamboo Shoot), Madras, 1985; Konanki,Macal &umacr;rru (Yellow Spring), in Pommaikal utaipatum nakaram (Town Where Dolls Break),

Sivagangai, 1992; Pirapancan, Orunal (One Day) in Nacukkam (Crushing), Madras, 1993. Thelast was selected by Ilakkiya Cintanai, a literary forum, as the best collection of short stories for the

year 1992.52 G. Nagarjan, G. N&amacr;kar&amacr;can pataippukal (Collected works of G. Nagarajun), Nagarkovil, 1997.53G. Nagarjan, Kantataumk&emacr;ttatum (That which is seen and heard), Madurai, 1971; idem,Kurattimutukku (Kurattimutukku), Madurai, 1963, 2 reprints in 1994; idem, N&amacr;laimarrum orun&amacr;l&emacr;, (Tomorrow is JustAnother Day), Madurai,1974, 2nd edn, 1983.



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in their hair, as is otherwise the custom throughout south India, including amongthe women of the local landowning reddiyar castes. The pallar wear the flowerssuspended from the marriage jewel, the tali, worn as a necklace. This makesthem, if anything, more desirable, and one story begins with the arrival in thevillage of a young bride and the animated evocation of a dance:

The ululation of the pallar women with flowers in their ttili rose up. The flowers, fastened to theend of the tali, danced on their chests and seemed to draw their perfume directly from theirbreasts. No women, except the reddiyar women, were allowed to wear flowers in their hair; the

simple fact of wearing them on the tali identified these women as low caste women....~4

As a very beautiful young bride, Taili comes to live in her husbands village anddiscovers a world ofoppression quite new to her. First, there is the most consistenttheme ofvillage life: the higher caste men are obsessed by the physical attractionsofthe untouchable women whom they invariably perceive as desirable and easy,so they harass them unceasingly until they yield. Thus Taili is followed and accostedeverywhere, from the lake to the grocery shop. The reddiyarcome and fool aroundin front of her house the better to watch her. Her husband, furious but unable toconfront them, turns his impotent rage upon his wife. Taking advantage of the

difficult season when agricultural work is over and day labourers have no jobs, arich, married reddiyar offers Taili work in his house where she can earn the grainshe needs. She accepts, and he persecutes her with his advances at the same timeas she finds herself up against all the caste restrictions which the jealous reddiyarwomen throw at her. One day she dares to ask his permission to go directly alongthe village streets to bring water to his house. He hesitates, then is overcome bypassion and agrees. The next day brings scandal: an untouchable is walking alongthe village street and- even more scandalous - she is wearing sandals. Sheproudly claims to have her employers permission, but in vain. The village assemb-ly meets, the reddiyar wriggles out of it and refuses to back her up: she is con-demned to drive the village cows and buffaloes to pasture outside the village each

day and all alone.A last pathetic image contrasts violently with the first: the solitary, fragile figureof a woman seen from behind, hair unbound, leaving the village at dawn with theherds. Once again, it is only by recourse to popular imagination, heavy with sym-bols and affectivity, that the laborious dreary poverty of sexual oppression andservitude is transcended.A writer who is not a dalit paves the way, perhaps acci-dentally, for a dalit literature whose expression takes up a more imaginative elementfrom dalit folklore. Unfortunately this remains to be rediscovered before it can beexploited.&dquo;

54 Pa. Ceyappirakacam, T&amacr;liyil p&umacr;cc&umacr;tiyavarkal (Those Who Wear Flowers in the Tali) in idem,Oru kir&amacr;mattu r&amacr;ttirikal (Nights of a Village), Madras, 1978, pp. 38-39.55 The academic study of folklore of the school of N. Vanamamalai has fixed its subject under thetwofold theoretical rigidity of Marxism and structuralism; aesthetic perception comes later, spon-taneously exploited by Sujata and, more systematically, by K. Rajanarayanan who was himself



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A little-known writer, Ekbert Sachchidanandan born in Madurai and for 20

years a teacher in a public secondary school in Kanchipuram, in 15 stories writtenbetween 1986 and 1999 and as yet uncollected, also puts a style and language atthe service of a micro-community, a Protestant sect within the Christian minoritywhich, in terms of dalit politics, has a real importance. Set apart and having neither

literary relationships nor involvement in social activism, Sachchidanandan, withdisillusioned but effective irony, denounces feudalism as it is maintained by the

religious system to which he belongs and in which he believes. His Christianvalues are in contradiction to the Christian intrigues he describes. His sympathiesare with those n,-,mbers of a religious hierarchy who are oppressed, moulded bybureaucracy and by the spirit ofcaste. The force and originality of his irony dependsupon his using the language of the executioner to speak ofthe victims, leaving tobiblical vocabulary and the phraseology of Christian charity, which always seemforeign and strange in Tamil, the job of denouncing, on his behalf, the travestythat has been made of an ethic and the cold hypocrisy associated with it. Thewriter conceals himself behind his borrowed words and behind a certain narrative

skill which gives the impression, quite falsely, that nothing matters, even if inad-missible

thingsare

happeningin the

story.The

misleading impressionofconfidence

and serenity creates both distance and contention, even though the author consist-ently maintains the constrained reserve and dignity of his heroes. The sacristan istreated as the lowest ofdomestic servants by everyone from the pastor, his familyand the church administration to the schoolmasters in the private school system,who are exploited and tyrannised by the corrupt and easily influenced administra-tion which is imposed upon them. In terms of experience and narrative technique,the world of Sachchidanandan is very much defined and limited and the author

does not seem to be moving forward: 1 1 stories out of 15 have the same theme,yet, in the Tamil and pan-Indian dalit configuration of today, he represents a veryactive and significant world. He is on the side of the oppressed and it is not im-

possible that he will one day turn his irony against the noisy, clamorous forms ofChristian militantism: the theology of liberation and the socio-religious

consciousness-raising which tend to be in the forefront and which give more im-portance to words than to acts. We should also bear in mind that the essential partof his message is certainly that the Christian idiolect, a markedly Tamil type,proves to be a formidable instrument of irony, ultimately against the church itself.To the extent that the diffused existence of a dalit consciousness gives place to

a social vision or to organised politics, we see a reduction ofthe distance that sep-arates an independent writer and an aligned one. On the borderline between worksof literature and political writings, a Sri Lankan Tamil novelist in the 1960s playedthe role of a significant catalyst despite being, then as now, a controversial figure.K. Daniel (1927-86) belongs to a family of varcoaur, launderers, who along with

made aware of the values of popular traditions by the great critic and essayist Ti. Ke. Sitamparanata

Mudaliyar (1882-1954).



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pallar, paraiyar, ampatfar (barbers) and nafavar (toddy-tappers) make up thefive groups ofTamil untouchables on the peninsula ofJaffnaknown aspancamcar.

A political activist, won over to the Maoist faction of the Communist Party, he

fought the discrimination against untouchables very actively in the 7-intiimai olippuvekujana iyakkam (Popular Movement for the Eradication of Untouchability).Dominic Jeeva (b. 1927), an orthodox Marxist writer of essays and short stories(he also publishes the journal Mallikai, formerly from Jaffna and now from Col-ombo), published the first volume of his autobiography in which he clearly revealshimself as a dalit writer, being an ampajjan (barber) by caste, and claims that allhis past writings have, in fact, been dalit literature.56 He also tells ofhis early dayswhen both he and his friend and colleague K. Daniel faced caste discriminationas writers and struggled against it. Such an image oftwo young Marxists, a barberand a launderer, both still carrying out their traditional caste activities (as Jeevacontinued to do for sometime) while playing an active role in politics and literature,was quite new and unexpected in Tamil Nadu, where they were valued as progres-sivists andnot identified as dalits.11 K. Daniel found himself isolated in an untenable

position declaring, in the face of the Tamil struggle for a separate state, that sucha state would make no sense if the

rightsof the untouchables were not

guaranteedfirst. He emphasised, in a manner pertinent but unpopular, that the call for a homo-genous Tamil identity and the fight for a separate state were occluding the funda-mental reality of the power of the dominant Tamil classes on the peninsula ofJaffna; he never yielded to pressure on this point. For reasons ofhealth and safetyhe spent the final years of his life at Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. His last works werepublished in India and it is there that they are currently, reissued. He remainsostracised by Sri Lankan Tamils because ofwhat they call his bias towards caste,but they are, nevertheless, constrained to recognise his value as a writer. ~ancarnarremains his most important novel, but a series of five others completes a picturewhich is still faithful to the struggle of the untouchables in the Tamil society ofthe island.5x The language alternates between the paficamar dialect and standard

56 Dominic Jeeva,Elutappat&amacr;ta kavitaikku varaiyappat&amacr;ta cittiram (An Undrawn Painting for anUnwritten Poem), Colombo, 1999.57 Cf., Dominic J&imacr;vaCirukataikal, Colombo, 1996. Similarly, Mu. Talaiya Cinkam (1935-73), whowas introduced by Sundara Ramasami in Tamil Nadu (cf., Talaiya cinkattin pirapaca yatarttam[Universal Reality of Talaiyacinkam]), in Cuntara Ramasami Katturaikal (Essays by CuntaraRamasami), Madras, 1984, as a vague philosopher like himself in search of some spiritual truthplayed, in fact, an active role against untouchability in Sri Lanka and was even assaulted andarrested by the police when, in 1971, an attempt was made by untouchables to take water from thetemple well ofKannakiAmmanon Ponkutu Island, but he has yet to be considered in that perspective.Cf., Ravikumars interview with Va. I. Ca. Jayabalan in Elucci talitmuracu, Chennai, 1999.According to the same source, Ponnudurai, an all-rounder of some sophistication and consideredas an important writer among Sri Lankan Tamils, has yet to identify himself as a dalit.58 K. Daniel, Pacamar, 1972, 2nd edn, Thanjavur, 1983, rpt 1994. In order, and up to the eve of hisdeath in 1986, K&omacr;vintan,Atimaikal (Slaves), K&amacr;nal (Mirage), Pacuk&omacr;nankal (Five Perspec-tives), and Tann&imacr;r(Water), the last with an Introduction which emphasises the books ethnograph-ical excellence, by the Japanese anthropologist Yasumasa Sekine.



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Sri Lankan Tamil with an overabundance of dialect words in the narration and

descriptions. This work may be seen as marking the beginning of documentaryand ethnographic literature in Tamil dalit literary history.And it is there that thelimitations of K. Daniel lie: his stories and novels are essentially documentaryand they lack real characters and evocative power. He does not deviate from aschematic formula in which characters embody his ideas and progress

logicallyaccording to the reasoning of the author who purposely leaves the appropriateliterary preoccupations to theArt forArts sake school (Na~okku ilakkiyam). Hischronicles are, however, an honestly rendered account and are the, perhaps some-what unnolished, vehicle of an ideology which still has its echoes today. Theirreissue in the 1990s came about as a result of the impetus given by a group ofwriters and critics dedicated to the dalit cause, and in Cuddalore an organisationcalled Kuralkaj (Voices) even created a prize for dalit literature in his name.With K. Daniel we enter into mainstream Tamil literature and find, with regret,perhaps less originality than is to be found on its fringes and among its precursors.

Organised I)alitse Documents for a HistoryThe Power ofWords

In Tamil, paficamar is now outdated; it is the term adi-dravida (not piirvatamilar,i.e., original Tamilians, coined long ago) which today designates the Harijan inofficial vocabulary. From 1990, however, the word Dalit has been used in moreand more significant ways; today it is breaking in everywhere and its expansionreflects a concomitant transformation in those who employ it, whether to refer tothemselves or to others. The infiltration has been slow however. It seems that the

first usages came in the 1980s. In 1982, the Tamil literary magazine Pa!ikaf, pub-lished in Bangalore, posed an entirely rhetorical question: is there a place for dalitliterature in Tamil? This was not, as was thought, an isolated occurrence. 59Another

Bangalore publication, in 1983, was providing an answer. The bi-monthly DalitVoice,60 published in English, carried an insert for its Tamil version, Dalit Kural,based in Madras. This same magazine reported the repercussions of the inaugur-ation at Madurai of a Tamil Nadu Unit of the Dalit Panthers by the secretary of

the all-India movement, RamdasAthavale, in the presence of MrsAmbedkar. Onthat day a huge procession frightened the shopkeepers, who closed their shops;the orthodox Hindus of the RSS and the dominant castes, natar and tevar, havenot felt at ease ever since.

After much hesitation the term Dalit has become the standard one to designatethe core of the three castes: pallar (agricultural workers and small farmers),paraiyar (originally players of the drum [parai] at funerals etc., and agriculturalworkers) and cakkiliyar (leather workers associated with the butchering of animals,

59 Nirappirikai, No. 2, Special Issue of Dalit Literature, November 1994, p. 116; contrast with

Vity&amacr;cam, No.1, 1994, p. 14.60 Dalit Voice, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1-15 February, 1983. The Tamil version, Dalit Kural, appears from thesame academy (Dalit SahityaAkademi, Bangalore) although it is based in Madras.



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the lowest of all); as well as another two castes not strictly speaking untouchable,vanniir (launderers and midwives) and ampattar (barbers and practitioners oftraditional medicine, bone-setters and mixers of herbal remedies) and, lastly, thedoubtful groups, communities socially assimilated into the dalits but more orless repudiating the identification: totli (sewage-tank emptiers), vettiyr (specialistsin cremation) and sometimes elavar and cempatavar (fishing commtanities); atthe very bottom there are also the kujivatlpfr (launderers for other untouchables).This list is neither exhaustive nor definitive, and the word Dalit does not yetserve to bring together all those it applies to, but it makes constant progress andsucceeds in asserting itself as an identifying category.Among negative reactions, we note the chauvinistic purism of the Young DalitMovement of Rajapalaiyam (near Madurai) which renamed itself, in contra-

distinction, as Tamilntu Paraiyarpravai grandAssembly ofParaiyar of TamilNadu). In fact, their gesture was motivated by a provocative pride which had itsprecedents. In 1930, the paraiyar Rettamalai Srinivasan, a member of the Legis-lative Council ofMadras, added his caste to the badge he wore at the Round TableConference in London and refused, as a self-described untouchable, to shakehands with King George V. Recalling this anecdote, the Tamilaka Paraiyar Kural(The Voice of Tamil Paraiyar) in 1993 invited its readers to add the title Paraiyarto their names, as is the custom with higher castes.61

Caste pride is often expressed in a contrary manner. The vanniyar, a backwardcaste f ercely hostile to the emancipation ofthe dalits, recently awarded themselvesthe degree of nobility, qualifying asAgni kula ksatriya, Royal descendants ofAgni. Today, the Pallar prefer to be tev8ntira kula 1,8jfjar , Landed gentry ofthe race of Indra, the god of cultivated land according to ancient Tamil literarytradition. They (the Pallar) justify - by all possible quotations from Tamilclassicalliterature and folk-songs- a new historical perspective: that they are the trueagriculturists of Tamil Nadu, the heroes of numerous pallu poems which sincethe eighteenth century extol these activities, equating them, as ulavar (agri-culturists), with the non-Brahmin group of Tamilians most prominent throughout

history, the Vilala. Moreover,as

theword

pallar gained currency onlyafter

thesixteenth century, it is considered to be a substitute for mallar, the warrior-

agriculturists ofthe ancient Sangam age. This convenient phonetic shift upgradesthe Pallar even more, putting them at par with their most violent opponents, thetvar.62

61 This is a monthly publication edited by S. Samuvel Paraiyar from Madras; cf., Vol. 1, No. 1,September 1993.62 For example, Kurusami Cittan, Tamil ilakkiyattil Pallar (mallar) T&emacr;v&emacr;ntira kula V&emacr;l&amacr;lar (atippataicc&amacr;nrukal) (Pallar [mallar] Teventira kula velalar in Tamil literature [Basic Evidences]), Coimbatore,1993. See alsoA. Tirunakalingam, Pallar inakkulu varal&amacr;ru (History of the Pallar Community),unpublished paper presented at a seminar entitled Canankalum Varalarum (People and History),Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture (hereafter PILC), 23-24 September 1999. Theauthor provides profuse literary and cultural references but sticks to a Marxist vision of caste and

class.



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The cakkiliyar go further and give us a unique opportunity to illustrate therecent developments of an etiological myth in the making. In 1994 they claimedas their ancestors the sage Vasistha and his virtuous wife Arundhati (who becamea star in the constellation of the Great Bear); then, in 1998 they relegated Vasisthato the Hindu pantheon in order to keepArundhati by herself as the symbol of the

(Tamil Sangam) chaste woman, thus asserting their high Tamil origin and dist-

ancing themselves from their Kannada and Telugu ethnic past. While they havealready succeeded in imposing the usage of the wordAruntatiyar as a dignifiedsubstitute for the infamous cakkiliyar denomination, they now also insist on beingcalled mitiyax mftaiyar and pakatai in the dialects of southern Tamil Nadu. Thefirst nomination, read as mil (great) plus atiyar (the foremost, the king,) linksthem withAtiyaman, prince of Takatur, an historical character celebrated in Sangamliterature; the second term links them to his son Pokuttu Elini, which had to bealtered to Pakatai, another term for grandeur found also in the folk ballad Muttu-pattan katai. 63 This grand artificial edifice comforts a proud and powerful con-sciousness whose assimilation or equation with a dominant non-Brahmin groupis always consistent, supported as it is by a pseudo-erudite literature and based onhistorical and mythological quotations after the style ofAyotti Das Pantitar.Remaining bookish and being, in any case, constructed by the urban intellectualsof the caste, it is in very sharp contrast to the traditional folk tales and songs of thegroup which normally acknowledge a subordination to the immediately superior

. groups; in such stories, as in all traditional myths about the origins oftheparaiyar,we are always told why the paraiyar have become the losers and under what cir-cumstances their karma deteriorated, an approach leading to acceptance ratherthan rebellion.&dquo; Projection of higher lineages remains entirely cultural withoutthere being any question of rocking the boat when it comes to economic statusand the reservation policies established by successive governments. If the term

Dalit, which is not, as Harijan was in past times, bestowed on them as a politicaleuphemism but rather implies free choice and commitment, is made banal inTamil, being applied both tardily and carelessly, it is because it comes at an oppor-tune moment to express a new dimension in the social and political conflict inherentin local

history.

63 Elil Ilankovan,Aruntatiyar varal&amacr;ru (History ofAruntatiyar), Madras, 1995, a booklet which

tripled in its size to becomeAruntatiyar varal&amacr;ruvin&amacr;vum vilakkamum (History ofAruntatiyar,Questions andAnswers), Mumbai, 1998, as a question-and-answer catechism for the caste.Also,Marku, Aruntatiyar Torrakkataikal (Origin Myths ofAruntatiyar), also presented at the PILCseminar (n. 62 above) collected seven myths from the Virudhunagar area, all of which account forthe fall of the aruntatiyar from their status of Kampalattu Nayakar.A faint trace of a migrationlingers in these myths; other evidence suggests that they came from Andhra during the Nayakaperiod (seventeenth century). Details of another group of aruntatiyar are found inArul Dass et al.,Kotaimalaim&amacr;tariy&amacr;r &omacr;rarimukam (Kotaimalai matariyar:An Introduction), Madurai, 1996. Yetanother aruntatiyar group from Coimbatore publishes the journal Dalit Urimai kural.64 See Robert Delige, Les Intouchables en Inde, Des castes dexclus, Paris, 1995, chap. 4. Les

mythes dorigine des intouchables, pp. 115-40.



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The Density of Associated NetworkSocial relationships in India are invariably of a particular density, the importanceof which, at the level of daily life, may be surprising to outsiders. In order to em-

phasise the extent to which the dalit universe is criss-crossed by multiple networkswhich give it muscle and make it more sensitive to fres