Literary festival
Meeting of streams
By Kancha Ilaiah
Literary festivals teach how to connect oneself to the social mass
culture, if one is doing the transformative writing.
I have just returned from the Jaipur Literature Festival having spoken
at two sessions, 'Outcaste and public conscience' and 'The journey to
childhood.' A group of writers and artistes has been holding this
conference for five years now. The attendance at the conference was
amazing. Intellectuals from several fields had gathered in that city
of history and culture of its own.
As I participated in this festival for the first time, that too as a
speaker on a subject — caste and untouchability — it opened my eyes
for two reasons. One, it had shown me how big is the literary world.
Two, it also has shown me how small is the presence of Dalit-Bahujan
writers and readers in such a globally visible conference.
It had drawn writers, poets, artists, painters, actors and playwrights
from all over the world. Of course, the focus was by and large India.
Apart from the writers in English language there were some Hindi
writers. By all standards it was an elite conference but one could see
writers whose interests and commitments went beyond their elitism.
For the first time I realised that literary festivals also teach how
one should connect oneself to the social mass culture, if one is doing
the transformative writing. Though the writing for pleasure and fun
would also have some transformative element in it, the writers who
write for radical transformation of the society need to work with a
different language and idiom.
I was trying to learn from my readers — surprisingly there were quite
few of them in that conference — how my English language and idiom was
communicating. I met a cross section of my readers both from India and
abroad.
A Bhutani woman writer told me that though she was a writer herself
with a vast reading she never knew that caste was such a big problem
in India. Of course the responses vary depending on the caste
background, age and experience of the readers. But one common point
was that the Dalit-Bahujan writings have shown them a different India.
In a conference where the presence of Wole Soyinka to Gulzar-Girish
Karnad to Christophe Jaffrelot to Mark Tully to Omprakash Valmiki and
P Sivakami (both well known Dalit writers) very different and varied
experiences of writing and the themes that they work got discussed.
India revealed itself in many different ways. In a country, where the
upper caste elite including the writers do not have a sense of shame
and guilt, such literary festivals work as a place for exchange of
ideas. This is a country where sex is discussed and written about from
Vastayana days onwards but caste was an issue of shame about which
they never wanted to discuss and write about.
Copyright
When Nayantara Sehgal (Nehru's niece) said at a panel discussion on
Edwina and Nehru's relationship that the copyright holders of Nehru's
letters to Edwina wanted to hide the simple fact that "our politicians
too have sexual organs," she was just making a known point.
But this is the same country that had hidden the fact that it has a
horrendous system of caste and untouchability from the rest of the
world. For all these years the copyright of caste remained with them
and they never allowed it to be written about and published.
The caste and untouchability was/is there as part of our day to day
life for so long but any writing about it shamed them and they have
hidden their guilt as it involved an immoral intercourse between two
human beings — a Dalit and a Brahmin. At least this literature
festival has lifted the veil.
After Valmiki, Sivakami and I got off the stage there were several
young people, who rushed for our autographs. Though I did not ask them
about their caste background, there was no way that there could be
many Dalit/OBCs among them. Such a response from the upper caste
English medium educated youth certainly opens a page of hope.
No positive writer, who writes for the transformation of the society
like India, wants a civil war for its own sake. But the change could
be smooth and peaceful only when the upper caste intelligentsia begins
to act on its sense of shame and guilt. A transformative book writing
is meant to work both ways. It is meant to embolden the weakest and
also meant to weaken the spirit of exploitation of the oppressors.
If writing helps even a section of oppressors to stop oppressing the
oppressed and they begin to understand the point of view of the
oppressed the role of writing becomes more meaningful. The Jaipur
festival has shown the signs of such positive exchange of views.
But this is only one side of the story. There could be another side as
well. The Dalit-Bahujan literature is not yet seen as part of the
mainstream. To make the Dalit-Bahujan literature mainstream literature
either the streams need to be changed radically or the small steam
should become big enough so that the others have no way but cross it
by swimming, and not jump it over.
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