September 13, 2011
Dalit movement & literary phenomenon
In 2004, the French Institute of Pondicherry provided a platform for
about a dozen Dalit writers in Tamil to reflect on their experiences
in the Dalit literary movement. What they said on the occasion, along
with extracts from their writings, were published later. And the book
under review is an English translation of that publication. David C.
Buck, an American academic who has translated some medieval Tamil
texts, has joined the editor of the Tamil volume, Kannan M., in this
venture.
The Dalit movement had a late start in Tamil Nadu, when compared to
Maharashtra and Karnataka, largely because of the dynamics of the
non-Brahmin Dravidian movement. It was only in the early 1990s — in
the wake of the Mandal–Masjid developments, and in the context of
Ambedkar centenary and the break-up of the Soviet Union and its impact
on the Left movement — that the Dalit movement first manifested itself
as a literary phenomenon in Tamil Nadu.
Talented writers
The 1990s saw a group of new and talented writers unleash their
creative force in the literary field. The smugness of the entrenched
literary orthodoxy was effectively challenged. But the movement has
since suffered a setback, and a lull seems to have set in. It could be
argued that the literary mainstream has now accommodated 'dalitism'.
Of the nine writers figuring in the volume, two — Bama and Imaiyam —
are known internationally, with a substantial number of their works
available in English and other languages. Alakiya Periyavan, who
showed promise right from the beginning, is now an accomplished
writer. The bohemian poet N.D. Rajkumar has an interesting piece.
Punita Pantiyan speaks of the challenges involved in running an avowed
dalit journal and, in the process, exposes the sham that caste
discrimination plagues only the countryside and that the cities are
free from it. Other writers featured in the book are: Sudhakar Ghatak,
Yakkan, Vili. Pa. Itaya Ventan, and Yalan Ati.
Considering that the cutting edge of the Dalit literary movement, at
least in its initial phase, was provided by critics (especially Raj
Gowthaman and Ravikumar), their absence somewhat detracts from the
comprehensiveness of the volume.
Formidable
Translating any literary piece is a formidable task. It's much more so
in the case of dalit literature, which seeks to challenge linguistic
as well as social protocols.
Overcome challenges
In order to capture the range and nuances of the dalit dialect, the
translators here have adopted "a derivative of the English spoken by
less-than-affluent people in rural areas of the American mid-south."
It's a very interesting way of overcoming the challenges, one that
lends itself to numerous possibilities.
When read in conjunction with No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing
From South India, edited by K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (Penguin,
2011), this volume will be of great help to both academics and
students of literature in understanding the dalit movement in Tamil.
It would have gained immensely from a good copy-editor. The purpose of
the book would be served better if middle-class readers reflect upon
their own privileged position in the hierarchy of caste.
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