Tamil Dalit Research Articles

Exploring the Dynamic Relationship Between Caste and Gender in Bama’s Two Novels

This research explores the dynamic relationship between gender and caste in the select novels of Bama, a prominent Tamil Dalit writer. Drawing on feminist and Dalit literary theories, this study analyzes Bama’s novels, Karukku and Sangati, to reveal the nuanced ways in which gender and caste intersect that shape the lives of Dalit women. Through close readings of Bama’s narratives, the article highlights the systemic violence, discrimination, and marginalization faced by Dalit women. She fearlessly scrutinizes the role of family, church, school, and government in inflicting both physical and psychological harm on the Dalit community. She emphasizes the need for collective struggle against this systemic favoritism as the key to individual liberation. Bama’s literary work brings to the fore the critical importance of comprehending the complex interplay between gender and caste in the context of oppression. Through her writing, she illuminates the agency and unwavering determination of Dalit women as they strive for social justice and equality.

Tracing An Archetypal Journey of Protagonists Towards Reforming the Parayar Dalit Identity

Vanmam centres around the lives of the Tamil Dalit Christian community, Parayars, in the Kandampatti village of South India—a space dominated by the people following the Hindu religion, that is, the so-called upper caste, Naickers and Tamil Dalit Hindu Community, the Pallars. The researcher would trace the archetypal journeys of the protagonists, Saminathan and Jayaraju, by employing the structure of the monomyth as given by Joseph Campbell. The heroes of Vanmam engage themselves towards the upliftment of their community, for which they keep a common goal in mind. This goal is to unite the two Dalit communities, the Parayars and the Pallars, which are divided on the lines of religion. The Parayars cherish the Ambedkarite ideologies that invigorates them to aim for the positions of power and authority. The first step towards this aim was to win the post of president through the village panchayat elections. This was crucial in reforming their identity and strengthening their sense of self. The stages of monomyth help in determining the various aspects of the narrative that are in alignment with it and those that are not. Campbell’s structure of monomyth is an established tool of analysis of the narrative, and the researcher would examine to what extent it can be applied to trace the journeys of the protagonists in Bama’s novel Vanmam.

Representation of Dalit life in Imaiyam's Koveru Kazhuthaigal

Indian society and its collective consciousness are polluted with casteism. After thousands of years of suppression and exploitation, the margin came to the centre and the other side of the history was revealed. Dalit literature gave insights about the dalit life which otherwise is never written in a dalit’s view. “Writing about Dalits by Dalit writers with a Dalit Consciousness” says Sharan Kumar Limbale about Dalit literature in his book Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature. Having this as base, this paper proposes to study Imaiyam's Koveru Kazhuthaigal from dalit literary perspective and appreciate the life represented in it. The novel is set in an Indian village and the protagonists belong to the washerman community which is considered as the lowest of the lower in caste hierarchy practiced in Tamilnadu. The hypothesis is to question the collective consciousness regarding the inhuman casteist practices and demand change in the life of the oppressed and in the conscience of the oppressor. Famous Tamil Dalit writer Bama proposes eduation as a solution for casteism in her semi autobiographial text Karukku; Imaiyam shows change of place from rural to urban setup as a solution for better treatment. The real solution demands change from the oppressor too. Limitations of this research is the huge volume of the possible solution to the problem represented and the concrete presence of casteism in Indian psyche.

Living in the Margin : A Study of Bama’s Karukku.

Bama published her autobiography “Karukku” in 1999. This unusual autobiography helps the reader understand the lives of the Tamil Dalit Christians. Even though Bama’s purpose of writing the book was to heal her “inward wounds”, the book has touched the heart of the readers. Karukku helps us understand the realities of the lives of Dalits. Bama looks at various aspects of the Dalit reality – a village which is divided on the basis of caste, Paraya men and women who cannot seem to overcome poverty in spite of working hard, children who are forced to learn lessons of untouchability at a very young age, the apathy of the church etc. An in-depth study of the text throws light on the pains of caste discrimination, untouchability and poverty that Dalit Christians experience. This paper, by the study of Karukku, tries to understand the realities of the Tamil Dalit Christians.

Categorical oppression: Performance of identity in South India

AbstractWhat does ‘identity’ really mean for the migrant workforce beyond its function in production relations? How are forms of identity evoked within broader social relations in a migrant context? This article explores these questions by looking at how the Tamil Dalit tea workers in the South Indian state of Kerala experience the stigmatisation of their identity categories in the context of two significant events that occurred in the tea belt—an economic crisis and a conflict between two states over managing a dam. The way ‘migrant’ workers are categorised in their ‘host’ society is discussed here as fundamental to how they experience life both in and out of their workplaces. Extending Philippe Bourgois's notion of conjugated oppression, I argue that when dominant groups stigmatise, evoke and employ certain aspects of the workers' identities to their disadvantage, they are engaging in a phenomenon that I call ‘categorical oppression’.

Contemporary Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics

Contemporary Tamil Dalit feminist poets challenge dominant ideas in mainstream Hinduismwith its inscribed caste and gender discriminations oppressing Dalits. Writing in the spokenTamil familiar to all Tamil speaking people, they address the struggles of Dalit women indaily life, their sexual oppression, and their desire for autonomy. I examine the social andpolitical themes and aesthetics of Tamil Dalit feminist poetry in the light of the rationalist andmaterialist theories of Dr. Ambedkar and E.V. Ramasamy Naicker (known as Periyar). Poetssuch as, Meena Kandasamy, Sukirtharani, Malathy Maithri, Ku Uma Devi, and N.D. Rajkumarwrite on themes of sexuality, caste oppression, and gender oppression, thus openly defyingassumptions about Dalit women and challenging caste dominant rules of poetry, society andlanguage. These poets’ concerns can be traced to the lineage of Dalit song traditions whichwere ceremonial and political, as well as the anti-caste movement in Tamil Nadu led by Periyar.Today’s Dalit feminist poets in Tamil Nadu continue to be energised by Periyar’s challenge tonationalist politics, decolonising hegemonic gender and caste ideologies. They use imaginationand logic to articulate their challenge to caste hegemony and present the interconnection ofland, body and sexuality, thus claiming their subjectivity.Keywords:Dalit feminist poetics, caste and gender oppression, rationalist and materialisttheories of Ambedkar and Periyar, decolonisation, claiming subjectivity

‘Mirrored in God’: Gramsci, Religion and Dalit Women Subalterns in South India

The Tamil Dalit Pentecostal conversion movement that has been active in Chennai’s slums and low-income settlements for the last four decades is also a political movement. It is, moreover, a women’s political movement. Normally both Dalits and women are ignored in India, they are considered people of no importance and irrelevant to the issues that grab the headlines. But it is important for us to recognize both the political nature and the importance of this Dalit women’s conversion movement, because we are at a time of great peril in India, where, as elsewhere, populist nationalism has swept an authoritarian leader to power and the fascist tendencies of an overbearing state are becoming increasingly obvious. In such a context Gramsci’s theorizations provide important suggestions for how to understand religio-cultural movements as political movements and how to evaluate both their importance and what they can teach us about the possibilities for religio-cultural-political resistance to authoritarian populism, and the crucial importance of low-income, low-status women in political processes of grassroots resistance.

Grapple for Equality: A Critical Analysis of Caste and Gender Discrimination in Bama’s Vanmam (Vendetta)

Divisiveness among humans is so inherent, rampant and intuitive that none would find it easy to escape the oppression resulting from this man-made setback. The Human psyche covets to rule, master and exploit its power over others; and this is the core and the most intimate cause of all intolerance and oppression in our world, whatever label one wants to bracket then under, say, caste, creed, race, gender or faith. This paper titled, Grapple for Equality: A Critical Analysis of Caste and Gender Discrimination in Bama’s Vanmam (Vendetta) is an attempt to identify the gender inequality and sexual violence among Dalit women exposed by the author. The main themes of the Dalit writings in India usually centre on subjects like social disability, caste system, economic inequality, contemporary cruelties and cultural assertion that have been uniquely entitled ‘the struggle for identity’. Bama, one of the renowned Tamil Dalit woman writers, dwells on the themes of caste and gender discrimination in most of her novels. The novel Vanmam mainly focuses on Dalit women, highlighting how they are subjected to social discriminations of multiple sorts.

Are we Hindus? Religion in Tamil Dalit discourse

Based primarily on original sources in Tamil as well as interviews, the article seeks to portray the attitude of Tamil Dalit intellectuals and political leaders towards the question of religion. It seeks to discover the role of religion in their discourse and how they utilise religious matters to mobilise their fellow caste members. It maps their efforts to distance themselves from Hinduism and to propagate the particularity of Dalit deities and Dalit religion as a part of their newly constructed identity. Their opinions on the possibility of conversion are also briefly noted. These attitudes are examined from the viewpoint of the differing emancipation strategies of the three major Tamil Dalit castes. The Paraiyar as well as the Arunthaiyar leaders try to reject the Hindu identity, though the common folk consider themselves to be Hindus. The Devendrars on the contrary associate themselves with the Hindu gods and Hindu temples, they claim direct connection with some of them. Even they, however, tend to emphasise particularity of their deities as a part of their identity building.

Tamil Dalit Literature: Aesthetics, Politics, and Life Narratives

Tamil Dalit Literature: Aesthetics, Politics, and Life Narratives

Other Tongues: A Study of Bama's Karukku and Sangati

This article seeks to (re)position Bama's Karukku and Sangati as autoethnographies from a Tamil Dalit perspective. Drawing on the combined tradition of Bakhtin's thought and feminist dialogics, the author engages in a transdisciplinary analysis of theoretical debates of Dalit autoethnographic narratives in order to understand the creation of dialogic spaces as spaces that both subordinate and subvert. Through a delineation of narrative hybridization in Karukku and Sangati, this article explores how Bama enables an understanding of the radicalization of Tamil Dalit women's consciousness itself by the appropriation of different registers—the self, the cultural, and the ethnographic—and dialectal Tamil.

When Feminism Overpowers Caste Marginalisation: A Study of the Feminist Agenda of Female Paraiyar Writers

Writings on caste-based marginalization are highly experiential in nature, and are almost always written by those who are born as outcastes themselves. Objectivity, however, becomes a problematic issue where such writings are concerned, since narratives which are written on the basis of personal experience and memory tend to be intensely personal and emotional in nature, and generally exhibit traces of personal bias, as in the case of female Paraiyar writers in Tamil Nadu, who are better known in the literary world as Tamil Dalit writers. Although widely acknowledged as the mouthpiece of Paraiyar/Dalit aspirations in the media and in academic circles, female Paraiyar writers tend to exhibit a fixated inclination towards issues of female marginalisation alone, instead of representing the cause as a whole, thus creating an element of disunity among Paraiyar writers who are supposedly working together towards emancipating their people from the clutches of caste-based oppression. Driven by such concerns, this paper seeks to analyse the novel, Sangati, written by a leading Paraiyar writer cum activist, Bama Faustina who is said to have provided Dalit women with an authentic voice and affirmative presence, with the aim of investigating the stand female Paraiyar writers take on the issue of caste marginalization on the whole, and the reasons why they tend to prioritise the sufferings of Paraiyar women over that of the Paraiyar community on the whole.

SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATION THROUGH LITERATURE

As an arm of Dalit politics in India, Dalit literature becomes an effective tool to express the protest and anguish of Dalits against the domination of the Caste Hindus. Dalit literature as a genre was established in the 1960s and 1970s when a flurry of Dalit writing was published in Marathi and Gujarati. Nearly two decades later, Tamil Dalit writing marked its identity in the literary map of Tamil Nadu. Some of these works have been translated into English and have been included in the literary studies curriculum. While the universities provide an institutional space for Dalit literature, a lot depends on how these literary works have been received by students. It is essential to enquire whether Dalit literature included in the literary studies curriculum has functioned as a social and political force. Through a qualitative study undertaken with 63 students of literary studies, this essay examines the impact of Dalit literature on student community. It also explores the students’ understanding and interpretation of the terms ‘Dalit’ and ‘Dalit literature’.

From Panchamars to Dalit

Dalit writing in Tamil Nadu is considered young compared with the other regions in India. Recent studies reveal, however, that Dalit consciousness and sensibility in Tamil Nadu predated Ambedkar's struggle against caste oppression in Maharashtra. Well ahead of his time, Dalit intellectuals in Tamil Nadu in the later nineteenth century preceded Ambedkar's disillusionment with Hinduism and subsequent conversion to Buddhism. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a group of intellectuals (identifying themselves as Panchamars) from Tamil Dalit communities were working toward the emancipation of their fellow citizens. Predominant among them was Iyothee Thass Pandithar who was instrumental in spreading a distinct Dalit sensibility and consciousness. It is generally observed that Tamil Dalit writing which was conspicuous during the period of Iyothee Thass Pandithar in the early years of the twentieth century failed to sustain its drive in the middle years. The dormancy in Tamil Dalit writing is attributed to the alignment of Tamil Dalits with the various political and social movements between the 1930s and 1970s until they regained a distinct voice in the closing decades of the twentieth century. While there has been considerable research on the writings of Iyothee Thass Pandithar, Tamil Dalit writings after his period have received less attention. This paper discusses the writings of Tamil Dalits in the middle years of the twentieth century (when it was considered to be dormant) and analyses the reasons for the emergence of a distinct Tamil Dalit political and literary movement in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Representation and resistance: Strategies in Bama’s Karukku and Raj Gautaman’s Siluvai Raj Sarithiram

The social structure of caste in India has assigned Brahmins to the apex and Dalits to the bottom of the caste system and, importantly, has also attained religious sanction, since the sacred Vedic texts served to perpetuate such stratifications among Hindus. The social institutions of religion, law, politics, art and literature thus reflected the dominant ideology of the Caste Hindus. But, after centuries of suppression, Dalits are now finding their voice, in literature as well as through political activism. In many ways an “arm” of Dalit politics, such literature has become an effective tool in expressing the protest of this community against the domination of Caste Hindus. Dalit literature as a genre was established in the 1960s and 1970s when a body of Dalit writing was published in Marathi and Gujarati, followed, nearly two decades later, by Tamil Dalit writing. Although caste oppression and discrimination are common elements in most Tamil Dalit literary works, their widely differing contexts range from Srilankan Tamil Dalit to Tamil Dalit-Christian communities. Bama’s Karukku (1992) and Raj Gautaman’s Siluvai Raj Sarithiram (2002) bring to light the discriminations prevalent within Tamil Christian communities. The protagonists of these novels take the radical step of rejecting Christianity and identifying themselves primarily as Dalits. Through an analysis of these two texts, the article discusses the caste hierarchy prevalent in Tamil Christian communities, while also exploring larger ambiguities in the construction of pan-Indian Dalit identity.

Resounding rhetoric, retreating rebels: the use and impact of militant speeches in Tamil Dalit movements

Oratory is an important aspect of Tamil culture, and people delight in the poetic flourishes of podium speakers. It is no surprise, therefore, that the leader of the largest Dalit movement in Tamilnadu is revered for linguistic prowess. The significance of movement utterances, however, extends beyond content and style. In recent decades, Dalit rhetoric has increasingly promised to ‘hit back’. Although these perorations have been credited with instilling a sense of pride, courage and assertiveness into previously submissive social groups, such analyses often take movement oratory at face value. A more contextualised reading of such speech-acts reveals that whilst ‘hitting back’ can restore a sense of pride, it can also undermine Dalit agency by reinforcing their characterisation as victims. In a vicious circle, radical rhetoric stokes the fires of caste conflict, which then inspires further tales of victimisation. Celebrations of Dalit lyricism, therefore, need to be tempered by an appreciation of its context and consequences.

Beyond ‘Dull and Sterile Routines’?: Dalits Organizing for Social Change in Tamil Nadu

Drawing on fieldwork with Dalit movements in Tamil Nadu, this article focuses on often neglected aspects of activism. A pervasive lack of resources has rendered Tamil Dalit movements overly incident-sensitive: reacting to caste atrocities rather than pursuing a positive agenda. Movement leaders thus concentrate on community-building by means of exclusive rhetoric that is, at times, divorced from the day-to-day concerns of their constituents. High-profile events and fiery speeches attract attention and foster collective identity, but are only part of a wider struggle in which the more mundane and everyday aspects of struggle—establishing strong networks, chasing up officials, seeking alternate sources of employment and so on—may be most effective. Changing caste relations, it is argued, requires continual commitment rather than episodic protest. This challenges what we mean by ‘movement success’ and ‘activism’.

‘You build your house, we'll build ours’: The Attractions and Pitfalls of Dalit Identity Politics

Dalit (ex-Untouchable) movements across Tamilnadu are struggling to achieve equality, justice and an end to caste based discrimination. Over the past decades they have succeeded in entering parliamentary politics in the state. Many of the movements that have contributed to the current profile of Dalit politics organized on the basis of a ‘Dalit’ identity. Increasingly, however, Dalit activists in Tamilnadu have come to stress more parochial and ‘primordial’ identities and adopt ever more specific objectives. The premise of identity politics is that social categories can and should represent themselves and assert their own priorities and agendas, but who defines the category and how representative are they? This paper teases out the contradictory aspects of such mobilization and interrogates the strategies of Tamil Dalit movements before considering whether the discourse of human rights can help transcend the impasse of identity politics.

Tamil Dalit Literature and Bama's Karukku: A Case Study

(2002). Tamil Dalit Literature and Bama's Karukku: A Case Study. South Asian Review: Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 41-41.