What Did Literary Histories Say to You?

-- Pradeepan Pampirikunnu

Main Argument: Traditional literary histories should be revisited and rewritten. History should
be democratized.

The author wrote the essay at a time when all over the world the oppressed social groups,
considered inferior ‘others’, are at present engaged in serious exploration of history and
interrogations of culture.

This is part of an attempt to retrieve lost pride and honour with the intention of redefining their
sense of self.

One of the lessons from history is that only people who initiate a politics of self-representation
and maintain records of their discursive practices will find a place in history and culture.

Dalit studies is therefore a political mode of enquiry and explanation generating discourses on
the past, present and future of Dalit’s in order to help them find a place in history and culture
and shape their future.

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Knowledge production and distribution goes through various procedures of rigorous social
control.

This process is called the politics of knowledge: to choose from a large body of information
available, leave the rest out, subject the select knowledge to editing and interpreting, confer
on it scientificity and objectivity, reduce its availability and limit its accessibility.

What is left out in the ideological apparatus of the state is the history and knowledge of the
oppressed. It is the voice of the broken, which is always silenced. It is the truth of the
oppressed, which is always excluded.

The task of dalit studies is to release the counter-hegemonic forces of critique in order to
facilitate the eruption of dalit voice and truth, breaking the silence and darkness in the midst of
prevailing politics of knowledge.

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Caste and Casteism

Every society offers an explanation for its structure. The explanation given by Indian society is
that of the caste system.

The famous historian Kosambi said the most important distinguishing feature of Indian society is
jati or caste.

Caste becomes casteism when these social divisions are arranged in hierarchical order and one’s
position in the hierarchy is used as justification for preferential treatment in inter-group
relations.

Those higher in the hierarchy grab the monopoly of purity, ownership and control over the
means of production and political power.

Those in the lower strata become subservient to the upper classes.

For example even now, most of those doing manual labour in the agricultural sector are drawn
from certain castes customarily forced to the fields for centuries.

Casteism has played an important role in devising the grammar of our language and designing
the inflections of our behavior.

Examples

Saraswativijayam (1892): Potheri Kunjambu

Kunhambu came from the caste of Tiyyas, then practising the lowly occuapation of toddy
tapping. He received an English education at the Cannanore Government High School, started
work as a postmaster in Malappuram and then became a copy clerk in the Magistrate's court in
Taliparamba. After passing the vakil examination, he moved to Cannanore and finally became a
lawyer known for his probity. He established the Edward Press in Cannanore and brought out a
series of books reflecting his anguished engagement with Hinduism, leading to his pamphlet of
1908 - Tiyyar - in which he advocated conversion as a means of escape from the degradation of
caste inequality. Kunhambu was much taken up with the idea of colonial modernity which
seemed to allow for education, mobility and equality for lower castes. Saraswativijayam begins
with the attempted killing of a Pulayan for daring to sing in the vicinity of a proud Nambudiri
landlord.
Although believed to be dead, the Pulayan survives, and the rest of the novel follows the two
protagonists - the master and the slave - as each of them seeks out his particular salvation. The
Brahmin goes to Kashi and cleanses himself of pride and ignorance, the Pulayan, through the
space opened up by colonial education and Christianity, becomes a judge. At the end of the
novel, the Pulayan presides over the trial of the Nambudiri and also marries his granddaughter
Saraswati. The novel has the epigraph: Education is the greatest of all wealth.

Chandu Menon’s Indulekha (1889), the celebrated first Malayalam novel, stages a conflict
between a feudal, Nair project of modernity and western modernity. We find no dalit
interaction in the novel. By contrast Kunjambu’s novel treats conversion as a means to
overcome caste, is far less discussed. It is the first non-Brahmin, non-Nair novels in Malayalam.
This obscurity of secularism is one reason why Dalit creative writing emerged so late in Kerala.
Caste is a hidden identity for Dalit’s in Kerala. Few people will openly declare their caste.

Everything holds a note of caste for the Keralite. An internal fear exists that if one is dark-
skinned, even if a savarna, one may be mistaken for an SC.
Consummables identified with different castes and their tastes such as marar pickles, Brahmins
wheat flour, marar papadam, namboothiri tooth powder are widely marketed all over kerala.
The absence of such market possibility for other communities is also a consequence of the
savarna constructions of ‘lower-caste’ identities.
There is also the use of ‘universal’ categories such as servants, sweepers, agricultural slaves and
folk singers

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Proverbs around savarna ideas

 “If the lowly acquire wealth, they will carry umbrellas even at midnight.’ [Alpan artham
kittiyal ardha rathriyilum kuda pidikum.’]
 Can the accouterment of caste be simply peeled off?
 Can a crow turn into crane by taking a bath?
  You might catch a leech and put it on the mattress, but will it stay there?

Examples of how the bodies and social status of avarna people are depicted in savarna
discourse.
Such figures are shaped by contempt as well as pity.

While savarna bodies and lives are conceived of as respectable and national, the local or
indigenous takes forms of leech, lowly idiot and crow.

The so –called secular language we use today is the language of the upper caste

You in Malayalam literature a rejection of regional identities and pan-Indian savarna

subjectivity.

Most important of this is treatment of savarna life and transactions and symbols as secular.

MT works is a case in point.

His novels are about the anger of those dismissed from nair tharavad- in his work society is
pushed to the rear and the tharavad assumes primary importance – the language of nairs was
accepted as secular- valluvanadan dialect

Consider the word veedu (home). William Logan in his Malabar says veedu or bhavanam is a
place where nairs usually live. Within the nair caste, the powerful live in idam. It was not illam
or mana (namboothiri houses) or pura (thiya house) or chala/ madam or cheri (dalit dwellings)
that became a secular word in Kerala- it was the nair word ‘veedu’

The dominant voice in all such narratives is caste-identified

This transformed the kerala tharavadu from a being a system of inheritance to the cultural
foundation of Kerala.

This is why despite the decline of matrilineal system, there exists a an anxiety regarding the
decline of tharavadu