Introduction To Karukku

Bama is the pen-name of a Tamil Dalit woman, from a Roman Catholic family. She haspublished three main works: an autobiography, Karukku, 1992; a novel, Sangati,1994; and a collection of short stories, Kisumbukkaran 1996.

Karukku means palmyra leaves, which, with their serrated edges on both sides,are like double-edged swords. By a felicitous pun, the Tamil word Karukku,containing the word hare, embryo or seed, also means freshness, newness. In her foreword,Bama draws attention to the symbol, and refers to the words in Hebrews (New Testament),"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercingto the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts andintentions of the heart." (Hebrews, 4:10)

Karukku is the first autobiography of its kind to appear in Tamil, for Dalitwriting in this language has not produced the spate of autobiographies which haveappeared, for example, in Marathi. It is also in many ways an unusual autobiography. Itgrows out of a particular moment: a personal crisis and watershed in the author's lifewhich drives her to make sense of her life as woman, Christian, Dalit. Many Tamil authors,both men and women, use the convention of writing under a pseudonym. In this case, though,this convention adds to the work's strange paradox of reticence and familiarity. Iteschews the "confessional" mode, leaving out many personal details. Theprotagonist is never named. The events of Bama's life are not arranged according to asimple, linear or chronological order, as with most autobiographies, but rather, reflectedupon in different ways, repeated from different perspectives, grouped under differentthemes, for example, Work, Games and Recreation, Education, Belief, etc. It is her drivingquest for integrity as a Dalit and Christian that shapes the book and gives it itspolemic.

The argument of the book is to do with the arc of the narrator's spiritual developmentboth through the nurturing of her belief as a Catholic, and her gradual realization ofherself as a Dalit. We are given a very full picture of the way in which the Churchordered and influenced the lives of the Dalit Catholics. Every aspect of the child's lifeis imbued with the Christian religion. The day is ordered by religious ritual. The year ispunctuated by religious processions and festivals which become part of the natural yearlycycle of crops and seasons. But parallel to this religious life is a socio-politicalself-education that takes off from the revelatory moment when she first understands whatuntouchability means. It is this double perspective that enables her to understand thedeep rift between Christian beliefs and practice.

Bama's re-reading and interpretation of the Christian scriptures as an adult enablesher to carve out both a social vision and a message of hope for Dalits by emphasizing therevolutionary aspects of Christianity, the values of equality, social justice, and lovetowards all. Her own life experiences urge her towards actively engaging in alleviatingthe sufferings of the oppressed. When she becomes a nun, it is in the stubborn hope thatshe will have a chance to put these aspirations into effect. She discovers, however, thatthe perspectives of the convent and the Church are different from hers. The story of thatconflict and its resolution forms the core of Karukku.

In the end, Bama makes the only choice possible for her. But she also sees thebeginnings of an important change, if not in the Church's practice, yet in the graduallygrowing awareness among Dalits, of their own oppression:

But Dalits have also understood that God is not like this, has not spoken like this.They have become aware that they too were created in the likeness of God. There is a newstrength within them, urging them to reclaim that likeness which has been repressed,ruined and obliterated; and to begin to live with honour and respect and love of allhumankind. To my mind, that alone is true devotion.

Clearly she understands that her own experience is part of a larger movement amongDalits. Yet, it is interesting that she appears to come to this awareness of her ownaccord. She does not, for example, seem to have access to liberation theologians (as doesVidivelli, in a parallel autobiography, Kalakkal.) She refers neither to Ambedkarnor to Periyaar, who not only attacked the caste system, but whose remarkable speeches andwritings against the oppression of women were published in 1942 under the title PenYenh Adimaiynanat? (Why did woman become enslaved?) Nor indeed does Bama — againunlike Vidivelli — make a connection between caste and gender oppressions. Not in Karukkuat any rate; she does so, abundantly, in Sangati and elsewhere. Karukku isconcerned with the single issue of caste oppression within the Catholic Church and itsinstitutions and presents Bama's life as a process of lonely self-discovery. Bama leavesher religious order to return to her village, where life may be insecure, but where shedoes not feel alienated or compromised. The tension throughout Karukku is betweenthe self and the community: the narrator leaves one community (of religious women) inorder to join another (as a Dalit woman). Sangati takes up the story of that newcommunity.

Dalit writing — as the writers themselves have chosen to call it — has beenseen in Tamil only in the past decade, and later than in Marathi and Kannada. It has gonehand in hand with political activism, and with critical and ideological debate, spurred onby such events as the Ambedkar centenary of 1994, and the furore following the MandalCommission report.

The Tamil equivalent of the Marathi "dalit" is taazhtapattor, used inthis specific sense by Bharati Dasan in the 1930s, when he was working for the SelfRespect Movement. He uses it in the poem Taazhtapattor samattuvapaattu ("Songfor the equality of the oppressed"). Indeed the new Tamil Dalit writing constantlyrefers to the anti-caste, anti-religious speeches of E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyaar),founder of this movement. All the same, although the Tamil words taazhtapattor or odukkappattorare used in much of the literature by both — writers and critics, it issignificant that the preferred term is Dalit, implying militancy, an alliance with otherrepressed groups, and a nation-wide — or even universal — identity. ("Whoare Dalits? All those who are oppressed: all hill peoples, neo-Buddhists, labourers,destitute farmers, women, and all those who have been exploited politically, economically,or in the name of religion are Dalits." from the 1972 Manifesto of the DalitPanthers, quoted in Tamil translation in Omvedt 1994).

More recently, Raj Gautaman (1995) points to the different functions of Tamil Dalitwriting, and the different local and global readerships it addresses. First, he says, itis the function of Dalit writing to awaken in every reader, a consciousness of theoppressed Dalit, and to share in the Dalit experience as if it were their own. (Karukku,he says, is a singular example of a piece of writing which achieves this.) At the sametime, according to Gautaman, the new Dalit writing must be a Tamil and an Indian versionof a world-wide literature of the oppressed; its politics must be an active one thatfights for human rights, social justice and equality .

I think that it would also be true to say that while much of the new Tamil Dalitwriting does indeed function as Gautaman claims, and is centrally concerned with raisingan awareness of the Dalit experience, Bama's work is among those (like the work ofVidivelli, Imayam and Marku) that are exploring a changing Dalit identity. There is, inthis writing, a very powerful sense of the self and the community as Dalit, which rejectsoutright the notion of varna; and which on the other hand refuses to"sanskritize," to evaluate Dalit life-style according to mainstream Hinduvalues. But there is also a powerful sense of engagement with history, of change, ofchanging notions of identity and belonging. Bama captures a moment that contains aparadox: she seeks an identity, but seeks a change which means an end to that identity.

I must conclude by commenting briefly on Bama's use of language. Bama is doingsomething completely new in using the demotic and the colloquial regularly, as her mediumfor narration and even argument, not simply for reported speech. She uses a Dalit style oflanguage which overturns the decorum and aesthetics of received upper-class, upper-casteTamil. She breaks the rules of written grammar and spelling throughout, elides words andjoins them differently, demanding a new and different pattern of reading. Karakku also,by using an informal speech style which addresses the reader intimately, shares with thereader the author's predicament as Dalit and Christian directly, demystifying thetheological argument, and making her choice rather, a matter of conscience.

As well as this subversion of received Tamil, all Dalit writing is marked by certainother characteristics. It reclaims and remains close to an oral tradition made up ofworkchants, folk-songs, songs sung at rites of passage, as well as proverbs—and someof this tradition belongs particularly to the women's domain. Karakku, veryinterestingly, also tells a story of Tamil Dalit Catholicism in the vocabulary that ituses, particularly in the central chapter which describes her spiritual journey fromchildhood faith to her return home after departing from the convent. There is often alayering of meaning in certain words, where a Tamilized Sanskrit word is given a newCatholic meaning. For example, Tamil mantiram (sacred utterance, but also popularly, magiccharm or spell) from Sanskrit mantra becomes "catechism" in Catholic use. Henceoften there is a spin or a turn-around of meaning; a freshness in some of the coinages,and different routes and slippages in the way Catholicism has been naturalized (andsometimes not) into the Tamil of the text. It is also important to note that Bamaconsistently uses the language of popular Catholicism, eschewing very largely, theterminology of theologians.

Bama's work is not only breaking a mainstream aesthetic, but also proposing a new onewhich is integral to her politics. What is demanded of the translator and reader is, inGayatri Spivak's terms, a "surrender to the special call of the text."

This is certainly not comfortable reading for anyone. Bama is writing in order tochange hearts and minds. And as readers of her work we are asked for nothing less than animaginative entry into that different world of experience and its political struggle.

A part of chapter three, and an earlier version of the introduction appeared in Kunapipi,volume XIX, number 3, 1997, edited by Dr. Shirley Chew. My thanks to the author Bama,and to Sr. Dr. Alies Therese of Quidenham, Norfolk, for reading this translation andcommenting on it in detail.