how Dalit literature emerged and how Dalit writers are practicing to achieve their mottos

         how Dalit literature emerged and how Dalit writers are practicing to achieve their mottos

Conclusion

In the preceding chapters, an attempt has been made to examine how Dalit literature emerged and how Dalit writers are practicing to achieve their mottos. In the process, the features of Dalit Writers of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have represented the suffering of Dalit women in the hands of patriarchal society. The view of Dalit women’s life conveyed in Dalit literature is different from the world of experience expressed hitherto. A new world, a new society, a new perspective, and a new human being have been revealed in Dalit literature. The reality of Dalit literature has the uncouth, the unrefined language of the Dalits. Dalit literature in Tamil Nadu also has its influence on criticism, Periyarism, Marxism, and other influential thinkers. It is a voice against casteism, which paves the way for untouchability. Literature and aesthetics go hand in hand; moreover, aesthetics occupies the second stage. Both are interconnected, Tamil literature has the aesthetical attachment in all forms. Discrimination in all means makes the Dalits protest against all evils. Dalit aesthetics is different from others. It is derived from past history. It is firmly based on change and protest in literature.

According to Dalit writers and leaders, a change is an essence for the desire for justice to all men in the world. At present, a Dalit individual seeks a complete social and cultural freedom with the help of their self-elevation and self- identification. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar said that after centuries of suppression, the Dalits are in the struggle for emancipation under the Liberation Movement. Dalit writings are the tools for social construction. The marginalized society became creative and progressed in this hostile society. The literal word ‘Dalit’ is used widely nowadays. But in another way, it is misunderstood in various senses. People uphold India – culturally, traditionally all through decades together, but the so-called upper cast people claimed themselves as superior and divided fellow human beings in the name of caste. Gandhi used ‘Harijan to denote suppressed people, where

as Dr. Ambedkar used the word ‘Dalit’ in all his writings and speeches. The scattered people who were named downtrodden suffer in the hands of upper-class people in all the means of life and still exist in different forms.

Dalit literature in India is a movement, a revolutionary struggle for social and economic changes. The primary motive of Dalit literature is the liberation of Dalits in particular and the liberation of the oppressed in general. It is fundamentally a cultural activity coming under the broad movements of Dalit political liberation. It is cultural politics and takes the form of protest. Dalit writers make a fervent plea for a complete overhaul of society. Like Black literature, Dalit writing is characterized by a new level of pride, militancy, creativity, and above all, it sought to use writing as a weapon. Dalit Literary Movement is not a Literal Movement, but the logo of change and revolution, the primary aim is the liberation of Dalits. It was a type of seditious expression against the establishment of the educated youth of those days. The Dalit youths gained motivation from the black movements of the far land of North America. Their literature, ` Black Panther,` became the role model for them. This protest against the establishment of the Dalits gained the very first expression amidst the Dalit literature. In the midst of the cobweb of poems, fiction, novels, dramas, and autobiographies, the age-old questions of Dalit identity were addressed. Although it started in an unorganized way, the Dalit Literary Movement gained pace with the active support of Dr. B, R. Ambedkar. History bears witness that it was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who is still esteemed as the pioneer of Dalit literature. It is no twist of fate that the Dalit literary movement sowed its first roots in Maharashtra, the birthplace of Dr. Ambedkar`s movement. His revolutionary ideas stirred into action all the Dalits of Maharashtra and lent them with self-respect.

Dalit women have been misrepresented in Indian literature and Indian English literature. Most of the upper caste male writers are biased towards Dalit women. They are portrayed as the victims of the lust of the higher caste men and never as rebels to fight against the injustices perpetrated upon them. Even in the writings of the progressive writers, such as Mulk Raj Anand, Premchand and so on, Dalit women are either molested or raped by the upper caste men. By depicting such pictures, writers gained sympathy for the victims, but such routinely kind of treatment is not enough. They have completely ignored the fact that Dalit women can also resist and fight back like any other victim of social oppression to guard their dignity. Thus, in other literature, a Dalit woman is never a fighter but always a victim. In order to counter- struggle the misrepresentations of Dalit women in Indian English literature, the first generation of Dalit writers constructed Dalit women in Dalit literature writes: The female characters in Dalit Literature are dynamic and not static. Dalit writers do not look upon widows, prostitutes, depraved women, as Dalit, the exploited, with compassion alone, but they make them towards radiance.

Dalit women’s sexuality is an important theme of creative concern in Tamil Dalit literature. Dalit writers discuss the containment of Dalit women’s sexuality from the pre-puberty stage to menopause by family and caste-bound society. Dalit women are not allowed to attend school after attaining puberty, are subjected to sexual assaults by much older husbands. They are sexually harassed by their fathers-in-law, brothers-in-law if they are widowed, are subjected to regular beatings by alcoholic husbands, and are loaded with heavy labour at home and in the fields besides taking over the nurturing of numerous children and the aged. Almost all Dalit writers a similar graph of a Dalit woman’s life’s style. Sexual assaults at home and rape at a workplace or custodial rape are the most encountered experience of Dalit women. Dalit writers foreground such a sexually repressive and oppressive social structure that invades the domestic as well as prevails over the social space. Their writing calls attention to the collusion of caste hegemony and patriarchal structure, which seek to control a Dalit woman’s sexual life and conduct.

Dalit socio, economic, cultural aspects of society pose a direct effect on Dalit literature. Dalit women’s literature comes from everyday life and everyday living. Patriarchal society has a lot of impact on how the living of these women based on gender discrimination. There is always a loophole in the equality aspect. Dalit literature mostly emerged from the atrocities done to them. The hierarchical imposition of rules leads to the deterioration of their living conditions. The caste system was questioned. Dalits never had the opportunity to worship in temples. It leads to the insecurity feeling, which otherwise leads to the adoption of foreign gods to worship. This lead to the total change in their livelihood. The marginalization of women and the lack of voice against atrocities resulted in Dalit literature by women. When women writers of Dalit community stood on the lines of feminism and took the stance of making the voice of the unheard find a place for echo, Dalit literature came into existence. The literature that flowed out from the pens of these writers displays the position of Dalit women and how they are treated.

Tamil Dalit literature is mainly concerned with casteism, and discrimination remains the basis of literature. Dalit patriarchy is an important subject of concern in Tamil Dalit literature. It witnessed a rather late start in Tamil as compared to its counterpart in Marathi or Kannada. As a result, the theorization of Dalit writing has not yet been put in place. Such a critical exercise requires to be evolved at the earliest to keep pace with a vibrant, multi-faceted, articulate, and radically innovative Dalit creative output in Tamil in recent years. The Dravidian politics that made its presence felt in Tamil Nadu state provisional pop during the nationalist movement and the subsequent coming to power of political parties consumed by Dravidian ideology. The period ranging from the sixties to the eighties of the twentieth century led to an effective silencing of the Dalit voice in the literary domain.

Dalit literature is in Tamil voices concern over friction among the various Dalit communities. It points out that intra-Dalit strife strengthens the hands of the upper caste, landed class, and the vote garnering politicians. Warning against the tendency to homogenize to convert into material that is of uniform quality or consistency throughout; to render homogeneous.  Dalits at large, thereby easing their distinctive culture and differences in lifestyle, beliefs, customs, and economic position. Nevertheless,  Dalit literature underscores the need to bury differences among Dalit groups and offer an organized, united resistance to social, political oppression of their community. Dalit writers experiment in terms of genres and expand the limits of literary language to include spoken, conversational, an earthy vocabulary of the marginalized. Their use of folklore, legend, myths, swearwords renders their narratives closer to everyday life. They argue that their works require an alternative aesthetic paradigm that is aware of Dalit lifestyle and experiential realities. The atrocity that pervades Dalit lives invades their literary expression, and they trounce hegemonic, traditional, mainstream literary aesthetic parameters and surge ahead to formulate a fresh, alternative, innovative, radical literary idiom.

Caste and gender discrimination for Dalits does not end if they get proper education and unity with themselves.   Dual oppression of Dalit women on the grounds of caste and gender forms an important issue of concern in Tamil Dalit literature. This self-reflexivity of Dalit discourse stands out as a distinctive mark of Tamil Dalit literature. Poets, playwrights, short story writers, autobiographers, and novelists repeatedly foreground the gender-caste intersection in Dalit lives. Representation of Dalit women is an integral aspect of Tamil Dalit literature in terms of space and voice granted to Dalit women characters. Dalit women characters are portrayed as lively, vibrant, earthy, witty, hard-working women who have the inner strength to face crises and work tirelessly at home and outside. Their songs, dances, community cooking at weddings bring out their innate talent. Dalit women characters often outnumber Dalit male characters even in plays even though women’s presence in theatre has been traditionally far less noticeable. Dalit women writers are called diamonds, and they are born and brought up in misery, discrimination, and adversity and come out stronger through their books and activism. Their writing gives an in-depth view of their struggle. Women across the world and especially in rural Tamil Nadu, have met challenges to get themselves educated, and for a Dalit woman, it is doubly hard. The few women who got themselves educated and wrote came out with work in forms of books which were, to a great extent, autobiographical, slanting towards feminism, and also were considered mainly as a movement of the women to come out of the oppressive norms.

The first chapter,  “Introduction, ” dealt with features of Dalit literature as well as characteristics of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Dalit writer’s writings. It is also analyses of Dalit writer’s writings like poetry, dramas, autobiographies, novels, and short stories and its treatment of atrocity and violence concerning Dalit literature and how the fragmented form of their writings supplements to the representations of the disrupted lives of the Dalits makes the present study relevant.

The second chapter, “Review of Literature,” described that a review of the historical framework of the Dalit, Dalit concern for the issue of the Dalit women and an examination of critical studies published on Dalit writer’s writings are discussed. Various critics have expressed different views on the theme of atrocity and violence in their writings. Still, much has not been said about their treatment of issues related to the atrocities of Dalit women. Moreover, critics have little attention to the fragmented form of their writings, which supplements the disrupted themes they deal with their writings.

The third chapter, “Dalit Literature in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry: An Overview,” portrayed that how Dalit literature was developed from Dalit movements, how it influenced the African writer’s writings, and how Tamil Dalit literature has emerged in the late twentieth century. This chapter also concentrated on an important development in the contemporary Tamil literary scene was the emergence of the Dalit literary movement at the turn of the 1990s. Though initially, literary criticism provided the cutting edge to the Dalit literary movement, Dalit creative writers have since asserted themselves. Dalit writers have to reclaim and develop these art forms, retaining sharply and without compromising to mainstream tastes, particularly Dalit features of spectacle, mask, gesture, and language. This concept of Dalit culture sets up an alternate classicism for Dalit on oral traditions. This chapter also discussed how many writers like Sivakami, Bama, Meena Kandasamy, Abimani, Gunasekaran, Imayam, and many others came to prominence. Through their writings, the Dalit voice could be heard, and the world felts their presence.

The fourth chapter, “Atrocities on Women in Dalit Literature,” concentrated on various themes related to women’s atrocity in the caste-ridden society. Almost all Dalit women writers, in all genres, write a similar graph of a Dalit woman’s life. Sexual assaults at home and rape at the workplace or custodial rape are the most encountered experience of Dalit women. Dalit writers foreground such a sexually repressive and oppressive social structure that invades the domestic as well as prevails over the social space. Their writing calls attention to the collusion of caste hegemony and patriarchal structure, which seek to control a Dalit woman’s sexual life and conduct. Dalit writers find that a Dalit woman is forced to live life according to the terms and conditions laid down by the domineering patriarchy.

The fifth Chapter, “Atrocities on Women in Dalit Poetry,” explored that Dalit poets assert their identity and the pride they take in it. They emphasize their right to be treated as equals to their fellow mortals who claim themselves to be the more equals among human beings. The protagonist of a Dalit poem is usually projected as a rebel ‘standing up against subjugation, humiliation, and atrocities’ and it is also shown at times, as ‘singing intoxicated of the dawn of a new life.’ Tamil women poets have been prolific writers and have emerged as the articulation of an Indian voice. They have met with stiff opposition for the social space that has always excluded women from any form of sexual dialogue. Women always face atrocities from men. Equality is only preached, but not put into practice. Dalit women face more atrocity every day, and they will continue to do so until society changes and accepts them as equals. The most notable Dalit poets who fight for Dalit women equality in Tamil Nadu are, Meena Kandasamy, Sivakami,   Kutti Revathi, Sukirtharani, Aranga Malliga, Malathi Maithri and Uma Devi among women. By speaking of the contemporary experiences of Tamil Dali women, these poets have given a voice to emotions that were rarely acknowledged in Tamil Dalit poetry.

The sixth Chapter, “Atrocities on Women in Dalit Dramas,” portrayed that Tamil Dalit theatre focused the politics of Dalits in the whole space. Dalit ideology, politics, feminism, social status, culture, and aesthetics started to spread its rays universally. The social conditions of Dalits are highlighted, and it is the key influential factor of Dalit theatre. Tamil Dalit dramatist K.A. Gunasekaran has all his merits as a dramatist. He presents different themes, especially women, the atrocity in which represent real-life situations through his dramas. In his plays, Gunasekaran brings in feminist notions of androgyny, the subjugation of the female body, and the celebration of otherness without shifting focus from the plight of women in general and Dalit women in particular. Gunasekaran’s Bali Aadugal (The Scapegoats) explores the interlocking of gender and caste discriminations. It developed the landed and priestly power conspire to offer a human sacrifice to appease the village deity. They trap a man to act a willing sacrificial goat, but a eunuch aids him to flee the village. While Dalits are not allowed to enter the temple sanctum, Dalits are offered as ‘Nara Bali,’ human sacrifice by upper-caste – Priesthood – panchayat bodies. They have chosen a Dalit woman for the sacrifice, is given no name, and is simply referred to as “Uduman’s wife.”

In Tottil  Todangi, Gunasekaran underscores the need for Dalit women’s participation in electoral democracy and the sharing of political power. Politician’s henchmen murder an elected woman representative as they refuse to ‘take orders from a woman.’ Police officials take Dalit women into unlawful custody, rape them at the police station to settle scores against their father or husbands who managed to evade the police net. In Paraiyai Pilanthu Kondu,Gunasekaran portrays what will happen when a society is conquered and subjected to exploitation. In addition to the plundering of the resources available in the society, the women become easy targets and are sexually molested and raped as part of the privileges of the conquerors. The Play Change is about the problems and sufferings of transgender people in a merciless society which deprives them of the right to lead a dignified life. It also depicts the sufferings of transgender people in government hospitals who are made to run from pillar to post in order to get medical treatment. They are chased away like dogs as there is no exclusive ward for transgender people.

The seventh chapter, “Atrocities on Women in Dalit Autobiography,” explained that Dalit’s autobiographer gives more importance to communal life rather than individual life. They are concerned with the pathetic condition of fellow Dalits. Dalit Autobiographies portrays the contemporary situation of the deprived, disabled, and offers an account of poverty and exclusion of Dalits. The oppression, struggle, assertion, deprivation of economic power and social welfare, benefits by reservation policy, and a quest for identity of the individual are the subject matter of Dalit Autobiographies. In Bama’s  Kurukku,  The Dalit women were compelled to voice their misery doubled up due to caste and gender discrimination. Dalit women are forced to put up with economic violence at male hands. She urges upon Dalits to educate themselves, read the Bible on their own, and recognize Jesus as a defender of the oppressed. Dalit writers in Tamil place an enormous emphasis on the possibilities of the empowerment of Dalits through education. The Scar is a life narrative of Gunasekaran; it strongly establishes a sense of the self of not only an individual (himself) but also his community as Dalit, which unhesitatingly rejects the notion of Varna and refuses to evaluate his lifestyle by the mainstream Hindu values. Gunasekaran’s mother is educated but not allowed to go for a job. She is confined to the home, and in order to meet both ends occasionally sells movie tickets in front of cinema halls. Still, when women are prohibited from watching films, she has to go collecting firewood for cooking. The purity of women, who is a carrier of the womb, has a centrality in Brahminical patriarchy, simply because the very purity of caste is dependent upon it. Gunasekaran also discussed the myth prevalent in his village of the murder of Michael Amma, who fell in love with an upper-caste boy. He then narrates the story of Thangarasu and Tamilarasi, who wisely left the country to settle abroad to save their lives after inter-caste marriage: The idea that the village exists because of caste must change, only then will intercaste marriages be possible.

The eighth Chapter, “Atrocities on Women in Dalit Fiction,” delineated that  Dalit novels are concerned with the pathetic condition of the Dalits. It helps dalits to be alert and struggle for their rights, which are denied to them by the so-called upper castes. Dalit novels are sources of Dalits’ social reality in contemporary India. Sexual violence on women at the workplace is an important theme that is interrogated by the novelist. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change projects some erosion of upper caste power through the portrayal of certain educated characters who are oblivious of caste hegemonies and power relations. The novel also explores significant gender issues such as the notion of the Dalit woman’s body and her vulnerability to different forms of exploitation, as is evinced through Thangam’s character. Bama novels also focus on male supremacy and violence by the men against the women of her community. She wonders if it is a strategy of self-gratification that the men achieve by way of wielding power and authority over their women because it was absent otherwise in their lives. In Sangati, Bama very realistically brings out the sufferings and agonies of Dalit women. She admits that all women are a slave to men; however, Dalit women are the worst sufferers. They have to bear the torment of upper caste masters in the fields and at home the violence of their husbands. Bama’s Vanmam is not the usual novel of atrocities against Dalits. However, atrocities are depicted, particularly the brutality of the police against women when they cannot vent their rage on the absconding men.

Imaiyam’s novels explore that Dalit women are shown to be subjected to sexual harassment, in law, verbal or physical behaviour of a sexual nature, aimed at a particular person or group of people, especially in the workplace. Poor Dalit women workers, like washerwomen, are raped by the upper caste patrons, and they are forced to keep silent so as not to lose their livelihood, for example, Mary in The Beast of Burden. Imaiyam novels depict how Dalit women are forced to commodify themselves to stave off poverty and help themselves and their dependents survive. In his novel, Arumugam, Imaiyam depicts Dalit women who have to work as commercial sex workers to meet two ends, but have internalized a moral value system that renders them torn between the ethical and the pragmatic. Their maternal cravings remain unfulfilled and often, as in the case of Chinnaponnu, meet a cruel, violent death at the hands of their clients over an argument regarding their professional fee. Meena Kandasamy novel When I Hit You is the story of a marriage gone terribly wrong, a relationship of equals descending into the hell of total domination — the man controlling the wife’s thoughts, actions, even intentions. It is the story of a young woman who would not be the perfect doormat. Salvation from such a marriage can only lie in one person: the woman herself. In The Gypsy Goddess, is given some connections might be established between this mythical figure and the character of Maayi. The old woman upon whom it falls to hold her village people together after the massacre, there is no way in which readers can unquestionably relate this cult goddess to any specific character in the novel.

The ninth Chapter, “Atrocities on Women in Dalit Short Story,” explored that Dalit Short stories offer an insight into the lives of downtrodden groups. Dalit writers have used it as a powerful tool to underscore oppression of Dalits, their fight against their oppressors as well as to point out certain regressive anomalies within the Dalit community. Sivakami‘s first collection of the short story, Naalum Thodarum, brings to attention Sivakami’s firm grasp of gender and caste interface within specific class structures. Her another story, “Ore Oru Oorile Ore Oru Anna” depicts how sons grow up more privileged than daughters and also how parents, especially mothers, pamper them but are pretty hard upon daughters. Bama’s Kisumbukkaran is explicitly used to describe a character in the title piece, a man renowned for his mischief-making. But it applies to many other people in the

collection as well; for a common thread in these stories is the refusal by some members of the lower-caste Dalit community to know to their “masters,” the upper-caste landlords. In her second collection, Oru Thathavum Erumaiyum highlights many social evils such as untouchability, slavery, exploitation, and the abject capitulation of the Dalits to the upper caste. Bama exposes the mind of the victim, Ramayi, whose father Muthukaruppan drowned in his effort to save the cow. Ramayi, the elder daughter of Muthukaruppan, expresses happiness to her friends over the hundred rupees given by their owner, not worrying about her father’s death. Abimani’s collection of short story Thettam, depicts that Dalit women as workers – industrious, honest, and invariably underpaid. His other collection, Oorchoru captures the lives of Dalit workers – male and female who are insulted and exploited by upper-caste landlords.

Abimani also shows how upper-caste women disregard Dalit men even while not fighting shy of using them either for their sexual needs or to combat social pressures over delivering an heir for their impotent husbands in “Padukkai” (In bed). His stories are an interesting variant on Dalit discourse that foregrounds gender pressures over Dalit women.  Unjai Rajan’s short story collection, Egiru depicts how Dalit women get beaten up by their husbands at home. After a day of hard labour in the fields, tending to the cattle and cooking for a large family, the tired woman refuses sex to her drunken husband, who bashes her up severely. Sexual exploitation of Dalit women workers at the workplace and sexual violence at the hands of husbands at home forms a subject of concern in many Dalit short-stories. Imayam’s short story titled The Binding Vow highlights the protagonist Ponnuruvi, a young girl who is impregnated by the landlord’s son. When the caste elders decide to get them married, they are cruelly betrayed. Ponnuruvi’s body is found floating in the tank used by the upper caste people. Since Ponnuruvi’s father is no more, her mother is left to fend for herself. Soon, there is a small shrine at the foot of the banyan tree. After a few years, the place becomes a place that takes on the appearance of a pilgrimage spot, especially just before Pongal. The belief is that Poonuruvi Sami, as she is referred to, is the one who sends the much-awaited rains around Pongal. Young women visit her shrine with bangles and kumkum and pray for the long life of their husbands. All the short stories are portrayed and rooted in conflict and use the language of a struggle.

The tenth Chapter, “conclusion,” presents the summing up of the previous chapter’s discussion and the findings of the study. It establishes that Dalit writers present the disrupted lives of the Dalits through the characters though they are spatially or culturally separated from mainstream society.

Dalit literature is nothing but the literary expression of their consciousness. However, Dalit literature is always marked by revolt and negativism, as it is intimately linked with hopes for freedom of a group of people who are as “untouchables,” and they are unfortunate bunches of social, economic, and cultural inequality.  Thus, the translations of Tamil Dalit and local texts into English become authentic representations of that culture for consumption by “First World” readers and academics with a post-colonial bent. Translation helps in exposing the continuation of untouchability, and Dalit readers could see their own pain in the texts.  It has meant to both shock and shame for non-Dalit readers in order to inspire change and to invoke a sense of constitutional justice and social responsibility. The pain of caste discrimination humiliation and physical violence, which is otherwise ignored in public discourse, is re-presented within the target text and thus gains a global representation.

Findings:

              Dalit’s experienced narratives are very distinct and differ from non-Dalit narratives in several ways. The non-Dalit writer’s writings end with body unsettled emotions. Whereas Dalit writing ends with the uncertain future of Characters. With the influence of various western literature, writers, and politicians, these Dalit authors recorded their experienced life stories in order to make awareness among fellow Dalits. The text and content stand in the neck and neck as the idea of “founders of discursivity.” Dalit writers are triggering opportunities for further research on the Dalit literature for the younger generation. Indeed, all the poets, dramatists, autobiographers, novelists, and short story writers have advocated education and self-reliance. The social analysis of these Dalit genres leads to the understanding of contemporary Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Dalit women’s atrocities, conditions, inhuman experience, and their emotions through the discourses. They were rooted in Dalit culture and caste. They also give optimistic measurements for the young generation.

The previous chapters’ discussion is reflected in the real social condition of Dalits is the main source of the writer’s inspiration in creating a literary workably doing so, the society will be more concerned with every benefit of the social phenomena. Each author can purposively express his or her response by assembling the message through his or her writings. Here, what stands out, in the end, is that Dalit writers are sublime creations, which bring about lamentable pains and sufferings and the evolution of personal consciousness beyond human understanding.