Dalits and Discourses of Anti-Caste Movements in Kerala, India

This paper attempts to study the formation of a dalit community and identity in Kerala. Recent years have seen a spurt of dalit writings in Malayalam literature. Our interest in these writings arose with the publication of several writings in Malayalam periodicals. These writings advocated the existence of a dalit identity and community in Kerala. Here we approach this debate through a study of identity politics and community formation and in the emerging " dalit literature " of Kerala. We discuss the relationship of dalit identity formation, politicization in their representation in literature and my focus is on dalit and adivasi debates in Kerala. The debate on the dalit of Kerala has an important relationship with discussion on the Maharashtra dalit literature. We outline the debates on dalits and dalit writings in Kerala. Issues like identity formation, community formation and other issues have been taken for study. In his pioneering work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign". 1 An imagined community is different from an actual community, because it is not (and cannot be) based on ordinary face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of their likeness. A nation is an imagined community, Anderson says, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may succeed in each, the nation is always imagined as a deep, parallel comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings 2. In this chapter I see how the neo-dalit writers read the story on their own past to create a common identity which hides the differences within lower caste and class communities. We show that through a reinterpretation of history, these writers create an imagined dalit community in Kerala.

Caste inequality is a heatedly debated issue in contemporary Kerala, in stark contrast to an earlier time, when the idea that Kerala had overcome caste hierarchies through the twin strategies of social development and political mobilisation was still hegemonic. Post-1990s, political developments have pushed the question of caste back into the forefront of public debate, and 'Dalit identity politics' has been perceived as a serious threat by Kerala's powerful left parties, despite the fact that Dalit political formations are not numerically powerful. Three processes seem to be crucial in precipitating the current situation: (a) the transformation of politics itself in the mid-1990s from the 'public action' mode to the 'liberal' mode, which was rejected by the Dalits and tribal communities; (b) rapidly widening economic inequalities and rapidly crystallising elite ideological dominance led to the strengthening of abjection as a mode of marginalisation of the lower castes which is being resisted; (c) the transformation of the Malayali literary public brought to the fore questions of caste and gender that were submerged under the earlier socio-cultural consensus generated by the hegemonic Malayali national popular shaped by the communists.

The theorization of caste has transformed significantly after 1990s, especially after the presentation of Mandal Commission Report1 and the debates based on that. The debate on caste has taken many turns in rapid succession in this scenario. Before, the commonly held idea about caste was that it is a remnant of pre-modern, hierarchical, purity/pollution formation specific to Hinduism alone. But, today, this formulation is rejected and even criticized by many in the academe. Today, everyone considers caste as a live force in Indian culture, society and politics. The caste issue has resulted in the compartmentalization of the society into two sections such as dominating or submissive, based on the economic and social statuses of the individuals belonging to these sections.

Outlook India, 2023

Dalit politics in Kerala didn't arise during colonial modernity, rather it has been around for centuries. Since the medieval period, it has encountered and resisted Brahmanism. Dalit politics waged a war against Brahmanism and white colonialism in the last century and continues to do so. Though there aren't enough records about other Dalit movements before the nineteenth century, there are several literary works, including Pachalloor Pathikam and Chenganooraathi Paattu, which give us an explicit idea about cultural resistance against the Brahmanical societal system. However, in the long history of Dalit resistance and politics, it was the movements started during the last decades of the nineteenth century led by Mahatma Ayyankali and Poykayil Appachan that wreaked the most havoc on the Hindu system of social inequality. Unlike other contemporary social movements, these were fundamentally systematic, strong and concerted.

2021

In the patriarchal milieu of Kerala, the woman’s world is overshadowed by male suppression and cowed silence; the Dalit woman, however, seems to never take it lying down. As is evident from the Channar revolt of the 19 th century, Dalit women have never been silent victims in history. This is in stark contrast to the upper-caste women who tend to succumb to caste patriarchy in silence. Drawing on the Channar or Shannar women’s historic revolt for the right to cover their breasts, this paper engages with the question of Dalit women's agency in the social reform movements during the period of the Kerala renaissance. Dalit women have been essentialized into silence in Dalit and ‘Dalitist’ writings. The writings of gendered Dalits characterize the emergence of Dalit women’s voices in literary discourses. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the newly emergent Dalit feminism in Kerala has an unrecorded and unrecognized tradition of its own in the early caste struggles such as the Cha...

2021

In the patriarchal milieu of Kerala, the woman’s world is overshadowed by male suppression and cowed silence; the Dalit woman, however, seems to never take it lying down. As is evident from the Channar revolt of the 19th century, Dalit women have never been silent victims in history. This is in stark contrast to the upper-caste women who tend to succumb to caste patriarchy in silence. Drawing on the Channar or Shannar women’s historic revolt for the right to cover their breasts, this paper engages with the question of Dalit women's agency in the social reform movements during the period of the Kerala renaissance. Dalit women have been essentialized into silence in Dalit and ‘Dalitist’ writings. The writings of gendered Dalits characterize the emergence of Dalit women’s voices in literary discourses. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the newly emergent Dalit feminism in Kerala has an unrecorded and unrecognized tradition of its own in the early caste struggles such as the Chan...

History of Dalit politics in Utter Pradesh has been a fascinating topic for academic and public imagination in the recent past. As a part of this process this paper attempts to capture the Dalit politics by examining the ides and activities of associations established by Dalits and for Dalits in colonial and post colonial Utter Pradesh. The main proposition this paper advances is that Dalit collectivist activism was actively promoted by several caste associations established by Dalits in Utter Pradesh. It was this process that actively promoted the identify formation process of caste and class among Dalits. This duel identity process remained to be centrality of Dalit politics in colonial and post colonial India. In sort, this paper attempts to trace the plurality of Dalit politics in Utter Pradesh.

2013

Critical Quarterly, 2014

The earliest, though not the first, uses of the term ‘dalit’are to be found in Ambedkar’s writings. 1 Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), the major ideological source of today’s dalit politics in India, conceived the category ‘Broken Men’(a literal translation of the Marathi word dalit) in his attempt to reconstruct the history of the untouchables in India. Taking a cue from Maxim Gorky’s ideas on the shared space between science and literature, Ambedkar believed that historiography was not a practice defined by the primacy of archival evidence; rather it is a creative art, and history, a work of art. 2 He tried to grasp the reasons for the Hindu–untouchable divide as a product of the historical dialectic.