Voice for Voiceless The Pedagogical Experiment of Savi Sawarkar

THAAP : Culture art and architecture of the marginalized and the poor

PhiN Supplement 13/2017 Edited by Karin Peters, Lisa Zeller and Julia Brühne, 2017

Dealing with the contemporary question of identity politics in India based on caste, the essay engages with the affective realm that determines the postulation of visual practices of Dalits in "public/popular art", which has been neglected. On one hand, 'Dalit visual culture' has been overlooked (perhaps due to artistic or cultural parameters of purity and pollution) by upper-caste elites from established categories of highbrow cultural production in India. But, on the other hand, the idea of 'culture' has been played out vigorously as an essential marker which at least symbolically enables Dalits to proclaim their pedagogical wealth in artifact, history and politics within an extremely hierarchized and caste-ridden society. Implicitly, this paper therefore explores how an expanded economy of affect has provided meaning to the Dalit world to expound a cultural significance and articulations through the images that embody their social stigma, misery, humiliation, etc., as well as values inherent in their mission and protest. There's nothing wrong in being grateful to great men…but there are limits to grate-fulness…in politics, bhakti, or hero-worship, is a sure road to degradation and eventual dictatorship.

Bhimayana is a graphic novel that narrates Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s experi- ences of being discriminated against. Using a graphic form inspired by Pardhan Gond art, Bhimayana breaks popular conventions of graphic narratives published in the West. The narrative of Bhimayana is inter- laced with contemporary events and brings to life Ambedkar’s story in a compelling way while retaining its subtleties. In this interview, S. Anand reveals that although the book was not planned for children, it has poten- tial as a pedagogical tool for exploring questions about caste-based dis- crimination. Anand talks about the book, its relevance in contemporary times, Dr Ambedkar and his journey in engaging with the issue of caste- based discrimination.

An Artist Dragged Down by Caste and Patriarchy: A Reading of Aarpar Layit Pranantik Reconstruction of an egalitarian society can be had only on the basis of the ideology of the deconstructed. The Indian caste -system and patriarchy, the two sides of the same coin have not only degraded human beings but also the energy within them to create and construct. These forces made huge India dalit. Patriarchy, the natural offspring of the caste system, with the inherited terror, made the female gender of the degraded section pitiably miserable. The distorted dalit woman under such hostile social milieu had to sacrifice all her humanity and creativity only for a stigmatized life. Aarpar Layit Pranantik (Through Rhythmic Intense) is a long bio-poem by Pradnya Pawar on a tempestuous personality named Withaa Bhau Maang Narayangaonkar. The poem exposes the obstructed life of a dalit versatile womanartist in the field of Tamashaa, a popular folk-form of public education and entertainment in Maharashtra. The paper attempts to show how the untoucable artis under the caste and patriarchy ridden hostile milieu sustained her will and ultimately surfaced victorious. Keywords: caste, patriarchy, gender, tamashaa, dalit, untouchable, maang, mahaar, brahmin and hindu.

2016

this is my PhD thesis .i completed in 2016. extensive research was done in Nepal and India.. premier and sole research on Nepalese Dalit Political Art

2017

• Stuff from yonder / here i'm already fading away [coisas de lá / aqui já está sumindo eu]

Prajakta Palav’s practice comprises accomplished paintings, as well as empathetic community art interventions. This essay concentrates on the paintings, as well as residues and ephemera emerging from her dialogue with the people of Konkan Nagar, in Bombay’s eastern suburb of Bhandup. While it is plausible to gloss Palav’s practice by reference to Situationist or ‘relational aesthetics’, I would like to think that the more proximate and sustaining affinity lies not with readymade art-historical rubrics, but with impulses in the artist’s local ethos. I am thinking, here, of her spiritual affinity with the literature of the Bhakti saint poets and, especially in the case of this project, with the work of the 20th-century saint and reformer Gadge Maharaj, who travelled across the villages of Maharashtra advocating cleanliness; in Gandhian fashion, he cleaned dirty drains himself, setting an example for his followers. This essay of mine must be read alongside chapter 5, ‘Devolution: The Artist-Citizen Redistributes her Privileges’ (pp. 245-256) in my book, The Thirteenth Place: Positionality as Critique in the Art of Navjot Altaf (Bombay: The Guild Art Gallery, 2016), where I have engaged with this question of the readymade art-historical template versus the organically drafted regional itinerary. In The Thirteenth Place, I question the default use of a generic discourse on collaborative art, and instead, ground the evolving practices of Navjot and her artist colleagues, Rajkumar and Shantibai in Bastar, in region-specific circumstances and choices. *

This paper attempts to examine the struggles and sufferings of the Dalits for their survival and the space created by them in the Hindu society in the light of English version of K. A. Gunasekaran's Tamil autobiographical novel Vadu as a novel portraying the culture, manners, oppression, Dalit identity, existence as well as struggles for survival of Dalits who are double-oppressed by own people in Tamilnadu in the milieu of Christian, Muslim and Hindu communities. Also, the Dalits (Parayar, Chakliar etc.) become in the novel as representative of down-trodden and suppressed milieu. The novel sensitises the readers to millions of tortured indigenous people all over the world. Though the novel has its form as autobiographical but it represents to whole of the Dalit community or society of India. Gunasekaran narrates the familiar tale of caste-oppression and prevalent prejudices in the villages of Tamilnadu with the three communities. It not only narrates but ridicules the unjust practices of the superiority of upper caste people in the name of Hindu caste-system. It also emphasises on the fact that Indian villages are doubly caste-conscious and cruel. At last, it also focuses how the narrator empowers himself and emancipates from these unjust practices. Though the novel does not cover the life time experiences of Gunasekaran but upto his graduation. He asserts: I have related my experiences upto my college days in this account. The experiences I have had since the time, my involvement in Marxist movements, my journey down the arts lane, do not figure in this book. [...] For others, this book is an introduction to dalit life. [...] I wrote about discrimination practices that I had suffered; sometimes tears flowed.