Angst, Anger and Pride in Dalit Urban Poetry Dr.

Rajnish Mishra the hopes and aspirations of the exploited masses, the problem of untouchability , the exploitation of Dalit women by higher caste men, are the themes of Dalit l iterature. The aim of Dalit writers is to expose the evil of caste system and in justice done to them by higher castes. The Dalit writers write what they see, fe el and think in the social environment (Trivedi 4). Gangadher Pantwane defines Dalit as: To me, Dalit is not a caste He is a man exploited by the social and economic traditions of this country. He does not believe in God, Rebirth, soul, Holy books teaching separatism, fate and heaven because they have made him a slave. He does believe in humanism. Dalit is a symbol of change and revolution. (pp. 2-3) Let us go to the village O Jamni I want to buy a gun gun? why Jivali? are you mad? Why do you need a gun? Ali Jamni, you do not know Poor Shambuk was meditating and practicing vedas And then? Rama killed him mercilessly. Now I want to shoot Rama and also I want to kill Drona who demanded Eklavyas thumb as Gurudakshina. (Pandya 6) The spirit of writing by Dalits is a kind of social protest where readers become aware of the experiences of the oppressed (Paul 67). Where all paths lead horizonward But to me were barred Your body covered With generations of dire poverty. Your head pillowed On constant need Rivers break their banks Lakes brim ove And you, one of the human race must shed blood struggle and strike for a palmful of water. Ispit on this great civilization

(Rokade pp 1-2) The anger and hatred that fill these lines from the poem, One Day I Cursed that G od, up to the brim are unmistakably clear: Would you wipe the sweat from your bony body With your mothers ragged sari? Would you work as a pimp To keep her in booze? O, father, oh god the father! You could never do such things. First youd need a motherOne no one honours, One who toils in the dirt, (Meshram qtd. in Paul 72) Im the sea, I soar, I surge. I move out to build your tombs. The winds, storms, sky, earth. Now all are mine. In every inch of the rising struggle I stand erect. (J. V. Pawar, I Have Become the Tide qtd. in Paul 76) Arjun Dangle, in his Introduction to A Corpse in the well, proclaims: Dalit poetr y is the impassioned voice of the third generation of the Ambedkarite movement. It can be seen standing up against subjugation, humiliation and atrocities; can be heard singing, intoxicated, of the dawn of a new life (xi)

Many things have changed with the passage of time but the power words have over human minds remains unaltered and undiminished. Poetry communicates the living, pulsating life-experiences and aims at bringing about change, especially when it is committed to a cause. In a wholly racialized society, there is no escape from racially inflected language, and the work writers do to unhobble the imaginatio n from the demands of the language is complicated, interesting and definitive (Pa ul 60). Aboriginal Australian and Dalit Indian poets and poems take a stance tha t is predominantly committed. They are driven by the dominant current of reactio ns against an exploitative system. They assert an individual or caste or racialethnic pride same as the various movements of the coloured peoples of the United States, South Africa or many other parts of the world do. Australian blacks and Indian Dalits, who sometimes refer to their blackness too, have a core resembla nce: they have been and are very heavily discriminated against. These peoples wh ose voices had been suppressed for a long time, and who had been marginalized co mpletely, had a Blakean choice before them. They can either create their own sys tem or follow that of the others. Instead of choosing to live as branded infra hum ans in a malevolent and maleficent system, they opt for liberty(limited initiall y but finally full) and equality, if not fraternity with amity, to begin with. Only God has the hypothetical power of creating matter ex nihilo. He is the only exception to the law: Nothing will come out of nothing. All human products of ima gination are definitely the outcome of the creative processes of human mind, but that site of creation (the subject as an entity) is itself the point where vari ous intersecting lines of effect meet. It is a very interesting thing when two p eoples separated by several hundred miles of oceans, without any definite and pr ominent socio-cultural exchange, produce literature that has themes that may be called mirror images, albeit with unique features of their own. This paper focus es only on the poems of the Australian Aborigines and Indian Dalits in English o r translated into it from various Indian languages. The history of oppression by the fair skinned man although differing in details and extent is shared by the Australian black and Indian brown-black peoples. Off

icially, India became a free country in 1947, so did the Dalits, in theory. Offi cially Australia changed its governmental assimilationist stance to the multicul tural one in the 1970s, so its indigenous people were recognized as equal humans with rights to dignity and liberty, in theory. The ground reality is different i n both the countries. Untouchability was decreed unconstitutional in India on pa per but the people of that caste were never freed of the stigma in practice. The y continued being the unpurchased slaves of the upper castes because of the mono lithic social structure of India. There is an uncanny parallel between the cours es of the history of subjugation and exploitation of the two peoples. The respon ding voices are a legion, but their core concerns are pronounced and clear, as i s evident from an analysis of the poetry of the Australian Aborigine and the Ind ian Dalit. The hitherto dormant volcano of their hearts erupts and the lava of t heir anger, discontent, frustration and angst flows out with force as in J. V. P awars Birds in prison: Shouting slogans to condemn or uphold a blaze of fire marches forth And forest fires take birth in oceans that seek to oppose. What obstacle shall now withhold Our turning volcanic vein by vein digging trenches every inch of the terrain? (41) The age old system of oppression and discrimination finds staunch opposition. Ju st like the Dalits, the Australian Aborigines too had been silenced by the force s beyond their control because just as the Crowns acquisition of 1770 had made sov ereign Aboriginal land terra nullius, it also made aboriginal people vox nullius (Heiss and Minter 8). Their poems assert their identity and the pride they take in it. They also emphasize their right to be treated as equals to their fellow m ortals who claim themselves to be the more equals among the equals. The dispossessed, those whose dignity was snatched away, reclaim it and dont hesi tate to snatch it back from the usurpers even violently, if the occasion demands it. Women, the doubly dispossessed, the subaltern among the subalterns, the inv isible, yet irritatingly present entities of this discourse, have been subjected to the worse kind of oppression. Their voice is heard amid the tumultuous uproa r of multitudinous voices. In fact, it has never been silenced completely. The D alit women have never been so effectively silenced as their middle class counter parts from Hindu upper castes. The oral and performative aspects of their expres sions cannot be discounted as they have had a strong tradition of lavanis and ta mashas where they have presented their thoughts candidly, although they are new to the expression in the form of printed words. History is theirs who have the power and means to write it. The marginalized sub altern never gets the centre stage. Where all action is shown in progress they r emain invisible as always. As Fanon or Malcolm X proclaimed, these voices assert t hat violence must be employed if needed, against the exploiters whose best inter est is in maintaining the status quo through perpetuation of their hegemony. It is the process of maintaining the hegemony that has taken a lot of ideological s upport and practical methods that have congealed into policies. The policy of as similation by dilution of the black racial traits through repeated exogamy was a matter of central concern for the white man, but it destabilized the identity o f the watered down Australian Aborigine: When two half-castes bred and bore a son or daughter, / The Koori connection was cut to a quarter (Smith, B qtd. in Heiss 45). The same process also generated protest and assertion of the self-identity and pride: I have no problem with who I am Not black, not white a quarter-caste as they sayI cannot choose a side, I will not be made to, my life is not a game. Not black, not white, thats why I write I am not ashamed. (Carr qtd. in Heiss 46) Like the Australian Aborigine, the Indian Dalit too had to face a challenge to h is caste identity and responded in various manners. The spirit of the preceding

piece of Aboriginal poetry is similar to that of the questioning of the fact tha t there is an algorithm of converting a shudra girl into a Brahmin but none for the conversion of a Dalit one: Begin. Step 1: Take a beautiful Shudra girl. Step 2: Make her marry a Brahmin. Step 3: Let her give birth to his female child. Step 4: Let this child marry a Brahmin. Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 six times. Step 6: Display the end product. It is a Brahmin. End. Algorithm advocated by Father of the Nation at Tirupur. Documented by Periyar on 20.09.1947. Algorithm for converting a Pariah into a Brahmin Awaiting another Father of the Nation to produce this algorithm. (Inconvenience caused due to inadvertent delay is sincerely regretted.) (Kandasamy, Meena) There are differences in the themes and concerns of the poetry of the two people s as there are differences in their specific individual conditions in their coun tries. The Indian Dalit hadnt had to face the curse of the stolen children, the r isk of extermination (simply not a viable alternative, economically, for the upp er caste people, as they lose those who do their free and dirtiest jobs), or tha t of assimilation (it would mean the dilution of the much valued pure blood). Th erefore their poetry does not have the scars of those traumas. Specificities not withstanding, the insults, wounds and scars these peoples share give their voice s the same intensity of pain and poignancy. Internalization of the prejudices of the dominant group and their assertion and perpetuation by the very people agai nst whom the prejudices were held, is a common mechanism for survival. It create s a set of alienated people who neither belong to their people nor are accepted as equal by the others. Racial and social mobilization are excruciatingly slow a nd very unsure processes whose rate or outcome can never be controlled or predic ted with certainty. Moreover, black skin with white mask (or Dalit skin with upp er caste mask) is not a psychologically healthy combination. Neither is it right , ethico-politically and socially. The subaltern dispossessed and silenced belon g to one mass. Their resistance to the phallogocentric social structure and thei r attempts at critiquing or deconstructing are very logical ends to the centurie s old process of planned dehumanization. Multiculturalism, postmodern questionin g of grand narratives and trends in upward social mobility have brought about ma ny changes in the mind set of the people. How deep these changes have percolated and how fundamental in nature they are, has yet to be seen and tested. In the m eanwhile, the longest march for a yet unreached goal must not stop. The themes of hatred and resistance against the exploiters are very common in th eir poems. The voices of the subaltern, freshly raised, rising from the soil, ra ise disturbing issues. They prove that the grand narrative of the Enlightenment the great ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity as the rational end of all so cial systems and the attainable or desirable state of existence is only there to beguile the masses. In reality, for an Indian Dalit or an Australian Aborigine there is neither liberty nor equality, and fraternity is nowhere to be seen. Rea son has been proven powerless in redressing the wrongs perpetrated by an iniquit ous system of institutionalized exploitation. Therefore, the subaltern must cata pult themselves to the stage of power play using any means whatsoever. Their lan guage is charged with the power to burn the social customs and the desiccated tr aditions that have given them a life worse than that of animals. The voices resisting exploitation are fully aware of their own strength and dign ity. They take pride in their being what they are. Their identity and self-image are affirmed in their poems again and again, as Smith Taylor affirms:

We blackfellas are trying To stand tall. Our enemy the media are always making us fall. We have been stripped of our pride. We blackfellas must stand as one as the fight still goes on. (qtd. in Heiss 55) Of course, hatred and anger are not the only things present in their poems. Ther e is love too, as is seen in the following lines about a mother: On her head, a burden. Her legs a-totter. Thin, dark of body my mother. All day she combs the forest for fire wood We await her return. Mother is gone Even now my eyes search fro mother. (Nimbalkar 36) Subjection and subjugation for generations turns an individuals existence into an everlasting hell: a hell that is so unshakably embedded, so deeply programmed i nto the existence that it is assimilated and naturalized. Socio-political and ps ychological repressions of the most debilitating kind, stretched over centuries, take the form of the hands of unseen fate or karma for those who are hopelessly trapped in prisons called their own existence. They have been sentenced to deat h in life, day after day, every day of their life. A time eventually arrives lat er, if not as soon as it should have come nearly at the threshold level of toler ance, when life becomes unbearable and the blood boiling in the veins can simply not be contained any more. If revolutionary blood bath and anti revolutionary p urges dont follow, the blood takes the form of words and flows out as a cry of an ger, anguish, anger, resistance, pride and a series of various human emotions th at were repressed till then. The ideological apparatuses of the modern hegemonic states have tilted the balance of power so much towards the agencies that run n ation states that any challenge seems at lest ineffectual in the last count, if not practically impossible. The intellectual pessimism arising out of this situa tion has generated theories galore. The petits recits (mini narratives) are the one that seem to be valid in the discourse the present paper is concerned with. The war against the structure that has successfully interpellated the thinking s ubject appears to be a contradiction in itself. The Dalit or the Aborigine is un der a lot of socio-economic pressure for assimilation, if possible, with the dom inant culture. The range of choices available to them is broad. They may identif y with the dominant mastering discourse and internalize it to propagate it thems elves later. They may remain neutral observers, or they may become active in res istance, raising their own voices in the public sphere, creating their own mini narratives. A stream of resistance, strong, conspicuous and continuous, can be s een originating from among the repressed. The war against an internalized and in herently exploitative system can only be fought with innovative tools, applying a series of methods available for the purpose. As Gene Sharpe recommends, the st ruggle has the best chances to be effective finally if it is peaceful and democr atically committed. He speaks about action against repressive non-democratic reg imes. Both Australia and India are democracies. Therefore, the insistence on pea ceful and democratic methods seems to be more relevant as the pressure it builds will generate voices both nationally and internationally - against the institut ionalized exploitation and repression of the subaltern. Literature has always be en a part of the move to persuade at the levels of both the state propaganda and that of the resistance. Although newly acquired as a weapon and it serves the s ame age old purpose for the cause of the subaltern whom everyone else has failed , and gives them hope, not false, but true:

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