1

Chapter I

Introduction

Sivakami gives a clarion call for the uplift of the Dalits. Dalit women

must also strive for gender and caste equality by subverting the

dynamics of caste and transcending the interstices of identity. The

evolution of the self is much more noticeable in Dalit women than the

others because of their life as the oppressed of the oppressed and the

slave of the slave.

Prema and Mani

Palanimuthu Sivakami first Dalit woman IAS officer who has been doing

extensive work among tribal communities and backward classes. In 2008 she became

a fulltime writer after taking voluntary retirement. From then on she has been working

for the upliftment of Dalits. Her writings created waves in Dalit literature and in Dalit

feminism. She is an acclaimed Tamil writer. She dreams for a change in the Dalit

Society. All the women should be treated equally with men. Dalit women are

marginalized in three ways. First due to economic, next due to gender subordination

and third due to caste discrimination. Sivakami’s pen proves mightier than the sword

because her works serve as her platform and battle against discrimination. Sivakami

talks about real women characters and they fight against all odds in their life. Their

act becomes the act of resistance. Hence an attempt is made in this thesis to analyse

about the pains of Dalit women by their own people and their survival in this biased

society, with particular reference to Sivakami’s novel The Grip of Change and

Taming of Women.
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Sivakami occupies a unique position in the cannon of Dalit fiction in Tamil.

She is a respected writer among the first generation of Dalit writers in Tamil who

began writing in the late eighties. Sivakami as a woman Dalit writer brought into

focus, for the first time, the gendered relation among caste-upper castes and Dalits as

well as among Dalits in Tamil Nadu. Sivakami alerts the reader to the precedence of

class interest over gender or submergence of caste concerns within an agenda

pertaining to gender issues. Sivakami has presented the sufferings of a Dalit which

becomes more pathetic when a Dalit is a woman. Majority of Dalit women are poor,

landless and wage labourers, they have to suffer caste discrimination as well as gender

discrimination. They have been suppressed by the upper caste men and by the men of

their own community.

Sivakami represents the subjugation of Dalit but also points out how they are

capable of transgressing and thereby creating conditions for their deliverance as well.

She interrogates the validity of studying Dalit life in isolation on the basis of the

strength of her own position as an insider. This lends a credibility of vision to her

writing. Although she ruthlessly exposes the weakness of Dalit movement, she also

paves the way for strengthening it from within. The voice of Dalit women is rarely

heard in the literary world. Dalit writings by women have formed a parallel counter

public to those formed by Dalit writers who are male. Dalit patriarchy, it turned out,

was ridden with its own forms of heavy handedness and discriminatory practices.

Dalit literature is primarily a literature of recover and a demand of the

oppressed for social equality. Dalit literature in Tamil, strongly influenced by Marathi

Dalit literature, was a distinct movement. The Dalit themes were already found Tamil
 3

literature in the 12th Century. The modern Dalit literature with its subaltern discourse

traces its origin back to the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

Dalit literature in Tamil until 1980s was regarded as a literature written by the

Dalits for the Dalits. Later, it developed itself into a genre that speaks for all the

oppressed including women and protested against all traditional social establishments.

Dalits writers make use of literature to express their sufferings, cultural exploitation

and also their political positioning. Like any progressive literature, Dalit literature is

also a cultural phenomenon that craves for social recognition for the Dalits.

The word ‘Dalit’ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘dal’ which means broken, or

oppressed. It has also its origin in Sanskrit and Hindi word ‘Dalita’ which literary

means oppressed. There is variation in the origin of the word Dalit, but it is

symbolizes the minorities. Dalit movement started in mid nineteenth century for

upliftment of these marginalized but also the patriarchal Dalit movement. The plight

of a Dalit becomes all the more pathetic when a Dalit is a woman and poor too. She

has to face not only the caste discrimination but the gender inequalities and economic

disparities too. Dalit refers to all the exploited and disadvantaged people in particular

sense. “Dalit are socially oppressed, culturally neglected and economically exploited.

Even after many years of Dalit movement, still they are being disregarded by diverse

social opportunities” (Rani 683).

Dalit writing is a post-Independence literary phenomenon. The emergence of

Dalit literature has a great historical significance. The causes and effects leading to

the age-old existence of oppression and despair of the lives of marginalized. Most of

the marginalized groups all over the world have a similar system of oppression. But

the titles are different as per the class and class divide. In India it was under the
 4

pretext of the caste. In the western world it was under the name of the race. Inequality

was the main source of this marginality which led to insecurity, injustice and

exploitation. Marginalized sections were always on the periphery and distanced from

the power centres. In this research work the main objective is to draw similarities

between the politics of Caste and Race in Indian Dalits.

Dalit literature is literature written by the Dalits about their lives. Dalit

literature forms an important and distinct part of India. Dalit literature denounced as

petty and false the then prevailing portrayal of life by the mainstream Marathi

literature which lacked mention of the of the abject poverty stricken lifestyle of the

Dalit and the utter oppression the Dalit faced at that time, from the higher caste.

The Dalit writer relies on his personal memory which is interpenetrated with

the collective memory of people. Consequently, Dalit novels and stories can be

treated as history, fictionalized autobiography and the retrieval of social memory. The

sudden growth of autobiography in Dalit literature can be significantly related to the

role of memory in projecting both individual and collective consciousness within the

same narrative from.

Dalit writers are severely critical of the silence of the mainstream literature

about surrounding social realities and their Romanisation of Indian society and its

hierarchies. Even when higher caste writers have voiced concerns about Dalit

communities, they are seen as condescending in nature and aimed at blunting Dalit

resistance and amalgamating Dalits in mainstream society. Dalit writers have used

such langue and slang expression that are generally considered unacceptable and

colloquial by the mainstream writers.

 5

Dalit literature in India has grown both in quantity and quality and made

sufficient impact to shake up the mainstream literature. The realities and experiences

that have not been reflected on other literatures find a central place in Dalit literature.

It has effectively challenged the Brahmanical hegemony in society and literature and

empowered the Dalit masses for asserting their rights and for expressing their

anguish. In this sense, it has contributed not just to literature but also to identify

formation at societal level.

Dalit literature has also begun to give space for separate sub-category of

women writers from Dalit communities. However, at the same time, the critics believe

that in asserting the realities of society Dalit literature has become stereotypical and

predictable. Also, it is seen as excluding itself from some of the valuable trends and

aesthetic aspects of mainstream literature that deals with more universal human

emotion and their creative expression.

In 1970s the ‘Dalit’ Panthers exploited politically, economically and in the

name of religion. So Dalit is not a caste. It is a symbol of change and revolution. The

Primary motive of Dali literature is the liberation of Dalit’s, the struggle against castes

tradition has a long history. Dalit literature is precisely that literature which

artistically portrays the sorrows, tribulations, slavery, degradation, ridicule and

poverty endured by Dalits.

Dalit literature has established itself as separate category of writing in many

Indian languages. Several writings under this category have emerged as a strong voice

of Dalit communities. In different literatures over the last five decades. The impact of

Dalit writers and writings has also compelled the literary associations. To recognize

as a separate have given place to Dalit literature in its several means.

 6

Dalit literature has established itself as a separate category of writing in many

of the Indian languages. Several writings under this category have emerged as a

strong voice of Dalit communities in different literatures over the last five decades.

The impact of Dalit writers and writings has also compiled the literary associations

and academies to recognize as a separate category of literature and reward it through

several means.

The famous 19th century social reformer and protagonist of the interests of

Dalits in Maharashtra Jyotiba first used this term of exploitation called ‘shudra’ and

‘outcaste’ Hindus. The term Dalit refers mainly to such caste groups; it is not a caste-

indicative term. It only refers to such people and communities that are historically and

structurally oppressed from the society. Dalit is not a caste but a socio-economic

category of discriminated people belonging to many castes and social groups speaking

many languages. The British government used to describe what is now called the

Scheduled Castes. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar used the term to give a new, respectful

and empowering identity called untouchable.

All every groups that were discriminated and exploited on the basis of birth

based identity or economic reason. A more expanded idea of Dalit also includes

classes like landless labour. Literature written by the members of the Dalit

communities or Dalit communities described as Dalit literature.

Many of the Dalit writings have been translated into English and published as

part of the anthologies of Dalit writings. The movement for Dalit literature has later

spread to other languages like Gujarati, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Malayalam and

Bengali. Dalit literature has used all has used all literary forms-poetry, short stories,

novels plays and autobiographies in various language. In Gujarati in Tamil,

 7

Omprakash Valmiki in Hindi and many more have contributed to the Dalit literature.

The emergence of Dalit literature, an attempt of writing from the margin the way to

reordering in term of politics of representation. The Dalit were always ‘the

powerless’, ‘the absence’, ‘the other’ and ‘disadvantaged’ the power binaries created

new narrative spaces.

Shantabai Krushnaji kamble (b.1923) is a Marathi writer and Dalit activist.

She wrote the first female Dalit autobiography. Her birthplace was Mahud which is

located in solapur.shw was from a poor family. The social and economic status of her

community was quite low. Santabai Kamblr’s Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha (1986)

published as a complete book in 1986 but presented to readers and television

audiences in serial from named as Najuka through the early 1980s, is considered the

first autobiographical narrative by a Dalit woman writer.

Kumud Pawde (b.1938) belonged to a Mahar (Dalit) family in Nagpur and

married Motriam Pawde a social worker of the Kunbi Maratha caste. By profession a

Lecturer in Sanskrit, Pawde has penned a number of articles on various issues culture,

social education and women’s problems. She has got the honour of being the

president of the All India Progressive Women’s Organisation which was established

in Nagpur in 1974. She has a book Antasphot (1981) to her credit which deals with

advanced Dalit women towards non educated women as its main subjects. The double

jeopardized condition and a constant awareness of being Dali characterize the women

characters in her work.

Urmila Pawar (b.1945) in Mahar family in the Konkan region of the Indian

state of MaharashtraPawar eventually left Konkan for Mumbai, where she fought for

Dalit rights and became a major figure in the Dalit rights and became a major figure
 8

in the Dalit literary movement. Though she writes in Marathi. She has found fame in

all of India. Urmila Pawar puts focus on the issues of the life of Dalit community and

in particular of Dalit women. In a society constantly changing after independence. Her

autobiography Aaydan (2003) has been translated into English as The Weave of My

Life (2009) a Dalit woman’s memoirs. It takes us from her childhood memories of life

in the village, and her mother’s constant struggle to make ends meet, through her

school and college days to her life after her marriage, in Mumbai, were she encounters

a feminist group and later becomes a writer and organizer of Dalit women. The

sufferings of the Dalit are, like those of the black slave in America, the sufferings of

her community.

Om Prakash Valmiki, (b.1950) a Hindi Dalit writer, has expressed the

authentic experience of a Dalit life in his work, particularly in Joothan, a memoir.

Originally published in Hindi in 1997, Joothan has been translated into English 2003.

He has penned other autobiographical works too. He wrote another book

Ghuspaithiye, AbAurNahin, Amma and other Stories, Salama. His work narrates the

rising of the Dalits in spite so facing heavy odds in the form of deprived childhood,

caste discrimination and unequal opportunities. In the book Joothan (2003) a Dalit’s

life Omprakash Valmiki writes. Valmiki highlights the caste system in India that has

resulted in the socio-economic oppression of thousands across India over centuries

merely because of the lower caste which they belong. Valmiki describes his childhood

in the village in Barla district of Utter Pradesh. He writes about the ill treatment meted

out to him when he was at school because he was an untouchable. He describes the

trauma he went through when he asked to spend three days sweeping the school

courtyard instead of accompanying his classmates belonging to the higher caste, in the

study class. Joothan is one of the best contributions to Dalit literature.

 9

Sharan Kumar Limbale (b.1956), a prominent Dalit writer activist, has written

a revolutionary autobiographical work, Akkarmashi (1984) translated in English as

The Outcaste (2003). Hailed from Maharashtra, Limbale is the author of novels, story

collections, and the editor of anthologies of Dalit literary criticism. He has won

numerous awards and honours for his contribution to Dalit literature as a writer as

well as a critic. His deep insight extensively helped to reshape the contour of Dalit

literature in the present time. Limbale belongs to ‘Mahar’ community. As a Mahar

child he faced the hostile treatment and antagonistic attitude of his upper- caste

classmates and friends. Even the teachers asked him to smear the flood and walls with

crowding paste on Saturdays. Such innocent kids suffer from the alienation.

Alienation is a painful state of one mind, where one feels oneself cut off from the

surroundings. Limbale’s writes during the interval the other boys threw stones and

teased me calling aloud ‘Mahar’. Limbale’s suffered from the high caste domination

from his childhood. Limbale’s style of writings has its own personal features of

sentence structure. sLimbale novel Akkarmashi (1984) it is deals with the caste

system is most unique feature of Indian society.

Bama (b.1958) is a prominent author in Dalit writing, born in a small village

called puthupatti in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. Her novels portrays the unseen life

of Dalits and her writings act as Dalit women empowerment-Karukku (1992), the first

autobiography by a Dalit woman, Sangati (1994), Kusumbukkaran (1996), Vanma

(2002) Oru Tattvum Erumaiyum (2003), have paved new paths in literature in terms

of raising Dalit consciousness. Karukku (1992) is an autobiography that chronicles

Bama’s life, from her childhood to her early adult life as a nun, and beyond. She does

not describe events only in terms of the impact they had on her later life, but writes of

the experience she had as moments of oppression that composed her daily lived
 10

reality. In the book present how her multiple identities as Dalit, Christian and woman

have impacted her oppression. Sangati (1994) thus celebrate the fortitude of the Dalit

women who can actualize their potential even as they are oppressed by the male

dominated and caste ridden society. Bama’s work envisions a powerful motive of

change and gives courage and inspiration to her community to organize themselves

under the force of Dalit consciousness.

Meena Kandasawmy (b.1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and

activist. Most of her works are centered on feminism and the anticlastic Annihilation

movement of the contemporary Indian milieu. Her works have been published in

various anthologies and journals the include anthology of contemporary Indian

poetry. Her works When I Hit you or a portrait of the writer as a Young wife, Gypsy

Goddess (2014). Her work narrates the raising of Dalit voice. When I Hit You or a

Portrait of The Writer as a young Wife, in the book the protagonist has a peculiar

relationship with her mother. She describes in terms of a bunch of physical ailments.

The story becomes a story about head-lice and cracked feet in the mother’s narrative

the violence itself is subsumed. The author used in the narrative technique in domestic

violence. The Gypsy Goddess (2014) is the novel about a true life massacre. The novel

the plight of a community of Dalit agricultural labourers who live and work in

inhuman conditions, coping with the unrelenting oppression and heart-breaking

atrocities inflicted upon them by their ruthless upper caste landlords in the southern

Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In particular, this novel revolves around the historical

massacre that took place in the village of Kilvenmani on Christmas Day, 1968.A

community across the deaths and the flow of food into the landlords. The party

organizers suffer grisly deaths and the flow of food into the market. Finally, the

landlords descend on one village to set an example to the others.

 11

Palanimuthu Sivakami, (b.1957) is an Indian writer in Tamil. She is among the

most prominent Dalit writers in India, a post graduate in History, took up her IAS

exams and became an IAS officer. However, she considers herself more as a writer.

As an IAS officer she has been doing extensive work among tribal communities and

backward classes. She became a full time writer in 2008 after taking voluntary

retirement from government service. From then one she has been working for the

uplift of the Dalits.

Sivakami herself edited a magazine called ‘PuthiyaKodanki’ for fifteen years

where political, social issues and gender, class caste intersections are discussed. She

feels Dalit literature is not only for aesthetics but also for celebration of identity.

When her novels, shorts stories and essays, Sivakami has made a significant

contribution to world literature.She published her first novel Pazhaiyana

Kazhithalumin 1989. It portrays the communal imbalances and the inferiorization of

Dalits. She published second novel Anantayi in 1992. It extensively unravels the

miseries of the peasant women in a feministic perspective. Her third novel

Pakaaakuin 1997.

Later, her first novel was translated into English by Sivakami herself as The

Grip og Change in 2006. Her fourth novel in 1999, karukku Vettu (1999) cross section

is a psychological inquiry into the hypocrisy of Indian marriage. Her collections of

short storirs were published in three volumes namely, Nalum Totarum (1993) Kataici

Mantar (1997) and kataikal (2003).

KarrukuVettu (1999) cross section is a well-known fictional work in Tamil.

This novel is Tamil is by leading woman writer P.Sivakami. Who has portrayed in her

writings of Dalit women as well as women in patriarchal society in general. Here the
 12

story is about a middle class working woman Sari who finds herself drawn to a man

Kaman. Her husband and children and her feeling of deep love for a man outside the

fold of marriage. The theme of the novel rather familiar sensitivity, the female

experience in the post-feminist era.

P.Sivakami the first Dalit woman to write a full length, semi- autobiographical

Tamil novel, pazhaiyana Kazhithalum (1989), translated into EnglishThe Grip of

change in 2006. The novel revolves around the character of a lower caste parayar

woman, named Thangam. She is more marginalized then other. She is awoman and

moreover she is childless widow.

The novel opens where she reaches to kathamuthu’s house in the midnight for

justice in badly beaten critical situation. She is working in the plantation of a higher

caste man named Udayar. Thangam is bear-turn up by Udayar’s wife and her brother.

The community who were against Thangam supported her and helped her achieving

justice. The novel ends with whole transformation of the society and a new way to

look after the world.

The Taming of Woman (2012) is Sivakami’s second novel translated from

Tamil into English by Pritham K, Chakravarthy. Sivakami’s background as a Dalit

woman. She writes from First-hand experience of the society. She portrays a life that

at once feels familiar and alien to urban middle class reader. Anandhayi married to a

womanizer, periyannan, a contractor, is not content with the wealth that his farms

bring him. Periyannan always trying to bring them under his control. Periyannan is a

domineering antagonist to the tender but tenacious Anandhayi. When his young son

dies at home and Periannan finds it difficult to take care two households and manage
 13

his official work. Lakshmi to move into his family home even when his wife,

Anandhayi, is in labour.

Sivakami opposes the caste break which, she thinks, is responsible for

crushing the creativity of lower castes, especially the untouchables. Sivakami, the

writer traces the oppression exercised by the upper castes towards the Dalit in terms

of labour, exploitation and inhuman treatment. Dr.Ambedkar’s observations regarding

the caste are relevant. “Dalit hood is the kind of life condition that characterized the

exploitation, suppression and oppression, and marginalization of Dalit people by the

social, economic cultural and political domination of the upper castes and

Brahmanical” (Vasant 178).

Sivakami raise a clarion call for the upliftment of their Dalit counterparts.

Dalit women must create gender and caste impartiality by subverting from the

dynamics of caste and transcend the interstices of identity. Various external and

internal factors manipulate the progress of selfhood. “In present-day-society a dalit

women is also considered to be unequal to her man. Today, dalit women, who

constitute the major working force, are thrice alienated and oppressed on the basis of

their class, caste and gender” (John E.Mary, 445-450). Sivakami has done a

successful portrayal of Dalit woman. She has shown the thrice marginalization of a

woman in Tamil society. Shivakumar observes:

Woman is a Dalit from Beginning to End seems really a naked truth at

this stage just because of this struggle of this Dalit women against the

society, against their own outset and against the traditions their men

follow. The patriarchy crushes down the originality, warmth, delicacy,

tenderness and even beauty in them. (3)

 14

Sivakami focuses attention on Dalit leadership and the need for consolidation

of Dalit groups to achieve a better bargain in society. Sivakami’s self-reflexive

analysis of the Dalit community earned her considerable censure in Tamil literary as

well as Dalit political circles. Sivakami’s fiction fuses Dalit discourses with feminist

discourse. Her focus is as much upon the female body as a sire of oppression as upon

a society fractured by caste. Mangalam says:

Sivakami succeeds in extending the discussion on Dalit empowerment

to feminist discourse. This novel, as Sivakami’s subsequent novels,

highlights domestic violence on Dalit women, the patriarchal silencing

of wives and daughter, the sexual repression of Dalit women even

while celebrating women bonding within and outside the family (201).

Sivakami’s translation of Tamil novel into English signals an important aspect of

Dalit. Women writer’s empowerment that makes available, a wider readership to her,

on her own terms thereby minimizing translation-transmission politics .That has crept

into the domain of translation of marginalized voices into a language of power.

Sivakami seems to be making a large point about empowerment, about the

learning curve of asserting one’s rights in a complex world that’s laying out the

educational and career possibilities of modernity but that keeps place for age old

injustices. Sivakami never allow her narration to get didactic, but she also refrains

from softening the blow of caste and gender brutality. kapoor observes:

She had achieved a revenge of sorts in her novel. At the end of her

novel, she had reduced her father to a counterfeit coin. She had

reduced him to an old man reading a newspaper on an easy chair. She

 15

and her cousin had been transformed into revolutionaries. Family

squabbles made for restricted politics. (6)

She discovers fictional writing is a deliberate process of selection and

omission that is always already informed by experience, which is itself not innocent

but socially and politically constructed. Sivakami’s puts herself through intense self-

examination as she explores her own identity in relation to the text. She considers the

possibilities of being criticized for protecting her own identity as a Dalit writer and

betraying the Dalit’s by acting the Dalit leadership.

She dramatizes such criticism through a series of imaginary conversations

where she alternately occupies the position of author and critic. In a series of

rhetorical moves, Sivakami both submits to and resists her critics’ change of

hypocrisy and social elitism and ends up complicating identities a politics. She is

accused of reinforcing the stigma of being a Dalit while pretending to be sensitive to

criticism.

Sivakami resists such accusations by exhorting all castes to join forces in the

fight against casteism. More significantly, she draws attention to her critic’s impulse

to collapse the social world of the texts with social reality. The text was an

unmediated reflection of the world. She continues to justify her representation of the

ethical ambiguities that characterize the fraught relations between caste and gender

and sexuality. Sivakami seems to be suggesting that the texts claim to truth lies

precisely in theses ambiguities that resist any notion of absolute truth.

Sivakami poses certain crucial questions that address the function of literature.

Unlike her readers and critics, she neither takes pains to emphasize that literature is

neither a direct reproduction of social reality nor restricted to a realist or moral

 16

function. She also sensitive to her own present position as an English-educated

professional and the resultant sense of estrangement from her family. Caste is the

most demoralizing aspect in a woman’s identity who is already located at the

periphery of a male dominated society. Mangalam says:

Sivakami’s fiction documents violence against women within the

domestic space. Her fiction exposes caste and gender hierarchies

outside and inside the home that renders the woman an outcaste in her

community. Dalits are other in Hindu caste caste structure and in the

novel their otherness is ostensible by the setting of the Dalit

communities. (111)

Shivakami writes from first- hand experience of the society. She portrays a life

that at once feels familiar and alien to urban middle class readers. The essence of a

lower socio-economic class with its trials and tribulations. The struggle for power

across genders and class even that among peers, the processes have all come across in

the translation. Unable to bear the torture put in by men in Indian society, how the

beautiful woman is forced to end her depicted.

Sivakami’s novels are an exploration of the continuities and shifting

affordances of the Dalit woman. Inscribed by multiple intersecting vectors of caste,

gender, the body of the Dalit woman signifies the expression of social stigma and the

only means of resisting oppression. Unlike many of the Dalit writers who preceded

and followd Sivakami’s works remain crucial critiques of caste patriarchy.

Sivakami’s novels highlight the domestic violence on Dalit women, the

patriarchal silencing of wife and daughter, the sexual repression of Dalit women even

while celebrating women bonding within and outside the family. Sivakami portrays
 17

the condition of the Dalit women in our society. But Sivakami seems to be making a

larger point about empowerment, about the learning curve of asserting one’s rights in

a complex world that’s laying out the educational and career possibilities of

modernity which nevertheless do not remove completely the age old injustices.

However, people like Gowri and Anandhayi, have to go a long way before they can

overcome the helplessness of the older generations of women.

Sivakami’s novel, the discourse of discontent, focuses on Dalit patriarchy. Her

subject of concern is the violent exploitation of the woman’s body and points out how

family, as an institution, is embedded in patriarchal oppressive system that is blatantly

unjust to women. It was the subjugation of the Dalit’s in general which was often

talked about, but Sivakami directs our attention to the bare reality of the sufferings of

women in Dalit community. Sivakami’s attempt, in giving voice to the voiceless in an

oppressive patriarchal society in indeed commendable.

Spivak says “the oppressed of the marginalized have means of voicing their

resistance. By writing about these indigenous voices, Sivakami is also trying to create

a space for the less privileged. The history of these people becomes alive through

these writings. In the highly masculine literary Dalit movement, Dalit women writers

did not have their space and it was not easy for them to press their voices. The

emphasis on gender is a way of asserting this space in the male-dominated literary

scene”. Sivakami towards the end of the novels laments how even for a modern and

educated Dalit woman, life still continues to be a struggle and caste a marker of

identity in the society. In other words, caste and oppression of women go hand in

hand.
 18

The second chapter entitled as Women’s suffering. It deals with the novel The

Grip of the Change. Women face a lot of challenges because of the existence of

patriarchal society, child bearing and family care roles, deep rooted cultural norms, in

the Indian society. Women’s faced the problem of their domestic responsibilities,

cultural and social specified roles. Women are considered as weaker section of the

society than men and given less important. Violence against women also known

as gender-based violence, it is collectively, violent acts that are primarily or

exclusively committed against women. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change Thangam is

protagonist of the novel. Thangam, a Dalit woman’s body bears testimonies to the

difficulties and violence faced by the Dalit woman. P. Shivkami showed how the

women’s are suffered in Dalit community Thangam becomes the victim of the

patriarchal system of society.

 19

Chapter II

Women suffering

Women writers are beginning to construct an identity out of the

recognition that women need to discover, and must fight for, a sense of

unified selfhood, a rational, coherent effective identity. As male writers

lament its demise, women have not yet experience that subjectivity

which will give them a sense of personal autonomy, continuous

identity, a history, and agency in the world.

Basu

Dalit women are placed at the very bottom of south Asia’s caste, class and

gender hierarchies. They suffer multiple forms of discrimination-as Dalits, as poor,

and as women. The caste system declares Dalit women to be intrinsically impure and

‘untouchable’, which sanctions social exclusion and exploitation. The vast majority of

Dalit women are impoverished; they are landless wage labourers; and they lack access

to basic resources.

They are subjugated by patriarchal structures, both in the general community

and within their own family. Violence and inhuman treatment, such as sexual assault,

rape, and naked parading, serve as a social mechanism to maintain Dalit women’s

subordinate position in society. They are targeted by dominant castes as a way of

humiliating entire Dalit communities. Human rights abuses against Dalit women are

mostly committed with impunity. Police personnel often neglect or deny Dalit women

of their right to seek legal and judicial aid. In many cases, the judiciary fails to

enforce the laws that protect Dalit women from discrimination.

 20

Dalit women suffer multiple discrimination at the intersection of caste and

gender discrimination. Dalit women are often trapped by patriarchal societies. They

experience brutal discrimination they being both a Dalit and as well as a woman. A

key target of violence and systematically denies them choices and freedoms in all

spheres of life. This common intersection of gender and caste discrimination is the

outcome of severely imbalanced social, economic and political power equations. Dalit

women have the right to be seen as subjects and not as objects. This played an active

role for the betterment of not only their family but also for their whole community.

Their voices have been muted and kept in silence

The Dalit woman, more often than not is dependent on her own labour.

Women’s are labours outside her home from morning till evening. When she comes

home, her husband will be waiting to snatch her hand-earned money which is often

the only source to feed the family. If she refuses to give him the money, the husbands

beats her up. The woman shouts back; in the process of resistance, she might beat him

back. This is not because of democratic patriarchy in her family. There are certain

debilitating stereotypes of Dalit families in general and Dalit women in particular,

which mar a clear understanding of her location in Indian society. Our self-perception

is crucial for building our politics. In post-colonial scenario the term subaltern gets

wider perspective as it refers to the third world countries.

The Dalit women are a Dalit amongst Dalits. She has suffered much and she is

still suffering. Women must walk through the burning desert of casteism in search of

some oasis. The social contribution of poor Dalit women along patriarchal, the middle

class norms which had a negative impact upon women’s cultural expression. The

Dalit women promoted as representative of Dalit culture, knowledge and traditions.

 21

This led to further marginalization of the poor rural Dalits and women. Prasad

opines:

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. In the stories and novels of Annabhau, Shankar

RaoKharat, BaburaoBagul and others, though the nature of the struggle

of woman in the beginning is individual, later it becomes class

conflict . . . The revolt of Dalit writers do not portray Dalit women as

hollow identities, overflowing with love as embodiments of sacrifice .

(14)

Dalit rural women face serious challenges in carrying out their multiple

productive and reproductive roles, within their families and communities. In this part

due to lack of rural infrastructure and lack of access to essential good and service.

They have the highest poverty levels, are landless and depend on the dominant caste

for employment, wages and loans. Their access to resources or even their efforts to

access them are often met with violence. In a male dominated society, Dalit women

suffered unimaginable oppression, not only through caste, but gender too, from which

there was no escape.

Due to the intersection of caste, class and gender, Dalit women are subjected

to direct and structural violence. Specifically, the structural violence and lack of

access to resources perpetuate their poverty and undermine their dignity. Dalit rural

women have very limited access to and control over land, which in turn leads to food
 22

insecurity. They also lack access to water and other communal resources; when those

resources are in non-Dalit areas, the women are attacked for attempting to use them.

Dalit woman is considered as a witch when she posses land on her own.She is

often accused of being a witch. Witch hunting is a serious problem in rural

communities where a Dalit woman can be either forced off the land or forced off the

land or forced out of the community. The practice is employed as a ‘land grab’ tactic

and is used by non-Dalits as well as Dalits. This further demonstrates that Dalit

women are continually met with violence, discrimination and subjugation from every

group.

Dalit women are thrice alienated on the basis of class, caste and gender. The

whole Dalit community has to struggle for survival. They need helping hand from

their women. Though this perspective, Dalit women deserve better position than

position than those of higher castes. But high caste women perpetrate caste based

discrimination and untouchability against Dalit women. The reality of the Dalit

community is that the whole family has to depend at least partly on their income.

Dalit women have limited access to land and no control over it. Dalits generally do

not own the land but work it for a dominant caste landlord.

The landlord’s socio-economic and political power in rural, agricultural areas

and status as employers of Dalit women allows for continual caste and gender

violence, committed with impunity. Dalit women experience physical, verbal and

sexual violence from the landlords when they try to assert their economic right to

wages or land and there to sexual integrity. Dr. Kleetus K.Varghese says, “The power

determines the position of social group and the individual. Depending on the power
 23

and position of social groups, they are placed either at the centre or on the fringes-

margins of a given society” (16).

Dalit women are marginalized and no opportunity is given in decision making.

Dalit women face violence in the home, in public places and even at work on some

occasions. Dalit women in India are an extremely volatile and sensitive issue. Dalit

women are a social force, a cultural symbol and have a historical background. Dalit

men react to the victimization they suffer at the hands of the upper caste people by

pouring it out on their wives and their daughter. Perhaps, this is one of the worst

tragedies of humanity that the oppressed themselves attempt to fill the emptiness by

reducing their own women to drudgery and further oppression.

Thangam is the protagonist of the novel, The Grip of the Change (2006). She

becomes as a childless widow and suffers in the hands of upper caste people. She is

marginalized in the name of marginalization economic oppression, gender

subordination and caste discrimination. The Grip of Change starts with sufferings of

Thangam’s story. Early morning she goes to Kathamuthu, the leader of Paryar caste to

say her pains:

Panic stricken they asked, ‘What happrned? What happened?’ They

calmed down on seeing Kathamuthu frozen at the entrance . . . wailing

so early in the morning? What is the matter? Get up explain your

problem without making such a fuss. Flanked by both his wives,

Kathamuthu recovered from the shock he had experienced and

questioned the shrouded figure. (4)

Thangam’s has been exploited by the upper caste landlord’s. The upper caste

landlords beaten up and dragged the Thangam. Her village people and her relatives no
 24

one comes help toThangam. So she goes to seek Kathamuthu’s help. “My saviour?

Sami! To whom can I tell this, but you? That’s why I came running all that distance,

all through the night, to see you. See what those rascals did to me” (4). Kathamuthu

intervenes in the case, turns it into caste violence and is able to get financial

compensation for Thangam. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak she says “The Subaltern

cannot speak. There is no virtue in global Landry lists with ‘woman’ as pious item

Representation has not withered away” (4). Thangam struggles a lot in the hands of

upper hands people:

Thangam caught between the tension created by Kathamuthu and her

aching body, sat whimpering. He cleared his throat impotently spat and

turned his attention to the woman. Look, I’ll be straight with you, even

if I sound rude. I’m living with this woman who doesn’t belong to our

community. (10)

‘Eley’ the condescending term was used to address the Dalits. In Udayar’s

wife abuses Thangam with whom her husband has an affair , “she picked a quarrel

with Thangam, abusing her by her caste name- parachi- for walking on the upper

caste street. She began to hit Thangam with a broom, and then her brothers and

brother-in-law joined her. They were beating her so violently . . . murdered (30).

Thangam’s was violently abused and beaten up by the upper caste lover. She

demand for the share in her husband’s paternal land refused on the ground. But no

land was given to her. Her fertility was questioned and linked to the land, “pulled

herself up and limped back into her hut. But when people from the Cheri who were

concerned about her went in, the woman had refused to her own” (8).
 25

She lives alone and works as a labourer’s on the farms of upper caste landlord,

“hunger and pain, but most of all by an overwhelming sense of defeat, she had

crawled in to Kathamuthu house” (27). The upper caste land lord pranjothi

Udayar’swho also raped her and repeats it after founding. She doesn’t complaint to

anyone. Once caught by the landlord’s brother-in-law who tell it to his sister and the

matter get serious.

Thangam faces extreme violence in the midnight by four men beating and

abusing her by dragging her out of her out of her hut with her hair. In such condition

she gets neither support from her brother-in-law or from any other woman or man of

her from any other woman or man of her community. “It is one of the most

downtrodden castes in Tamilnadu . . .” (pillay, 61).

Dalit women are vulnerable to male exploitation and caste is a secondary

category in the context of violation of woman’s dignity. Bsau says, “This exclusion of

Dalit women from the mainstream women’s movement is not such a bad thing after

all: it has caused them to start building their own praxis, identity, and agency” (145).

Thangam is treated as a ‘body’. After the death of her husband she becomes a

helpless woman.” My husband’s brothers tried to force me, but I never gave in. they

wouldn’t give me my husband’s land, but wanted me to be a whore for them! I

wouldn’t give in. each time one of them came near me I brandished the broom. After

that none of them came anywhere near me . . . There is no protection for me” (7). Her

brother-in-law and they force her to become a prostitute. As she tells kathamuthu my

husband brothers try to force become a prostitute. She can get her property only if her

body can satisfy.

 26

Thangam moves outside from her home earn to money by working as a

labourer in the fields. She was working in the lands of the upper caste landlord

Paranjothi Udayar and there she is rapped by him. Thangam remained silent because

he is her paymaster. She narrates, “I didn’t want it. But Udayar took no notice of me.

He raped me when I was working in his sugarcane field. I remain silent; after all, he is

my paymaster. He measures my rice . . . .” (7).

Dailt women their voices have been muted and kept in silence. The position of

Dalit women is as marginalized in Dalit literature as they are in their community

“Hopeless bastards. Nothing to eat. Yet they have all the pride in the world . . . .”

(13).Thangam face the problems of their own caste, which decides her status. “Re

appeared on the verandas. He listened to the caller . . . trouble in the arrack shop

between our chaps” (39). Prasad says:

We have been denied the right to articulate our own vision of

emancipation; our energies have been co-opted to working out the

visions of dominant others who have shown scant respect for our

world-view or philosophy of life, by not enabling us to articulate them

or work towards achieving them. (47)

Women are suppressed in the name of the caste and gender. A notable feature

of paraiyan community, “Polygamy is in among the parayar. Besides the legally

wedded wife, the parayan invariably had another woman who also served as lady of

the house. This led to frequent bickering’s within the family” (pillay 63). On the

contrary, in the case of Thangam, Paranjothi Udayar uses her to satisfy his lust and

treats her as a mistress. When the matter of illicit relationship is disclosed by the
 27

society, the same man refuses to accept his relationship with Thangam. His power,

pride and aggression are revealing from the following lines:

Ungrateful whore! Even if she was hurt, she was hurt by the hand

adorned with gold! A parachi could never dream of being touched by a

man like me! My touch was a boon granted for penance performed in

her earlier births! And then the dirty bitch me! How can I face world

with my name thus polluted? He was thoroughly upset . . . only the

caste concerns made him anxious-the exposure of an affair with a

Parachi was humiliating. (31)

The striking cords of similarity in choice of food items only spell out their

depressing economic condition. The religious disabilities forced on the Dalits do not

rob them of their religious faith. Thangam is unfortunate to be left in the cold without

protection. She suffered both as a woman and as a Dalit. Kthamuthu helped her to

lodge a false complaint against Udayar. He manipulated the whole story and said that

when Thangam took a walk on the street frequented by upper class people to attend

nature Udayar’s wife abused her, “you paraya bitch, how dare you walk on this street”

(11).

The story revolves around the character Thangam, who lived in Puliyur. She is

left poverty stricken and uncared for by her family members after the death of her

husband. She worked in Udayar’s sugarcane field for her survival. One day she was

raped in the sugarcane field by her pay master, Paranjothi Udayar. Unable to often

Udayar because of his power and political background, the downtrodden remain

afraid of him.
 28

Thamgam also maintained her silence. Thereafter he made advances and

regular forced himself on her with an act of darkness. She had no choice. One day

Udayars brother in law saw Thangam and Udayar together and conveyed this to

Kamalam whose brothers beat her up cruelly until she bled. Thangam sought the help

of Kathamuthu, the Parayar community leader.

Thangam described how she was raped by her paymaster in the sugarcane

field and explained how she who never smiled at another men after her husband’s

death, but yet had to undergo the shame and violation of offering a solution for the

assault by an upper caste men. “Her naivety was touching. Aloud, in a kind voice, he

said, ‘come’, and bent to help her up and lead her to the . . . prostrate yourself at your

saviour’s feet” (21).

Thereafter she and her brother cruelly beat her up till she bled. The policemen

who came for enquiry favoured the upper caste and accused Thangam by declaring

she had an illegal affair with Udayar and consequently Udayaramma’s relatives

physically assault her:

They maintained difference of opinion with regard to village and

political affairs, but joined hands over labour and wage issues. These

two dominant communities owed political allegiance to the ruling

party, so the new rules of land reform could hardly be implemented.

Both communities had filed a combined affidavit when a case was

registered against benami holdings. The Padayachis were also very

strict in observing caste rules . . . small farmers of the backward

Padayachi community with the lower caste community. (63)

 29

Policemen was used the caste name derogatively. They received bribe from

Udayar and told him an idea to file a false complaint against Thangam, that she stole

money and a transistor from his house. When Kathamuthu heard about this he sent

one of his men to guard Thangam’s house. Udayar was angry as he never thought that

Thangam, a lower caste labourer would betray him.

She should be grateful for a man like Udayar to have touched her, instead she

betrayed him. Further he said, “He could have braved it out even if it had been a

murder or an assault. But what a disgrace if he had to own up to a relationship with a

parachi!” (32).The upper caste people planned to hire workers from the neighbouring

village after this incident. They were ready to pay more for the neighbouring

labourer’s stranger than to the women of lower caste. The discrimination was based

on the different categories of work undertaken:

Pallars were agricukturallabourers, parayars were drummers and

menials and the chakkiliars were cobblers. The first grade pallars were

absent in puliyur. The pallar were considered themselves superior to

the rest. The parayars considered themselves higher than the

chakkiliyars, who themselves considered higher than the paravannars

washer man community. (63)

The lower castes parayan, pallas, valluvan, chakkilian, vannan are considered

to be of different categories while for the upper caste considered these divisions went

unrecognised as all of them were the Dalits. Few days later three huts in the Cheri was

burnt down. The Dalits believed that the upper caste people burnt the Cheri because

of their refusal to work for them.

 30

This ensured a communal riot among the two groups. At last the police entered

the village for a reconciliation. To ease the issues, the upper caste people were

advised to accept their demands and offer compensation for the victims with an

increase of fifty praise on their daily wages. Kathamuthu demanded of Paranchothi

Udayar a sum of twenty thousand rupees as compensation for Thangam. But Udayar

denied it.

Kathamuthu goes on to deceive Thangam. Once night Thangam was offered

arrack by Kathamuthu’s wife and later he physically abuses her and she is forced to

settle down in Kathamuthu’s house as his third wife. The Dalit man unleashes his

frustration and establishes his supremacy in the human society by harassing the

women of his community. Women through education can acquire financial

independence.

Thangam introduction into Kathamuthu’s life. He follows only Bigamy. He is

married first to Kannagavali and then to Nagamani. Nagamani’s as an upper caste

widow. “Kathamuthu’s sexual exploitation of helpless Dalit women is just opposed to

his politicization of sexual violence on Dalit women by upper-caste men and thereby

score a personal or mercenary gain” (Mangalam, 11). The caste system condemned

the Dalits into lower castes based on a variety of reasons. Sivakami’s depicts the

paraiyars as disabled, marginalized and depressed Dalit’s. She focuses on the Dalit’s

life.

Thangam, a victim of rape, sexual abuse and physical assault seeks

Kathamuthu’s aid. Kathamuthu champions the cause of Thangam only for his own

welfare. The amount that he gets as compensation from Udayar for allegedly raping

Thangam, he spends on himself and his family. Initially, he borrows a part of it from
 31

Thangam and then he uses the whole lot. In lieu of it he provides her with food,

clothes and shelter.

In The Grip of Change, Sivakami’s vividly describes a typical panchayat. It

assembles at the Tamrind tree between the village and the Cheri soon after a fire

breaks out in Kannamma’s house burning down some more huts in the Cheri.

“Flinging threats and abuses at him was part of Kamalam’s daily routine” (55). Social

hierarchy and casteism the veritable nightmates are found in the panchayat too.

Sivakami’s points out at Kathamuthusa the leader of the parayars. A male chauvinist

Kathamuthu emerges out when he admonishes his daughter for dressing up well or for

bedecking her plait with flowers. Kapoor says:

But Kathamuthu is also a patriarch who seeks to completely control the

women in his life. There are three of them, his two wives, Kanagavalli

and Nagamani, and his almost grown daughter . . . they have learn to

fight caste-based inequality. Gowri, however, is a silent observer,

never able to stop herself from flinching at Kathamuthu’s

authoritarianism or his disregard of the consequences of his vulgarity.

(6)

Dalit women talk the experience of the Dalits community, through her

character Kathamuthu. How they are socially marginalized and not allowed to wear

even chappals. They have to get down from bicycles and push the vehicle when they

enter upper caste street. In Puliyur, the village and Cheri are almost joined. The few

tamarind trees that keep the Cheri and the upper caste apart. “I still remember,

Kathamuthu continued, that I was the first one to wear sandals and walk on the upper
 32

caste street . . . as they entered that street and walk the length pushing the vehicle”

(67).

Parayars in the Puliyurcheri that features in The Grip of Change worship

Mariyamman. According to Dumont, “Mariyamman is the guardian of thousands of

villages in the region” (Phillips, 271). It is the same with the residents of the Cheri in

Puliyur. In the novel, it is only during the Mariyamman temple festival that the whole

Cheri wears a festive look. The festival season is the only time in the whole of their

life, when they eat and drink to their heart’s fill. Sivakami too acknowledges that

“spicy fried pork accompanied by arrack was the festival favourite” (85). Thangam is

exploited not only by Udayars, but also by the men of her own community is a very

obvious example where the sinister face of patriarchy within Dalit community gets

exposed. The most important thing to be noted is that Thangam approaches

Kathamuthu to penalise those people who abused her, but she gets justice only after

she is sexually exploited by the very Kathamuthu himself.

Kathamuthu, a subaltern who fights for the liberation of subaltern people,

behaves exactly like an upper caste man in his attitude and approach towards Dalit

women. Kathamuthu tries to rule his house with a heavy hand.

His wives are the subalterns who were denied the right to speak freely or act

according to their wishes. One of the extracts showing the high clutches of patriarchy

is where Kathamuthu calls his wives with extremes anger. When represent a sex

which remains invisible most of the times. They are correctly seen as an ellipsis, a

muted group “which cannot be represented, that which is not spoken, that which

remains outside naming and ideologies” (Harish 259).

 33

Kathamuthu speaks with extreme anger and irritation when Thangam met him

to plead for justice. “Shut up, bitch. Don’t you dare use foul language here I’ll hit

your mouth. Don’t you have any respect for the man you’re talking to? If you have

nothing more to say, piss off” (4). Women characters are thus denied space and voice

in male cantered societies. In the novel Kathamuthu’s wives, Kanagavalli and

Nagamani are shaded behind their husband. For Thangam also it is the refusal of

rightful of space by her own family members that make her seek shelter in

Kaathamuthu’s house.

Truly confirming to its title, the novel The Grip of Change doesn’t only voice

the plight of an exploited Dalit woman, but also it records the waves of change in the

Dalit consciousness; thus providing a kind of cure for the ailments of the society.

Through the character of Gowri, the ideal of education, the recovery of Dalit’s

condition is established. Kathamuthu allows his daughter to study and it is only

because of this awareness provided by education that she is able to realize the

exploitation of women in a patriarchal set up. Being educated she protested against

her early marriage.

Gowri was thirty one. She had continued studying, had done research,

received a doctorate, and was now teaching. She had stubbornly

refused to marry. Her reasons for her refusal were like blows dealt to

Kathamuthu . . . father and run to school like a hunted creature. She

was earning her living now. Her self-confidence had grown in

proportion to her independence. (125)

She defies the decision of her father about her marriage by working hard for

her examination, and after getting success, she chooses to study further in the city
 34

college. Through Gowri, Sivakami advocates the need for an organized, educated,

Dalit youth that stands united by ideological commitment and sincerity of action

towards empowerment of Dalits.

The entire story narrated through the eyes of a young girl, Gowri, the daughter

of Kathamuthu. She comments the significant incidents that happen around her. She

openly condemns the inhuman treatment of her father inflicted upon Thangam. Gowri

represents the symptoms of the growing awareness among Dalits. As her father, a

Dalit patriarch allows her to study; she is able to realize the exploitation of women in

a patrichal set up. She thus protests her early marriage, “The suffering that my mother

underwent in her marriage! I don’t want to be tortured like her by some man” (124).

To avoid marriage, she works hard for her examination, and after getting success, she

chooses to study further in the city college. When she crosses the threshold of her

home, resisting her father, she thinks she has freed herself from the tyrannical chains.

Gowri is bitterly critical of her father’s polygamist marital state and always

provokes her mother Kanagavalli and her step-mother Nagamani for liberation. In fact

Gowri is the mouthpiece of Dalit women through whom who voices for the the

voiceless Dalit women who are bearing the inhuman treatment silently.

Gowri openly condemns the inhuman treatment her father inflicted upon

Thangam. When Kathamuthu rapes Thangam. She is also critical of her father’s

polygamist marital state and always urges her mother Kanagavalli and her step-

mother Nagamani for liberation. Here the vocalization and resistance chiefly rests

upon the firebrand spirited Gowri. “Gowri, overhearing their conversation, wondered

whether Thangam would eventually get any money at all for herself. She heard
 35

her . . . when she rembered to whom the money belonged” (81). Gowri realises the

importance of education and says about her father:

‘Dogs! Dogs in this house! Shameless as dogs!’Gowri shouted. She

went back to her room and locked the door, weeping. Thangam won

her court case and the rights to her land. But she stayed where she was,

continuing to live with Kathamuthu . . . the responsibility of paying

those who worked on Kathamuthu’s land; she also received people

who came in search of Kathamuthu. (93)

Thangam’s story of violence is the oldest of its kind. The power-relation

between the Dalit woman and her landlord is the age story woven newly. While

working in the fields of Paranjothi Udayar she was constantly gazed by him. “It was

squealing so loudly despite the gag that children had gathered to gape at it” (85). He

prepared himself to exploit her thinking that she was this servant. Besides, Thangam

was no princess or minister’s daughter and she does not even have a husband.

Therefore, he made it a routine to slake his lust whenever possible. The sexual

violence she faces on very first day left her dejected forever. She had spent her three

years of widowhood untouched by a man; she hated succumbing to the loathsome old

man’s lust. She sobbed with anger sitting alone in the field. Through the novel,

Sivakami questioned the vulnerability of Dalit women. She allows her character to

awake at right time and be conscious against the violence imposed upon her.

“Kathamuthu saw his lack of attention and suggested, ‘shall we begin?’ . . . Paranjothi

had in mind” (79).

Even Paranjothi Udayars is shocked by her extreme step. He always thought

about Thangam as a helpless vulnerable widow whom he can buy with his small
 36

amount of money. He never expected Thangam to act to the extent of filing a police

complaint. Thangam further dares to ask Kathamuthu to go to court for her matter

related to her husband’s share in the land. Thangam’s daring in the first matter gives

her courage and inspiration to move forward. I the novel it is clearly mention that

Paranjothi Udayar drags Thangam in the relationship and she have a strong disliking

towards this:

Thangam lay curled up in a corner. As Kathamuthu washed his hand in

the plate, he queried Thangam in a concerned tone . . . once a

panchayat has arrived at a decision, another cannot be called on the

same issue. But the aggrieved party can go to court you’ll have to

come to Athur for every hearing.’ Kathamuthu peered speculatively

into the corner where Thangam was seated . . . eventually get any

money at all for herself. (81)

Dalit women success in putting an age old, biased theory that the supremacy

of the male must never be challenge and the burden of proof is always lefts on the

woman. Despite of all, Thangam overcomes such violence against her and her body in

Udayar’s case with the help of Kathamuthu. But, her mentor Kathamuthu tries to use

her as a third option for sex and to teach lesson to his two wives.

Thangam’s case takes political stand in the hand of Kathamuthu who once was

the president of the panchant union in Athur. He was a popular and respected leader

for the people of Athur and nearby villages. He changed the happenings regarding to

the affair between Thangam and Udayars and violence it brought. “ You are such a

bitch. I have changed the whole story. Don’t you understand?” (12). Kathamuthu

interferes and change Thangam’s story to gain some political importance among his
 37

caste people. The Dalit woman and her dignity are not very important for him in this

matter. He is the man who gets ready to handle the Thangam’s matter out of the court

by taking cash from Paranjothi Udayar. Such a man dominat and patriarchi curve of

mind turns out whenever he talks with his daughter, Gowri:

Thought, Imust say Iam not satisfied with the offer. Three policemen

were detailed to stay behind in the village, while the inspector and the

tahsildar left i their jeeps. Kathamuthu was talking to the Cheri elders

when a message was conveyed that Udayar would like to talk to him.

Kathamuthu and Paranjothi walked towards each other . . . startled,

Paranjothi said, Kathamuthu, can’t we settle the matter in the

Panchayat?. (74)

When the police logged the complaint, the issue gets series and enlarged. Now

it rises from Thangam and the violence against her to the issue of workers, wages,

prejudices, casteism, and revenge. “Someone brought the wooden plank that served as

a door in Pichappillai’s house. They pulled the pig off the pyre and placed it on the

plank” (86).

Those who went to work in fields next day planned seedlings happy at the

thought of earning an extra fifty-paisa for their labour. Their happiness merely lasted

for few hours as their of earning an did not allow them to leave the fields even at five

in the evening. With pitiful thoughts we can observe that the happiness of lower caste

people depends on the liberalness of the upper caste:

Those who went back to work the next day planted the seedlings happy

at the thought of earning an extra fifty praise for their labour. But their

happiness was short lived. Their supervisors did not allow them to
 38

leave the fields even at five in the evening. They stayed back and

worked. In continuance with the traditions of the society they lived in,

the lower castes had learned to tolerate the intolerable. (76)

The violence on lower caste people in the form of aggression is too an age-old

story told in a new way. Here, no one justifies with lower caste’s suppression. Upper

caste people knew their ways to take their money back in every matter. “Startled,

Paranjothi said, ‘Kathamuthu, can’t we settle the matter in the panchayat? Why

should we take a matter concerning a woman to the court?” (74).

In addition to this, the astute Ramalinga Reddiar decided to bourn every hut in

the Cheri when things settled down. He proudly pronounced that that they complain

for the future matter. “The residents of Puliyur Cheri’s north street had together

contributed two hundered and fifty rupees and purchased a pig from Sirumadal . . . It

was seqealing so loudly despite the gag that children had gathered to gape at it” (85).

It shows an internalized arrogant attitude towards Dalit community. From these entire

matters one thing gets clear that violence, woman and politics are discuss side by the

author very aptly:

After the panchayat, she did not return to Puliyur. When she was not

busy with her court appearances, she worked on Kathamuthu’s land.

Whenever she remembered her life in Puliyur, she wept . . . The shock

of being dragged out by her hair in the middle of the night to be beaten

up like an animal had affected her mind deeply. She would gasp awake

at night at the slightest sound. She hated the memory of Udayar’s

sexual use of her body. (87)

 39

As the Thangam and her matter unknowingly gets the big issue and apparently

living this one aside. Every one discussed about caste and other matters. Nothing very

hood and appreciating comes out for Thangam out of all these and we can see that the

patriarchy wins in the end. In the novel, assertion on caste subjected by Kathamuthu

was taken for granted by everyone. His own community brutally in public mutes the

new bud like Rasendran’s voice down. “ She felt genuinely angry when one of them

made a sarcastic remark about him. The serving spoon never knows the taste of curt,

‘she thought” (88).

Moreover, the justice given to Thangam out of the court is unjustified. She

deserves the right place and honour instead of ten thousand rupees. Her gullible,

marginalized nature is expose and use by everyone including her own caste people.

While taking her matter to Kathamuthu at the very night of the attack her demand for

justice was so simple. She says, “sami, these hooligans who beat me up, they should

be jailed for at least a day and tortured. The pain is killing me” (5).

The suffering she has gone through is not the concern of anyone. Thangam,

after that nights experience was not able to sleep properly. No one show concern for

her psychological state after that particular incident, for a childless widow such

violence was like hurricane in the silent sea. Thangam’s response to this incident was

such horrific. Once she used to plate her long hair, but now she no longer bothered

with that. She now pinned it up without any care and covered head with her sari. “In

the house of Paranjothi when they assembled again, once of the polic men suggested

to Paranjothi, why don’t you lodge a counter . . . We’ll manage the rest” (41).

When she watched Gowri, doing her make-up for school while humming

popular song from radio, a delicate lightness spreads on her body but immediately the
 40

feelings are harden. Here, Sivakami shows how the marginalized Dalit woman

Thangam becomes the victim of the patriarchal of society. Sivakami’s novels voice it

through Kathamuthu, the self-styled leader of the Parayars. While talking to the

inspector about Thangam he says, “Sir, I am not educated like you. I have just studied

till class three. There after my mother had to live as a bonded labourer’s in an upper

caste house hold. I tended their cattle . . .” (22). Similar sufferings are endured by the

children belonging to the lower caste. They are made socially disabled in educational

institutions.

The story of Thangam speaks volumes about her helplessness. Thangam

becomes a victim of sexual advances by her upper caste landlord, Paranjothi. But she

does not dare to raise her voice against this injustice for the fear of social oppression.

The upper caste people planned to workers from the neighbouring village after this

incident. K.Sachidanandan says, “Dalit literature empowers the marginalized by

retrieving the voice, spaces and identities silenced or suppressed by castes powers”

(14).

The Grip of Change creates the impression that the upper caste had handled

the incident as a man-versus-woman problem, whereas the lower caste had given it

the caste slant. But, Thangam, a subaltern Dalit third world woman goes on facing

problem everywhere. The violence in the form of physical, emotional, psychological

and religious ways is not the matter of today. Since centuries, women, are being

dominated by the hands of patriarchy.

Thangam faces triple violence. One can clearly observe that the social

structure denies her natural right, the cast Hindu community treat her as a slave and

the patriarchy treats her as an inferior. At the end, reader gets a hint that the women
 41

and their role in the society are changing and so the patriarchy and their role must

change. And at the end, Gowri in the novel has shown as the epitome to such change.

Sivakami’s is able to formulae the poignant tale of a woman’s struggle.

Through the Thangam’s story and Gowri’s protests which suggest that silence and

suppression. It is optimistically replaced by a stimulated and resisting expression. The

violence from the physical, emotional. Psychological and religious ways, the women

goes to facing the problem everywhere. At the end of the novel readers gets a ideas

the woman and their role, in the society changing and also patriarchy their role also

change. At the end Gowri in the novel has shown as his epitome to such change.

The third chapter entitled as male domination. The Taming of Women deals

with the concept of male chauvinism. The Taming of Women is based on how women

struggle to protect their honour and how they are oppressed by the men. Dignity for

women is still a question mark in most of the places in the world. It is based on the

women being oppressed in both upper and lower classes. The story begins when the

protagonist Anandhayi discovered her husband Periyannan’s paramour. When

Anandhayi successfully trapped the woman who had an affair with her husband

Periyannan, his torso bare, came thundering down the steps.

 42

Chapter III

Male Domination

Dalit women considered to be the most underprivileged group left out

at the bottom of the hierarchal caste society for centuries. In centuries

to Dalit men, they suffer more to their dual oppression: being Dalit and

being woman. Being Dalit, they suffer due to caste discrimination and

being a woman, victimized by the patriarchal social order both in their

homes as well as outside. Dalit women believed to be alienated at three

levels; caste, class, and gender position.

Tomar

Dalit literature not only hoists heart wrenching questions but also authenticates

the capability of the people in the margins to fight against injustices. Women have

always been doubly oppressed and remained the object of male domination. In this

context, the dilemma of Dalit women in Indian society is horrible as they are

oppressed on the basis of class, gender and caste. In the last few decades Dalit women

are trying to create a female space for themselves through writing their traumatic

experiences. There are a large number of Dalit women writers who brought Dalit texts

into limelight. They have started searching for the root cause of these injustices forced

upon them. Women in these writings bring their own identification as women as well

as Dalit.

The social inequalities between men and women are increasingly questioned

by women from quite diverse milieu and waging their fight in various ways.

Theoretical positions and forms of struggle which a short time ago still had some
 43

credibility, and indeed some importance, have begun to be transformed by the breadth

of the movement, the resulting debates and analyses, and the active encounter with the

labour movement and the parties of the Left. For some people, male domination in the

life of our society is the sole important form of oppression and must therefore be an

exclusive target of struggle. This position, adopted by some ‘radical feminist’

currents, can even attract bourgeois and petty bourgeois favour, at least when ‘the war

of the sexes’ is held up as the only social battle to be waged. For others, by contrast,

male domination is the least important form of social oppression, coming a long way

behind class exploitation, imperialist domination, and racial segregation. At the

extreme-and this was at times the view of some militants and left-wing circles-such

domination could wait its time, fated to disappear together with class exploitation,

imperialism and racism.

The caste system is the oldest surviving social phenomenon in the world. The

inherent superiority of same castes and the inferiority of others is one of Hinduism’s

central elements. When a person is born into a particular caste, it is not possible to

change one’s caste to another. Many Dalit women are victims of gender

discrimination. The basic different between high caste women and Dalit women lies

on the ground of caste based discrimination and untouchability. Faces male

domination is also faced by Dalit women.

Caste is the most demoralizing aspect of Indian society. Caste disparities lead

to violence against lower caste women, who is expected to yield to upper caste male

chauvinism. The caste discrimination is exposed when a Dalit woman moves from

passivity to active assertion against the sexual exploitation. It is a caste which shapes
 44

of the integral part of the gender status and identity of Dalit women. Caste

oppression, gender subjugation and class exploitation, all are interlined together.

Dalit women suffer both gender and caste-based violence. The violence

against women has noted that Dalit women face targeted violence, even rape and

murder, by the state actors and powerful members of the dominant caste used to

inflict political lessons and crush dissent within the community. Gender inequality

sanctified by religious and cultural norms subordinates women and reinforces the

patriarchal order, allowing for violence against them to be carried out within their

own homes and communities as well.

Dalit Women face verbal, physical and sexual violence in the public and

private domain. Dalit women’s sexual and bodily integrity are threatened and

violated, even from a young age. Due to the caste hierarchy, dominant caste men

have a perceived right over Dalit women’s bodies while gender inequality and

subordination norms play an important role in the perpetuation of marital rape and in-

caste-sexual assault.

Dalit Women are considered to be available sexually to any dominant caste

man. They are forced temple prostitution and trafficking becomes the major concerns

for young Dalit girls. Sexual exploitation of Dalit women is a common occurrence

due to their low socio-economic status and dominant caste members take advantage of

their power and authority over them.

Dalit women are being practiced on the basis of discriminatory social, cultural,

economic, religious and political tradition and beliefs. If women resist their practices,

they are usually punished with violence. Sixty per cent of Dalit women experience

family or other gender-based violence, whether physical, sexual, psychological, social

 45

or cultural. Dalit women also face hardship because of child marriage, bigamy and

dowry practices that continue to prevail despite having been outlawed. Devi says:

There is a even a scale of distances within which different panchamas,

as the untouchables are called in south India, may not approach

Braman’s eight yards for Kammalans, twelve yards of illuvans or

Tiyans sixteen yards for pulayans, thirty two yards for pulayans, thirty

two for the parayans or pariahs. (209)

This segregation is maintained through various rituals and ideals of purity and

pollution. So far as Dalit women are concerned, they face multiple jeopardy by virtue

of being lower caste and also women at the same time. Dalit women face sexual

harassment from the upper caste landlords for whom they work and also from the

patriarchy of their own society. Even though the kind of oppression that Dalit women

face is multi-layered and complex, they have failed to get adequate representation in

women’s movements which have remained upper-class. Indians are divided along

class; caste and religion. Women need to be understood in terms of their locations

which in turn influence relations of power. Hence the need felt by the Dalit women to

have their own organizations and different discourses to represent their agonizing

experiences as Dalit women.

The women writers, too, are seen to feel the need to take up a dual

responsibility of defending their community against the greater atrocities of the caste

system on the one hand, and at the same time critiquing the gender discriminations

perpetrated by their own patriarchy, on the other. However, when it comes to Dalit

women’s writing, it is not only much more radical, it is much more complicated. It

exposes the multiple fronts of exploitation and suffering. Arjun Dangle says, “Dalit
 46

literature is marked by revolt and negativism, since it is closely associated with the

hopes for freedom by a group of people who as untouchables are victims of social,

economic and cultural inequality” (38).

Sivakami’s The Taming of the Women (2012) novel highlights how women

struggle to safeguard their honour and how they are oppressed by the men. The story

begins when the protagonist Anandhayi discovered her husband Periyannan’s

paramour. There is the notion of how women are being crushed at the hands of men.

Women are perpetually tortured at home and are also the sole means of providing

livelihood for the family.

The patriarchal notion of home, as domain of woman, is not rejected by

Anandayi. In the agrarian milieu of Anandayi, we have Dalit men who possess

concubine in order to teach a lesson to legally wedded wife or simply they lust after

women. “Anandhayi would never have managed in a strange house. She’d have stood

there like a stump not knowing what was where” (1). The other woman is significant

when one talks about power relations within a Dalit community.

The woman is the victim of the male power. The woman, so singled out, as

‘the other woman’ and the subjugation at multiple levels, makes us aware of the

power relations that operate between Dalits and upper-caste as similar to the once

between Dalit men and women. In fact, she is never seen to leave home to seek

liberty. “Periyannan, his torso bare, came thundering down the steps. He released the

woman from Anandhayi’s grip and pushed her aside” (4).

The domestic space, she is confined to, becomes a powerful place for

resistance. “Those disabilities which were imposed upon the scheduled castes by the

superior castes” (Sharma, 77). There’s no subversion of dominant patriarchal

 47

discourse, but a true portrayal of Dalit community, rendering the visible and the

invisible:

Without a word, she fell on the wall . . . After a while Anandhayi woke

up. Her face was bloated by her endless tears, her eyelids heavy, her

body aching, her messy, lips blistered-dark now like ripe jamuns-and

her heart broken . . . the floor and the milk dregs on the floor next to

her. Anandayi changed her mind, released the noose and started to

wail. (84)

The Taming of Women revolves around Anandayi rather than her husband

Periyannan. Anandhayi, the central character, is always working inspire of all the

brutalities that she has to face at the hands of her husband, Periyannan. At one point

of her lifetime, she tries to commit suicide but it is the face of her younger child that

makes her sustain her life. Anandhayi’s subjugation is not just of a single individual

but the whole of the tribal community. The reality of their life is shocking and it is

beyond our imagination. “Even though it was burning, somehow it rekindled her

belief in life” (20).

Periyannan’s wife Anandhayi was in labour while he had taken another

woman to sleep with him upstairs brought to him by the midwife with whom too,

Periyannan often had physical connection. “After that Anandhayi threw in two

measures of millet into the mortar and started to pound” (115). The male domination

in a woman’s life is brought out clearly in this novel. In a Patriarchal system a man

can do anything and a woman cannot question him when he has many wives. When

he likes he would bring a woman home and throw her away when his needs are meet.
 48

Periannan’s wife, Anandhyai has to suffer when he brings home another woman

named Lakshmi:

Anandhayi’s heartfelt heavy. Here she lay alone on her bed while her

husband shares his with a lighter-skinned woman. Her faceless parents,

who deserted her very young, disturbed her now and she burst into

tears . . . She came in just a few days back. And God knows when she

will take to her heels. (115)

Anandhayi had no illusion about him though she wished that he would not get

his women home. “The term Dalit however served to unite the group by including all

the lower castes under one common umbrella” (Narayan, 38). The physical violence

the women saw and are subjected to on the basis of their being Dalits, made one

daughter Dhanam, a rebel, while the other daughter kala became apathetic.

Periyannan was the king of and he laps all women under his control.

Periyannan married Lakshmi, whom he got home as his second wife. His desire for

Lakshmi was so much that he did not mind risking everything he had – his wealth,

respect, work and status in his attempt to gain control over Lakshmi. “Sure I sit home

entertaining every passer-by. Who is here to stop me? Because you want to hide your

shady doings, you are shifting the blame on me. How fair is that?” (59). When she did

not act according to his wishes, Periyannan was much hurt; he saw it as a blow to his

egotism. Anandhayi the man protagonist married to the womanizer Peiyannan. Her

mother-in-law, Chinnasami and Lakshmi are infused with originality. These men

preferred to have contact with many women as they considered that as a matter of

pride:
 49

The rotting body was anyone to sob or wail. Just a few women linked

their arms around each other’s waist, swayed first to the lest, then to

the right and sang a few dirges. Not a single eye was wet. Not one

lamentation could be understood. It was a house with the putrid stench

of death and sweat. (60)

The women were kept by them in order to assert their virility or to teach a

lesson to their legally wedded wife or simply because they lusted after women. It is

of much significance, however, that such women happen to be always poor, without

any social support and are either widows or abandoned by their husbands.

The representation of the other women is a significant entry point to the

discussion of power relations with a Dalit community. Such a woman is an obvious

victim of male power. Lakshmi suffered pain and humiliation because of the

treatment given by both the father and the son. Most of the Dalit women get married

out of compulsion and circumstance. They are forced by the manmade destiny to lead

their life as prescribed to them.

The Oppression to a greater or lesser extent produces anger or hurt and

oppression and injustice form an inevitable part of an untouchable’s life, especially

the Dalit woman, which has become a life of tolerance and sacrifice. When

Anandhayi successfully trapped the woman who had affair with her husband, the

moment he thrashed her, she got the labour pain and delivered her baby. He didn’t

come to see the new born baby too.

In the patriarchal Indian society, women pass through manifold trials and

tribulations apart from the discrimination in terms of their caste and gender. Their

oppression is seen both at home and outside. The dual pressures of caste and gender
 50

place women in a state of exploitation by the men. She is reduced to a mere body, to

the position of a mere sexual commodity. Ilaiah says:

The writers, indeed, portrays a new side of Dalit life world and show

that with all their troubles Dalit women enjoy much more freedom and

independence than upper-caste women who are relegated to the house.

They do not need to follow restricting rituals which Hindu social

norms impose on the upper-caste women. In fact, as KanchaIlaiah

claims, Dalit society is much more democratic and in its own way

gives a lot of freedom to its women. (47)

Women have been the object of violence in greater degree from their own men

folk, and also from so called upper caste men. In Indian society, women is subjugated

and ill-treated in many ways. It is all because of the age old patriarchal society in

which the men are always upper hand and dominate the women irrespective of the

class, background, plight and predicament of the women.

Anandhyai married to a womanizer, Periyannan, a contractor, is not content

with the wealth that his farms bring him. He is hungry for the power that money can

bring, and tyrannical in his treatment of the women in his life-be it his wife, his

concubine, his old and ailing mother his daughters or the many women for whom he

has an insatiable appetite:

Lakshmi gave no reply. She could not help but smile. The old crone

was scared her son might hear and so had spoken in an undertone.

Whatever she had been eating ran down her chin. Lakshmi gently

moved the stick and said, ‘I will, from tomorrow. Now, please let me

go up. (145)
 51

When his young son dies at home and Periyannan finds it difficult to take care

two households and manage his official work, he persuades Lakshmi to move into his

family home even when his wife, Anandhayi, is in labour. Anandhayi prays to her

God, claiming, “Sami . . . let the slut come down and she will get it from me. She

who has climbed up has to climb down” (4). It is also a portrayal of the sort of

misdirected hatred women reserve for each other, a social and cultural interpellation

where the worst discrimination and judgment comes from other women. Instead of

focusing that violent hatred towards her openly cheating husband, Anandhayi’s anger

findsits source in the women he sleeps with. Her tribulations in bringing up her

daughters Dhanam, Arul, and Kala is perhaps best captured in the lines:

Even when he approached her with a question, ‘why do you ask me?’

she snapped. Muthakka propped the child on her outstretched legs and

began to bathe her. Anandhayi was in the kitchen draining out the

kanji. He chose to come. Avoiding Anandhayi’s line of vision, and on

the pretext of founding the child, he brushed his hand on Muthakka’s

breast. (21)

Periyannan is always tries to bring all women under his control through sex

and power. Muthakka is a maid who came to help Aanandhayiin her household chores

until she got back to normal from her delivery. “His careless tone irritated Muthakka.

‘I’ll be gone in ten days’ . . . don’t let the demonises who’s just delivered know about

it though” (7). Periyannan does not want Muthakka to leave, so he insisted upon her

staying for a few more days:

Brushing against her dody, periyannan walkedout of the kitchen.as he

was about to leave after cleaning his teeth, Muthakka . . . quietly,

 52

Anandhayi took the drawstring bag beside her head and handed it over.

In it were a few torn ten-and five rupee notes. Muthakka drew out a

fiver, tucked it into her waist and gave her own two rupees to

Madhalaiamma. ‘Do you have something for me to munch? I’m

feeling faint’. (8)

Periyannan is king of all he surveys, until he encounters and is enslaved by the

beauty of Lakshmi, whom he gets home as his second wife. Lakshmi reaffirms the

image of a destitute woman ending up as a concubine. Her youth is exploited by

numerous men; the last one abandons her at a lodge. Her sexual exploitation results in

a damaged uterus and she is unable to conceive a pregnancy:

Anandhayi grumbled to herself. She mixed the leftover . . . the free

flow of cash had made him less responsible towards his home . . . he

had not come home for days. The free flow of cash had made him less

responsible towards his home. Dhandapani, the chilli merchant in

odakathur, was already urging him to accept his service. Dhandapani

was very famous among rich men. He was the best-known pimp in that

area. He always had a list of available women. (57)

Periyannan is introduced to her as a rich childless widower who is enthralled

by her beauty and sets her up in a house in the town away from his family home. He

pampers her with clothes, jewellery and holidays at hill station. “She felt as if the sad .

. . that had been ringing in her head suddenly came to a halt” (92). Lakshmi was born

in a Tevar’s family and only daughter surrounded by brothers and doting parents.

“Even as the folks stood by, Lakshmi entered the house quietly. There are two women

here, and still he brought in his concubine,’ someone whispered to the old crone”
 53

(114). Her post-widowhood lifestyle alienates her from her natal family and she fears

a violent reprisal if she ever returned home.

Periyannan has numerous liaisons, with professional prostitutes, with distant

relatives, even with the mid-wife Muthakka who visits to help his wife deliver his

fifth child, Aanandhayi is held always a captive by repeated pregnancies, enormous

amount of domestic chores, and work at the far-flung family land and is constantly

subjected to severe violence by her husband. Guru says, “In this context that in

different capacities ‘Dalit men are reproducing the same mechanisms against their

women which their high caste adversaries had used to dominate them” (83).In fact,

even when she is in labour, Periyannan pushes her on the floor, assaults her and

mounts the stairs to sleep with another woman:

She was so angry she nearly spluttered the words out. ‘It appears the

old man is better than this kid,’ remarked Anandthayi, referring to

Periannan with an old familiarity. The rest are small kids. Anandayee

is a patient woman. She got married to me even before she reached her

puberty, till this days, she has lived with me in fear, submissive to me

ever. (124)

Periannan enamoured of Lakshmi’s seductive beauty and pampers her. He

gives money to her so that she may visit a midwife to abort her foetus. He orders her

to carry on with her pregnancy. When she points out that her health is fragile and she

can’t bear the burden he pushes her aside violently and shrugs it off. She ultimately

pawns her nose stud to meet the expenses of abortion. Lakshmi, once she enters

Periyannan’s house, although given a separate room upstairs, is tormented and almost

butchered byPeriyannan physically and sexually:

 54

Lakshmi brought the conversation to a halt. Her heart was on fire. He

stopped too, his mind twisted. Of late, Anbu had been insisting on

sleeping next to Lakshmi at night, though Anandhayi objected . . . he

tried turning Lakshmi around, first gently, then forcefully. She was

hurt . . . she swiped off his hand. This time he approached her with a

show of affection and hugged her tight. (126)

Periyannan asserts his patriarchal power by repeated, brutal acts of violence on

all the women in his household - his aged mother, his adolescent daughters, his wife

and his concubine. “When Periannan returned from the cremation ground, he was too

scared to look Anandhayi in the eye” (97).

Periyannan stays away from the house for long and each time he returns home

he brutally assaults Aanandhayi, scolds her for being a careless housewife, and

insinuates that she courts secret lovers during his absence. “Look out when

periyannan’s wife is going to get one, and then you shall see” (118). He takes no

interest or responsibility for their children’s upbringing, blaming Anandhayi for every

minor lapse of any of their children. He creates an atmosphere of sheer terror during

the brief intervals he stays at home. For all his preferred love, Periyannan tortures

Laxmi’s body almost every night. He is constantly insecure about her, does not let her

talk to anybody and often has sex with her violently:

A woman’s curse can ruin you, ’begged the old crone. ‘Dirty bitch,

how dare you take a sickle at me?’ Periannan was not going to stop any

time soon. He now turned his anger on the crowd...mani and Periannan

dragged Lakshmi up the stair ways, threw her in the room and locked it

from outside .(128)

 55

Perannan inflicts violence upon his wife as a matter of right and pins her down

through recurring pregnancies, in the case of his concubine, he literally locks her up in

a room, comfortably furnished, but cut off from human contact. Imprisoning or

holding captive a woman’s body, causing psychological torment is a strategy used by

Periyannan to wield power and authority over women. “periannan was screaming

bloody murder because he couldn’t find the... demanded before scattering the seeds”

(143). He never gives sufficient money to his wife to run the home while selling off

parts of his land or mortgaging his house to give expensive gifts to Lakshmi:

She had been down with a bad fever and had lost her gait. Her breasts

had shrunk. If and if he came to the backyard, she slunk to the thinnai.

As she went about taking care of the delivery, Anandhayi also fed her

well. ‘Poor woman, she may not be around the next delivery,’ she

whispered to herself . . . Periannan, of course, never sent her alone to

the fields. (157)

Unable to put up with his violent conduct, Laxmi elopes, first with a lorry

driver plying to her hometown and later with Manickam a young, rich, philandering

son of Periyannan’s arch enemy Kangani. Each time, Periyannan hires a taxi, spends

vast amount of money to hunt her down and brings her home. Violence and sexual

abuse increase manifold after her return home. Periyannan also grows more

suspicious and insecure about her.

Instead of releasing she from the pact of living together mutually agreed upon

earlier, he beefs up security to hold her captive. “The more his father yelled at him,

the more Lakshmi grew fond of him” (124). In a way, the freedom to break away, a
 56

privilege enjoyed by the concubine, denied toe wife in a traditional society is hardly

open to Lakshmi:

Lakshmi-hunting and had ignored both his contract and the political

party. Also, Kangani’s yield was larger and he was much wealthier.

Periannan could no longer compete with him. kangani’s wife sat on the

thinnai adorned with a thick gold chin . . . ground the necessary

masalas and cleaned the dishes from the previous night. Periannan was

a little hurt, but consoled himself that the girl needed the money. (146)

The points of intersection that intrude the lives of Lakshmi andAanandhayi are

barely distinguishable. They are subjugated, assaulted and held captive. As

Periyannan is rich, he hardly bothers about Lakshmi’s poor but upper caste family. He

throws a wad of currency notes on her father's face and drags back Lakshmi to his

house. While motherhood ties down Aanandhayi and she is unable to even commit

suicide, Lakshmi is bound by the rigours of her sexual identity.

As a concubine, Lakshmi has to put up with whatever methods her master may

employ to extract pleasure through her. She is reduced to a mere body, to the position

of a mere sexual commodity. Whether in terms of gifts, jewellery, saris or hiring men

and cabs to locate her whereabouts, Periyannan flashes money and keeps a check on

Lakshmi. . “Lakshmi bemoaned to herself. The whole night, after a hard whack on

my nose, I lay crying to myself, and here he was with this bitch not even regretting

hitting me or feeling guilty of his act” (133).

After all, she had treated him like a son. The ageing Periyannan needs Mani’s

physical prowess and henceforth does not chide him over his failure in studies or his

secret drinking bouts. Thus, Mani establishes his patriarchal authority in the
 57

household by exercising physical violence on women. Both the father and the son beat

up the unmarried daughters/sisters and resent the visits of the married ones to their

natal home. Lakshmi, finally, consumes poison to free herself of ceaseless torture.

Periyannan weeps bitterly at her death but soon turns to Aanandhayi with vengeful

violence. “To the surprise of everyone, he burst into tears that swelled out of them

like a foaming ocean” (224). Lakshmi finds freedom only at death, when she

liquidates her own body. Through her suicide, she affirms her claim to an identity

beyond the body:

Lakshmi’s eyes were unfocused. Suddenly, she leapt out of the bed.

The moment her feet touched the floor, she fell flat on her face. Two

nurse hurried into the room. ‘Where are the elders?’ the nurses asked

Arul as they lifted Lakshmi on to her bed. Around eleven in the

morning, Lakshmi was declared dead. Periyannan could not believe it,

but had to accept it eventually. (224)

Aanandhayis left to face the anger and viciousness of a husband who had lost

his material prosperity and official clout resulting in a diminished income. “She had

been expecting it any time soon, yet the pain in her heart was unbearable” (224). He

also becomes a more desperate man as he can no longer get even with Lakshmi after

her successful attempt at an escape from his clutches through her suicide. Periyannan

treats Aanandhayi worse than a maid, denying her any money even for her personal

expenses. His neglect of his children's upbringing and education result in their

irresponsible, disrespectful, abusive conduct towards their mother:

There was no one leaf empty at the corner. Dhanam headed straight for

it, when Anandhayi made Mani sit there and warned her in an
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undertone, ‘let the visitors leave. You can eat afterwards’. Dhanam

burst into tears and blew her nose into her half-sari... Anandhayi

chided her gently. (151)

As they always saw their father keep his wife subjugated, the children grow up

to deny their mother any subjectivity. While Aanandhayi put up with Periyannan’s

brutality on account of her responsibility towards her children, his ill-treatment of her

has, however, forged a callous, abusive behaviour among her children who fear their

father’s authority and look down upon their mother as powerless and therefore

dispensable. “Anandhayi was setting off to sow paddy. She took out the gunny bag

that she had soaked the night before, then spread the paddy seedlings on it and

converted them with hay” (142).

Periyannan and Aanandhayi have three daughters - Kala, Danam and Arul.

Severe, savage violence is vmeted out to each one of them by their father or Mani,

their elder brother. Their younger brother Anbu reports about them maliciously to the

parents, gets a larger share of the eatables from the grandmother and blackmails them

to indulge him or else be ready to face their father's ire:

Dhanam looked beautiful-fairer and fleshier than Kala. Kala, on the

other hand, was slender. Dhanam was oversensitive, could burst into

tears at the drop of a hat, could not bear hunger or control . . .

Anandhyi watched gritting her teeth. Only afterwards did Dhanam cool

down a bit. (152)

Each of the daughters gets beaten up by the father or by both the father and the

elder brother. At times, they are even dragged to the cowshed and thrashed. After

marriage, their father strongly resents their visits to his house or their bonding with
 59

their mother. Danam, in fact, is beaten up by her husband at her marital home and

violently threatened chided by her father during her visits to her natal home after

marriage.

In the lives of all the three daughters, Periyannan’s intolerance of a woman’s

attempt at self-articulation or her interrogation of male injustice precipitates enormous

violence against them. Dhanam, who uses speech in a more subversive way than the

other daughters, is thrashed the most. Kala, a voracious reader amongst the three is

taken out of school forcibly. Arul, the most imaginative and cherished by her father

for having brought him luck at her birth, is forced out of his home when she tries to

counsel him to give up drinking. The two sons’ are never shown to be beaten up, even

for their grave lapses:

When periannan returned home at nine in the night, he saw Kala on the

bicycle on the road. ‘Kala!’ called out. Kala had not expected her

father at the time and was startled by his rough tone. Her feet stopped

pedalling on their own... even before she had begun Dhanam and Arul

stood there with their hands stretched out for the milk dregs. As soon

as Periannan entered he grabbed Anandhayi by her bun and dragged

her up. (83)

The married daughters are not encouraged to visit their natal home or converse

with their mother while the sons are kept tightly under a leash by him. If they raise a

whisper, they would get no share in the property, he threatens. Thus, all the children

are controlled treated harshly by the father and are moulded by him in such a manner

that they perceive their mother as someone who deserves the violence she receives

from her husband.

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Thus, he subverts the mother-daughter bond and the daughters, brought up on

a staple diet of violence, grow up to be violent towards their mother - abusive and

bereft of empathy. Bama says, “From this perspective, it seems to me that at least our

women work hard and earn their own money, and have a few coins in their hands.

They don’t hold out their palms to their husbands for every little expense, like those

of others” (66). Victims of patriarchal abuse themselves; the daughters turn abusive

towards their mother or resent Lakshmi. They are not equipped with education or

sensitivity to perceive the two women as fellow victims:

Anandhayi felt faint. Kala would come of age by the end of this year.

She looked almost ready. Maybe Anandhayi should make her a

jumkas. She should harvest two sack-loads of coriander, and then she

could buy the jumkas and two goat kids besides. Of course she had to

make sure her husband did not come to know about it. Half of what he

earned went to his women. (78)

Although abused by their father, they are in awe of his authority and power.

As economic power and social prestige rest with their father and their mother is

reduced to a domestic drudge and a child-bearer, the daughters fear the former while

feeling ashamed of the latter. Periyannan is very cruel towards his daughters. Kala,

the eldest of the three daughters is a studious girl and a voracious reader of fiction.

She borrows books from her friend’s brother and devours them after school hours,

reading up a novel a day:

Anandhayi could not help feeling bitter. She was fed up with this life.

She was reduced to being just a mother to her children. As she

breastfed the child, she wiped away her tears. When a drop fell the
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child, she wiped away her tears. When a drop fell on the baby’s cheek,

it looked at her and smiled. Already a year has gone by. He is very

pale. He is constantly chewing rice and never seems to listen to me.

(80)

Her father, during one of his rare visits to home catches a glimpse of her

reading. He quickly snatches the book and interrogates, “From where did you procure

this?” (48).The younger siblings report from Dingumalli Annan. Dingumalli is the

mentally retarded brother of Kala’s classmate Maariayee. Periyannan flares up, “How

dare you bring books over from a male fellow? Has your mother let you loose on the

streets?”And thrashes her, hitting her hard on her head with the book gnashing his

teeth like “a wrathful dog” (48).

He turns around and hits another child for munching uncooked rice and swirls

over to grab his wife's hair and hit her for her incompetent child-rearing skills. He

then leaves home leaving behind a dazed and numbed family. When Periyannan is

busy electioneering sees Kala cycling on the back lane and asks her to return home.

At home, he drags Aanandhayi by her hair, abuses her character, and thrashes her

until she faints at the kitchen by the hearth. When her grandmother shields the young

Kala, Periyannan hits his old mother and thrashes Kala black and blue. Kala receives

a further punishment from her father, when she is stopped from going to school:

Mani will move to the city to continue his studies. The rest are still

little. You stay on the first floor with me. Anandhayi is a patient

woman. She got married to me as a very young girl. She is scared of

me and will not even squeak. ‘you still have a year to complete the

bridge. (99)
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She is hardly thirteen or fourteen and she is punished so harshly for such an

innocent activity like cycling. She is married off to a school teacher but is unhappy as

her husband is unable to provide her luxuries but instead helps his elder brother

financially. She comes back to her natal home after a bitter fight with her husband

“On the day of the wedding, though, people were more curious about the emerald-

studded chain worn by Lakshmi than about the bride . . . and still he brought in his

concubine, someone whispered to the old crone” (114).

Her husband hits her hard in the presence of her brother-in-law and abuses

Kala over bather father’s sexual escapades. Her father however resents her stay, calls

up her husband and dispatches her to her marital home. Kala receives no affection or

support from her natal family either before or after marriage.

Periyannan’s daughters get no share in their father’s property. Nor do they get

any stridden at the time of marriage. They are married off before they turn fifteen and

are denied any privileges if they visit their natal home. Arul, the youngest, an

intelligent, sensitive girl who is given to speaking to creepers and trees, announces her

wish to remain unmarried and denounce motherhood:

Even Arul is able to go out to the thinnai and pee by herself, but this

kid still needs an escort, she thought to herself as she switched on the

light. It was past midnight. Balan stood there, holding on to his penis

so that he would not wet his shorts... when Anandhayi whipped

around, she was shocked. (93)

Once when Arul defends her mother when her father chides her for no fault,

Periyannan gnashes his teeth threateningly at her. Her visits to her father’s house

come to an end following this incident. Thus, all the three daughters are left to fend
 63

for themselves and receive no support from their family - either material or emotional.

One can comprehend the miserable plight of the women in patriarchal Indian society.

The women are caught in the clutches of men. A critic has noted despite the relative

expansion of space and voice, the emerging image of women is still that of a suffering

human being. “She could think of nothing else but of an escape route from this hell.

There seemed none. Her body ached. She refused to say a word to anybody in that

house” (144).

Anandhayi and Lakshmi represent the subservient self which is butchered by

periannan. Characters like Poongavanam and Dhanam challenge the code of conduct

imposed upon them. Although in a patriarchal world, they manage to transgress their

allocated space. Poongavanam makes the difficult choice of remaining as a single

mother, thereby asserting her dignity. Younger women Malarkodi and poogavanam

choose to live in an independent world defying the patriarchal die tom. There is also

an array of strong women characters like the old crone with a determined self to have

others in control. Sivakami Anandhayi is a study of cross section of the community, a

social real it. She attempts to create a new consciousness, the possibility of creating

another community where women is looked upon with respect.

Sivakami thus foregrounds the issues in and around Dalit women, who

remained conveniently foregotten amidst the hue and cry raised against the segregated

status of Dalits. Anandayi is a true picture of Dalit household, a representation which

Sivakami lays bare to the society with the hope of changing in the established order.

The Dalit writers are asserting their identity and challenging a society that had earlier

excluded them by writing about their lives themselves. They were no completely
 64

absent from the literary and cultural discourse of India. The Dalits had found textual

space in the writings of the upper-class literatures.

This portrayal was midway between presence and absence. From this stature

of ambivalence, Dalit literature opens new vistas by opening the space to the Dalits

for defining their individuality and cultural identity. These writers foreground a

literary space for these disadvantaged, subdued figures and in turn reclaiming their

own long-lost space in the field of literature. These tribal writers manage to carve

their own space by making others hear their home-grown voice. Their new found

opportunities speak up for the community and not a particular individual, they rely on

revolt and progress and not on backwardness and passivity. The passive suffering of

these people leads to a state of active assertion of selfhood and they move on from the

discourse of pity to the discourse of resurge.

Sivakami focuses on the violent exploitation of a woman’s body and points

out how family as an institution is embedded in patriarchal, oppressive system, that

are blatantly unjust to women. Dalit women’s sexuality (whether as a daughter, wife

or beloved) is severely contained and repressed. She points out, “In the society that is

known as mainstream, the problems of Dalit women are considered separatist. They

face the worst expressions of male chauvinistic society- atrocities like raping,

profiling, physical assault and murder”. They reflect the general bias at the grassroots

against women, as in tribal society. When we talk of women’s empowerment, we give

priority to those who live below the poverty line- malnourished and poor women.

Even in that respect, Dalit women are the worst affected.

She feels that the concept of education for Dalit women is yet to take root in

society. Consequently, Dalit feminists who speak for their women and spearhead
 65

causes like inter-caste marriages are often branded separatists. They may be on the

periphery, but they ironically form the core issues because they speak for large

numbers who have been affected by discrimination. “The Dalit feminists need more

encouragement from the country to emerge from their shells” (46). Sivakami is

critical of the upper castes, who she claims lack human conscience.

Although she claims her identity to be beyond caste, her caste consciousness is

evident in the remarks made by her. She points out that, Caste is the real hurdle India

has to cross. The entire country is rooted in caste. Sivakami further adds that for an

upper caste Hindu, a village sounds romantic, but for the Dalit it sounds like the

corporation (public) toilet. The Dalit communities are forced to prostrate before upper

castes and they are ghettoized working as landless labourers and living in clusters on

the fringe of the village. She highlights that assuming the larger identity of a Dalit

encompasses gender discrimination, class discrimination, discrimination against

transgenders and all the issues that a marginalized society faces.

Dalit women sufferings are endless they are deprived are education and rights.

They are exploited by the upper caste adn also by the rich men. They are marginalized

in the society in all walks of life. Sivakami gives a call to all Dalits to overcome the

pains undergone by them using education.

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Chapter IV

Summation

Palanimuthu Sivakami was an Indian Administrative officer and bureaucrat

for a span of nearly three decades in the civil service who gave up her office to turn

her attention to politics. She founded the political party “Samuga Samathuva Padai”

forum for equality in society, in 2009. Her maiden novels were Pazhiyana

Kazhidalum which published in the year 1986 and translated into English by herself

as The Grip of Change (2006). This was the first Dalit novel to be written in Tamil. In

1997 she came up with a sequal to this novel in the form of Asiriyir Kurippu which

was translated, Author’s Notes. Her second novel is Anandhayi (2001) which was

translated as The Taming of Women (2012).

Her novel Cross Section (2014) was published by the Sahitya Akademi. This

is the translation of her Tamil novel Kurukku Vettu and was translated by C.T. Indra.

Her fifth novel is Truth and After which is the story about a bureaucrat turned

politician named Nila. She has also made a short film ‘Ooodaha’ (Through) which is

set in 1995. Two collection of short stories by her include Kadhaigal (2003) and

Sivakamiyin Sirukathaikal (2006).

She is the editor of Puthiya Kodangi a magazine in Tamil which was started in

the year 1991 and which continues to be published to this day. This magazine has

been important in giving space to budding Dalit writers from Tamil Nadu and also for

activists of the Dalit cause. Her works comes down heavily upon the Dalit patriarchy

along with domestic violence and takes a strong Dalit feminist standpoint.
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The first chapter Introduction gives a brief introduction about Dalit literature,

and contribution of Dalits writer in India. It also provides introduction about

contemporary writers, Palanimuthu Sivakami’s life, her works and her literary

achievements Sivakami can be seen as a great writer.

The second chapter entitled as women’s suffering. It deals with the women

suffering. The pain of the Dalits has been born from the womb of rejection, then hope,

the corollary of pain, has to spring from the heart of revolution and Sivakami’s

women who suffer because of the pain inflicted on them by the so- called upper caste

people fight with the spirit of hope and try to change the society.

The protagonist of the novel is Thangam, a poor parachi widow who suffers

not only for being a Dalit, but for being a woman, another too. The novel, The Grip of

Change is narrated through the eyes of a young girl, who comments on her

community and narrates the significant incidents that happen around her,

simultaneously thematising Dalitism in order to empower its own identity, and

problematic it in order to transcend the inequalities within the Dalit communities.

Thangam is treated as a ‘body’ in this novel. Time and again she is assaulted

physically, verbally and sexually not only by upper caste patriarchs but by the

womanizers of her own community too. After the death of her husband, she becomes

a ‘surplus woman’ for her brothers-in-law and they force her to become a prostitute.

Even her right on share of land is rejected on the basis of her ‘infertile body’ which

could not produce a child. She can get her share of property only if her ‘body’ can

satisfy their lust. But she is unable to save her body from the jaws of patriarchy.

Sexual and occupational harassment is another challenge faced by the poor Dalit
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woman. Thangam’s saga of exploitation is not complete as the rich and influential

Dalit Panchayat leader Kathamuthu.

Thangam narrates her plight to Kathamuthu, he tries to sympathise with her

and starts giving her a special treatment. But suddenly, he feels that Thangam is

getting a soft and glossy skin and hair. He gets interested in her and when everybody

in the family gets asleep in the afternoon, Thangam who was lying in the kitchen was

raped by him. Thangam is exploited not only by Udayar, but also by the men of her

own community is a very obvious example where the sinister face of patriarchy

within Dalit community gets exposed.

The most important thing to be noted is that Thangam approaches Kathamuthu

to penalise those people who abused her, but she gets justice only after she is sexually

exploited by the very Kathamuthu himself. Kathamuthu tries to rule his house with a

heavy hand. He threatens his wives and establishes his dominance at home, as if

women are mere objects to satisfy his sexual pleasures and for reproduction. His

wives are the subalterns who were denied the right to speak freely or act according to

their wishes. In the novel Kathamuthu’s wives, Kanagavalli and Nagamani are shaded

behind their husband. Through the character of Gowri, the ideal of education, the

recovery of Dalit’s condition is established.

Kathamuthu allows his daughter to study and it is only because of this

awareness provided by education that she is able to realise the exploitation of women

in a patriarchal set up. She defies the decision of her father about her marriage by

working hard for her examination, and after getting success, she chooses to study

further in the city college. Through Gowri, Sivakami advocates the need for an

organized, educated, Dalit youth that stands united by ideological commitment and
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sincerity of action towards empowerment of Dalits. Gowri openly condemns the

inhuman treatment her father inflicted upon Thangam. She is also critical of her

father’s polygamist marital state and always urges her mother Kanagavalli and her

step-mother Nagamani for liberation.

The third chapter entitled as Male Domination. It deals with Male Domination

in the novel. Sivakami’s novel portray the rustic story of women who suffer at the

hands of men who strongly believe in and stand for patriarchy. The conflicts and

struggles are between tenacious women and tyrannical men in the contemporary

society. The central male characters, Periyannan and Mani lived in the poor village;

both are not only hungry for the power that money could bring them but also

tyrannical in their treatment of the women in their life, be it their wives or their old

and ailing mothers or their daughters or the other women for whom they had an

insatiable appetite.

The Taming of Women portrays the discrimination between men and women

in a small village. This is the story of hard-working Anandhayi, married to a

womanizer, Periyannan, There is struggle for power not only amidst genders, but

generations and families within the village as well. Anandhayi the wife gives birth

while he has another woman with him upstairs, brought to him by the midwife with

whom too, Periyannan often gets physical.

Anandhayi has no illusions about him. She wishes, however, that he would not

get his women home. Later when he goes to town regarding work he falls in the

beauty of Lakshmi and he is totally lost in her. And during his daughter marriage he

bring her into the house and after someday he plays the same prang which he does

with Anandhayi and this makes a drift into their relationship. At first Anandhayi feels
 70

jealous for the women but after some days she becomes a great support to her. Due to

the continuous misunderstandings between Periyannan and Lakshmi she plans to

leave the house three times she leaves the house without his knowledge but he loses

all his time power and money to bring her back home. Later they end in bad fight and

Lakshmi commits suicide.

Periannan children settled their life. The author portrays the real sufferings of

the women among the men within the marginalized community. How the man

struggle for power and sex and how the women are treated low and are made to suffer

under physical ailments. The women characters in this novel either it be mother or

wife or daughter or worker all are under the pangs of men, put under sufferings.

Anandhayi faces the struggle of bringing up her daughters Kala, Dhanam and Arul.

They simultaneously dishonored outside in public realm forced, unpaid in the

economic sphere and often compounded by sexual harassment and a real risk to

physical life.

When Periyannan goes out to the town for a work he gets introduced to

Lakshmi and there he falls in love with her and he gets attracted towards her

physically and he maintains a secret relationship with her. Finally at the time of his

daughter’s marriage he brings her home and keeps with him. Even with Lakshmi he

never maintains a good relationship. He doesn’t give her the freedom he fights with

her all the time. She is put under physical violence he beats, quarrels with her but

Lakshmi couldn’t bare it any more so when she started rebelling both Periyannan and

Mani started beating her and finally she commits suicide. When he is maintaining a

secret relationship with Lakshmi he nags his wife by putting forth many question

regarding her behaviours and beating her and abusing her.

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Once when Periyannan returns home from work he finds a male near his house

and without asking anything to her he beats her up thinking that she had secret

relationship with Anandhayi him.Even to his daughters when they put forth their

interests in studying he shows the anger to his wife. Periyannan’s daughters were

denied education and they were only meant to do their household duties, get married

and produce children and when he found his daughter reading a book which she got

from her neighbour to study Periyannan forcefully took away the book and started ill-

treating his wife and physically attacking her.The women face sufferings even in the

place where they work and even in the institution where they get education.

Kangani’s wife’s sister Neelaveni who was known for her beauty in the village

had many hidden rumors within her when she was sent to school she was physically

trapped by the teachers and she faced many problems. In each and every phase

women are made to suffer a lot and men take hold of the situation and control them

physically and mentally. Though periyannan ill-treats the women in his life he feels

that his fifth daughter fetches good luck for him so he never abuses her as he gets to

know in the astrology that she will bring fortune and wealth to him he treats her with

care. He abuses his mother, Anandhayi and Lakshmi but he never used harsh words

for other women.

The novel brings out women sufferings. The grip of change voices the plight

of an exploited Dalit woman. The Dalit woman’s is never a fighter but always victim.

Sivakami is able to formulate the poignant tale of a woman’s struggle to fight and

survive in a biased society. Thangam’s story and Gowri‘s protests which suggest that

silence and suppression is optimistically replaced by a stimulated and resisting

expression. The Taming of The Woman Anandayiis a visual presentation of an

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ordinary Dalit woman who does not have a bone of resistance. Anandayi cannot even

give a voice of protest because he mind is preoccupied with the task of running her

household works. Even that submissive subaltern raises her head in protest when her

husband brings his concubine home. She gets beaten whenever she raises her head in

rebellion.

Sivakami thus foregrounds the issues in and around Dalit women, who

remained conveniently forgotten amidst the hue and cry raised against the segregated

status of Dalits. The voice of Dalit women is an intense cry for justice. Anandayi is a

true picture of Dalit household, a representation which Sivakami lays bare to the

society with the hope of change in the established order. The passive suffering of

these people leads to a state of active assertion of selfhood and they move on from the

discourse of pity to the discourse of resurge.