DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF KARNATAKA

Assignment on DSE1: Analysis of Bama’s “Karukku”

Submitted by: Name: Akhil Fayis P

Registration no: 2017DEG01
Class: MA ENGLISH 3rd SEM
Department of English
CUK, Kalaburagi

Submitted to: Mahendra M

Professor
Department of English
SHL
CUK, Kalaburagi

Date of submission: 10/12/2021

When reading “Karukku” as a whole, one can observe the writer's theme and
technique in the first two chapters, which are set in order. Her choice of language
not only gives an indication of what she accomplishes in Tamil, but it also provides
valuable insight for others who communicate in Tamil. Another fascinating feature
of Bama's “Karukku” is the influence of the Catholic Church.
While it is true that oppressed people will create autobiographies to express their
desire for "equality, freedom, and solidarity," autobiography is not their exclusive
means of expression. Working on the language itself, going against both
established form and established literary language, is a prominent creative method
among Dalit writers in all languages. Bama falls neatly into the Dalit literature
category. This is intended to raise awareness about what it means to be a woman in
India today, particularly a Dalit woman. “Karukku” describes the struggles and
humiliations of a Christian Dalit woman named Bama. Dalit literature is oppressed
literature, and it is always literature with a purpose. Bama's major goal in writing is
to "sharing my experiences with people," as she puts it. I use writing as one of my
weapons in the struggle for impoverished people's rights.' Thus, she satisfies self-
reflection and inner power through her writing, which is done in the oppressed
people's language, as well as the language of the oral narrative, which includes
turns of phrase and proverbs, folk songs, and other ceremonial songs of the people
represented in her writings.
This autobiographical tale, which provides testimony about a life, must be
understood as a distinct literary form in order to be appreciated as an attestation of
truth, a societal critique, as well as a meticulously constructed and well-written
literary narrative. “Karukku” is about a Christian Dalit lady who recognises that
her Christian identity is profoundly mediated by her Dalit identity, and that she
must combat discriminatory practises both within and outside the Church, which is
all the more difficult as a woman. Karukku is likewise a unique book, virtually
masticating for a new form. The narrator reflects on many incidents in her life from
varied angles again and over again. Bama arranges the events in her life 'under
numerous topics, for example, Work, Games and Recreation, Education, Belief,
etc.,' according to Lakshmi Holmstrom in her introduction. (See p. vii). It's almost
as if you're witnessing the ripples created when a bunch of stones are thrown into a
pond. When Bama considers her life, new ripples appear and speed over the
surface, forcing her to consider a huge portion of her life rather than the
consequence of a single episode.
The fact that she is a Dalit determines her existence as a Catholic Christian girl and
lady. Her rising knowledge of her Dalit identity, on the other hand, characterises
her forays into the Church, exacerbating her re-examination and reconstruction of
what devotion to God entails, as well as the significance of faith and belief in her
life. As a result, this is a book that charts the narrator's development and education
from childhood and innocent faith to adulthood and her own understanding of the
Church and the world. The narrator is taking stock of her life after leaving the
convent, and she reflects on various events and how they have shaped the outlines
of her life and imposed on her self-understanding and socio-political awareness.
Bama grew up in a Christian household where he was taught to believe in God. For
her, religion was a sense of obligation and obedience (reinforced by severe
punishment), as well as a sense of class and caste identification. She quickly learns
what it means to be a Dalit in Indian society and then quickly learns what it means
to be a Dalit in Catholic Christian society. However, as a devout Christian who
chose to become a nun despite the fact that one of her main goals was to make a
difference in Dalit society, particularly among women and children, Bama does not
abandon Christianity's vision or message and instead criticises Catholic institutions
that preach one thing but practice another. According to her interpretation of the
scriptures, Christianity's message and goal is love for everyone, which involves
equality, social justice, and human welfare. She believes that because God took on
the shape of a lowly man, he decided to side with the poor. Her ideas and thoughts
were to make a vivid change in the vision to change the plight of the Dalit people,
and she enters the convent with that zeal precisely because she believes she can
better serve the poorer sections of society, particularly the Dalits, by working with
the Church's resources and message. Unfortunately, the convent fails her, and she
leaves; however, her reflections on her life show that the Church has always
operated in this manner during her lifetime, and that social, political, and economic
inequality have always marked all internal boundaries of her beloved village life;
these internal boundaries, or invisible boundaries, have demarcated castes and also
created rules of untouchability to high visibility. This awareness of injustice that
pervades our society does not fill Bama with despair, since she recognises that her
own experiences and the awareness that has resulted are part of a greater Dalit
consciousness that is fueling a wider movement. “Karukku”, on the other hand, is
primarily a book on living as a Christian Dalit, as well as the Catholic Church's
hypocrisies and double standards, as well as caste prejudice inside it.

Bama's writing feeds on simplicity, and she communicates her ideas with a certain
indirectness, almost without emphasising them, inquisitively for someone who has
historically been viewed as non-literary or even using unpleasant language,
demonstrating her abilities as a good writer. Bama also mentions her grandmother
in Chapter Two, where she recalls how the family she worked for disrespected and
looked down on her grandma. The ripple impact of the incident and action that her
grandma went through has indirectly altered, emphasised, and enhanced her sense
of inner-self. The way Bama continues to detail all the hard work she did as a
young girl to support the family's inadequate cash demonstrates her technique once
more. This is when she expresses her own self-reflections on the Naicker
employers and Nadar tradesmen's exploitation. 'All the time I went to work for the
Naickers, I knew I shouldn't touch their things or chattels; I shouldn't get close to
where they were, I should always stand away to one side,' she says again.

For the Dalits, education could only be a pipe dream. After discussing her views on
hard work and untouchability, she moves on to her convent school, where she did
not have to perform such things: 'I ate my meals and studied; that was all.' Not that
she learned to despise physical labour, but she claims that during her vacations, "I
handled all the jobs that fell to me normally." She then expresses her happiness and
discusses how much she enjoys hard physical labour. She then goes on to explain
how the Dalits' relentless labour does not better their situation; rather, it becomes a
factor in their survival. Bama's technique thus underlines her theme: the
importance of hard physical labour in the life of Dalits from infancy to death, and
even the opportunity for education as their only hope of breaking away from the
cycle of enslavement, which is reversing with increased strain on youngsters. This
first chapter establishes that the book is a collection of Bama's observations on her
own life from childhood through her departure from the monastery. This chapter
focuses on Bama's experiences in the holy order, which was formed by a woman
who loved the poor and downtrodden, educated their children, and assisted them in
their daily life. The convent, on the other hand, performed unevenly. Bama's
fundamental identity as a Dalit and a woman from rural India is revealed in the
first words of this chapter ('I was born in a small village as a Dalit girl'). From this
vantage point, she sees the convent as inadequate and unresponsive. Instead of the
poverty that the church exposes and the poverty that she has encountered in her
life, she discovers an affluent lifestyle. She mentions the weird, wealthy, and lavish
meals as well as the scale of the structures. The church appears to be cut off from
the material realities of her community, which made up the majority of the
congregation. She felt as out of place as she would in an upper-caste household.

Most crucially, Bama examines how the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience
that nuns were had to take effectively distanced them from the realities of everyday
life, placing them "at a considerable distance, as if they belonged to a another
universe." The monastery was cut off from the rest of society and had no empathy
or understanding for the impoverished. The nuns were enslaved by their own
comfort. The vow of 'obedience,' in particular, irritates Bama since it is used to
keep nuns in line, to keep them docile even in the face of injustice or insensitivity,
as well as their personal responsibilities. Because she was told to acquire
obedience and trust, Bama was compelled to serve the wealthy rather than the
poor, as she desired. In the church, Bama discovered a disconnect between what
was professed and what was practiced.

So as to conclude, Bama's “Karukku” is about the writer's vision of the Church and
her interpretation of her people's suffering as much as it is about her Dalit
community. Her gender and religion play a role in her experience of Dalit
marginalisation. She writes as a Dalit woman on Dalit women's experiences in her
community and encourages women to triumph in expressing their identity and
achieving independence. Her Dalit identity is complicated by her gender, just as
her Dalit identification obscures her position as a woman and a feminist.
“Karukku” is a ground-breaking work that examines the numerous elements of
Dalit exploitation, specifically of the Paraiyars in Tamil Nadu, as well as
exploitation within and by the Church. A key element to remember about Dalit
conversions to other religions is that they usually do so as a community, as a caste
based in a specific region. As a result, their caste identity is sadly carried over into
the new religion. Converts from upper castes, regrettably, seem to carry their caste
prejudices into their new religious identities. As a result, all religions in India have
caste customs and prejudices. The Dalits appear to have no answers from religion
or even constitutional involvement. In fact, after the publishing of the book,
Bama's own community was upset for a time. Karukku caused quite a stir in Tamil
literary circles after its release, despite the fact that it heralded a new era in Tamil
Dalit society by allowing the voiceless to be heard in the public sphere. As a result,
Bama used the Tamil people's local vernacular rather than a structured text that
could be easily understood. Bama has done something very different by using
demotic and colloquial language for narration and even argument, rather than just
reporting speech. She establishes a boundary by consistently breaching written
grammatical and spelling conventions, omitting words and linking them in unusual
ways, and requiring a new and different reading pattern. Due to its stylistic corpus
approaches, the style she adopted is particularly difficult to translate into English.

Works Cited:
1) Bama, Karukku, trans. Lakshmi Holmström, Macmillan India Limited, Chennai, 2000.

Print.

2) https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/introduction-to-karukku/
211413
3) Rajendran, Jayanthi. “Words Unspoken: A Testimonial Discourse of
Bama’s Karukku: A Gratification of Self-Reflection and Inner Strength of
the Subaltern Women.” Contemporary Voice of Dalit, vol. 12, no. 1, May
2020, pp. 89–96, doi:10.1177/2455328X19898418.