70

CHAPTER -II

ASSERTION OF THE SELF

A woman must have money and a room of her

own if she is to write fiction Imaginatively she is

of the highest importance; practically she is

completely insignificant, she pervades poetry

from cover to cover; she is all but absent from

history.

Woolf, A Room of One‘s Own

Bama Faustina is the most distinguished Dalit fiction writer,

and one of the most acclaimed of all Dalit women writers. Her

autobiographical novel Karukku in Tamil version published in

(1992) is translated into English in 2000. Karukku is the first Tamil

Dalit text on the Christian Dalit community. Karukku was awarded

the ‗Crossword Award‘ for the translation in 2001, the novel stands

as a means of strength to the multitudes whose identities have

been destroyed and denied. And it breaks the barriers in many

ways. It has journeyed widely as agreat contribution to the

development as a Marginal literature, literature in translation, and

finally to Dalit literature.

A new generation of artistic writing has enriched Dalit

literature. The term Karukku refers to palmyra leaves with sharp

edges on both its sides. It is also referred to freshness and

newness. She has justified the sharpness of the leaves with the
 71

sharpness of the sword in the Bible. She connects these terms with

the suffering of the people in the novel. In her introduction, Bama

provides an explanation for the title of her novel Karukku. She

explains the name of the title by bringing up its reference to Tamil

people‘s cultural relationship.

Karukku is written by a wounded self-esteemed Dalit woman

about with specific the experiences of Dalit women, of her clan

argue against the patriarchy and caste oppression. In a 2003

interview with The Hindu Bama says:

Karukku was radical because I have used the local

dialect of the people and not the formalised text. This

is a departure in Tamil literature. [...] I don't think of it

as a burden already in Tamil literary world this has

been categorised as Dalit literature and I don't mind.

[...] Dalit people welcome me. They are curious to read

my writings and for the younger generations, especially

women I am a role model. But there are many who

don't like me because I am writing about

discrimination, oppression. This is a kind of fighting

through literature and they don't like it. I identify

myself as a Dalit woman writer... There are many

writers available to write about other issues but few for

Dalits and there are many issues that have to be

tackled. If and when Dalits are respected and treated

 72

as equal human beings then only can I write about

other things (www.hindunews.com).

Bama, one of the first Dalit women writers, articulates the

thoughts, aspirations and anxieties, hopes and fears, past and

present of her society. She explains the existential predicament of

the Dalit women and the protagonist‘s struggle against patriarchy

as depicted in Bama‘s Karukku. Bama assumes herself to be a bird

whose wings have been clipped, yet she desires to live a meaningful

life. She feels that for the better survival of women empowerment of

women it is necessary and is possible only by eradicating

inequality and untouchability, by empowering them through

education and employment and by taking pride in their identity. It

is in this context that Bama‘s Karukku becomes relevant.

Bama‘s personal struggle finds her own identity in Karukku.

She left behind the life of renunciation and came out of the world,

and then she wrote Karukku. The focus was on Karukku which

was on Dalit aesthetics. Susie Tharu aptly says in a conference,

Literature for Life Fest (2011):

Between ‗healing and cure‘-cure is something like

doctor decides you and says you are recovered, but

healing something which happens to individual person

and some senses outside the scope of making cure.

The sharp transformation takes place between cure

and healing (Susie Tharu 2).

 73

Bama was born in the Dalit family of Paraya, which is an

untouchable caste, her mother was a housewife and father was an

army man. Bama was a voracious reader from her childhood days.

Though in the very beginning, she was not able to understand the

double standards of the society. She does not even know; how her

village comes to be divided on the basis of communities the lower

caste and upper. But as she grew aware of it, she writes:

We only went to their side if we had worked to do

there. But they never, ever, came to our parts. The

post office, the panchayat board, the milk depot, the

big shops, the Church, the schools all there stood in

their streets. So, why would they need to come to our

area besides, there was a big school in the Naicker

street which was meant only for the upper caste

children (6- 7).

Karukku is a reflection on different themes like religion,

education and recreation etc. She gives a clear picture of the caste

oppression meted out to the dalit Christian not only by the upper

caste society but within the Catholic Church. Bama say that; ―after

seven years of living in the convent, on 8 November 1992, I left

behind my renunciation and came out into the world. ―After that, I

wrote my book Karukku‖ (xi). Sharmila Rege quotes in her text

Writing Caste/Writing Gender (2013):

 74

Anand Teltumbde finds the autobiographical

narratives too individualistic, often glorifying the

author, romanticizing dalit backgrounds and failing to

represent collective pain. Guru (2003), on the contrary,

underlines the sociologically illuminating, politically

subversive and aesthetically interesting character of

dalit autobiography. He argues that the dalit

autobiography that flourished under liberalism has

come to be excluded from the cultural taste of Indian

middle classes under neo-liberalism (Sharmila 13).

Bama asserts her identity and presents. Ranjith Guha states

in his text The Small Voice of History: Subaltern Studies (1996) ―the

voice of a deviant subalternity committed to writing its own history‖

(Guha 12). In the book Writing Caste and Writing Gender (2006),

Pantawane‘s opines in the ―Dalit life narratives challenges the

bourgeois genre of autobiography and pull all the boundaries of

what are considered the parameters of the life-world‖ (Pantawane

16).

Dalit writers are not willing to accept writings by upper caste

writers, no longer as they don‘t want sympathy; don‘t want any

portrayal of themselves by others. They do not want spokes men of

other community; they are now able to voice themselves. The sword

like rims are as both lengths of Palmyra leaves can wound easily to

highlight the various ways in which Dalit‘s live Stafford, fractured

 75

and peripheral life and from my own desire to see Dalit‘s

breakdown the cubs that enslaved them, my desire is to cut away

shoots of the enslavement that coiled around them, and my desire

to save their natural faculty of aggressiveness. I decided to name

my book Karukku. The argument of the book is to do with the arc

of the narrator's spiritual development both through the nurturing

of her belief as a Catholic, and her gradual realization of herself as

a Dalit. Tamil ―word ‗Karu‘ embryo are seed also means freshness,

newness. She does not use any symbol, and refers to the word in

Hebrews‖ (New Testament) (xv). Writing on Bama Faustina‘s

testimony, Pandian argues that: ―Dalit life narratives have violated

genre boundaries by depleting the ‘I‘-an outcome of bourgeois

individualism- and by displacing it with the collectivity of the Dalit

community‘‘ (Pandian 17).

The story is not her own but that of others too. Bama‘s life is

related to her people. She had the opportunity to tell something

that others in her community did not have. She portrays Dalit

women experiencing discrimination and untouchability in the

public sphere, as compared to men. In Tamil Nadu, Dalit women

cannot enter village temples, hotels and eating places.

Subordination keeps most Dalit women out of the public sphere.

Bama documents the realities of the whole people of her

community who were not allowed to voice their own stories. The

novel brought hostility on unequal measures that began to brick

 76

back. They said she has portrayed them as a contemptible and

worse as pigs, dogs that loft around the dust ridden lanes of the

town. The active hostility vary from the people that she was

championing whose life‘s she wanted to wipe of clean the stigma as

of untouchability shattered.

Bama identifies herself with the community. With her self-

respect and self- assertion that could build Dalit consciousness

through her autobiography. In this she compares her plight to that

of a bird whose wings have been clipped off. She feels that though

she is free to fly, she is unable to do so; as her life at the convent,

have crippled her in many ways. Bama describes herself in

Karukku: ―Before I pursued writing I was like as a bird whose wings

had been clipped; I now feel like a falcon that threads the air, high

in the skies, which unable me to spread my wings and fly‖ (xi).

Bama‘s Karukku is compared to Toni Morrison Sula, it‘s a

true representatives of the marginalized ones in their respective

countries, undertake this journey in their works respectively. The

protagonists of both the narratives have made themselves heard

and the stereotypical representations of the marginalized

people. Both the writers have attempted to break the silence

imposed upon them by others. ‗Change‘ is what underlies these

narratives, the change towards self-assertion. M. Rafseena, argues

in his paper Breaking the Silence: Bama‟s Karukku and Toni

Morrison‟s Sula (2014):

 77

Karukku and Sula as a radical exist for themself, not

for anyone else. Their desire for self- expression finds

expressed in the stoic refusal they projects towards the

society of which they were a part of it, but became an

alien with the image of a pariah when bestowed upon

them by the same society. Though incarnated as a

pariah, there is struggling with much revulsion within

themselves (Rafseena 3).

Badri Narayan in his book Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion

in North India (2006): opines that the Dalit narratives are the

narratives of identity and self-respect ―the new narratives of

identity and self-respect are filled with memories of dissent against

dominance and oppression‖ (Badri Narayan 40). Dalit women‘s

assertions of their rights are evident on wide range of issues. The

women took the affirmation their rights, their independence in

matters of how they live, through their assertion, they directly

questions the dominant caste male and female. Being dalit woman,

she concerns identity and status, dignity and rights. Kumari

Jayawardena defines feminism in her book Feminism and

Nationalism in the Third World (1986):

Embracing movements for equality within the current

system and significant struggles that have attempted

to change the system". She asserts that these

movements arose in the context of i) the formulation

 78

and consolidation of national identities which

modernized anti-imperialist movements during the

independence struggle and ii) the remaking of pre-

capitalist religion and feudal structures in attempt to

modernize third world societies (Jayawardena 2).

Bama‘s Karukku, can be compared with Viramma: Life of a

Dalit (1997), Shantabai Krishnaji Kamble: Majya Jalamachi

Chittarakatha (The Kaleidoscopic Story of My Life) (1998), Baby

Kamble‘s The Prisons We Broke (2008) and Urmila Pawar‘s The

Weave of My Life (2009) are the Dalit autobiographies in which the

protagonists trace out the genesis of Dalit identity and celebrate

the self of their community, in critiquing Brahmanical domination,

in all autobiographies writers speaks out for the women of her

community, presenting unflinching portrait of its women

subjection by both caste and patriarchy. The act of writing itself

was a declaration for Bama. The excessive oppressive force

repressed her which generated anger and rebellion within her.

While narrating these life stories, these women were very particular

in selecting those parts of their lives which they thought had a

greater being on their present day situation. Frances Maria Yasas

in the preface of her book Single, Celibate, and Dedicated Women

Tell Their Stories: Images of Women in Secular Institutes in India

(1990), she emphasizes how one can learn from the first hand

experiences of these Dalit women:

 79

Thousands of term papers and books may be written

on the Dalit women but the writer of the most

scholarly of papers may be far from understanding

what the life and problems of Dalit women are to her.

The best way of knowing what the life of a Dalit women

is to experience it, to be a Dalit woman; second best, is

to step into her chappals, or her bare feet, through her

oral history, in which she express herself in such a

way that we can feel and identify with her and

vicariously live through her experiences. The appeal

here it is not only to the mind but also to her heart

(Frances xiv).

Bama needs an outlet to resist the forces that subjugated her

and the outcome was the first autobiographical work Karukku. She

expresses a desperate urge to break, throw away and destroy the

bounds of unjust social structure. The driving forces that shape

her book are the numerous events that occurred in her life which

inspired her to write dedication about her communities need. Mini

Krishna say: ―Breaking a silence that lasted for more generations

than we can count comes Bama‘s Karukku, a text which is a life

story that could lay the foundation for a course on Dalit memories‖

(xxiv).

Shantabai, was the first Dalit women teacher in Solapur

district, at board school, Unlike Bama, she is also the first Marathi
 80

writer who wrote her autobiography, and it was serialized in ‗Purva‘

magazine in 1983, the word ‗Chitrakatha‘ literally means a picture

story but also indicates a sense of pieces of pictures being together

like jigsaw puzzle. When she was studying in seventh standard,

people in the community began to suggest that her father should

get her married. Since was educated her brother and father wanted

to find a schoolmaster as a grooms and tried to tempt her father

with stories about the assets owned by the prospective groom‘s

family. But both men were firm with their decisions.

Karukku is radical, fearless and self-questioning. Bama

beautifully portrays her experiences and reactions through

discrimination, suppression and violence meted out towards the

Dalit‘s where she also talks about the exploitation by the Naicker

employers and the Nadar tradesmen. She also discusses about

‗untouchability‘. Karukku is the narration of painful and bitter

memories, of despair, disillusionment and the pathetic conditions

of the life and culture of people where women are subjected to

sexual harassment and physical assault. Incidents are narrated,

re-narrated and reinterpreted each time to express the oppression

of dalits. Similar to Bama‘s Karukku, Raj Goutaman‘s novel Siluvai

Raj Sarithiram (2002) portrays clearly the hardships of a radical

critique of Christianity, K.A.Geetha has translated these line in her

book Contesting Categories, Ramapping Boundries: Literary

Interventions by Tamil Dalits (2014):

 81

Siluvai Raj Sarithiram relates the various experience of

Siluvai from his childhood until he converts to

Hinduism, in his mid-twenties. He spent his childhood

in Roman Catholic streets in a village called Puthupatti

(Geetha 80)

However feminist theories conceptualize different, they all

recognize women‘s double bind As long as women remain silent,

they will be outside the historical process. To Nancy K.Miller‘s

name for a theory of female textuality:

must grapple with the formal constrictions and

rhetorical presentations, the historical context and

psychosexual labyrinth, the subversions and the

capitulations of women‘s self-writing in patriarchal

culture that ‗fictionalizes‘ her (Nancy 18).

Author‘s Journey in the novel, she describes her village in

such a way that one can imagine the nature and beauty of the

village. It describes her quality of narration and also her love

towards her native place. She says that her village in surrounded

by Western Ghats and explains various mountains and temple

around her village. According to her the people lives there are

agricultural labourers. She clearly describes various settlements

how people settled according to the castes:

There is a small often to twenty houses known as

Odapatti. It is a full of Nadars who climb Palmyra

 82

palms for a living to the right Koravar who sweeps

streets and then lather working Chakkiliyar then

comes Kusavar who makes earthen wear pots. Next to

that comes the Palla settlement. Then immediately

comes Paraya settlement where Bama lives (1-2).

Apart from that they were the streets of Thevar, Chettiyaar,

Aasaari and Nadar beyond that were the Naickers Street who

considered as upper cast communities in her village. She doesn‘t

know how it comes about upper caste communities and lower caste

communities and how they were separated like this into different

parts of the village. Right from her child hood she was seeing caste

difference which is oppressing her caste people saying that they

were Dalit and belongs to lower community.

In an interview with Azhagarasan, Bama shares her child

hood experiences, about her family and her education. Bama say:

My native place is Uathirayiruppu Puthupatti in

Virudhunagar district. This is a village taluk. The ‗oor‘

(village) ends there. Buses will not go beyond that.

There is no road beyond that. It is on the slop of the

Westen Ghats… a beautiful oor. Appa was in the army,

Amma was a coolie, and My Patti was doing menial

jobs in the houses of landlords. (V 142)

 83

The feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in book A Vindication

of the Rights of Woman states (1792) that; “it is time to affect a

revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost

dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local

manners‖ (www.brainyquote.com), as well as Kate Millett in her

first major work Sexual Politics (1970), which according to feminist:

The growth of the feminist movement is inseparables

form feminist criticism as the increasing consciousness

of women leads them to question and criticize

misrepresentation of women. To understand the ways

in which gender is acquired through language and

perceive the role played by the language in creating

women‘s subjectivities and their oppressions are the

two important tasks which the feminists set for

themselves (Kate Millett 93).

This oppression made a revolution in her in such a way that

she says each and every person who belongs to lower community to

raise their voice in fight for their rights and bring about change in

the society, Bama says:

I don‘t know how it came about that the upper-caste

communities and the lower caste communities were

separated like this into different parts of the village, but

they kept themselves to their part of the village, and we

stayed in ours. We only went to their side if we had

 84

worked to do there. But they never, ever, came to our

parts. The post-office, the panchayat board, the milk

depot, the big shops, the church, the schools — all these

stood in their streets. So why would they need to come to

our area (7).

Bama focuses on the different caste formations within village

stating how people meticulously followed caste rules while carrying

out their day-to-day socio-cultural and economic activities. Bama

recollects, since the parayas were considered to be untouchables

they had a separate settlement, far away from the main village.

Social interactions between the so-called upper caste and lower

caste communities were strictly prohibited except on special

occasions when such interactions were inevitable for both.

Bama, one of the first Dalit women writers, articulates the

thoughts, aspirations and anxieties, hopes and fears, past and

present of her society. She explains the existential predicament of

the Dalit women and the protagonist‘s struggle against patriarchy

as depicted in Bama‘s Karukku. She assumes herself to be a bird

whose wings have been clipped, yet she desires to live a meaningful

life. She feels that for the better survival of women empowerment of

women is necessary and it is possible only by irradiating inequality

and untouchability, by empowering them through education and

employment and by taking pride in their identity. It is in this

context that Bama‘s Karukku becomes relevant. Shibu Simon and

 85

Sarojini Sudha wrote in their book Beautiful Blacks and Dignified

Dalit‟s that, Bama describes Karukku in this way:

The story in Karukku was not my story alone. It was

the depiction of collective trauma-of my community-

whose length cannot be measured in time. I just tried

to freeze it forever in my book so that there will be

something physical to remind people of the atrocities

committed on a section of the society for ages (Shibu

Simon and Sarojini Sudha 144).

Bama feels that women are always more oppressed and are

victims of male domination. The plight of Dalit women in Indian

society is horrible as they are oppressed on the basis of class,

gender and caste. Women had start protesting against the

discrimination, oppression and injustices leveled upon them and

should try to create a female space for themselves. Elian Showalter

states in Theory of Gynocriticism (1986):

Women‘s writing is a double voiced discourse that

always embodies the social, literary and cultural

heritage of both the muted and the dominant and

insofar as most feminist critics are also women writing,

this precarious heritage is one we hare; every step

towards self-understanding as well; every account of

female literary tradition has parallel significance for

our own pale uncritical history and critical tradition

(Elian Showalter 263-4).

 86

Both her grandmothers worked as servants for Naicker‘s

families. When they were working in the fields even tiny children,

born the other day, would call her by her name and order her

about, just because they belong to Naicker caste. And her

grandmother, like all other labourers, would call the little boy Ayya,

(Master) and obeying his commands. It meant that the Naicker

women would pour drinking water from a height of four feet into

their cupped hands. Or it meant eating leftovers from the Naicker

families in return of their hard physical labour she was horrified

and protested. But the reply she got from her Patti, her

grandmother, brings out the fatalistic attitude of her people.

Accepting such social arrangements meekly, her

grandmother, a believer of fat had said, these people

are maharajas who feed us our rice. Without them,

how will we survive? Haven‘t they been upper caste

from generation to generation, and haven‘t we been

lower-caste? Can we change this? (DPN 235)

In Majya jalmachi Chitrakatha (1998), Santhabai‘s family was

poor. Her mother was forced to go from door to door early in the

morning, asking for the leftover ‗bhaki‘ collecting it in a basket. At

times when the children were hungry the dried bread would be

cooked along with the leftover curry and served to them. Most of

the women worked in the fields cleaning and collecting jowar. They

received small quintiles of grain in return for their labour.

 87

Karuku focuses especially on three aspects namely Caste,

Religion (that cause great pain in Bama‘s life) and Recreation. This

novel speaks of the suppression of the Dalit people and their

untiring effort to rise up from exploitation and discrimination.

Through her novel Bama exposes the caste oppression, poverty and

inequality she herself had experienced as part of a particular

community. Bama‘s reflects her childhood, in a caste divided

village in Tamil Nadu, made her recreate her experiences as a Dalit

child in her Karukku. Bama‘s Karruku based on the experience of a

Tamil Dalit Christian woman has been bestowed with many

nomenclatures in different field of studies as Marginal Literature,

Translation Studies, Autobiography, Memoirs, Feminist literature.

Taking birth into discriminated caste results a Dalit woman

to face multiple oppression that violates her economic, political,

social and cultural rights. She is inaccessible for education and

social privileges. The situation of Dalit women in India is just

inexplicable. They are one among the worst sufferers of socio-

cultural, political and economic exploitation, injustice, oppression

and violence. They are oppressed by the broader Hindu society,

their own community‘s men and also their own husbands.

Bama has never heard of untouchability until her third

standard but she had seen, felt and experienced humiliation and

oppression. As she was child, she could not understand why the

difference is, but for the first time she comes to know the
 88

deplorable and piteous situations of her community. While

returning from her school, Bama finds an elder person from her

street, holding a packet of snacks in his hand by its string without

touching the packet and was handing it to a Naicker in the village.

Bama was unable to control her laugh, watching the fun, she says;

Just then, an elder of our street came along from the

direction of Bazaar. The manner in which he was

walking along made me want double up. I wanted to

shriek with laughter at the sight of such a big man

carrying a small packet in that fashion (15).

When she reaches home and narrates the whole story to her

brother, she feels terribly sad with the reply her brother gives. He

says that:

The man wasn‘t being funny when he carried the

package like that. Everybody believed that Naickers

were upper caste and therefore must not touch

Parayas. If they did, they would be polluted. That‘s

why he had to carry the package by its string‖ (15).

When she heard this she doesn‘t want to laugh any more.

She wonders;

What did it mean they called us ‗Paraya‘? Had the

name become that obscene? But we too are human

beings? Our people should never run these petty

 89

errands for these fellows. We should work in their

fields, take home our wages and leave it that (16).

Karukku bring forth that how the author‘s childhood is

interspersed with events that repeatedly impel her to raise ultimate

question (regarding equality, oppression, untouchability etc.) which

the society considers impossible. She feels bewildered and

perplexed over the passivity of her community and the subtle

measurement of superiority by the upper class and religion in

society. Bama questions:

How did the upper castes become so elevated? How is

it that we (Dalit‘s) have been denigrated? And in my

heart I have even grieved over the fact that I was born

as I am. Are Dalit‘s not human beings? Do they not

have common sense honour self-respect wisdom,

beauty, dignity? What do we lack? (27).

Above stated series of burning questions is not only the

outburst of Bama, a grief stricken women, born as a member of

untouchable community. It is an articulation to the tormenting

soul of every downtrodden who has to face exploitations at the

name of polluted. These lines are from Bama‘s Karruku which is

often included in the field of Dalit studies that comprises the

writings having alignment with the revolutionary movement

commenced by Dr. B. R Ambedkar with a vision to emancipate the

oppressed in every field of life. The term Dalit refers to all the
 90

exploited and oppressed people belonging to various lower castes in

India. According to Bama Dalit Literature is:

Liberation literature like Black Literature, Feminist

Literature and Communist- Socialist Literature…there

are traces of the agony and ecstasy of the Dalit‘s, the

direct and emotional outbursts, the collective identity,

the mockery and caricature of the immediate oppressors,

the supernatural powers of oracle and the mythical

heroism: these are the several elements for the

reconstruction of a conscious Dalit literature (97-98).

From than Bama focuses on education, became conscious of

their rights. She realized only education bring drastic changes in

Dalit‘s lives. Education infuses necessary confidence in women,

fight against all kinds of oppression. Now a days women began to

voice their feelings freely. As Meena Shirwadhkar in her text Indian

Woman Novelists: Perspective of Indian Fiction in English (1985)

observes:

As women received education they began to feel an

increasing urge to voice their feelings. The awareness

of individuality, the sense of compatibility with their

tradition-bound surroundings, resentment of males

dominated ideas of morality and behavior problems at

home and at place of work or in society-all come up in

a welter of projection (Shirwadhkar 201).

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Bama‘s elder brother advices her to study well with care and

says her to work hard because education alone can change the

condition of the community and people will respect educated

person irrespective of their caste. The words told by her brother

makes a deep impression in Bama‘s mind. She decides hardly to

prove herself. She starts studying hard, with all her breath and

being. She stood first in her class. And because of that, many

people become her friends, even though she is a ‗Paraichi‘. She

says, ―as Annan had urged, I stood first in my class and because of

that; many people became my friends, even though I am a

paraichi‖ (18). But throughout her education she faces many

hurdles regarding her caste and community. Wherever she goes,

she has a painful experience of untouchability. Dr. Amarnath

Prasad has opined in his text Indian English novel in English:

Critical Perspective (2000):

Yes even a Dalit or an untouchable can become an

engineer or a doctor or lawyer or a professor if he is

given proper education and proper facilities. God never

makes any difference between the poor and the rice;

between the rough and the sublime. The minds of all

men are almost equal (Prasad 199).

Bama feels that Women are always more oppressed and are

victims of male domination. The plight of Dalit women in Indian

society is horrible as they are oppressed on the basis of class,

 92

gender and caste. Women had start protesting against the

discrimination, oppression and injustices leveled upon them and

should try to create a female space for themselves. The oppressions

gave Bama to write the opportunity to think positive and question

her place in the society. Generations of sufferings, endurance and

survival have imbibed her with the vigour and stamina. She always

carried with her a struggle to discover her true self and identity.

She made a commitment to promote Dalit rights and examined the

nature of caste oppression, gender oppression and class

oppression. She felt joy and pain while finding her identity. Bama

is one who awakened and conscious about women‘s life and

problem faced by her community. Neeru Tandon states in her text

Feministic Paradigm Shift (2008) that:

A feminist is one who awakened and conscious about

women‘s life and problem, and feminist consciousness

I the experience in a certain way of certain specific

contradictions in the social order. That means the

feminist apprehends certain features of social reality

an intolerable, as to be rejected if one is to transform

the society for a better future (FPS 28).

Bama has found Karukku is the right way to explore the

sufferings of Dalit women. Women‘s are considered as the symbol

of sex and object of pleasure. Evelyn Cunningham sates that;

―Women are the only oppressed group in our society that

 93

lives in intimate association with their oppressors‖

(www.quotegarden.com). A study of Dalit feminist writing reveals

tales of endless miseries, inhuman victimization and shocking

gender discrimination. Bama, began to emerge as a Dalit feminist,

she is a Tamil Dalit Christian, her identity as a Dalit, her

marginalized position in the society further shows that she is more

accentuated by her gender, class and religious location.

Dalit, from such a position, she explores the multiple

structures of oppression that operate in the lives of Dalit‘s, and

more specifically in the lives of Paraiya women of Tamil Nadu.

Bama belongs to the class of first generation learners in her

community and has found a place in academic circles by virtue of

being a school teacher and more significantly as a writer. She lays

great emphasis on education as a means of social empowerment.

As an activist writer, she forges close ideological affinity with

feminist thought. Women and Dalit‘s are both oppressed groups,

oppressed on account of their birth. Bama foregrounds the affinity

between the two groups and uses feminist strategies of

representation, rereading and historicizing the oppression of Dalit‘s

in her narrativisation of Dalit experience. Santhabai Kamble‘s

autobiography records a similar struggle for education like Bama.

Kumud Pawda discusses the difficulties she underwent to become

a Sanskrit scholar. Shanta Bai Kamble writes about the dilemma

she faced in her own family circle when she wanted to continue her
 94

education. Thus, education was denied and was not available to

the girl from a marginalized community. In an interview with

Jaydeep Sarangi, Bama share her views:

I was born and brought up in a Dalit Christian family

in Puttupaty, a small village in South Tamil Nadu. I

completed eight in the village school. While I was in my

village, I came to know about different castes and

experienced a lot of discrimination based on caste,

class and gender. I was treated inhumanly and faced a

lot of discrimination and rejection. During school

holidays I used to accompany my grandmother to work

in the landlord‘s field. I have seen how my

grandmother was ill-treated because of her caste. I

grew up in my village experiencing all kinds of

atrocities. After completing eight classes I was sent a

nearby town for higher studies. (www.museindia.com).

When Bama was studying in seventh class every day after

school used to play with other children. They were playing on the

big neem tree hanging like bats, after a while they have started

another game-running right up the coconut palm and touching its

tips. The coconut palm grew slantwise, some children grabbed it

twisted it. By the time Bama turn, all the coconuts fell down. Rest

all children frightened. Next morning at assembly, the headmaster

called Bama said these lines; ―You have shown us your true nature
 95

as a ‗Paraya‘, you have stolen coconuts. We cannot allow you inside

the school‖ (19).

Bama in front all the children, she had been shamed and

insulted. The tears start welling up from her eyes; one her teacher

lived on her street came by her side and advised her to go to the

priest. She went to priest. The priest response was to say, ―After

all, you are from the Cheri. You might have done, you might have

done it‖ (19). Shibu Simon and Sarojini Sudha wrote in their book

Beautiful Blacks and Dignified Dalit‟s (2012) these lines:

Bama records her experiences of being victimized thus at

school and college in her Karukku which is

simultaneously an intense personal experience and that

of community. If any untoward incident happened at

school, the blame would undoubtedly fall on the slum

children. The much maligned Paraiya community is often

considered to be dirty and naturally prone to criminal

activities (BBDD147).

Baby Kamble can be compared to Bama, how she was

subjugated; Kamble to Mahar caste would fight against their caste

Hindu girl fellow students. The school in which Kamble was getting

education was a girls‘ school. She and her friends were not scared

of their classmates at all. But their teachers were in favour of the

caste was humiliated, harassed and discriminated against by her

classmates as well as by her teachers. However, what are

interesting to note is that Kamble and her classmates belonging

 96

Hindu students and punished Kamble and her friends when caste

Hindu students made complaints against them to the teachers.

Bama studies up to eighth class in her village, and then she

goes to high school in a neighbouring town. She feels very shy and

almost fearful by seeing the children who attended and the clothes

they wore. She gets used to it soon and begins to work at her

studies eagerly. All children living in the hostel used to wear smart

clothes, they all are from upper caste families. The warden sister of

that hostel could not abide low caste or poor children; she had got

hold of Paraya‘s and scolds them for no rhyme or reason. These

have people nothing to eat at home; they come here grow fat. Bama

says; ―it was really embarrassing. Unlike the upper caste children

we too paid our fees, for our food, yet we had to listen all this

abusing‖ (TDW 199). She portrays the prejudices based on caste

leveled upon Dalit children through the warden sister in Karukku

who could not abide low caste and poor children.

As Alice Walker discusses the issue of education by

presenting the harsh realities of the biased education available to

the African American girl and highlighting the heavy price she

must pay to be education. From her works, one can infer that she

stresses the need to discard mainstream history that is thrust on

the marginalized groups. Bama projects the handicap of poverty of

rural Dalit families that obstruct the girl from getting education. He

examines the corruption involved the educational system.

 97

Education facilities for women were minimal in the 19th

century and those that existed remained largely unutilized. There

was strong Hindu families did not ‗condescend‘ to send their girls

to such schools. Only converted Christians from Harijan and the

lower classes sent their daughters to these schools. Vijayalakshmi

Seshadri quotes in her work The New woman in Indian- English

women writers since the 1970‟s New World lit series (1994), Toru

Dutt, ―around the end of the 19th century saw the entry of women

in medical; nursing and teaching profession came at an opportune

moment‖ (Seshadri 38).

Bama stood first among all the Harijan pupils of that district

who took S.S.L.C along with her. Bama and her mother stand side

by side with great pleasure. She feels proud to be singled out as a

Harijan child who had gained best marks. This incident gives her

more inspiration in her life. In order to prove herself, she starts

college studies at a village some distance away. She thinks that,

―such a big college, at such a distance away, among so many

different students, nobody would bother about such things as

caste‖ (21). But even there, they did certainly consider caste

differences. She experiences the same humiliation and oppression

there also.

The government announces special tuition for scheduled

caste students. The lecturer announces in front of whole class that

Harijan students have special tuition opportunity in the evenings.

 98

She feels that tuitions and grants are more humiliating their caste

rather encouraging them. Bama says: ―Among other students, a

sudden rustling, and a titter of contempt. I was filled with sudden

rage. At once I told the teacher that; I don‘t want their special

tuitions or anything else (22).

In Madras City, Henry Steel Oclcott, the founder of

Theosophical Society, was the first individual great personality who

rendered service to the Depressed Classes. He himself speaks why

he entered in the field of education and adds:

Education is the evident panacea for all the social

order. Teach the Paraya that he is a man with human

rights like any other man; that he must win them

himself by rising himself; show him how to go to work,

and then leave results to him and to time (TDW 234).

Here Bama can be compared with Valmiki‘s Joothan (2008),

he also broken his community‘s rules at the early age b going to

school. Even though he faced humiliation and insults from the

upper caste teachers and students in school but still continued his

studies. This is the life story of an individual; it is about the history

of the entire chahra or chamar community, who has been pushed

to the brink of caste-based discrimination for ages. Rajkumar

quotes in his text Dalit Personal Narratives (2011):

 99

Why is my caste my only identity? Many friends hint

at the loudness and arrogance of my writings. They

insinuate that I have imprisoned myself in a narrow

circle. They say that literary expression should be

focused on the universal; a writer ought not to limit

himself to a narrow, confined terrain of life. That is my

being Dalit and arriving at a point of view according to

my environment and my Scio-economic situation is

being arrogant. Because in their eyes, I am only an SC,

the one who stands outside the door (Kumar198).

The Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu, the spurt in

translations ensures the Dalit voice to become accessible and

casteism in exposed. The article on A Palmyra leaf that sears us in

Hindu. On September 16, 2001; Bama also writes of the

oppression that Dalit‘s face from the state and a brutal police

force.

The core of her work, however, is her indictment of

Christianity, her reflections on the low status of Dalit

Christians in the Roman Catholic Church. When she

completes her education and goes to teach in a school,

she realises that the nuns there don't care for Dalit

people… Her experience in the convent is not a very

happy one either. In the school that is attached to the

convent, she notices that people from her community do

 100

all the menial work. Bama reacts initially by keeping

quiet about her caste. She feels a great anger, however,

and ultimately takes the bold step of leaving an otherwise

protected environment (http://www.thehindu.com/).

Bama‘s father was particular to educate his children. Even

when the society expected her to stay at home he took the

courageous step to send her to the school. Her father won‘t allow

her to stop off now. He wants her to study at least to the tenth.

With all these negatives and suppressions, anyhow she goes

to a different college to take B.Ed. degree. The same story repeats

there too. But as she is educated, she dares to speak up for herself.

She successfully completes her education and decides to become a

teacher. She works in a convent. Bama says; ―I enjoyed standing

up to the authorities and teaching with some skill and success‖

(23) In fact, Bama feels happy to teach dalit children. So, she

enjoyed standing up to the authorities and teaching with some skill

and success. She completes five years of working with lot of spirit

and guts. She observes that the nuns there were collectively

oppressing Dalit children. Then she thinks, in order to overcome

this situation why can‘t she become a nun and truly help those

people who are humiliated so much and kept under a strict

control. She decides to scarify her life for poor and Dalit people. At

last she resigns her job and joins for nun training, Bama says:
 101

Before my decision, I had read about the woman who

founded that particular order, how she had done so for

the sake of the poor and lowly, lived and died for them

alone, I wanted to be like her, living only for the poor

and downtrodden; so I entered that particular order (23).

In the autobiography A Brief History of my Life Rettamalai

Srinivasan states that:

Thinking that to uplift the oppressed, poor and the

underprivileged, education must widely available; the

government issued an order G.O.68-1893. Every year

the government is spending 20-30 lakh on education

through the labour commissioner and Directorate of

Education (Srinivasan 182).

M.S.S. Pandian in reference to Bama‘s Karukku argues that

Dalit life narratives violated the boundaries of the genre by

depleting the ‗I‘-an outcome of bourgeois individualism- and

replacing it with the collective of the Dalit community. Bama‘s

Karukku, instead of talking about herself, gives a voice to the whole

Dalit community. This according to Pandian is a violation of the

genre‘s boundary because it is inclusive of a whole range of textual

strategies. M.S.S.Pandian argues and Anupama Rao quotes in her

paper In Gender and Caste:

 102

Bama conscious choice of spoken Dalit Tamil,

ungoverned by the tyranny of elaborate grammatical

rules, as the medium to voice the story of her community

is indeed instructive. In a spirit of defiance, it obviously

challenges the authority of literacy over morality, a divide

which was ratified and nourished by Tamil Saivism or

Tamil nationalism of different hues, including

mainstream Daravidianism during this century. But at

an equally important plane, it is an effort by Bama to

break free from her proficiency in standardized written

Tamil, a result of her privileged education in schools and

colleges, and to lose herself in the community of Dalit‘s

(Anupama 132-33).

After reading Bible, Bama recall, ―I learnt that god has

always shown the greatest compassion for the oppressed. And

Jesus too, associated himself mainly with poor. At nobody had

stressed this nor pointed it out‖ (104). People taught that god is

loving, kind, gentle one who forgives sinners, patient, and tender,

humble, obedient. But nobody had even said that god is just

righteous, is angered by injustice, opposes falsehood never

countenance inequality. Bama works in a Christian religious order

where Tamil people were looked upon as a lower caste and then

among Tamil, ‗parayar‘ were a separate category. Everyone those

who are taking training Bama to become nuns are anxious to find

out to which caste does Bama belong. She answers everyone

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honestly without any hesitation. During the completion of the

training, sister tells to Bama that there is a separate religious order

for Harijan women to become nuns. Pope Paul VI says in his

Lumen Gentium (1964):

Holiness is the responsibility of everyone, because, the

―Lord Jesus, the divine teacher and model of all

perfection, preached holiness of life to each and every

one of his disciples regardless of their situation‖ (Pope

Paul VI 40).

Sister (nun) says: ―They would not accept Harijan women as

prospective nuns and that there was even a separate order for

them somewhere‖ (25). After she gets confirmation from the

convent, she gets admitted in the religious order. With all obstacles

and oppressions, at last she becomes a nun and goes to a convent

elsewhere. She hopes that there might be some humanity there.

Because Christianity stands for love, helping and service to

humans. And convents are service oriented. But, there also repeats

the same caste differences. Their services are favored upper caste

people rather Dalits. That convent is attached to a school and that

convent too was not without its caste divisions. They speaks very

insultingly about low caste people and don‘t even consider them as

human beings. Bama says:

They did not know that I was a low caste nun. I was

filled with anger towards them, yet I did not have the
 104

courage to retort sharply that I too was a low-caste

woman. I swallowed the very words that came into my

mouth; never said anything out aloud but battled

within myself (25).

This shows the struggle which Bama faced in herself in order

survive in the society where there is a lot of caste discriminations.

In spite of all criticism of nuns, her strong desire of becoming nun

was developed more in order to teach with poor that there is Jesus

who cares to put hot into them and argue towards them. At last

she resigns her job and enters a religious order, in order to become

nun. Bama says, ―Today I realize what an extremely foolish thing I

did. But at that time I didn‘t understand in the least what I was

doing. I was like one who was falling into a well, blindfolded‖ (105).

By the end she was disappointed by the order she entered. But to

some extent she feels that she studied about people‘s hardships,

sufferings and about human attributes of Jesus.

The year 1992 was an extremely important turning point in

Bama‘s life; she left the life nunnery in renunciation and came into

the world. She urges Dalit‘s to get education and to understand the

spirit of Christianity and the message of Lord Jesus. But when she

comes out of the convent, as she suffered discrimination, she feels

economic insecurity. Bama writes this autobiography after leaving

the convent, and those days are considered a period of crisis by the

author herself. She faced many problems when she came out.
 105

Finally she understands that her purpose of becoming a nun is

ruined. Then she wrote Karukku. Bama feels very sad when she

finds that even Dalit children are constantly oppressed and

humiliated by nuns.

They are put to degrading jobs like sweeping,

swabbing, cleaning, washing and even cleaning the

lavatories. And in the convent, as well, they spoke very

insultingly about low-caste people. They spoke as if

they didn‘t even consider Low-caste people as human

beings (25).

She wishes the subjugation of poor Dalit children in convent.

The Paraya people from her caste perform all the menial jobs; they

must stop behaving like slaves to Naickers and Nadars.

Bama resists all kinds of oppression on Dalit women. The

author wants to break all the barriers of social and cultural system

and depicts her problems as a Dalit and as a woman. Bama, after

seven years she wrote the book. She says, it is a great joy to see

Dalit‘s aiming to live with self-respect. The life portrayed in

Karukku throws light on the most agonizing and hapless lives of

the Dalit‘s. The act of writing itself was a declaration for Bama. The

excessive oppressive force repressed her which generated anger

and rebellion within her. She needed an outlet to resist the forces

the subjugated her and her and the outcome was the first

autobiographical work Karukku. She expresses a desperate urge

structure. Bama points out how the church distorts the real image
 106

and teachings of Christ. The priests and the nuns had frightened

the Dalit children telling stories of Satan and Evil.

According to their notion, ―Low-caste people are all degraded

in every way. They think we have no moral discipline or cleanliness

nor culture‖ (26). She feels painful to see even older people

trembling, shrinking like small children frighten by the power and

wealth that sisters had, burying their pride and self-respect and

running to do the menial tasks assigned to them. For the purpose

of her survival, she has to pretend there, even though her caste

people are facing discrimination. Bama declares that ―If you are

born into a low caste, every moment of your life is moment of

struggle‖ (27).

According to Babasaheb Ambedkar, ―Hinduism is not a

missionary religion, because the caste system grew up among the

Hindus‖ (AC 54). A method of escaping the yoke of untouchablility

licensed by Hinduism is by conversion into more liberating

religions like Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. Bama, a Dalit

catholic Christian forced much discrimination in the church and

convent. Her grievances are against the institutions and

practitioners of Christianity, the church, the convent, the priests

and nuns and not the religion itself. “We who are asleep must open

our eyes and look about us. We must not accept the injustice of

our enslavement by telling ourselves it is our fate, as if we have no

true feelings; we must dare to stand up for change‖ (28).

 107

Bama describes in a very pathetic incident where two castes

fight for the ownership of cemetery. After the death the final ritual

does not matter but what matters the most is that to which caste

do you belong? During this dispute Bama very cleverly exposed the

role of police in the exploitation of poor class. Bama ridicules

blatantly the discriminatory attitude of the police whose basic

duties of protecting the innocent and checking the criminal are

forgotten by the police. In this dispute of cemetery‘s ownership

between Chaliyar and Parayas, One of the Chaliyar man had

fabricated an elaborate case, against the complete caste. Police

take the side of Chaliyar as they have paid the police some money

and also have offered them good food during the whole incidents.

In return the police attacks on Parayas, arrest all the male

members of Paraya community and beat them black and blue, ―We

continued to hear the thuds as the police struck heavy blows, our

men screaming the pain, and women shouting and yelling in

protest, We tumbled within as we heard all this‖ (38).

In order to seek change Bama, in order to change the fate of

Dalit‘s, all Dalit‘s who have been deprived of their basic rights,

should raise their voice, piercing through ever heart instead of

being more and more beaten down and blended. She says that they

must united and fight for their rights. Bama says, ―Life of parayas

is hard to live from very childhood‖. Right from her childhood she

sees people working hard, her mother and her grandmother

labored from sunrise to sunset, without any rest. They can survive
 108

only if both men and women work hard. Their work is of various

types. Agricultural labour works in ploughing, manuring, watering,

sowing the seed, planting them out; then weeding, spraying the

fields with fertilizers, reaping the grains etc. Apart from that, there

is construction labour, digging wells, carrying loads of earth, gravel

and stone. Sometimes people have to go up to the hills to gather

firewood. They must work with palm leaves or at the kilns making

bricks, people had to work something or the other in order to

survive. Bama says; ―People of our community work for Naickers,

each Paraya family attached to a Naciker family as bonded

labourers‖ (48). Dr.Kathipadma Rao in an article on Dalit women

states these lines:

while examining the areas in Tamil Nadu where in the

Kamma community (Naickers) that had long since

migrated and settled down as landlords, I found that

the Dalit women who pick flowers in their fields are

paid just three rupees as daily wages. The powerful

self-respect movement stated by Periyar, and the

coming to power of the political parties that originated

from Periyar‘s D.K.Party and their decades of the rule

have not improved the situation of Dalit women

(Kathipadma Rao 5).

The writings of Dalit women novelist P.Sivakami and those of

Bama document of sufferings atrocities committed upon them.

 109

Every text is a the genre functions as a collective document, as the

text in the genre functions as a collective document, as the

narrative moves from individual to community through a retelling

of trauma. The narrator becomes the witness recounting the

trauma. Dalit‘s have been outside the law, outside expression,

outside genre, outside everything, produced autobiographical

statements about their lives as a part of large context. Unlike

Shivakami, who uses folk language only in dialogues between her

characters, Bama uses folk language throughout her works?

Moreover she challenges the decorum and aesthetics of

mainstream literature and breaks the rules of written grammar.

She aguishly says that, ―How can they afford to study, when it is

such a struggle even to fill their bellies‖? (55).

Though they were poor and backward they used to enjoy

their life like any other castes. Bama writes about her village life in

such a way that the readers feel themselves in the village enjoying

along them as well. There were different games they play

frequently. But in the children also there have some caste

differences. Two or three boys sometimes used to get chance to

play with Naickers. Remaining children used to call them ‗Ayya‘

and do all the works they say, as if they only have all the power. All

the children used to work in the field all the day and collect their

daily wages. They used to make shards of mud-pots which they

used to shape into round pieces and get some money by doing that
 110

which they called it as ‗Tile Money‘. Sometimes they used to go to

the lake and bring some clay which they shape into pots and pans

and dolls to play with. They used to play lots of games. The kids

they adjacent villages used to get together and play different

games. They abhor being inferior but they used to pretend in front

of Naicker children they give respect to them, Bama says:

We‘d play at giving circus shows, or kuuthu

performances; sometimes we danced or did a kummi.

Sometimes we played at being nuns and priests who

came and gave us blows. Then we played at being

married and setting off on a bus journey; the husband

is coming home drunk and hitting his wife; the police

arriving and beating him up (56-57).

These games indicate that children show an image of adults.

As they see different incidents which adults do, that reflects on

them. Bama‘s games show such an impression as if they are

imitating adults. The grasping ability will be more in children than

in adults. As they grow a little older their games changes

accordingly. As they grew older, they used to go to lake to catch

fishes. Still older girls would play all indoor games. Boys of the

village used to go to cinema. According to their village rule, No girl

should go to the theatre. When girls grew up, there was no more

play. They go to work during day, come home and do the

household chores. That was it. Bama says, now even the little ones
 111

don‘t play anymore. Even the tiny ones wakeup at cock-crow, go to

the matchbox factory, and work there till sunset‖ (58). With this

she explains how her village is being changing day by day, but still

the caste differences remains the same.

In Karukku Bama explains her childhood in her village,

playing games, celebrating festivals, her small enjoyments with her

friends in her village. She writes that they used to wait for longer

time to watch movie but neither the equipment nor the film had

arrived. She says, Now, Besides, there is a cinema of our own in

our parts. People go and watch films there, every now and then.

Karukku gave glimpses to the writer‘s spiritual development both

through nurturing her belief as a Catholic, and her gradual

realization of herself as a Dalit. In her village, during Christmas

and Easter days, they used to set up loudspeakers and mike sets.

As soon as the man with the mike set arrived at the bus stop, all

children used to run to the bus stop to see the equipment. This

shows that their village then was so backward with fewer facilities

but still they enjoyed their life. They used to play songs to which all

children used to dance and enjoy with colorful dresses. Bama says,

―During those days, the entire street would be bustling with joy”

(60). They used to celebrate Christmas, New Year, Easter and

Chinnamalai festival. By her words it was clear that her family

believes in Jesus. They used to celebrate Christmas and Easter in

a grand manner. There was usually a house to house collection for

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the festival and grand celebrations with procession and drums.

Bama says that but it was just us, the Dalit Christians, who

contributed to the festival. The Nadars neither contributed, nor did

they participate in the celebrations on that day.

The festivals play an important role in bringing the people

together and merging the boundaries between them. But in the

absence of thier intermixing of upper and lower castes, the festivals

and religions become meaningless and celebrations become futile.

The Sisters and the Priests too do not say what needs to be said,

but only speak words which are irrelevant and meaningless.

Because of all these experiences, festivals fail to enthuse Bama.

She understands the importance of Easter only when she left home

and went to study outside:

What passes nowadays is merely a matter of doing

things out of a sense of duty. When I developed some

commonsense and discrimination, it began to strike

me rather than jostle among the crowd in the name of

festival, I would much prefer to worship at home. (85)

After taking B.Ed., Bama started working as a teacher. Her

life took to turn when she took the vows to become a nun. This was

an attempt to break away from caste bonds and further pursue her

goals to help poor Dalit‘s children. She expected that she could

work with the poor Dalit‘s and create awareness among them but

unfortunately she was shocked to find that in North India. After

 113

seven years, Bama left the seminary is protest against the

discrimination the church metes out to Dalit Christians. After a

period of disappointment, disillusionment, Bama slowly dispensed

such thoughts and began to gain strength to defend herself and

her community in a positive way. She is indebted to Rev. Fr. Mark

SJ and Fr. M Jay raj that encourage her to write and gave moral

support so that she could build self-confidence and self-respect.

Bama‘s autobiography reveals that conversion to Christianity

was a mistake on the part of her grandmother because it failed to

change their status. The claim of the missionaries that Christianity

offered them a life of dignity and a chance to live in a casteless

society proved to be fatal. In fact, Bama‘s autobiography reveals

that the people who try to convert these people: priests and nuns

are themselves not free from such biases. In the convent the bitter

truth is revealed to Bama. She did not reveal her caste identity to

the other people and so was able to hear their real views which

were seeped in caste biasness. She tells that the people in the

convent did not know the meaning of the word Dalit. The few, who

knew, showed utter contempt for them. Bama knew that if she

would reveal her identity in front of the convent people she would

be rejected, but her lie offered her a chance to know the

unadulterated views about her people from God‘s people. She

wondered sadly, how the sisters would bear in God‘s kingdom

 114

where there are neither high nor low. Bama quotes the talk of some

Sisters about Dalit‘s:

How can we allow these people to come into our houses?

In any case, even if we were to allow them, they would

not enter our homes. They themselves know their place.

There is nothing we can do for these creatures. And we

shouldn‘t do anything for them. Because to do so, would

be to help cobras. Even if we were to do something for

them, they will never make progress. Their natures are

like that. These days these people go about reasonably

dressed. So you can‘t even make out who they are,

sometimes. The government goes and gives these people

all sorts of privileges. Why do illiterate people need all

these things? (100).

The above quoted lines show that Christianity does not offer

a casteless society in India. Bama feels disillusioned by the nuns in

the convent. Bama says, in an interview with Srinidhi Raghavan:

My guide, Father Mark, read my work and felt that it

would be a great publication. When Mark approached

a professor for a critique, the latter threw my work

away, calling it rubbish. I am glad I was not present at

that moment because I would have been crushed. But,

almost 20 years later, the stories I told in 1992 are still

 115

relevant, she adds with a slightly disheartened smile

(www.interviewbama.com/).

After Bama becames nun, she worked for three years, as a

teacher of Mathematics at school in Madras. After three years she

has transferred to another convent. And that is not of her choice.

First phone call has come from the provincial said that, She had

selected to become the head teacher at a village school near

Maduri. She wasn‘t happy to be head over there. Bama received

second phone call that she need not go to Madurai, but has to

work as teacher for maths at Madras. Again she received third

phone call came from the Provincial, said u don‘t have to take up

the post of math‘s teacher at Madras school. Go instead to our

Teacher Training School. Your service is needed there. Bama says:

I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It irritated me

that they were changing their decision like this, every

day. How many times was I to relay myself for few a new

tasks?‖ Again Bama received phone call from Bama that

she has transferred to Jammu Kashmir. In such way the

Sister has taken vow to humiliate Bama. In that journey

she has faced many struggles. Somehow she has

escaped from that place. Bama says; ―I felt like prisoner

who had just escaped from a jail (134).

Bama started questioning herself, why should not Dalit‘s

have their own choice? (135). Thought the Provincial has taken
 116

decision times, Bama smiled and accepted their every task, but

then still she was ill-treated by the name of Outcaste. In such

distress time, her mind was tossed as if it were in a storm, if she

leaves the job and return home, but she dint. Her journey was with

open ending story.

Bama is the most celebrated contemporary Dalit woman

writer. She has been in the forefront of caste literature activism

and has given Dalit aesthetics a visibility, presents Bama's life as a

process of self-reflection and recovery from social and institutional

betrayal. Hence Bama felt all the emotions during writing Karukku

in a great flood. Many startling, events, sorrows, achievements

have turned up in Bama‘s life during those past seven years. She

has faced many problems, each day brought new wound, new

understandings‘, new lessons that experiences teaches, sufficient

mental strength to rise up even from the edge of defeat. Hence, she

is oppressed by caste, gender and religion. It is a painful journey

with open ending story, and many questions are left unanswered.

The writer mainly concentrates on religion and education, and

gives expression to her bitter experiences. It is the depiction of a

journey from weakness to strength. Raj Kumar opines in his book

Dalit Personal Narratives (2011):

Bama recollects, that inspire of her education, her

experiences at the convent, etc., the upper caste people in

her village continued to treat her as an ordinary Dalit

 117

woman. When she joined her community she was treated

by her fellow members as an outsider. Bama, thus, felt

more and more alienated. The fact that she is a Dalit

woman and a single woman made her social position

further Vulnerable. In order to cope with her tension-she

started written her life-stories, this ultimately became her

testimony. Bama finally help and cooperation from her

community members and settled own amongst them as an

ordinary individual (DPN 230).

Bama‘s act of expression can be viewed as a subaltern

expression. It came out as a resistance against the ongoing caste

and gender oppression. Also the book has becomes the testimonial

of a Dalit Christian woman has bitter experiences. Her act of

witnessing turned out to be a source of inspiration to her fellow-

beings. Bama‘s way of writing her autobiography is quite different

from the usual style. Her deliberate attempts to deviate from the

usual style of autobiographies resulted in a subaltern testimonial

autobiography.

Bama mode of self-assertion and identity is linked with that

of her community both of which cannot be separated. At the end of

the narrative Bama celebrates her newly found freedom, a new

brave world where there is no discrimination against Dalit‘s. She

exposes the caste oppression, poverty and inequality she herself

had experienced as part of a particular community. Bama refers to

 118

the Dalit consciousness and the symbol is the new revolution,

which aims at bringing a new social order into Indian society.

Karukku thus asserts itself to be a testimonial in the form of

an autobiography. The Dalit Christian women suffer from identity

crisis apart from being discriminated for their low social order, and

also discriminated within and outside the churches. The author

find out with education, awareness, and income to support Dalit

Christian women questioning their rights fighting for their

individual identity. Writer like Bama took her pen and wrote about

their life-experiences, particularly about their positions in their

families and communities, that women-related issues got

highlighted properly in Dalit literature. In preface of Graham Green

a Literary Life (2003); Graham Green has a revealing sentence that:

Writing is a form of therapy: sometimes I wonder how

all those who do not write, compose, or paint can

manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the

panic fear which is inherent in human situation

(Graham Green).

Hence, Karukku is the living story of a particular people in a

particular village, in which Bama; the narrator is part and parcel of

that group. It talks about their style of living, their hard work, their

culture, their belief system, their entertainment, their spirituality,

their love, their fight, their struggle, their pain and agony, their joy

and sorrow, their tears and dreams. The texts have never worked
 119

on the victimhood of Dalit‘s. The agency of Dalit‘s has been

powerfully presented in all her writings. Her works lay a lot of

emphasis on empowerment of Dalit‘s through education.

Thus, Karukku is about this re-assertion of the self and

identity that were destroyed by the atrocities Dalit‘s have gone

through. In Bama‘s narrative, sufferings become a structure that

induces trauma on Dalit self and provokes a reconstruction of the

once destroyed self. It is this self-assertion and occupation of space

that, hence the purpose of Dalit writing is the self-realization

among Dalit community makes them understand the need to

struggle for their survival. Therefore Dalit literature becomes

purposive as well as reflexive on the society. It has a very real and

political function. Its purpose is to redefine certain social norms

and stereotypes. Unveiling the unfathomable depths of the

hegemonic power that it made the society believe that Dalit‘s are

degraded, Bama asks the reader to revisit the history and to

interrogate the accepted truths about the country and its people.
 120

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