Article

Words Unspoken: A Testimonial Contemporary Voice of Dalit

12(1) 89–96, 2020
Discourse of Bama’s Karukku: A © 2020 SAGE Publications
India (Pvt) Ltd
Gratification of Self-reflection and Reprints and permissions:
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Inner Strength of the Subaltern DOI: 10.1177/2455328X19898418
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Women

Jayanthi Rajendran1

Abstract

If untouchability lives, humanity must die.

—M.K. Gandhi
In this present and current global research scenario, the theme of subaltern has become a household
word in regular usage and also in various disciplines other than literature. Literature, on the other
hand, represents life in relation to social reality. The word ‘subaltern’ has its origin in the German word
which means ‘inferior rank’ or ‘secondary importance’. Julian Wolfreys defines subaltern as a concept: ‘It
contains the groups that are marginalized, oppressed and exploited on the cultural, political, social and
religious grounds’. Thus, subaltern literature reflects various themes such as oppression, marginalization,
gender discrimination, subjugation of lower and working classes, disregarded women, neglected sections
of society and deprived classes of the existing society. As De Boland rightly confesses, ‘literature is an
expression of society’. Literature in itself embodies life and life is a social reality of society. A writer, who is
a member of a society, is influenced by specific social status and receives some degree of social recognition
and recompense. Though this may benefit them in one way: it obviously helps them bring to limelight the
sufferings and difficult paths the downtrodden tread upon. Thus, this article focuses on the voice of the
voiceless in bringing out their voices to be heard in the outer world. In Bama’s Karukku, she testifies her
situation of life and narrates her feelings in this small writing. In a world where problems relating to human
privileges have been under perilous focus, literary portrayals of the experiences of demoted groups have
assimilated great implication. The modern stream in Dalit literature in India is a challenge to bring to prime
the experiences of discrimination, inequality, violence, injustice and poverty of the Dalits.

Keywords
Gender discrimination, injustice, marginalized, subaltern, social reality

1
English Language Centre, Jazan University, Jazan, KSA.

Corresponding author:
Jayanthi Rajendran, English Language Centre, Jazan University, Jazan 82831, KSA.
E-mails: [email protected]; [email protected]
90 Contemporary Voice of Dalit 12(1)

Introduction
One of the most significant purposes of Indian English writers of fiction has been the artistic interpretation
of the Indian society and its culture and the construction and prediction of the Indian image. Commonly
and generally according to the writings, the Indian society is broadly classified into three main groups,
namely the upper caste, the non-upper caste and the depressed classes. Among them, there existed many
castes and sub-castes, which followed numerous practices and customs; surprisingly, each of them is a
unique way of representing their caste and creed. The impact of the upper castes has been significantly
felt in the social, religious and cultural lives of the downgraded sections over the years. The mounting
corpus of subaltern writings, poems, novels and autobiographies, however, seeks to rectify the pheno-
menon of suppression by examining the nuances of subaltern culture.

Dalit Literature
Dalit literature is one of the most imperative literary movements that took its offshoot from deprived
untouchables to make its appearance in the post-independence India. The revolution of the denounced
identity of these so-called ‘untouchables’ to a self-chosen identity as Dalit is a story of communal
struggle waged over centuries. Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Dr B. R. Ambedkar, two soaring figures in
the pantheon of Dalit history, were the first to coin the word. The voice of the sidelined and the targeted
is a great tool to distinguish the obscured conditions that exist in the world around us. With the knowledge
gained from marginalized literature and subaltern, the world will be able to fight ignorance engulfing the
lives of these people and the bias that is a result of that ignorance. Expressions of inner self-experiences
have long been buried in silence, often with religious and social agreement, and consigned to the
boundaries as non-literary. More recent is the drift to refute their reality altogether.
The term ‘Dalit’ found favour with activists; in other words, this broad definition includes all the
oppressed. This broadening takes the term beyond the Hindu fold to embrace Dalits who have converted
to Buddhism, and in later years, this would also embrace those who converted to Islam or Christianity.
The manifesto of the Dalit Panther Movement in Maharashtra, published in 1973, defines Dalits as
‘members of scheduled castes and tribes, neo-Buddhists, the working people, the landless and poor
peasants, women and all those who are being exploited politically, economically and in the name of
religion’. This movement made a late start in Tamil Nadu, coming to the foreshore only in the 1990s after
the celebrations of the birth centenary of Dr Ambedkar. It would be problematic to discuss all Dalit
writings or the complexity of issues involved in such a brief introduction; it is important to know that
some of the issues involved and the aims of this movement in various literatures in our languages are
similar to one another.

Social Intricacies That Emphasized Discriminations

The laws in our society have become an intrusive element in marginalizing the marginalized. The unequal
position of men and women that is being sustained and furthermore reinforced in sovereign India is due
to the faulty way of approach in executing laws and policies towards the society. There has always been
a sex-based disparity and discrimination that has been in reality which existed in different forms in the
Indian society for generations. This is because inequalities are becoming an integral part in our traditional,
Rajendran 91

social structure based on caste, community, religion and class and have a significant influence on the
status of women. The multifaceted, multi-layered and diverse social situation that exists within the
country requires an immediate intervention and reformation for social transformation that would benefit
all sections of the population; however, this element of reformation and transformation has been
abandoned for decades.
Presently, the situation is that the fluctuating social processes have led to the removal of certain
limitations in women’s lives; however, these have also created centres of confrontation regarding the
desired change in women’s status. This has further paved way for the present society to stand up firmly
and vigorously in bringing to light the dark aspects of the society, especially the Dalit society, in writing.
The future of Dalit literature is engraved on the present condition of the Dalits and their susceptibility.
And certainly, new reformation waves are flowing in for a drastic radical change and development in
Dalit literature as literature of remonstration. Thus, Dalit literature is a new dimension in the day-to-day.
With great astonishment, people become fascinated towards this new charismatic dimension in literature.
Furthermore, modernization and globalization in India have affected women from different backgrounds,
thus resulting in egalitarian distribution of opportunities and a non-uniform pattern of social change
among women from different social rankings, hierarchies and backgrounds. In Dalit literature, the Tamil
Dalit writer, Bama, under the pseudonym of Faustina Mary Fatima Rani thought deeply about the nature
of Dalit life, the different perspectives from different categories of the society and about the relationship
between activism and literature. Because of the nature of Bama’s work as a Christian Dalit as well as a
woman writer, both of which gave a tangentially different understanding of Dalit experiences, the
testimonial form of writing (about her own life and that of her community in this instance) creates a
generic challenge and its value truly dependents on its perceived truth of expression, its complete fidelity
to lived experience.

Karukku a Symbol of Expression

In Karukku, as a whole, when looked closely at the first two chapters that are set in order, one can see the
theme as well as technique that have been employed by the writer. Her use of language is not only an idea
of what she does in Tamil but also a great insight for those who use Tamil as their language for medium
of communication. In Bama’s Karukku, the language has another interesting factor—the influence of the
Catholic Church. As Lakshmi Holmstrom points out, Bama uses the language of popular Catholicism,
not the language of theologians. Much of Dalit writing that gets translated is testimonial in nature—it is
the lived lives of the writers that seem to add the value of truth and hence literary worth in the eyes of
translators and publishers. While it is true that the oppressed will write about their lives in order to assert
their quest for ‘equality, freedom and solidarity’, the autobiography is not their only mode of writing. A
major creative strategy among Dalit writers in all languages is to work on the language itself, to go
against both established form and established literary language. Bama fits well into it under the category
of Dalit literature. This is meant to sensitize what it means to be a woman and that too a Dalit woman in
India today. Karukku gives an account of the sufferings and indignities of a Christian Dalit woman—
Bama. Dalit literature is of the oppressed which is always literature with a cause. The main aim of
Bama’s writing, as she says, is ‘to share with people my experiences. I use writing as one of the weapons
to fight for the rights of the underprivileged’. Thus, through her writing, she gratifies self-reflection and
inner strength and this is done in the language of the oppressed people, and in the language of the oral
narrative, including turns of phrases and proverbs, folk songs and other ritual songs of the people being
represented in her writings.
92 Contemporary Voice of Dalit 12(1)

Bama’s Early Background

Born in 1958, Bama, also known as Bama Faustina Soosairaj, is an explicit Tamil, Dalit feminist, devoted
teacher and novelist. She is the sister of well-known Dalit writer Raj Gauthaman. In addition to this, she
wrote 20 short stories and ascended to fame in no time. She climbed the ladder of elevation through
recognition with her autobiographical novel Karukku (1992), which diaries the ecstasies and sorrows
experienced by Dalit Christian women in Tamil Nadu, south India. Karukku won the Crossword Book
Award for the best fiction in Indian languages and was later available in English translation in 2001,
which was translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom. She subsequently wrote two more novels: Sangati (1994)
and Vanmam (2002) along with Erumaiyum (2003).
Bama aided as a nun for 7 years in a Catholic institution and later the writer left the convent and began
writing, working out her masterpiece Karukku. With the encouragement of a friend, she wrote on her
childhood experiences which reflect her inner self and feelings she felt as a child. Apparently, such
feelings which she harboured within her made her produce her gifted Karukku. These experiences shaped
the basis for her first novel, Karukku, which was later published in 1992. Bama was detested by her
village for depicting it in poor light and was not allowed to enter the village for the next 7 months when
her novel was published. Karukku was, however, with great solidarity, critically applauded and won the
Crossword Book Award in 2000. Bama followed it with Sangati and Kusumbukkaran. With great
struggle, the writer managed to get credit and started a school for Dalit children as she was much
concerned and cared about their well-being and wanted to educate them in order for them to know the
reality of the outside world and to encourage them to understand, achieve and conquer.
The name Bama is made up from the different sounds in her Christian name. Hers was a Dalit Christian
family, her grandfather having converted to Christianity. The status of the family did not change much and
they remained landless labourers, working for upper-caste landlords. However, Bama’s father was in the
army and this made some difference to their lives. Like all children, Bama played many games with her
four siblings, her favourite game being ‘Kabaddi’. Her reason for liking the game is typical of her attitude
to life and writing—‘I liked the whole business of challenging, crossing over and vanquishing the opponent’,
she explained in an interview. While her father, an Indian Army personnel, was instrumental in educating
her and her siblings, her brother, Raj Gautaman, who is a leading Dalit theoretician and literary critic,
encouraged her to read. While Bama read Jayakantan, Akhilan, Mani and Parthasarthy—all Tamil writers—
she also read Kahlil Gibran and Rabindranath Tagore. Bama also wrote poetry when she was in college.
After finishing her college, Bama became a schoolteacher because she wanted to educate girls from very
poor backgrounds. However, at the age of 26, she decided to enter the Church, and took the vows to become
a nun. This was a well-thought-out decision to pursue her mission to educate poor Dalit children. It was also
an attempt to break away from the bonds of the caste system which was discriminatory in social life.
However, her experience in the convent disillusioned her and she walked out in 1992, after 7 years. She felt
that she had lost everything. Her only good memories were those of childhood. One of her friends, Father
Mark, who heeded to her laments, suggested that she write memoirs of her childhood. Almost as a healing
process, Bama began to write Karukku and completed it in 6 months. According to writer C. S. Lakshmi,
Bama is more than a writer; she is ‘a chronicler and recorder of Dalit life and struggle in Tamil Nadu’.

Karukku—Self-reflection of the Inner Self

This autobiographical narrative, which gives testimony about a life, has to be treated as a different
literary genre to be seen as an attestation of truth, a social critique as well as a carefully structured and
Rajendran 93

well-written literary narrative and to be appreciated as would any influential work of fiction. Karukku is
about a Christian Dalit woman who realizes that her identity as a Christian is heavily mediated by her
identity as a Dalit, and that she must fight the discriminatory practices both within the Church and
outside, and that this is all the more tough as a woman. Karukku is also a very different kind of a book,
as if almost masticating for a new form. The narrator ponders over the various events in her life again
and again from different perspectives. In her introduction, Lakshmi Holmstrom reaches a point of view
that Bama groups the events in her life ‘under different themes, for example, Work, Games and
Recreation, Education, Belief, etc.’ (p. vii). It is almost like watching the ripples that result when a
number of stones are hurled into a pond. Every time that Bama thinks of her life, new ripples form and
speed across the surface of her life, making her take stock of a large part of her life rather than the impact
of a single incident in itself.
Her life as a Catholic Christian girl and woman is arbitrated by the fact that she is a Dalit. On the other
hand, her growing awareness of the Dalit identity marks her ventures into the Church, and aggravates her
re-examination and reconstruction of what devotion to God means and of the role of faith and belief in
her life. This, then, is a work that plans the growth and education of the narrator, from childhood and
innocent faith to adulthood and understanding of the ways of the Church and the world in her own ways.
The narrator is taking stock of her life at a particular climactic moment of her life, after she has left 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.
As a child, Bama grew up in an atmosphere instilled with faith in the Christian religion. Religion
for her was a sense of duty and obedience (enforced with strict punishment), and also an idea of class
and caste identity. She learns very early what it means to be a Dalit in the Indian society, and, rapidly,
understands what it means to be a Dalit in the Catholic Christian society. However, as a believing
Christian, one who had chosen to become a nun even if one of her main aims was to make a difference
to the Dalit society, most commonly the women and children, Bama does not give up on the vision or
message of Christianity and, instead, criticizes the Catholic institutions that preach one thing and practice
another. The message and aim of Christianity, according to her reading of the scriptures, is love towards
all, which implies equality, and social justice and human welfare. She thinks that God chose to side with
the poor as he himself incarnated in the lowly form of man. Her ideas and thought were to make a vivid
change in the vision to change the plight of the Dalit people, and with that zeal, she enters the convent
precisely because she thinks she can work better for the poorer sections of society, especially the Dalits,
by working with the resources and the message of the Church. Unfortunately, the convent fails her and
she leaves it, but these reflections on her life make her understand that the Church had always worked in
this manner in her lifetime, and that social, political and economic inequality had always marked all the
internal boundaries of her beloved village life, these internal boundaries or invisible boundaries have
demarcated castes and also for certainty have created rules of untouchability to high visibility. This
awareness of injustice that permeates the life of our land does not bring despair, for Bama realizes that
her own experiences and the resultant awareness are part of a larger Dalit consciousness raising a larger
movement. However, Karukku is first and foremost a work about life as a Christian Dalit, and about the
hypocrisies and double standards of the Catholic Church, and about the caste discrimination within it.
Even as she attacks the Church, she laments the rise of consumerism and lack of belief that marks
contemporary life as a whole.
The writer’s tone is amazing when she reveals about the hard work that she enjoyed: ‘I don’t know
why they were so surprised. In those days, I really enjoyed that kind of hard physical labor’ (p. 47). The
education system encourages subtly to look down on people doing physical labour as the lot of those who
have botched to progress themselves. So, Bama’s reaction is interesting. She does not look down on the
94 Contemporary Voice of Dalit 12(1)

work that her community does; she is only aghast at the fact that society does not recognize or reward
the importance of this labour. She also recognizes the hardship of her own mother and grandmother who
‘labored from sunrise to sunset, without any rest’. She further points out that even today, men and
women in her village ‘can survive only through hard and incessant labor’. Though labour is enjoyable,
it is not paying; it is exploited by others who control the levers of power which is very well prevalent in
the Indian society. To add more to this, she also describes the work that is available in rural Tamil Nadu
which is so demanding for the labours. However, she speaks of her village and her people who, if no
other work is available, must ‘go up to the hills to gather firewood’ or do other work ‘in order to eat’. She
then describes the work done by other ‘backward’ castes, and says that it is only people of her community
who had ‘to work so hard’. This is where the reality is outspoken. The suppression of the people is being
projected from her view that hard work and other menial labour are meant only for those who want to
work hard. Hard work is a way of life for her family, with her grandmother waking as early as two in the
morning to do household chores before going to work at the Naicker household where she was a servant
and coming back only after sunset. Her grandmother is not being described in terms of her labour but in
terms of resounding out her responsibilities to her masters, to the family that she was bonded to.
Bama’s writing thrives on simplicity and, inquisitively for someone who has traditionally been seen
as non-literary or even using impolite language, she more often makes her points with a certain indi-
rectness, almost without emphasizing them, proving her ability as a talented writer. Bama talks of her
grandmother in Chapter Two as well, where she also describes the way her grandmother was treated and
looked down on by the family she worked for. It is the continuing and spreading results of the event and
action that her grandmother underwent is the ripple effect that has indirectly affected, emphasised and
strengthened the feeling of inner-self in her. Bama’s technique is perceptible again in the way she
proceeds further to describe all the hard work she used to do as a young girl in order to supplement the
family’s insufficient income. This is when she voices her inner self-reflections of exploitation by the
Naicker employers and the Nadar tradesmen. She also voices again about untouchability as a set of
stringent rules she had learnt to observe as a part of her life: ‘All the time I went to work for the Naickers,
I knew I should not touch their goods or chattels; I should never come close to where they were, I should
always stand away to one side’.
Education could only be a dream for the Dalits. After her opinions over hard work and untouchability,
she then moves on to the subject of her convent school, where she did not have to do this kind of work:
‘I ate my meals, and I studied; that was all’. Not that she learnt to look down on physical labour but,
during her holidays, she says, ‘I did all the chores that fell to me customarily’. She then expresses her joy
and talks about how she enjoyed hard physical labour. It is then that she talks of how this incessant labour
does not improve the lot of the Dalits, it becomes their factor for survival. Furthermore, she expresses
how there is discrimination between men and women in terms of even these worthless wages. She points
out that her community is still cheerful and seems to take this hard life uncritically, after gently pointing
out that the upper-caste society could not endure without this labour which their community would
render unto them. Bama finishes on a pessimistic note, focusing on the fact that even children are sent to
factories to work rather than being sent for studies.
Bama’s technique then reinforces her theme: the place of hard physical work in the lives of Dalits
from childhood until death and even the chance for education, their only hope to break free of the cycle
of exploitation, retreating with cumulative workload on children. This chapter from the beginning
validates that the book is a sequence of reflections by Bama on her own life from childhood until she left
the convent. The focus of this chapter is on Bama’s experiences in the holy order that was founded by a
woman who had loved the poor and the lowly and had educated the children of the poor and helped them
in their lives. However, the convent functioned indifferently. The first sentence of this chapter reveals
Rajendran 95

Bama’s primary identity as a Dalit and a woman from rural India (‘I was born in a small village as a Dalit
girl’). She judges the convent from this perspective and finds it lacking and unresponsive. She finds an
extravagant lifestyle instead of the poverty that the church exposes of and the poverty that she had
experienced in her life. She speaks of the strange, rich and lavish meals and also the size of the buildings.
The church seems far removed from the material reality of the life of her community that formed the
largest part of the congregation. She felt as out of place there as she would have in an upper-caste home.
On top of that, the convent was extremely hierarchical, almost like the society outside. She realized that
the world was inside the church and social service to the country and to the poor were far from the minds
of the serving nuns. The church valued the wealth and influence among the upper castes. Bama says that
even the school attached to the convent was no better.
Most importantly, Bama analyses the way the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that nuns had
to take actually separated them from the reality of ordinary lives and ‘put them at a great remove, as if
they belonged to a different world’. The convent was cut off from the social reality around and had no
understanding of or sympathy for the poor. The nuns were ‘trapped in comfort’. Bama particularly chafes
at the vow of ‘obedience’ because this is used to keep nuns in check, to keep them submissive even in
the face of injustice or insensitivity and their own commitments. Bama was forced to serve the rich, not
the poor as she wished, because she was told to learn obedience and faith. What Bama found in the
church was a disjunction between what was professed and what was practised. As she says, the training
that the nuns received had no connection to the lives they had to live later. If the nuns found it hard to fit
in, they were told that they did not have the calling. Bama strongly believes that the church had no
connection with the lived reality in India; the authorities had been ‘indoctrinated during their studies in
Europe and in America’. Not only did the convent have no idea about Dalits but they also spoke dis-
paragingly of them. After serving in one school for 3 years, Bama was transferred five times within 1
month. Then, after another 5 months in a rich children’s school, Bama left the convent for the world of
social inequity and difficulty that she had hoped that the church would work to alleviate. Reflection is
focused and speaks of the authority of the church over its nuns and how the very Christian principles that
are meant to motivate its good work among the people are used to coerce and govern those who have
taken holy orders to serve the church and the people. She spells out some of the opinions of the other
nuns about Dalits and feels provoked by the vulgarization of ethics within the church, and the impossibility
of serving the people from within.

Conclusion
Bama’s Karukku is as much about the writer and her perception of the Church and her interpretation of
the hardship endured by her people as it is about her Dalit community. Her gender and religion are added
factors in her sense of marginalization as a Dalit. She writes as a Dalit woman about the experiences of
Dalit women in her community and urges women to emerge victorious in bringing out their identity to
independence. Her gender complicates her Dalit identity as much as her Dalit distinctiveness obscures
her position as a woman and a feminist. Karukku is a path-breaking work that explores the various facets
of exploitation of the Dalits, precisely of the Paraiyars in Tamil Nadu, even within and by the Church. A
salient point about conversions to other religions by Dalits is that they usually convert as an entire
community, as a caste based in a certain location. Hence, their identity as a caste is carried over,
unfortunately, into the new religion. Equally unfortunately, converts from upper castes seem to carry
their caste attitudes into their new religious identity. Thus, caste practices and prejudices are found in all
religions in India. Neither religion nor legal constitutional intervention seems to provide any answers to
96 Contemporary Voice of Dalit 12(1)

the Dalits. As a matter of fact, Bama’s own community was outraged for a while after the publication of
the book. Karukku created quite a stir in Tamil literary circles after its publication, although it marked a
new era in the Tamil Dalit society in voicing the voice of the voiceless to be heard in the outer arena.
Thus, Bama used the local dialect of the Tamil people and not the formalized text that can be easily
understood.
Bama has delved into something entirely new in using the demotic and colloquial language as her
medium for narration and even argument, and not simply for reported speech. She marks a boundary by
breaking the rules of written grammar and spelling throughout, eliding words and joining them differently,
demanding a new and different pattern of reading. The style she adopted is extremely difficult to translate
into English due to its stylistic corpus methods.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of
this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.