KARUKKU

BAMA

1/24/2011 Assignment 3

Manoj Kumar MA in Elementary Education Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Karukku (Bama, 2000) an autobiographical account of a Dalit Christian women traverses its readers through the variegated experiences of the author in a particular socio-historical milieu. When we pass through such accounts we usually realize a tension between the great urge for theory building and recapitulating the experiences through a set of conceptual categories on the one hand and being honest to specificity of the lifeworld on the other. Rich textured description and appreciation of life itself even amid the repression, violence and destitution by the author cannot be captured by adding few more qualifiers before women, like Dalit women, Christian Dalit women, Tamil Christian Dalit women- so on and so forth. these Dalit with capital D and Christian with capital C can also be categories means glossing over many lived experiences. universalizing and essentialzing- and attempt to capture life-world through Nonetheless putting things together, making connections, comparing and recapitulating discrete experiences through some categories/frameworks help in organizing resistance and politics of liberation. Approach for making connections could be paradigmatic or syntactic. Syntactic approach gives space to specificity of experiences and makes connections like rhizome- a network in which the issue of centre and periphery does not occur. After advent of post-structuralism this approach received more appreciation. In feminist discourse autobiographical accounts and other narrative forms like diaries, letters and journals received attention and celebration of diversity became order of the day. In this backdrop reading Bamas autobiography is quite rewarding. Here is a young dalit woman who is trying to change her fate through education and adherence to certain religious order which appears to be based on compassion, justice and equality before the god. What she realizes over the years is the fact that while education can be empowering for an individual and make some minor positional changes, it cannot make any long term structural changes. The author earns some respect among her peer in one of her schools through hard work, the ascriptive identities of being women and dalit looms large. The moments of dignity and glory are momentary and short-lived, while the moments of systematic abuses are

all pervasive. Nonetheless it appears from the account that those moments of glory give her taste for dignity, justice and equality. Authors elder brother opens up the possibilities and promises of education when he advises her to study hard. Prevalent practices of caste and other forms of discriminations notwithstanding, probably school holds some promises of emancipation. Dalit intellectuals like Ambedkar and Phule had recognized this potential of modernizing institution. The Bamas account does not engage with the politics of school knowledge so much, but she does provide vivid accounts of her first school in village and convent school. It seems, school as a modernizing institution does not breed in a sociohistorical vacuum. It also takes its sustenance from a particular socialinstitutional ecology. In India presence of caste as an institution is all pervasive. Similarly patriarchy shapes the way people comprehend and act in the social world. Caste and patriarchy have constitutive role in shaping the cognitive-interpretive framework. In Bamas account both school and religious order established by womansaint represent alternative social sites which provide interpretive frameworks. Other alternative sites of comprehension can be found in quasi-mythological communitarian accounts which are so well woven in the narrative and also authors lust for life itself in whatever forms it comes to her. Village is not a place where just human beings live. Every mountain and field has a particular name. Sometimes life appears to her in kaleidoscopic forms. When she returns from school there are so many things to seeI was walking home from school one day, an old bag hanging from my shoulder. It was actually possible to walk the distance in ten minutes. But usually it would take me thirty minutes at the very least to reach home. It would take me from half an hour to an hour to dawdle along, watching all the fun and games that were going on, all the entertaining novelties and oddities in the streets, the shops and bazaar. The performing monkeys;

the snake which the snake-charmer kept in its box and displayed from time to time; the cyclist who have not got off his bike for three days, and who kept paddling as hard as he could from break of day; the rupees note that were pinned on his shirt to spurn him on; the spinning wheels; the Maariyaata temple, the huge well hanging there; the pongal offerings being cooked in front of the temple; the dried fish stall by the statue of Gandhi; the sweet stall selling fried snacks, and all other shops next to each other; the street lights always demonstrating how it could change from blue to violet; the narikkuravan hunter-gypsy with his wild lemur in cages, clay beads and instruments for cleaning out the ears- Oh I could go on and on. (Pages- 11-12) Alongside this vivid kaleidoscopic description there is structured social life- the entire social geography of village. The morphology of caste does not simply define social spaces; it also dictates gestures and movements of various social actors. The description Bama provides of Pallas (landless dalit) man who brings snacks for Naicker (landholding upper caste) man is a narrative of dehumanization- a process which is so prevalent that it appears natural to a properly socialized actor. Fortunately it does not look natural to a dalit girl of school going age who has eyes for details. Capturing these movements and gestures through the categories of established social science disciplines would have been impossible. The morphology and ideology of caste pervade school and convent also where she decides to become a nun. Her decision to become nun has been driven by her willingness to do something for the deprived people. Somewhere Church and particular religiosity holds promises for compassion and justice, but gradually she realizes that the convent is citadel of rituals and habitual action and there is no scope for reflection on the aims and meanings of human life. She writesThere was no love to be found in that convent, among these people who declared all the time that God is loving. There was no love for poor and humble. They claimed that Gods love is limitless, subject to no conditions. Yet inside the convent there were innumerable conditions.

About how you should be and who you were in order to deserve love. (page-92) The reality in school is not much different. Bama gives description of her own childhood school in initial parts of the autobiography, but reality of the convent school where she teaches as a nun is similarIf you are inclined to think, well all right, the convent was like this, but at least school would have been good, I have to say, no, actually it was worse. Each class was full of children from the wealthy families. They sat in rows, sleek and well-fed. All they had to do was to light skinned and to arrive in cars. Even the smallest children would eat meals which were brought to them by servant boys and girls, and whom they grandly ordered around. (Page- 97) Gradually author realizes that either she can live a comfortable life in convent as an individual by erasing all her memories of being Dalit of pallar caste and being women or she has to leave the convent. She looks possibility for working in an ordinary school run by convent for the children of deprived classes, but eventually she realizes that the certain elements of caste and class have got institutionalized in school. Finally she leaves the convent and get back to live like an ordinary educated dalit woman. Amidst many personal struggle and failures of life she joins various struggles against dalit oppression. As she writes in her afterword association and identification with this general social cause gives meaning to her life. Richness of description vis--vis womans experiences is not as striking in this autobiographical account as it is with regard to dalit experiences. Attention has not been given to the way patriarchy works even in deprives communities. Though as a reader one can point out to the places where distribution of power and roles along the lines of gender is visible in the narrative, the author and narrator does not specially provide those vantage points to the readers.

Bama. (2000). Karukku. (M. Krishnan, Ed., & L. Holmstrom, Trans.) Chennai: MACMILLAN.