A MARXIST READING of BAMA's SANGATHI Abhijith MS

LUX MONTIS Vol. 5 No. 1 January 2017 VOICE OF THE DUAL PROLETARIAN; A MARXIST READING OF BAMA’S SANGATHI Abhijith M.S. P.G. Scholar, Dept. of English, Newman College Thodupuzha, Idukki Dist. e-mail [email protected] Mob:8086416581 ABSTRACT Bama’s Sangathi is an autobiographical account of the lives of the dalit people, especially dalit women in Indian society. The novel shows the sidelining and torture that the dalit community face and dalit women suffer the extreme as they are further down in the social chain. The novel identifies cast system as the major reason of this social backwardness. The objective of this paper is an analysis of Bama’s Sangathi from a Marxist perspective. Karl Marx (1818-83) and his fellow thinker Friedrich Engels, made detailed studies and came to the conclusion that social relations and stratification are evolved as an outcome of economic relationship within the society. In Bama’s Sangathi also, one can easily connect the non-transparent economic distribution leading to social disparities, or in other words, connect the inevitability of maintaining social disparities to ensure a non-transparent economic distribution. The protagonist most vividly presents the current situation, its reasons and methods to improve life of a community in this novel. A closer reading will show how the approach of the protagonist is that of a Marxist. INTRODUCTION In Sangathi, Bama the protagonist is narrating the lives of three generation of women in her community. Bama presents the experience of women who have experienced domestic and sexual violence within their family and society. Difference in the treatment of boys and girls from the point of birth, differences in rights and legal protection for men and women, attitude of husband towards wife, attitude of upper caste people, situation of women in the upper classes, role of religion and education etc are the major themes within the novel. Analysis from a Marxist perspective can trace all these to economy and ideology, of which the latter is further developed from the former. Before deconstructing the novel and reconstructing it as an example of class struggle, the idea of Marxist criticism needs to be stated. Marxist criticism is one among the most widely used and variedly interpreted methods, therefore, its applications here would be easier to grasp if the intended Marxist perspectives are stated clearly. 1 LUX MONTIS Vol. 5 No. 1 January 2017 (1) In the last analysis, the evolving history of humanity, of its social groupings and relations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods. (2) Historical changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage. (3) Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class. (Abrams,147- 148 ) Bama’s Sangathi, a narration of class oppression. Before going into the detailed analysis of instances of male-female and class oppositions within the novel, a clarification in the approach is needed. The inferiority of the Paraya community and women in particular is a result of chathurvarnya system which was widely followed in Hinduism. This system divided society into castes and the Paraya’s belonged to the lowest untouchables. Here comes the veil of ideology which masks the truth of social equality to favour the upper classes. Ideology, as already defined in the beginning, is created to “legitimize and perpetuate the interests of the dominant economic and social class”. The so called upper classes need the Paraya people to remain slaves to them, so that they could be used as cheap labourers. Education and private ownership of farm lands was prohibited by religious laws to ensure that the Paraya community never realised their rights and remained voiceless slaves. The notion that they are low barbarous people with no rights born to work for the upper class, who are born with the rights to punish them, was deeply carved into the psyche of the Paraya’s. Women were further chained as they were made to believe that they are inferior to men and are born to serve men. These ideologies of caste and gender inequalities are aimed at maintaining social and economic superiority, and any questions raised against these systems of oppressions are dealt with severe humiliations and torture- manifestations of which are found throughout the novel. In Bama’s Sangathi one can see that males are irresponsible towards their families and the burden of raising one is rested entirely on the female folk. Male children are attended with special care, and are fed and taken care of while female children are fed in the end with whatever is left in the plates. “When they are infants in arms, they never let the boy babies cry. If a boy baby cries, he is instantly picked up and given milk. It is not so with the girls. Even with breast-feeding, it is the same story; a boy is breast feeding longer. With girls, they wean them quickly, making them forget the breast. If the boy catches the illness or a fever, they will run around and nurse them with the greatest care. If it’s a girl, they’ll do it half-heartedly.” (Bama, : 7). Boys are allowed to play freely while girls are instructed to do the house hold chores and take care of their siblings. Even when they play together, male dominance is asserted and stamped into the subconscious of the children. Bama quotes patti, “when we played ‘mothers and fathers’, we always had to serve the 2 LUX MONTIS Vol. 5 No. 1 January 2017 mud ‘rice’ to the boys first. They used to pull us by the hair and hit us, saying, ‘What sort of food is this, di, without salt or anything!’ In those days, we used to accept those pretences blows, and think it was all good fun.” (Bama, : 31). Thus, from the earliest days of life, the different status of men and women are made clear and projected as the normal way of life. Women are deprived of many rights which men enjoy and are treated inferior under their laws. Even when they are accused for the same crime, women don’t have the ‘right’ to clarify their part and they get more punishment than men.( example quote) Within families, both men and women go to work, but women are supposed rise up early and prepare food, which she is supposed to eat only after she have fed her husband. She has no ‘right’ to eats first and if she does, she will be punished severely. (Example) No one has the ‘right’ to question a man beating his wife, because he have the ‘right’ to beat his wife. Bama’s mother says that “It’s as if you become a slave from the very day you are married. That’s why all the men scold their wives and keep them under control” (43). Men have the ‘right’ to demand sexual satisfaction from his wife whenever he wants it, and women-no matter how sick or tired-have no ‘right’ to stop him. It is a wife’s duty to look feed the family, she has no ‘right’ to demand that her husband should also contribute. Husbands have the ‘right’ to spend his wage as he likes. Women have no ‘right’ to sing in public or to act on a stage, no matter how talented they are. “Even then it was the men who sang and beat the rhythm. There were so many amongst us women who could sing really beautifully. But never to this day has a single one of us been allowed to sing in public. We certainly have not been invited.” (Bama, : 35). Girls have no ‘right’ to marry from outside the cast, but boys can if they wish. “A girl who has a little education and has progressed somewhat, is not allowed to seek a like-minded man, and certainly not marry anyone of her choice” (Bama, : 109) The lower cast women have no ‘right’ to take a shower in the ponds owned by upper cast men, but are molested by them. Even when Paraya girls are raped by upper class men, there is no protest from her community as the headman fears that “if we bring the upper caste people to the Panchayat, who will give us job in the farm.”(Bama, : 26). Women of the upper caste are better off than Paraya women, but they also have no ‘right’ to walk out of their house as they like. They are like birds kept in iron cages-well fed but imprisoned. Every oppression is backed by rights and privileges through certain ideas which are accepted as universal by people of the society. “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class”(32) says Karl Marx, in The Communist Manifesto. These ideas which give special ‘rights, or privileges for upper casts to oppress the Parayas and males to oppress females are created by these upper classes with the intention of maintaining their control over lower classes.

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