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SPECIAL ARTICLE Caste in a Casteless Language? English as a Language of ‘Dalit’ Expression Rita Kothari This paper focuses on a new archive of dalit writing My mother is an untouchable, while my father is a high caste from one of the privileged classes of India. Mother lives in a hut, father in a in English translation. The “archive” has a forced mansion. Father is a landlord; mother, landless. I am an akkarmashi homogeneity imposed by the term “dalit”, which (half-caste). I am condemned, branded illegitimate. – Limbale 2003: Acknowledgements embraces an urban middle-class dalit and a member of How is it that people consider us too gross even to sit next to when travelling? They look at us with the same look they would cast on a scavenger caste; the homogeneity is consolidated by someone suffering from a repulsive disease. the fact that the translated texts are in an international – Bama 2000: 24 I have asked many scholars to tell me why Savarnas (upper-caste language. The questions asked concern the relationship Hindus) hate dalits and Shudras so much? The Hindus who worship between caste and the English language, two trees and plants, beasts and birds, why are they so intolerant of dalits? – Valmiki 2003: 134 phenomena that represent considerably antithetical signs. Dalit writers accept English as a target language, Homogenising/Heterogenising the Archive he three excerpts above are by three authors – Sharan- despite the fact that local realities and registers of caste kumar Limbale, Bama and Omprakash Valmiki – who are difficult to couch in a language that has no memory Tbelong to different parts of the country. Limbale lives in of caste. The discussion shows how English promises Maharashtra and writes in Marathi. Bama is a teacher in Tamil to dalit writers (as both individuals and representatives Nadu and writes in Tamil. Omprakash Valmiki lives in north- ern India, and writes in Hindi. Born an illegitimate child to an of communities) agency, articulation, recognition and untouchable mother, Limbale rose to become the regional justice. The paper draws attention to the multiplicity d irector of a university. From an untouchable community in of contexts that make writing by dalits part of a literary Tamil Nadu, Bama moved to a Christian convent which, she public sphere in India, and contribute to our thinking hoped, would give her and many others like her a life of dignity and equality. On fi nding Christianity in India equally caste- about caste issues in the context of human rights. ridden, she quit the convent and now teaches in a school. Valmiki asserts his distance and exclusion from Hinduism by adopting his scavenger and untouchable caste as his last name, “Valmiki”. He is an ordinance offi cer in the town of Dehradun. Thus, all three represent not only different languages or regions, but also different religious identities. They call atten- tion to many specifi cities, of caste, class and region. For instance, Limbale’s “Marathi” would not be the same as that of a Chitpavan Marathi-speaking person from Pune. Also, his mixed lineage as the son of an upper-caste father and lower- caste mother provides to his experiences a dimension of sexual and gender politics. His narrative becomes as much his own as his mother’s. Would the ramifi cations of being half-dalit be the same as (being) fully dalit? Does a dalit become fully elite – that is a question raised in Valmiki’s autobiography Joothan. Bama’s critique of Christian missions is as much about Hindu- The author thanks a viewer’s comments and also acknowledges ism as the localisation of Christianity in India, and its mis- the feedback and help received from Abhijit Kothari and Harmony placed claims of egalitarianism. Thus, it is possible to “read” Siganporia. each of these autobiographies as individual narratives of strug- Rita Kothari ([email protected]) teaches at the Humanities and gle and articulation of that struggle, or documents of commu- Social Sciences Department, Institute of Information Technology, nities, regions and nations, challenging the idea of India and Gandhinagar. its unfi nished modernity. 60 september 28, 2013 vol xlviII no ? EPW Economic & Political Weekly SPECIAL ARTICLE As an exercise, we could replace the three authors with an- by dalits part of a literary public sphere in India, and con- other set of authors, say for instance, Balbir Madhopuri (2010), tribute to our thinking about caste issues in the context of who provides a much-needed perspective on untouchability in human rights. Punjab and erodes populist myths about equality in that re- The subsequent section continues with English as a lan- gion, and with B Kesharshivam (2008), the author of Gujarat’s guage of empowerment, and also builds upon its “casteless- fi rst dalit autobiography. The heterogeneity of caste experi- ness” as a marked strength, not an inadequacy. It is based on ences, negotiations between caste and modernity, and caste as an interesting case study of a Gujarati dalit writer, Neerav both a pan-Indian and locally experienced phenomenon Patel, who raises some very important questions in this re- emerging out of life narratives, would provide the “point of spect. Drawing on his views, by no means representative of all entry that sees dalit sociology not through the eyes of the aca- dalits in India, I add specifi c and regional perspectives on not deme but in terms of its own emic categories” (Visvanathan only English, but the hegemony of standard language over 2001: 3123). what are perceived as dalit dialects. The favourable view in Thus, a new archive of dalit writing in English translation Patel’s case stems as much from the empowering nature of forms the basis of this paper. The “archive” has a forced homo- English, as the stigmatising nature of his own Gujarati. If geneity imposed by the term “dalit”, which embraces an urban standard Gujarati, Patel argues, is as distant and alien to dalits middle-class dalit as well as a member of a scavenger caste, as English, he would rather embrace English, and use it to re- who may have to wait a generation more before s/he can place his “mother tongue”, thus making English what he calls become part of the middle class. The homogeneity is also con- his “foster-tongue”. By being foreign, English does not normal- solidated by the fact that the translated texts are in an interna- ise and legitimise caste, and by being an ex-colonial language tional language. I have discussed elsewhere (Kothari 2008) with global reach, it becomes empowering. the politics of representation in an archive of this nature – the The closing section asks what it means to give up or embrace preoccupation with the autobiographical; the burden of repre- a language, and how the “self” gets redefi ned and translated sentation that some members of a dalit community carry with into new meanings by the aforesaid shedding or embracing of them, mostly ones who have had the opportunity of self-ex- a language. I suggest that embracing English involves, and pression through social mobility, and so on. Questions could also coincides with, multiple levels of translation as far as also be raised about the following: the transparency of autobi- dalits are concerned. ographies; the location of upper-caste mediators and transla- tors who “re-present” such “authentic” voices; the middle-class Material and Symbolic Capital readers who would be much more willing to read autobiogra- The introductory discussion above mentioned the “archive” of phies as narratives of suffering than to engage with the polem- dalit literature in English translation. In the discussion that ics of essays and articles; and also the discursive nature of follows, I delineate the conditions that aid the emergence of truth, that is constructed as much through life stories as the the archive. The public sphere formed through dalit articula- blurbs of books, publishers’ efforts, the marketing economics tion has many agents and participants. As a signifi cant devel- of English publishing houses, etc. The scope of this paper does opment for the archive under discussion, life stories, witness not allow me to discuss them here, although they do get dealt accounts, YouTube videos, and a range of cultural texts of with in partial ways elsewhere (Anand 2003a, 2003b; Kothari groups subjected to vulnerability and violence, have come to 2008; Merill 2010). play an important role in the discourses on human rights. Pramod Nayar persuasively argues that “cultural texts may Issues and Arguments not have much evidentiary value in a court of law, but they The questions I seek to ask here are about the relationship carry enormous purchase on the civil society which becomes between caste and the English language, the two phenomena politicised as a result of these emotional appeals to its moral that represent considerably antithetical signs. Caste, an insti- imagination” (Nayar 2012: 5). Nayar’s study refers to the “in- tution that defi nes tradition and inheritance, combines, sertion of new identities (victims), contexts (casteism, racism), through translation, with the modern and secular discourse of economies (suffering) into popular and public discourses of the English language. Dalit writers, as we see in the section the nation – India – to produce a rights imaginary and a rights that follows, appear to accept English as a target language, de- literacy” (ibid: Preface). Written in the myriad languages of spite the fact that trenchantly local realities and registers of India, and very often non-standardised registers, dalit life caste are diffi cult to couch in a language that has no memory stories become a part of the gamut of cultural texts, a task of caste.

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