12

Introduction

The Lower Caste Characters in Indian English Fiction

The Rise of Indian Novel:

Human being is a peculiar social animal on the planet. One of the distinctive aspects of human beings compared to other animals is their instinctive urge to express their experiences, feelings, joys, sufferings, pains etc.; and literature is one of the media for this. In the early phases of human history, oral narrative traditions catered to this urge. Later on, literature, as a form of human expression, evolved with genres like poetry, drama, fiction, and so forth. Therefore, literature possibly can best be described by situating it in its socio-cultural phenomena, as no literature can be produced in a vacuum.

The novel, as a literary phenomenon, is pre-eminently a social form, and is concerned with social issues and relationships. The novel, as one of the major and most effective forms of literature, “gives artistic form to the relationship of man and society,” and is “the organic product of a particular environment in a particular society in a given time.”1 It is deeply rooted in the socio-political, economic and cultural facets of the society. It frequently mirrors life, thereby becoming a representation of the society. Henry James’ opinion aptly sums up the connection between the novel and society: “The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”2

Henry James, in “The Art of Fiction” (1884), argues that the art of the painter and the art of the novelist is analogous. He draws an analogy between the painter and the novelist while giving a general description of the novel thus: [A]s the picture is reality, so the novel is history…The subject matter of fiction is stored up likewise in documents and records, and if it will not give itself away, as they say in California, it must speak with assurance, with the tone of the historian.3

Thus, it can be said that the rise of the novel in India is not merely a literary phenomenon, but pre-eminently a social one. It is closely associated with social, 13

political and economic ethos of the country. It synchronises with the rise of the reformist zeal in the 19th century Indian society - mainly the upper caste Hindu society bound to tradition and customs.

Here, a cursory look at some reformist movements, will help to understand the connection between the rise of Indian novel, and the reflection of socio-political and cultural aspects of the society in it. There were attempts to reform the age-old Hindu society on religious and social grounds. Many of these reforms were carried out during the period of Lord William Bentinck, the then Governor General of the East India Company in India from 1828 to 1835. For example, the most well-known of the reforms carried out by Bentinck was the abolition of sati by a law passed in 1829, in response to Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s vigorous campaigns against it. With this law, the custom of sati was prohibited in December 1829 in Bengal, and in 1830 in Madras and Bombay. Bentinck also passed a law against the ritualistic female infanticide to emancipate women from the tyranny of custom and blind faith. Another important measure taken by Bentinck was the banning of the custom of thagi- ritual murder and robbery in the name of goddess Kali. Other social reformists like Akshaykumar Dutt argued in favour of marriage reforms, which would include widow-remarriages, and courtship before marriages.

The rise of novel in India coincides with such developments in society. It is bound up with these moments in the country’s history. Being a social phenomenon, it mirrors these social issues and relationships of society. For example, the first novel in Marathi, Yamuna Paryatan (1857) by Baba Padmanji (1837-1906), a Christian convert, deals with a major 19th century problem, viz. pitiable conditions of Hindu widows, and their remarriage. The novel narrates the story of Yamuna, a poor girl, who has attended a missionary school, marries an enlightened Hindu, Vinayak to keep her mother’s promise. When the couple sets out on a journey, Yamuna comes to know the pathetic plight of Hindu widows in India. Latter, she has to confront with the same situation after her husband’s death. When Vinayak dies in an accident, Yumuna’s mother-in-law wants to shave Yumuna’s head, and strip her off all her jewellery to follow the strictures of religious and caste conventions. But, Yamuna does not want to fall prey to such conventions, and runs away. She takes shelter in the house of a Christian couple, and finally remarries. Padmanji’s concern for widow-remarriage is also shared by Gauri Dutt in Devarani Jethani Ki Kahani (1870), a Hindi novel. 14

These examples show that the Indian novel represents social reality as it derives its theme, content and subject matter closely from the prevalent social issues and concerns.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife is the first novel in English. It appeared in serial form in the Calcutta Weekly, The Indian Field, in 1864. It was published in book form only in 1935. The novel as a form arrived first in regional languages, and then in English4 as Meenakshi Mukherjee points out: Within about twenty-five years after the passing of the Educational Minutes of 1835 which made English the official language of higher education in India, the new narrative form called the novel began to emerge, first in Bangla and Marathi (renamed upanyas and kadambari respectively) to be followed soon after in Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Malyalam.5

Before Rajmohan’s Wife, the two tracts of imaginary history – Kailash Chunder Dutt’s “A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945” appeared in the Calcutta Literary Gazette in 1835; and Shoshee Chunder Dutt’s “The Republic of Orissa: A Page from the Annals of the 20th Century” published in The Saturday Evening Harakuru in 1845. They are considered the precursors of the Indian English novel, and “Both project into the future, describing battles of liberation against the British but end with dissimilar resolutions.”6 But, the novel as a genre in Indian English literature, has evolved with Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife - a significant beginning in Indian English fiction, and, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee is the originator of the genre.

The novel, Rajmohan’s Wife is important as far as the canon formation of Indian English fiction is concerned. Krishna Kripalani points out Chatterjee’s role in establishing the novel as a genre in Indian English fiction thus: It was Bankim Chandra who established the novel as a major literary form in India. He had his limitations, he too was romantic, effusive and indulged a little too freely in literary flashes and bombast, and was no peer of his great contemporaries, Zola and Dickens, much less of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. There have been better novelists in India since then, but they all stand on Bankim’s shoulders.7

The novel, Rajmohan’s Wife, sets the formula of representing social issues within a certain framework. The novel deals with the problems and role of women in patriarchal society in the 19th century of an upper caste Bengali family. The novel 15

delineates sufferings of the beautiful but passionate Matangini who is expected to embody the ideals of a submissive wife, and her conflicts with her bullying and villainous husband Rajmohan, who represents patriarchal mindset.

Kripalani’s observation about Chatterjee becomes significant and valid in the sense that the way the novel paves the way for its successors - the upper caste urban middle and upper class writers in English, who hardly go out of the turtle shell and address significantly the country’s greatest sickness, i.e. caste until Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable in 1935. The lower caste people form a considerable share in Indian population, still they are neglected in Indian English fiction. The upper caste novelist, Chatterjee hardly deals with the lower caste lives in his novels as observed by Raj Kumar: Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, a very important Bengali writer once wrote that for the oppressed, oppression by countrymen belonging to higher castes was not less galling than oppression by arrogant foreigners. Yet, in Bankim’s fourteen novels there is not one that deals with caste oppression, nor are there any characters in his fiction who come from the category of untouchables.8

Within this purview, it is worthwhile here to take a brief survey of issues and themes that Indian English fiction has preoccupied itself with in lieu of representations of issues of caste, and of lower caste characters.9 But before undertaking this, the term ‘lower caste’ as used in this thesis needs some clarification.

Use of the Term ‘Lower Caste’:

Indian society is based on thousands of castes and sub-castes, which poses a problem: how to be accurate to the vocabulary and language usages about castes, and thus be ‘politically correct’. The term, ‘lower caste’ is routinely used as a binary opposition to ‘upper caste’. The term, ‘upper caste’ is used to refer to those people/groups, who are cream of the society, and enjoy benefits of the caste prerogatives, and are privileged because of their high caste status, mostly in relation to the Brahmin - dvija. Throughout the thesis, the term ‘lower caste’ is used to refer to the group of people, who are stigmatised, exploited and oppressed because of their caste status. It is used in a comparative sense to talk about the lower castes as it refers to the protagonists who are oppressed, stigmatised, and dehumanised, because of 16

their lower order in the ladder of the oppressive and hierarchical Indian caste system. To be more precise Bakha belongs to the Bhangi (Scavenger) caste, Om and Ishavar are Chamaars (Cobblers), Velutha is Paravan, and Ayyan Mani is a neo-Buddhist, erstwhile Mahar by caste, who all belong in contemporary sense to the Scheduled Castes.

However, while using the term, the researcher does not endorse the inferiority implied by the word ‘lower’. It is not intended to hurt or offend the subjugated communities or to support the hierarchy. Rather it is used in a generic sense to refer to the group of people, who are stigmatised, exploited and oppressed based on their ‘lower’ caste identity. It includes castes other than Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas or the Shudra/OBC/SBC castes, which are subjected to oppression and exploitation because of ‘Brahminism’, which is understood here as a form of ‘caste ideology’ which is used systematically and instrumentally by upper castes to dominate the many lower castes. Similarly, the researcher does not agree or endorse the superiority implied by the term ‘upper’ in the expression ‘upper caste’. Here again, the use in this thesis of the word upper caste is purely referential sans any hierarchical values implied by the researcher. The use only references the presence of hierarchical values in the society that comes under study in this thesis.

The use of ‘upper caste’ does not mean that all the selected novelists for the present study belong to Brahmin caste only.10 Rather, it is used in a generic sense to denote what ideological positions do these novelists take while representing the people of ‘Other’ lower castes. Therefore, the term does not refer to the writer’s caste identity as such, as all of them do not belong to Brahmin caste per se, except Arundhati Roy. Mulk Raj Anand belongs to a Kshatriya - warrior caste of metal workers (Tambat), which is second in rank and social prestige to the Brahmin. Anand’s father Lal Chand was a coppersmith and soldier in the British Indian Army. Rohinton Mistry belongs to Parsi community, which itself constitutes a minority in India and subjected to oppression by the majority, but still it enjoys high social and economic status in comparison with lower castes whom he has represented in his work. Neither Manu Joseph belongs to the oppressed caste. In a nutshell, the term refers to a ‘discursive formation’ on ‘Other’ lower castes by those who are privileged and elite due to their education, social, economic and geographic spaces and factors. 17

Moreover, the thesis focuses more on the lower caste protagonists to “understand the(ir) ‘othering’”11 and problemise the upper caste dominance.

There are other possible ways of using the term lower caste. For example, it can be used with a strikethrough - lower caste - to indicate the earlier exclusion, a group that was not meant for inclusion in mainstream society in India; but today, it implies that there is a change in such structures to some extent. They are ex- untouchables. It also implies that today the external markers of caste are not visible like the broom and spittoon they were expected to carry along with them. Still caste is ‘readable’ or ‘non-erasable’ unless it gets erased from one’s mind in real sense. Even today, the lower caste people are discriminated against and subjected to humiliation through various invisible micro practices of caste. They are excluded and insulted because of their so-called ‘lower’ caste status. Therefore, there is another way of using the term with single inverted comma - ‘lower caste.’ It also marks off the word as directly taken from its popular or traditional usage, and it is not an invention of the researcher. It can be italicised - lower caste - also to add nuances to its meaning and emphasise the usage.

But all such visual techniques of emphasis are deliberately avoided as one of the aims of this thesis is to reveal how in the works examined there is a process of inferiorising the subjugated communities as somehow lower. The hierarchical power relations – of upper and lower – are not only continued realities in the worlds represented in these novels, but there is in these novels an implicit effort to perpetuate that hierarchy. Against this background, the comparative indicators upper and lower point to material condition as well as discursive agendas. Another reason behind avoiding marks of emphasis is to enhance readability of the thesis. The researcher does not want to go overboard with the usage of these visual techniques. Therefore, throughout the thesis, the term is used without strikethrough, single inverted comma or italics.

The lower caste people have been called by various names, such as Ati- Shudras, Antyaja, Chandala, Untouchables, Dalits, Harijans, Depressed Classes, Scheduled Castes, Neo-Buddhist, Dalit-bahujan, Dalit-subaltern, etc. across the time.12

18

Issues and Themes of Indian English Fiction:

Let us now take a cursory look at the history of Indian English fiction. The 19th century Indian English novels after Rajmohan’s Wife, are hardly significant, and they almost go unnoticed. The Indian novel in English gained currency only in the first half of the 20th century. Critics agree to the view that the novel as a prominent literary form appeared only in the 1930s. Commenting on the rise of the Indian novel in English, K. S. Ramamurti says that “real fiction, good fiction in English appeared only after the thirties.”13

The Indian English fiction of the 1930s and after is deeply influenced by the political, social, economic and ideological ferment caused by Gandhian movements.14 M. K. Naik comments on the effect of Gandhian influence on Indian English literature and particularly on the novel thus: “A highly significant feature is the sudden flowering of the novel during the ‘thirties’, when the Gandhian movement was perhaps at its strongest.”15 Similarly, Leela Gandhi observes, [t]he novel of the 1930s and ‘40s in turn played a very important part in imagining and embodying the radical vision of anti-colonial nationalism… the novelists of the 1930s and 1940s owed their inspiration and the conditions for their emergence to two contexts: the social and political upheavals of the ‘Gandhian whirlwind’ and the era of the late-modernism in Europe.16

The Indian English novelists propagated Gandhian ideology in their works, and indirectly plunged into the freedom struggle contributing their literary share in it. Gandhi remains a driving force behind the novels of the period. Naik sums up the effect of Gandhian phase on the novels of the period, and gives full credit to Gandhi for making changes in Indian literary scenario: The works of K. S. Venkataramani, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao would not perhaps have been possible had the miracle that was Gandhi not occurred during this period. In fact, it was during this age that Indian English fiction discovered some of its most compelling themes: the ordeal of the freedom struggle, East-West relationship, the communal problem and the plight of the untouchables, the landless poor, the downtrodden, the economically exploited and the oppressed.17

An overview of some novels dealing with the Gandhian theme and representation of caste and of the lower caste characters among them will make the point clearer. K. S. Venkataramani’s second novel Kandan, the Patriot: A Novel of 19

the New India in the Making (1932), “an exponent of Gandhian politics”18, as its title suggests, tells the then contemporary story of the Civil Disobedience Movement of the 1930s. An upper caste protagonist Kandan, is an Oxford educated Indian youth who resigns from the lucrative and luminous Indian Civil Service to plunge into freedom struggle and finally succumbs to police-bullet. The novel represents several lower caste characters like Nandan, Mukkam, Nallan and Kariyan who are agricultural labourers, and occupy a minor position within the horizon of Kandan and his noble Gandhian cause.

Mulk Raj Anand makes Gandhi a character in Untouchable (1935). It is a tale of an eighteen-year-old untouchable sweeper boy Bakha, based on Gandhi’s portrayal of Uka in Young India. Bakha hears Gandhi talking about the abolition of untouchability and protection of cows, but has no direct and personal contact with him. Here, Bakha occupies a major place for the first time, which is a significant change in itself in Indian English fiction as far as representation of caste is concerned.

In Raja Rao’s Kanthapura (1938), Range Gowda from the Potter caste appears as a subsidiary to the high caste, Brahmin protagonist, Moorthy, who uses religion skilfully to imbibe the Gandhian spirit in the minds of the poor and ignorant villagers to fight against the British. The novel focuses more on Moorthy, a young Gandhian, who embodies Gandhi’s influence and charisma that can be seen even in the remotest South Indian village of Kanthapura - a fictional village in the province of Kara which is caught in the Gandhian whirlwind of the 1930s. Iyengar sums up the theme of the novel as “Gandhi and our village,”19 and Naik calls it, “perhaps the finest evocation of the Gandhian age in Indian English fiction.”20 Iyengar writes: The style of narration makes the book more a Gandhi Purana than a piece of mere fiction. Gandhi is the invisible God, Moorthy is the visible avatar. The reign of the Red men is Asuric rule, and it is resisted by the Devas, the satyagrahis.21

S. Menon Marath’s novel The Wound of Spring (1960), is about a matriarchal joint family in Kerala set in 1920s when Gandhian movement was flourishing speedily. It represents the lower caste servant characters. Unni, son of high caste Krishna Menon, responds, like his brother Govinda and sister Meenakshi to the Gandhian call of demolishing boundaries of caste system and inequality. Unni runs away from home after realising that his mother Parvati loves Govinda more. He has 20

various escapades, and in one such situation, he is rescued and nursed by untouchable lower castes- Kandan and Kochutti. He starts working with them on a farm and falls in love with Cheethu, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Kandan and Kochutti. Unni marries Cheethu, but their inter-caste marriage is not accepted by Unni’s family. They treat it as a betrayal and treachery. As a result, Unni is attacked by self-appointed guardians of moral social order leaving him seriously injured. However, the novel focuses more on the upper caste feudal Nair family saga of Kerala in the 1920s, and their glorious past as a soldier warrior clan than on the untouchable lower caste characters.

In Red Hibiscus (1962), by Padmini Sengupta, Rasmi is an untouchable sweeper who works as a domestic help to Sita, the upper caste protagonist. She offers a red hibiscus to the goddess in Kali temple. She is abducted by a higher caste man, and her husband Ramadan is stabbed when he attempts to rescue her. But it too focuses more on Sita, who has grown under the influence of her Gandhian freedom fighter father. Sita represents the first generation of women who were influenced by the Gandhian spell.

Apart from these few examples mentioned above, the novels which deal with the Gandhian ferment hardly take notice of the lower caste characters and their lives. There are many novels which deal mainly with Gandhism and the upper caste characters without considering and admitting any recognisable presence of the lower caste character, like Venkataramani’s Muragan, The Tiller (1927), Krishnaswamy Nagarajan’s Athavar House (1937) and Chronicles of Kedaram (1961), Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers (1947), K. A. Abbas’ Inquilab: A Novel of the Indian Revolution (1955), R. K. Narayan’s Waiting for Mahatma (1955), to mention but just a few.

The novels written before and after independence handle the theme of Gandhian ideology. The novelists exploit the magic and charisma of Gandhi’s name and presence in their writings. As Meenakshi Mukherjee notes, “He has been treated variously as an idea, a myth, a symbol, a tangible reality, and a benevolent human being. In a few novels he appears in person, in most others his is an invisible presence.”22 Leela Gandhi sums up Gandhi’s impact on Indian English novels: 21

[T]he impact of Gandhism on these novels is measured not only in terms of its anti-imperial content but also and perhaps more significantly, for its impetus to the programme of internal national reform. By and large, the social realism of contemporary fiction seeks its material and gains its inspiration from the nationalist mobilization and ‘upliftment’ of women, workers, untouchables and peasants.23

The point of concern is here that these novelists hardly take any notice of other leaders and revolutionaries from the lower castes like Jotirao Phule and B. R. Ambedkar (Maharashtra), Bhima Bhoi (Orissa), Narayan Guru (Kerala), or Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil Nadu), and model the characters on their ideology. Instead, there is a plethora of examples, where characters and protagonists in these novels are modelled on Gandhi and Gandhian ideology alone.

Partition is another dominant and favourite theme that Indian English novelists deal with, and here also the lower caste characters appear as marginal. At the birth of new nation, India faced another crisis, i.e. pains of partition between Pakistan and India. Khushawant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956) is a classic example, which deals with this theme. The novel is a poignant picture of the eruption of violence and carnage between the Sikh and the Muslim in a small village named Mano Majara, located on the banks of the Sutlej river on Indo-Pakistan border. It depicts how, earlier, both Sikhs and Muslims used to live peacefully together for several years, regardless of their religious beliefs and differences, but partition makes them enemies of each other suddenly. Impact of partition is shown “with pitiless realism of description and the swift tempo of the narrative carries the reader along.”24 Within such communal purview, the lower caste characters do not have any considerable presence, but appear as a part of simple villagers who cannot fathom the partition – its religious, social and political implications. It focuses more on a generous and impulsive village gangster Jugga, a Sikh, and his love for a Muslim girl Nooran. He saves the situation at the cost of his own life, when the villagers are stirred up to attack the Muslims travelling on the train to Pakistan.

Chaman Nahal also presents the nightmare, misery, bitterness and horror of the partition in his novel Azadi (1975). The novel focuses on the elements and outcome of partition like suicide, forced conversion, resigned acceptance, sudden departures, muted despairs, etc. The story revolves around the upper caste Lala 22

Kanshi Ram of Sialkot and his family, who are forced to leave Sialkot for Delhi after the partition. On the way, Arun, Lala Kanshi Ram’s son, falls in love with the lower caste Chandni in the refugee camp. The narrative makes her appearance a filler as she serves the purpose of filling up the vacuum in Arun’s life created by Nur’s absence, a Muslim girl in Sialkot but the partition has separated both of them. Here, Arun dreams of marrying Chandni, but she is abducted from the refugee camp at Narowal by the Muslims, and thus the possibility of inter-caste marriage is ripped off.

These novels present a moving description of the horror and pains of partition like burning of the cities, and Hindus and Muslims killing one another; and inevitably the caste question gets least attention against the communal tension.

Another important (upper caste) theme that seems to have fascinated many Indian English novelists is the East-West encounter, where the lower caste characters remain neglected. Meenakshi Mukherjee observes, “In some novels the West appears as a character, in some others as an attitude or a set of values.”25 In many of these novels, urban upper caste westernised protagonists (male or female) educated mostly in the UK and the USA universities return home from a stay of a few years there, and are of same values like Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Rahoul, a Cambridge educated astrophysicist in So Many Hungers (1947), Bhalchandra Rajan’s upper caste youth Krishnan from Cambridge in The Dark Dancer (1959), Nayantara Sahgal’s Sanad Shivpal, a zamindar’s son in A Time to be Happy (1958), Chaman Nahal’s Brahmin intellectual Ravi Sharma from the United States in Into Another Dawn (1977), or Gita Hariharan’s Devi, a graduate from the UK in A Thousand Faces of Night (1992). They have difficulty in coping with the native Indian culture as they have returned with western outlook and values. The East-West confrontation poses serious problems in their lives resulting in sufferings and conflicts of identity. These writers write about urban and cosmopolitan situations and cultures, characters who often speak English- the language of their daily life. Mukherjee finds a stereotypical pattern of representation of upper caste characters, who are types rather than individuals in these novels. She points out this phenomenon in relation to Bhalchandra Rajan’s The Dark Dancer, which also reveals limitations in the representations of the lower caste characters: The “England-returned” young man who deserts his patient suffering wife for a glamorous English woman, the brilliant scholar 23

who is forced by his family to take up a government job that does not give him intellectual satisfaction, the advocate of individual freedom who willy-nilly submits to an arranged marriage, all these are stereotyped situations in Indian fiction today.26

Some novelists have depicted rural India in order to “solve the problem of heterogeneous audience by choosing themes and situations that have more or less the same validity all over the country.”27 Mulk Raj Anand writes mostly of villages in The Village (1939), The Sword and the Sickle; and Raja Rao in Kanthapura. But they do not give any central space to the lower caste character. Kamala Markandaya, educated at Madras University, married to an English man and settled in Britain, tries to go beyond the depiction of elite urban people to the poor peasants of rural India. She delineates the struggle of poor peasants of a typical South Indian village through the tragic story of Rukmani and Nathan in Nectar in Sieve (1954). But nowhere has she made the lower caste identity conspicuous in the peasantry. Shyamalan and Mee aptly observe in this regard: [H]er descriptions of the life of the poor (in Nectar in Sieve and A Handful of Rice for instance) are often inaccurate in minor details. Markandaya’s writing is more confident when she writes about her own class and The Nowhere Man (1972) perhaps her best work deals with a slice of life - racial prejudice against Indian migrants in Britain, of which she has first-hand knowledge.28

Thus, some novelists have depicted rural India giving attention to the portrayal of rural people especially upper caste characters and peasantry. But it seems that these writers in English fail to reach and understand the millions of uneducated, poor and oppressed lower caste villagers.

Apart from these, a few novels use the lower caste characters as only fillers. In Sudhin Ghose’s Cradle of the Clouds (1951), Kumar, the village potter, is a low caste Hindu appearing as a filler. In another novel, The Flame of the Forest (1955), a lower caste boy serves the purpose of incarnation and sacrifice only, as he is killed to transfer his spirit tantrically to the body of an upper caste boy, who had died earlier.

Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie (1995), has an untouchable lower caste character Shahaji Kadam working in a garage, and is in love with a high caste girl Tara Sarang. He is beaten at the end and taken by the municipality officials to asylum for his transgression of caste norms. The setting of the novel is the Central Works 24

Department chawl no 17 in Bombay, now Mumbai, where the fifth floor is reserved for Christians and the ground floor for Untouchables. Both Hindus and Christians do not talk to Untouchables. However, the novel focuses more on the lives of Ravan, an upper caste Maratha, and Eddie, a Roman Catholic and their growing up to adolescence on different floors of the chawl.

More recently, in Amitav Ghosh’s novel, Sea of Poppies (2008) an untouchable Ox-man Kalua appears as rescuer for a simple and pious caste widow Deeti from her rapist brother-in-law and cunning mother-in-law. Deeti is married to Hukum Singh, a crippled worker in an opium factory. Her mother-in-law drugs Deeti with opium on the wedding night so that Deeti’s brother-in-law can rape her, and consummate the marriage, because Hukum Singh is infertile. She has a daughter from her brother-in-law. When her husband dies, she is forced to go sati, and she is also prepared for the same, considering it as the only option to end her tortures from the brother-in-law. But Kalua, from the neighbouring village comes to rescue her. They get married and eventually become indentured servants on a schooner named Ibis.

Women novelists like Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Deshpande, Gita Hariharan, and others have continued the tradition of dealing with the world of urban middle class, upper caste and in some cases westernised women, who struggle within patriarchy. For example, Anita Desai, born of a German mother and a Bengali father, depicts in her fiction the educated upper-middle class women and their aspirations in novels like Cry, the Peacock (1963), Voices in the City (1965) and others. Ruth Prawar Jhabvala’s westernised protagonists clash with their conventional Indian families to the subject of arranged marriage and romantic love as in The House-holder (1960), or in Heat and Dust (1975). Shashi Deshpande’s novels- The Dark Holds no Terrors (1980), Roots and Shadow (1983), That Long Silence (1988), and Small Remedies (2000), deal in a direct way with the situation of women in urban, middle class life and their fears, hopes, uncertainties and frustrations. However, in these writings too, the lower caste (including lower caste women) characters do not get much space and attention.

This succinct survey of the history of Indian English fiction shows that Indian English fiction is dominated by themes, which are of national and international concern, such as Gandhism, patriotism, partition, East-West encounter, alienation of 25

upper middle class and upper caste urban Indian male and female characters; but has given scant attention to India’s greatest sickness, i.e. caste. It takes no interest in the projection of the lower caste characters as significant. Some novelists have depicted rural India, but attention is given to the portrayal of rural upper caste peasantry. Women novelists in English depict the world of upper caste and upper middle class urban women only dealing with their lives, affairs and frustrations, and scarcely handle issues of caste exploitation in general and of lower caste women in particular.

Practices of Representations of the Lower Caste Characters as Insignificant and Subsidiary in Indian English Fiction:

No doubt, lower caste characters appear in Indian English fiction. Nevertheless, they appear merely as insignificant persons and subsidiary to their upper caste counterparts. Two novels, Kanthapura (1938) by Raja Rao, and Manohar Malgaonkar’s The Princes: A Novel (1963), set against the backdrop of the Gandhian movement can be taken here to establish the argument, viz. how the practices of representing the upper caste characters as protagonists, and the lower-caste characters as insignificant, secondary and subsidiary are prevalent in Indian English fiction. Lower-caste characters like Rachanna and Range Gowda in Kanthapura, and Kanakchand in The Princes are used to highlight the significance of the upper-caste protagonists Moorthy and Abhayraj respectively. They contribute towards highlighting the personality of their upper-caste counterparts only.

In Raja Rao’s Kanthapura, the lower caste characters like Rachanna, a Pariah, Range Gowda from the Potter caste, and others appear as subsidiaries to the high caste Brahmin, Moorthy, who uses religion skillfully to imbibe the Gandhian spirit in the minds of the poor and ignorant villagers to fight against the British. Moorthy is shown as an intellectual, who knows very well that the master key to the Indian mind is religion. Therefore, he uses traditional forms of narratives like harikatha and bhajans to indoctrinate the Gandhian spirit of caste equality among the ignorant villagers to achieve the Ghandhian goal of swaraj. In other words, in this novel although people of both upper and lower caste communities are participants in the fight against the coloniser, it is Moorthy, the Brahmin, who is the agent of change. It is through his agency that the others also achieve their nationalist spirit. 26

The novel is written from the upper caste view point. The narrator - a high caste Brahmin widow, Achamma, “largely a creature of memory and tradition”29 focuses more on Moorthy, and gives scant attention to the description of resistance of the lower caste satyagrahis in Gandhian struggle. The narrator, who is outside the realm of the lower caste experiences, does not address the issue of caste adequately, as there are limitations in her narrativisation. She confesses: How many huts had we there [in the Pariah quarter]? I do not know. There may have been ninety or a hundred – though a hundred may be the right number. Of course, you wouldn’t expect me to go the Pariah quarter, but I have seen from the street corner Beadle Timmayya’s hut....30(bracket added)

Throughout the novel, the lower caste characters like the Pariah Rachanna, Lingayya, the Potter Range Gowda and others appear as fillers or in Moorthy’s words as “pillars” in the scheme of “a thousand-pillared temple” (164) of swaraj and Gandhism. Both Rachanna and Range Gowda take active part in Moorthy’s agitations helping him to organise and unite the lower caste people without understanding Gandhism. However, nowhere do they represent lower caste-consciousness. Rather they remain blind followers of their protectors- Moorthy “the Small Mountain,” and Gandhi “the Big Mountain.”(171)

Moorthy visits the quarters of all the castes and untouchables in the village. He follows Gandhian dictum of abandoning foreign clothes, not going abroad or foreign universities for education, when Gandhi advised him once that he should help the country “by going and working among the dumb millions of the villages.” (47) From then, he becomes an ardent follower of Gandhi and plunges himself into the swadeshi cause throwing “his foreign clothes and his foreign books in the bonfire” and walking out as “a Gandhi’s man.” (48) He mixes with the untouchable lower caste Pariahs despite threats of being excommunicated by the Brahmin community and the Swami. He does not abstain from his path saying, “Let the Swami do what he likes. I will go and do more and more pariah work. I will go and eat with them if necessary.” (57) He keeps visiting the Pariah quarter regularly, mixes with them and walks side by side with them, and even one day he helps to carry the Untouchable Puttaya’s wife’s corpse for a while. He teaches Pariah people to read and to write. Despite his mother’s repeated threats, he does not refrain himself from this goal of the ‘Pariah-service’. In this way, his depiction appears as messiah of the lower castes. 27

On the other hand, Rachanna appears as spineless. Though, he like Range Gowda, becomes a member of the Congress Panchayat Committee of Kanthapura, but still he is not allowed to enter the temple to take a vow before the village-god in the Party function. He does not rebel against such humiliation, and does not show any feelings of being insulted.

Another character, Range Gowda too appears as a pawn in Moorthy’s schemes of swadeshi campaign. Moorthy uses Range Gowda to start the Congress group in Kanthapura. Moorthy uses him in his plans skillfully as he knows he is “an esteemed Elder” (97) of his community and is revered by all the villagers - “the Tiger, his words were law in our village.” (08) Moorthy is confident that if Range Gowda follows the Congress, then others will follow him. He too responds to Moorthy’s call saying, Do what you like, learned master. You know things better than I do, and I, I know you are not a man to spit on our confidence in you. If you think I should become a member of the Congress, let me be a member of the Congress. If you want me to be a slave, I shall be your slave. (97) Range Gowda works for the government to collect revenue, “the symbol of sense and solidity, a sort of Sardar Patel to Moorthy the village Mahatma.”31 He is depicted as an ignoble and insignificant “buffalo” (97), whose life seems to be put in service of Moorthy, “a noble cow.” (06) Range Gowda refers to Moorthy as a “learned one” and to himself as a “fool” (94), and he is always ready to help Moorthy, which explains Range Gowda’s position as subservient and secondary to Moorthy.

Range Gowda is shown as incapable to understand the Gandhian principles like ahimsa (non-violence), and forgiveness that Gandhian Moorthy is imbibing among the villagers. He can terrorise the village, and even the authorities, therefore can take upon and be rude to a policeman like Bade Khan in the village. He musters courage to refuse to rent a room to Khan and even humiliate him. In such scheme, Range Gowda’s introduction serves the purpose of showing Moorthy’s magnanimity. Moorthy strictly follows and teaches the Gandhian principles of non-violence and forgiveness in his life, and Gowda, on the other hand, appears as violent, narrow- minded, and of having communal mind-set, as he always takes upon the police Bade Khan, because the police is Muslim whom he always refers as “the bearded goat.”(83) Further Range Gowda’s character is diminished by showing him as money-minded 28

that he is the only one, who, at the end, goes to Kanthapura to “dig out his jewels” (252), when the village is sacked for the auction and all the villagers have left it or died in the police scuffle.

In this way, Range Gowda is used as only a filler. His character is not agential, or his action is not developmental, therefore his role in the plot appears as functional. He is used as the symbol “but almost never as a flesh-and-blood character who might see reality different from his creator-master-author.”32 Though he is a very influential person in the village, whose decision is revered by all the villagers, but nowhere he uses it to represent the lower caste-consciousness or fight for the lower caste cause; but rather appears as a supplementary to Moorthy, whom he follows blindly. In addition, he is separated from the Potter caste and does not represent his people and caste, as he is rich and owns coconut and banana gardens along with mango-groves. Tabish Khair opines, “the Potter caste is nowhere near the bottom of the caste hierarchy and Range Gowda is a Patel, a leader of his community, a rich man, the owner of a ‘nine-beamed house’ and a person who has clearly internalized upper caste values.”33

Throughout the novel, the focus is more on the development of Moorthy’s character as a Gandhian. For example, after the police scuffle in the Skeffington Estate with Bade Khan, Moorthy fasts for three days in the temple to purify himself as he feels “much violence had been done because of him, and that were he full of the radiance of ahmisa such things should never have happened.” (84) While fasting, when he is disturbed and taunted by an upper caste lady, Venkamma, he says to himself, “I shall love even my enemies. The Mahatma says we should love even our enemies.” (86) He prays to purify the sins of others, and the fasting and meditation give him strength and awakening as he says to Rangamma, “The great enemy is in us...hatred is in us. If only we could not hate, if only we would show fearless, calm affection towards our fellow men, we would be stronger, and not only would the enemy yield, but he would be converted.” (90) The narrative presents the upper caste characters like Moorthy, Ranganna in positive shades as enlightened and self- empowered, who work for eradication of untouchability, and do not care their being excommunicated by their people, viz. Brahmins. They also fight against their own conservative people like the Swami and Bhatta and against the British for liberation and emancipation of Untouchables. 29

The novel focuses more on the upper-caste Moorthy, “a noble cow, quiet, generous, serene, deferent and Brahminic, a very prince” (06) who is loved by all the villagers referring to him as “our Moorthy,” (09) “our learned” (78) Moorthy. The narrator attributes all positive shades to his personality and proudly says, “We know Moorthy had been to the city and he knew of things we did not know. And yet he was as honest as an elephant.” (12) Even his enemies like Bhatta have good opinions about him considering him “a nice Brahminic boy – he neither smoked nor grew city- hair, nor put on suits and hats and boots.” (42)

Moreover, the novel focuses on the upper caste cultures through festivals of the Kenchamma temple, and harikathas and bhajans. All the people irrespective of their castes, participate actively in Moorthy’s agitations, and offer prayers to the village goddess Kenchamma for Moorthy’s release from the prison when he was arrested. When Moorthy was sentenced to three month’s rigorous imprisonment on the false charges of his role in arranging the assault by the Pariahs on the police, the narrative sums up its impact on the village: “The whole afternoon no man left his veranda, and not a mosquito moved in all Kanthapura. We all fasted.” (139)

Further, the caste specific proverbs are also used to highlight the upper caste culture and its significance. They are used to eulogise the upper caste identity. For example, at the end, the village is sacked and all the village land is confiscated by the government for their agitations against it. When the villagers are preparing for the satyanarayana procession, and thus for the final agitation against the British, they see that the people from the city coming, and form an impression that they are coming for the auctions and buy their fields. The upper caste villagers do not seem worried any more as they feel swaraj is more important than their fields saying: “Only a pariah looks at the teeth of dead cows. What is lost is lost, and we shall never look upon our fields and harvests.” (226) In this way, the lower caste identity is devalued and presented in negative shades. Caste question thus gets scant attention in the novel.

Manohar Malgaonkar’s The Princes: A Novel has a lower caste character- Kanakchand, Dhor/ Cobbler by caste, who plays a secondary role as the novel revolves around Abhayraj - the Bedar prince of Begwad state. The setting of the novel is the small Indian Princely State of Begwad during the time of struggle for independence. Prince Abhayraj is the narrator who tells about the power of the 30

princely states, his ancestors, about the way he grows up in the feudal system; his journey from ‘lamb to lion’; his friendship and relationship with Kanakchand; his freedom and college days at Chelmsford College of Agra; his revolutionary tendencies and his tussle with his despot and autocrat father - the Maharaj who also opposes Abhayraj’s marriage with a European girl he loves and compels him to go for a conventional arranged marriage; his joining the Indian Army and his participation in the Burma campaign during the Second World War; and his life after the princely states and power are dissolved in independent India. In a nutshell, the novel records Abhayraj’s quest for identity, hopes, fears, frustrations, tensions and turmoil that lurk in his mind as he grows up and faces various situations in his life. In this scheme, Kanakchand’s character is introduced to highlight Abhayraj’s character as significant whereas Kanakchand appears insignificant and functional.

It is in Ashokraj High School that Abhayraj comes into contact with Kanakchand. The fight between Charudutt - Abhayraj’s half-brother, born to the Maharaja’s concubine- Bibibai, and Kanakchand at the school serves the purpose of introducing Kanakchand to Abhayraj, who subsequently become bosom friends until the Maharaja horsewhips Kanakchand publically in a function.

When Charudutt and his friend humiliate and beat up Kanakchand throwing him in the nearby pond, it is the prince who comes to the help of Kanakchand. Kanakchand does not attend the class as his books have been thrown in the pond in the fight, and he cannot buy new ones because of his utter poverty. When the prince realises that Kanakchand cannot buy new books, he offers his own books to Kanakchand, so that he can continue his education as the narrator informs, “when Kanakchand met me the next morning, I gave him my own books instead. I was pleased with myself when I saw him come into the class and take his usual place near the back wall.”34

This act highlights the prince’s magnanimity, as he gives all his books to Kanakchand including his favourite glossy book the Highway Treasury, a present by his tutor Mr. Moreton on his previous birthday. The tutor, Mr. Moreton is also immensely pleased with Abhayraj’s act of ‘giving.’ Abhay’s significance is highlighted with such positive attributes, as he emerges as helper, sympathiser and giver whose motto is to give. In another incident also, he gives the Holland gun as a 31

gift to a palace official, Hamidulla, where he says: “I wanted to give and I gave, and the giving made me happy.” (92)

From the incident of the fight in the school, their destinies get “inextricably interwoven” (44) as their friendship develops and they share food and toys. Since Abhay does not show any princely inhibitions, Kanakchand is so pleased with him that he keeps visiting the prince without hesitation. Kanakchand serves the purpose of a gateway for Abhayraj to have knowledge about the darker side of life. He says: I did not realize it then, but Kanakchand was my first direct contact with the quivering poverty of India, and one day when he showed me what he had brought with him for his mid-day meal- a single black roti smeared with a mess of oil and chillis and a whole raw onion-for no reason at all I felt close to tears. (50)

Kanakchand’s childhood portrayal may appear in positive shades, as he is seen by Abhayraj’s point of view as hard-working, diligent and passionate about education. Therefore, he writes an essay in English for Kanakchand, to help him to secure the annual scholarship offered by his father, the Maharaj, so that Kanakchand can continue his higher education. However, while portraying Kanakchand in this shade, paradoxically he appears weak in studies. Abhayraj’s magnanimity is highlighted, as he helps Kanakchand, who is very weak in English, and therefore cannot secure the scholarship. With this conviction the prince works on the essay for three days, gets it corrected from his tutor, and gives it to Kanakchand to submit as his own for the competition. Obviously, Kanakchand stands first, but the palace officer Abdulla Jan informs the Maharaj that it was the prince, who had written Kanakchand’s essay. The Maharaj then subsequently horsewhips Kanakchand publically on the day of the prize distribution for cheating and his dishonesty; as well as for Kanakchand’s defiance and disloyalty in keeping the Gandhian white-cap in the pocket, which had been banned by the Maharaj in his state.

This whipping incident changes their lives and destinies drastically altogether. Abhayraj is not happy with the scene, feels very sad with his father’s act, and even sees his father as “a demon, Satan.” (77) Abhayraj is so anguished and remorseful that he is relieved of it only after his mother's promise to compensate by bearing all expenses of Kanakchand’s higher education in future. But after the incident, Kanakchand is shown as a traitor, who turns bitter unreasonably towards the prince, 32

who illogically keeps himself away from Abhayraj thinking that it is Abhayraj, who has betrayed him, though the real culprit is Abdulla Jan in this matter. Despite Abhayraj’s sincerity, kindness, help and friendship, Kanakchand turns bitter towards him. In this way, Kanakchand’s character is introduced to highlight the generous nature of the prince (and also of the Maharani) who is shown as very cooperative, compassionate, friendly and helpful towards him.

Here Abhay is shown as the sufferer, who feels this incident has deprived him of his only childhood friend. For him, Kanakchand is the only best friend, and when he deserts Abhay, the prince becomes lonely. Abhayraj’s loneliness is highlighted with Kanakchand’s betrayal and misunderstanding, and their relationship gets bitter in future also, without having any reconciliation until the end. The Maharani has borne all of Kanakchand’s expenses and paid the money demanded by his father Roopchand every month until he passed out of the law college. Still he does not show any gratitude as Abhay feels, “It was hardly likely that Kanakchand did not know where the money for his education was coming from, but not by a word or gesture did he ever show his gratitude to my mother or myself.” (77)

The friendship between them serves the purpose of highlighting the callousness of Kanakchand, and inversely, the kindness and benevolent spirit of Abhayraj. Kanakchand is portrayed as ungracious and ungrateful, whom Abhayraj reminds questioning later: “Look, Kanakchand, have you no gratitude, no feeling of friendliness towards those who have been kind to you?”(288) But Kanakchand refuses to admit it and be grateful. Abhayraj’s personality is highlighted with all positive attributes as progressive and righteous. Kanakchand’s description appears as a complete foil to Abhayraj’s magnanimity.

The narrative describes Kanakchand in negative shades as a fraud and cheater, which offer him the position of an antagonist in the novel. After his education, Kanakchand forms the Praja-mandal Party in Begwad, and works for the dissolution of the princedom, taking active part in the struggle of the nationalists. His activism is highlighted with narrow cause in the life, i.e. to avenge the public whipping he had received in the school. He always takes on the Maharaj, becoming more violent and unnecessarily alluding to the Maharaj’s private life: “his extravagance, his drinking, 33

his concubines, and even to the fact that the Maharani had run away with a Mohammedan.” (281)

The Maharaj calls nationalists as “local goondas” (232), arrests the leader Kanakchand and forbids him to enter the state for five years during the Cripps Mission and when Abhayraj was fighting against Burma for the British. When Kanakchand comes back from deportation after independence, the relationship between the prince and Kanakchand becomes more hateful and resentful. It is shown that Kanakchand and his party-men display unwarranted enthusiasm to put down the king and the prince, when the princely states and power are going to be dissolved soon in the independent India. Kanakchand’s vehement and arrogant attitude, his persistent actions in dishonouring the king even after knowing that things are favourable to him, show that he stoops to the level of personal revenge from his professed aim of the lower caste and national uplift. And this attitude certainly earns Kanakchand’ the appellation of disgruntled local goonda. His activism seems to be more revengeful and vehement as he wants to avenge the act of the Maharaja’s whipping him publicly. Kanakchand is represented as a corrupt form of the nationalist, who has amassed a great fortune through corrupt ways as he owns a jeep, lives lavish life-style, and so forth, except fighting for his people.

When the princely power is dissolved, and the princely states are merged, Kanakchand becomes the Education Minister. He is depicted with the normative gaze pointing out his inefficacy and corrupt nature as the Minster of Education, whose sole aim in life is to take upon the prince. He is shown as a callous and malicious politician, who is flogged by Abhayraj also at the end. Abhayraj beats Kanakchand, the Minister, for his arrogance and defiance when he is giving the public speech in the high school in the abdication ceremony. Here Kanakchand’s speech strikes a discordant note with his bangs and threats, but Abhayraj does not lose his self-control initially. He only shows an amiable attitude towards the new set up. It is only when he is personally challenged by Kanakchand’s speech that he goes forward, and whips him publicly in the function. The end re-asserts Abhayraj’s power and domination over Kanakchand. Thus, Kanakchand’s character serves the purpose to mark the development in Abhayraj’s personality from lamb to lion, to describe Abhayraj’s coming into manhood, and asserting his rights as the prince though he has lost the power. 34

In this way, Kanakchand’s character is introduced as subservient, arrogant, callous, discourteous, dishonest, disloyal, fraud, hooligan, insolent, malicious, mean, rude, traitor and above all ungracious and ungrateful - a complete foil to the helpful, friendly, cooperative, diligent, progressive and righteous Abhayraj. Thus, Kanakchand’s opposition does not appear as a symbol of the lower-caste assertion and dignity in real sense in the novel.

Such a pattern of representing the lower caste characters highlights the significance of the upper caste characters. Moorthy and Abhayraj appear as important characters juxtaposed to Rachanna, Range Gowda and Kanakchand who appear as insignificant, subservient and fillers.

In this way, Indian English fiction offers space for the lower caste characters, but by making them insignificant and secondary. They appear to play merely a functional role and not as determining characters. Therefore, it can be said that in Indian English fiction there is a tendency to represent characters belonging to lower castes in merely peripheral roles – more as functions than as individuals. Their presence facilitates the development of action in small ways, but they are never really seen; their lives, aspirations, cultures never being represented– thus, they are not really individualised. As against such a pattern of representation of upper caste characters, Dalit writer and critic Baburao Bagul opines that these writers failed to take notice of the lower caste lives because: “Their own cultural conditioning, their psyche and their mythology were the real stumbling blocks which did not allow them to portray the downtrodden.”35

However, there are a few Indian English novels which offer considerable space to the lower caste characters. They appear as protagonists or major characters, who contribute significantly towards the development of action, or who make a significant impact on the resolution of the novel. Here a succinct survey is offered of such novels, where the lower caste characters get central space.

Indian English Fiction with Lower Castes as Protagonists:

Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935) presents the pitiable plight of the lower caste protagonist Bakha, whose life is tied to the deep-rooted caste system in 35

Indian society. The novel portrays an eventful day in the life of an eighteen-year-old sweeper boy Bakha, who belongs to Bhangi caste. He is the son of Lakha, the Jamedar of all the sweepers in an army cantonment town of colonial North India, who lives in a colony of the outcastes of Bulashah. The novel depicts how Bakha is ill treated, insulted and abused always by the upper caste people because of his caste, and is addressed to in the most humiliating manner. He is compelled to think that he does not do anything in life except polluting the upper caste people. Anand creates a character that is in quest of identity and his identity depends on his ability for survival. Unfortunately, this survival depends not on his individual potency, but on the action of the others who are around him.

Another novel of Anand The Road (1961) has a lower caste protagonist, Bikhu, who belongs to the Chamaar (Cobbler) caste. Bikhu who has helped to build the road in village, has a sense of pride and decides to leave the village along with his fellow-men. Therefore, at the end, he takes the road towards Gurgaon- the way to Delhi hoping that he will not suffer there, because of his caste, and may achieve dignity in life by changing his profession. The novel depicts various atrocities like burning the huts of Untouchables, paying lower wages to them, and various atrocities committed by the landlord Thakur Singh. The novel, in Gandhian vein, talks about dignity of labour, as work is worship. Anand returned many years after Untouchable to deal with the lower caste lives in this novel, but it did not attain the popularity of Untouchable.

In Bhabani Bhattacharya’s He Who Rides a Tiger (1954), Kalo, the Blacksmith is a bogus swami. It is the story of a hunger driven Kalo and his daughter Chandra Lekha in Calcutta. Kalo is jailed for three months for stealing a bunch of bananas. He then becomes a pimp for subsistence in the city. There he realises that his only daughter Lekha has herself been lured to harlotry. His attitude towards life and society at large becomes bitter. In order to save his daughter and to avenge society then, he disguises himself as a Brahmin Mangal Adhikari accompanied by Lekha transforming themselves into a priest and a nun. He performs miracles like a stone Shiva rising from the ground to exploit faith of devotees. People from all strata - the rich and the poor, jute merchants and rice profiteers, including even a magistrate, who had earlier sent Kalo to prison, become his ardent devotees now. He builds lies upon lies to continue all the fraud. The proverbial title of the novel implies, that a man who 36

rides a tiger, does not know how and when to stop, and Kalo is trapped in a similar condition. Lekha finds herself in an awkward and uncomfortable position as a nun, and feels as if the harlot-house had tried to pollute her body. Similarly, the fraudulent temple spreads corruption inside her. Finally, Kalo decides to tell the truth. When he reveals the truth, the devotees, Brahmins, Banias, sightseers and stragglers are taken aback, and in sheer frenzy, they cry calling him as the rogue and saitan and beat him breaking all the bones in his body. Thus, the novel depicts his journey from the hunger driven Blacksmith to bogus swami to saitan where he emerges as a criminal, frustrated, liar, cheater and fraud.

In R. K. Narayan’s The Guide (1958), Rosie is a lower caste character born of devadasi. She is a dancer and is married to Marco, a single-minded researcher and historian of art and civilisation. She is neglected by Marco and as a result she gets attracted towards Raju, a tourist guide. When Marco comes to know that Rosie has been dancing before Raju as well as committing adultery with him, he abandons her and returns to Madras. Deserted, Rosie now turns up at Raju’s doorstep, and initially Raju’s mother receives her warmly. However, when the scandal spreads, Raju’s mother asks Raju to send Rosie away. Instead, Raju lets the mother retreat to her old village and begins to commercially promote Rosie, who is now more traditionally renamed Nalini. She soon becomes the best known and the best paid bharatnatyam dancer in the country. However, the novel focuses more on Raju’s spiritual journey from darkness to light becoming a swami after being released from jail.

Shanta Rameswar Rao’s lesser known Children of God (1976) fictionalises the lower caste lives in relation to the question of temple entry. The lower caste woman narrator’s son Kittu is beaten and burnt to death as he has defied the social norms by entering a temple. The upper caste people cannot tolerate the proud and assertive Kittu’s advances. So, they make him pay the price for it. The novel focuses on how various atrocities are committed on the lower castes by upper caste people even after twenty-five years of independence.

Suresh Chandra’s least known work Baba’s Tribe (1989) is a caricature of the lower caste leaders, who terrorise and exploit their own people. It tells how Wako, Sada and Rasu, the rustic trio come together to rescue the common folk from their tyrannical leaders, and ultimately become messiahs of the oppressed. 37

Rohinton Mistry’s well known A Fine Balance, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize of 1996, has as key characters Ishvar and his nephew Omprakash who belong to the Chamaar (Cobbler) caste and are victims of caste discrimination. Ishvar's father apprentices his sons Ishvar and Narayan with a Muslim tailor, Ashraf Chacha in order to break away from their misery and poverty as leather workers in a village. The tailoring skill is also passed on to Narayan's son Omprakash (Om). Narayan and his family are killed by Thakur Dharamsi, an upper caste village thug, and Ishvar and Om are the only two who escape the killing as they are with Ashraf in the nearby town. Ishvar and Om move to Mumbai to get work, where they are hired by Dina Dalal, a Parsi widow, and their business runs fairly smoothly for almost a year until the Emergency. When they return to their hometown to find a wife for Om, they are forcibly taken in a truck as the government officers want to fulfil the quota of the family planning programme during the Emergency. The forced sterilisation they undergo ultimately reduces them to the status of beggars.

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, the Booker Prize winner of 1997and one among the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 1997, revolves around the tragic love story of the lower caste man Velutha and upper caste woman Ammu. A neglected daughter in her family, Ammu’s marriage with a Bengali proves to be a nightmare for her. Deserted by her own people, she gets attracted towards Velutha, Paravan by caste. For this, both of them have to pay the highest price in their life. Ammu discarded and humiliated by her own people dies in a deserted lodge, and Velutha is beaten to death by the police. The novel depicts the tragedy of inter-caste love affair; and at the same time exposes the hypocrisy of the upper caste people, like, Chacko, Ammu’s brother, who has illicit relations with lower caste women working in his factory to which his mother Mammachi has her consent. She builds a separate entrance for Chacko’s room and even secretly pays money to these women for keeping her son sexually satisfied.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005) set in the Sundarbans of the Bay of Bengal, has the illiterate Fisherman Fokir, as a central character, who rescues the upper caste NRI protagonist Piyali Roy, a marine biologist. Fokir rescues her from crocodile-infested waters and helps her in her research on a rare endangered river dolphin. The novel records many adventures and escapades that come on their ways. 38

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, the Booker Prize winner of 2008, revolves around Balram’s journey from the heart of darkness to shining India. Balram Halwai is a member of Halwai- the sweet-making caste in Bihar.36 Though he hails from the poor backward family of a rickshaw puller, Balram is determined not to die in the wretched world of darkness, where there is only slavery, poverty and ignorance. He decides not to live life like his father and brother, who are reduced only to the role of breadwinners of their family, to work like slaves to feed family. At the end, Balram, the ‘white tiger’, turns out to be a murderer, a villain and wants to produce more ‘white tigers’ implying that he wants to produce more criminals from lower castes.

More recently, Manu Joseph’s Serious Men (2010) has Ayyan Mani, a middle- aged Neo-Buddhist, erstwhile Mahar by caste, as a key character. He is a sweeper’s son, who lives in BDD Chawl at Worli, Mumbai. Ayyan weaves plots around his ten year old son Adi’s life that his son is an extraordinary, genius, a mathematical wizard, which is ultimately a lie. Actually, Adi is a geeky child and is disabled (deaf by left ear). Ayyan works as an assistant to a brilliant Brahmin Aravind Acharya, an astronomer at a scientific institute in Mumbai. It is a story of a deprived man’s angst, vengeance, aspirations and frustration narrated using irony and humour.

Though these novels give central space and attention to the representation of lower caste characters as protagonists, yet their representation appears as insignificant and unremarkable. That is to say, even the lower castes became protagonists, still they are not represented adequately. These novels may expose the atrocious world of caste, yet they do not present a critique of caste to any substantiality. They do not merely describe the lower caste world, but constitute it in certain ways so as to inscribe the upper caste power fictionally. To prove the argument of the thesis, four novels viz. Untouchable by Anand, A Fine Balance by Mistry, Roy’s The God of Small Things and Serious Men by Joseph, are taken to refer to the phenomena of how lower caste characters are represented as protagonists, and still there is no substantial critique of caste.

Here, the selection of the novels is limited to concentrate on the idea being perused, viz. examining the representation of the lower caste protagonist in Indian English fiction within the methodological framework of lower caste-consciousness. These novels are considered as key texts in the representational practices of the lower 39

caste identity, and seem to be open to and deserving of critical consideration and attention. In addition, they have won several prestigious literary awards and are critically acclaimed for the depiction of lower caste characters and identity. And more importantly, the publication of these novels coincide with crucial moments in the history of the anti-caste struggle and resistance, as Anand’s Untouchable marks the prominence of the upper caste presence under the guise of Gandhi, when B. R. Ambedkar was fighting for the lower caste people in the 1930s. Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, are set against the backdrop of the 1970s, the period of the Dalit Panther activism and Emergency rule; Joseph’s Serious Men set against the present world of globalisation and liberalisation.

The Lower Caste Character in Dalit Literature:

The argument of the thesis is substantiated by setting up a comparative framework through contrastive analysis of selected narratives in Marathi by lower caste, popularly referred as Dalit writers, to highlight how much of the critical work critiquing caste has been done in regional languages (bhasha sahtiya). For this purpose, let us take a succinct look at Dalit literature in Marathi by mentioning a few autobiographical narratives.37

Daya Maruti Pawar’s Baluta (Share of Village Product), which appeared in 1978, records mute sufferings of both the narrator-writer (Dagadu) and his community. It describes the tragic suffering and injustice that he meets with as a member of the lower Mahar caste in Maharashtra. It gives a heart-rending account of his childhood spent in poverty, humiliation and hard work; and his struggle for education and employment.

Like Dagadu, Pralhad in P.I. Sonkamble’s Athavaninche Pakshi (Birds of Remembrances) appeared in 1979, tries to change his destiny through education. The protagonist Pralhad, who is an orphan and belongs to Mahar caste, narrates his painful and humiliating experience of childhood and his struggle for education. It reveals how lower castes are segregated from the main stream Hindu society, and when the lower caste boys start taking education, they are made to sit in a separate corner or outside the threshold of the classroom, and so forth. 40

Laxman Mane’s autobiographical narrative Upara, published in 1980 (An Outsider) gives a candid and vivid account of his struggle, aspirations and frustrations in life within the caste based Hindu society. The author, who belongs to Kaikadi caste, records his childhood struggle, his inter-caste marriage and its bitter repercussions thereafter. Being nomadic, Kaikadis do not have any fixed source of income and stability in their life. They earn only by weaving baskets made of cane. Their children bring food by begging in villages, and also have to compete with dogs and pigs to pick the food from dung hill and so forth.

Sharankumar Limbale’s Akkarmashi meaning bastard, as the abusive word refers to a child born out of extra-marital affairs, delineates the author’s childhood sufferings and humiliation being a Dalit and an illegitimate offspring. Shakarrao Kharat’s autobiography Taral Antaral (High and Low) published in 1981, tells the story of his life and also of untouchables in general. It is a poignant satire on social inequality and injustice.

Uchalya, literally meaning pilferer, is an autobiographical account of Laxman Gaikwad’s life and of his community (Pardhi) - stamped as thieves by the British, and how this branding continues even after independence. It is a moving account of a stereotyped oppressed, who is a representative of his small community, which makes its lives on petty crimes. Being unskilled and having notorious image, no one is interested to employ them for farming and other work.

Kishor Kale’s Kolyatyach Por - a son of Kolhati caste, which appeared in 1998, gives an account of lower caste women from his community, who are treated as consumable commodity and are frequently subjected to seduction by upper caste landlords in villages. The Kolhati woman spends her entire life performing the folk dance tamasha and gratifying sexual urge of the upper caste village landlords. Members of the family are very accustomed to selling their sisters and daughters, and they are not ashamed of it, because they accept this practice as their religion and tradition. It is a touching depiction of how lower caste women are trapped in the clutches of masculinity, both in the community and outside it.

Narendra Jadhav in his Aamcha Baap aani Aami, translated by the author himself as Outcaste- A Memoir, tells the story of his father, Damu Jadhav, who rebels against tyrannical caste system and creates his own destiny and dignity, responding 41

duly to the call of Ambedkar to Dalits to ‘educate, unite and struggle’ and live with self-respect, pride and dignity. Damu succeeds to imbibe this spirit of self-respect and excellence among his children as well, and prepares them to stand against the oppression of caste system to reclaim their human dignity and identity.

Santosh Pawar’s recent autobiographical narrative, Chorata (2005) meaning sneak thief, speaks like Uchalya, about the Pardhi community which is branded as thieves and criminals. The narrative also explores the issues of exploitation of women of the community from both within and outside focusing on evil practices like selling and buying of the women who are used as a consumable commodity.

There are a few Dalit women writers and they too, like their male counterparts, write about their tumultuous life without any restraints in their languages. For example, Shantabai Kamble’s Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha, meaning ‘a story of sufferings in my life’, appearing in 1983, is considered as one of the pioneering autobiographical narratives by a Dalit woman writer in Marathi. Shantabai Kamble nee' Naja, who is the first Dalit woman teacher in a school, records the angst of class, caste and gender being born in Mahar caste in Maharashtra. This description is a symbol of silent suffering of Dalit women in general.

Baby Kamble’s Jina Amucha, meaning ‘our living’, serialised in 1982 and first published in 1986 as a book, deals with the oppression and exploitation of the Dalit in general and of Dalit women in particular at the hands of upper caste people. She identifies her suffering with her own people as they are treated as worthless creatures without having any dignity in their life.

Urmila Pawar’s memoir Aayadan, meaning weaving of cane baskets, which appeared in 2003, is an account of the long journey of a Dalit family from Konkan to Mumbai, dealing with their dreams, aspirations, frustrations and sufferings.

Kumud Pawade’s autobiographical narrative Antasphot, meaning inner- disclosure, deals with lives of Dalit women in urban areas, who follow the Hindu religious traditions like vat-savitri puja, triratri, vrat, fast etc. blindly without understating its significance in their lives. She narrates how she is ridiculed and discouraged when she decided to learn Sanskrit, traditionally the language of upper castes- especially of Brahmins. This is a heart-touching story about the determined 42

Kumud, and how she overcomes all the hardships and becomes a reputed lecturer of Sanskrit in a college, thus challenging and breaking monopoly of learning Sanskrit language and literature.

These narratives by Dalit writers are an outstanding and significant contribution to the bhasha literature for their lively and moving depiction of the lives of lower caste people. Raj Kumar observes that these are [T]ales of personal sufferings of the Dalit writers fused with their interpersonal responses and community feelings which they experience in a Hindu society. On the face of several oppressive social forces, these writers, with their growing perceptions and mature imagination, capture the tensions which grow out of a continuous battle between ‘loss of identity’ and ‘asserting self’. Thus, the very process of writing autobiography by the Dalits is a form of resistance against various forms of oppression.38

A common thread of these self-referential narratives is that the writers have written autobiographies when they are young, and being young, their search for identity becomes more intense and passionate. They reveal about themselves and about their families and communities bluntly without hiding anything. They question the establishment, tradition and religion condemning the hypocrisy of the upper caste people.

These narratives have created ripples in the canonical literary world with their plain and outspoken style of narrating their pains and sufferings, whose driving force is B.R. Ambedkar, who taught lower caste people to live with self-respect and dignity. Both male and female writers use plain, candid and frank language while narrating their experience. Raj Kumar observes: It is significant to note here that unlike the upper –caste writers who generally prefer to write in the polished official language, the Dalit writers often express themselves with ease by picking up those idioms and phrases which they commonly use in their day-to-day conversations. This is the reason why they never feel shy of using slangs, abuses or even curses which are the reflections of the world they live in and the way they shape their lives. Almost all life- stories which are based on mediated narratives are rich with people’s language and culture.39

Dalit literature is marked for its anti-establishment and authenticity of representations of the lower caste lives. Baburao Bagul opines that the established literature of India is Hindu literature which supports establishment; whereas Dalit 43

literature is revolutionary as it “has the revolutionary power to accept new science and technology and bring about a total transformation...it is revolution incarnate.”40 Dalit literature “seeks to raise consciousness and bring about social change. It is a literature of protest and a literature of hope.”41 It “portrays the hopes and aspirations of the exploited masses. Their fight for survival, their daily problems, the insults they have to put up with, their experiences and their outlook towards all these events are portrayed in Dalit literature.”42

Dalit critics and writers draw a parallel between sufferings of Blacks (Afro- Americans) and Dalits.43 Both exist on the periphery, in the margins or at the bottom of the social structure; and also in literary representations. A Dalit writer and critic, Janardhan Waghmare points out three characteristics of literature of any oppressed minority group: commitment, collectivism and contemporaneity, and argues that Afro-American and Indian Dalit literature share these characteristics.44 Sharankumar Limbale compares representations of Dalits and Blacks in writings of upper caste and White writers respectively stressing more on experience than imagination. He argues that there is a distortion of the lower caste identity by upper caste writers as Black identity by White writers: White writers have portrayed Blacks in their literature. However, their portrayal has been distorted and full of contradictions. African Americans have been shown either as vile-natured and dirty, or as clowns. They have been represented in such a way that their inner core would appear as black as their skin colour. A realistic and accurate representation of African Americans cannot to be found in the American literature up to the Civil War. Marathi writers have not portrayed Dalits accurately either. Middle-class writers wrote novels about the lives of Dalits, based on their own imagination. Due to the absence of the authentic experience of Dalit life, these works are lifeless, shallow and distorted. Written from a middle- class liberal perspective, they fail to bring out the extreme self- consciousness and fighting instinct of Dalits. Both African American and Dalit critics have made the same objection: ‘The portrayal of us bears no resemblance to us. The picture that you have drawn of us is repulsive and distorted. You do not have the capability to create a sharp and combative image of us’.45

In this way, Dalit literature and literary criticism trace the genealogy of the lower caste representations to the Phule-Ambedkarite traditions, as well as to their Afro-American counterparts.46 The next chapter aims to set out the theoretical framework borrowing from Indian radical thinkers like Jotirao Phule and B. R. 44

Ambedkar, who build a discourse of caste on rejection, resistance, rebellion and subversion to challenge the upper caste discourses. 45

Notes

1Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English, (New Delhi and London: Heinemann, 1971) 18.

2Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884), The English Novel, Developments in Criticism since Henry James, A Case Book. Ed. Stephen Hazell, (London: Macmillan, 1978) 36.

3James, 37.

4Pyari Chand Mitra’s novel Alaler Gharer Dulal in Bengali appeared in 1854 and Baba Padmanji ‘s Yamuna Paryatan in Marathi appeared in 1857.

5 Meenaskhi Mukherjee, The Perishable Empire, Essays on Writing in English (2000), (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2004) 8.

6Meenaskhi Mukherjee, “The Beginnings of the Indian Novel”, An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English, Ed. A. K. Mehrotra, (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003) 94.

7Krishna Kripalani, Indian Literature: A Panoramic Glimpse, (Bombay: Nirmal Sadanand, 1969) 45.

8Raj Kumar, Dalit Personal Narratives: Reading Caste, Nation and Identity, (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010) 133-34.

9Here the point of focus is limited to Indian English novel with reference to its dominant themes and the role of the lower caste characters in them. Therefore, any deliberations on the historical development of the various types of novels and their thematic aspects are eschewed. Similarly, issues like whether the Indian English novel is influenced by the English novels or regional Indian novels, comprehensive map of Indian English fiction and such other issues are not taken into consideration.

10The Economic and Political Weekly featured the Paranjape and Satyanarayana debate about caste in and of the Indian English novel and novelists in 1991-92. These articles include Makarand Paranjape’s “Caste of Indian English Novel”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 26, No 40, (Oct. 5, 1991), 2298-301; and

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“Politics of Misreading”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 26, No 52, (Dec. 28, 1991), 3022. K. Satyanarayana’s “Politics of (Self)-Representation: Case of a ‘De- Brahminised’ Brahmin”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 26, No 47, (Nov. 23, 1991) 2716; and “Rhetoric of Neo-Brahminism”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 27, No 5, (Feb. 1, 1992), 235-36. Merin Semi Raj revisits this debate in “Caste in Indian English Fiction: Footnotes to a Post-Mandal Debate”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 1, No 21, (May 23, 2015) 83-85.

11Merin Semi Raj, “Caste in Indian English Fiction: Footnotes to a Post- Mandal Debate”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 1, No 21, (May 23, 2015) 85.

12Here are some usages:

A grammarian Panini uses bahya, antya, antyaja, antayoni and nirvasita sudra. (quoted in R.S. Sharma, Rethinking India’s Past. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2009, 291). Jotirao Phule refers to class instead of caste using Ati-Shudras to refer to Mahar, Mang etc. which in contemporary sense correspond to the SCs. (Tritiya Ratna (1855), Pune: Mahatma Jotirao Phule Samatati Pratisthan. Reprinted in the Quarterly Purogami Satyashodhak: June 1979, Vol.II, 36). B. R. Ambedkar in “The Untouchables”, argues that the present Untouchables are originally ‘Broken Men’ who lived outside the village; those who lived outside the village, i.e. on the antya of the village, are called Antyaja. ( “The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables?” (1948), BAWS, Vol.7, Comp by Vasant Moon. (Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1990), 277-79). M. K Gandhi uses Harijan- ‘people of god’ to borrowing from the Saint Narsinha Mehta. Earlier, Gandhi used the term Antyaja (last born) to refer to Untouchables. ( Quoted from S. M. Michael, Ed. “Introduction” to Dalits in Modern India Vision and Values.(1999). New Delhi:Vistar, 2001, 13). The term ‘Scheduled Castes’ appeared for the first time in April 1935, when the British government issued the Government of India (Scheduled Caste) Order, 1936, specifying certain castes, races and tribes as Scheduled Castes. Prior to that, in 1911, these population groups were generally known as ‘Depressed Classes’. (Quoted from S. M. Michael, Ed, “Introduction to Dalits in Modern India Vision and Values,(1999). New Delhi: Vistar, 2001, 13).

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The term ‘Dalit’ is used first in 1920s by Ambedkar, but gained popularity in the 1970s with the rise of Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra. Ambedkar first used the term Dalit in his journal, BahishkritBharat (Outcast India), in 1928, where he characterised “being Dalit as the experience of deprivation, marginalization, and stigmatization.” (Quoted from Anupama Rao, The Caste Question, Dalits and the Politics of Modern India, (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010) 15).

The term ‘Dalit’ is defined variously by contemporary critics and scholars as: ‘Dalit’ means masses exploited and oppressed economically, socially, culturally, in the name of religion and other factors. (Arjun Dangale, “Introduction Dalit Literature Past, Present and Future”, Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature,2009 (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, , 2012,liii). Not only are the Buddhist or the backward defined by the word Dalit, but whoever are exploited workers, all of them are also included in the definition of ‘Dalit’. ( M.N. Wankhede , Dalitanche Vidrohi Wangmay, Nagpur: Prabodhan, 1981, 78). The Manifesto of Dalit Panthers of 1972 defines Dalits as members of Scheduled Caste 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. (“Dalit Panthers’ Manifesto” in The Exercise of Freedom: An Introduction to Dalit Writing. Ed. K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu, New Delhi: Navayana, 2013, 62). According to Anupama Rao, Dalit defines “the historical structures and practices of dispossession that experientially mark someone as Dalit and simultaneously identifies the Dalit as someone seeking to escape those same structures.” ( The Caste Question, Dalits and the Politics of Modern India, (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010),16) Kancha Ilaiah uses ‘Dalitbahujan’ to refer to the SCs and the OBCs, meaning people and castes who form the exploited and suppressed majority. ( Why I Am Not a Hindu, A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy, (Calcutta: Samya, 1996), viii - ix). G. Aloysius uses hyphenated ‘Dalit-subaltern’ to refer to oppressed group. ( Dalit- Subaltern Emergence in Religio-Cultural Subjectivity, Iyothee Thassar and Emancipatory Buddhism (2004), (New Delhi: Critical Quest, 2007).

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Nowadays, the word ‘Dalit’ may appear problematic and objectionable to some people, as recently, a social activist Pankaj Meshram has filed a Public Interest Litigation, against the State and Central Government, before the Nagpur Bench of Mumbai High Court, accusing them that the word Dalit is used derogatively to refer to a particular community, which is insulting and unconstitutional; therefore Dalit should be replaced with either ‘Scheduled Caste’ or ‘Nav-Bouddha’ (Neo-Buddhist). ( Loksatta, Mumbai edition, Tuesday 30 August 2016, 11).

13 K. S. Ramamurti, Rise of the Indian Novel in English, (New Delhi: Sterling, 1987) 7-8.

14 In the 1920s, after Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s death, M.K. Gandhi rose on the horizon of Indian struggle for independence. Gandhi not only influenced the political scenario but practically in all areas of Indian life -social, economic and even literary sphere. His political movements like Non-cooperation, Civil Disobedience, Dandi- Sabarmati March, Quit India and other movements and activities stirred the Indian English literary world as well.

15M. K. Naik, A History of Indian English Literature (1982), (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2002) 118.

16 Leela Gandhi, “Novelists of the 1930s and 1940s”, An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. Ed. A.K. Mehrotra, (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003) 168.

17 Naik, 118.

18 K. R. S. Iyengar, Indian Writing in English (1985), (New Delhi: Sterling, 2004) 279.

19 Iyengar,391.

20 Naik, 166.

21 Iyengar,391.

22 Mukherjee, Twice Born, 61.

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23 Gandhi, 170.

24 Naik, 220.

25 Mukherjee, Twice Born, 65-66.

26 Mukherjee, Twice Born, 90.

27 Mukherjee, Twice Born, 26.

28 Shyamala A Narayan, Jon Mee, “Novelists of the 1950s and 1960s”, An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English, Ed. A. K. Mehrotra, (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003) 227.

29 Iyengar, 397.

30 Raja Rao. Kanthapura (1938), (Bombay: Oxford UP, 1947) 07. All references to page numbers in brackets to the novel are from this edition.

31 Iyengar, 392.

32 Khair, 138.

33 Tabish Khair, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels (2001), (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2011) 138.

34 Manohar Malgaonkar, The Princes: A Novel, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1963) 48. All references to page numbers in brackets to the novel are from this edition.

35Baburao Bagul, “Dalit Literature is but Human Literature”, Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature (2009), Ed. Arjun Dangale, (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2012) 283.

36Toral Gajarawala observes in Untouchable Fictions that Halwai is categorised as the OBC in states like Rajasthan and Haryana, but not in Bihar. For this, see the page 227. Gajarawala also points out that the caste question gests the least attention in the novel: ‘The novel’s critique, however, proceeds from an entirely different orientation than that of Dalit fiction, where caste specificity produces a

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character’s entire trajectory.... Balram does not identify as a Halwai in general, but only insofar as it is possible to use such categorization to his advantage. He has no sense of caste consciousness, the basic condition for Dalit literature.’ (Untouchable Fictions: Literary Realism and the Crisis of Caste, New York: Fordham UP, 2013, 140-41).

37 Dalit literature in Marathi is also dominated by other genres like poetry and short-stories, but here autobiographies are taken only to suffice the point only. Some short-stories in Dalit literature are also taken in the subsequent chapters to substantiate the arguments.

38Raj Kumar, 150.

39Raj Kumar, 244.

40Bagul, “Dalit Literature”, 294.

41Pramod K. Nayar, Postcolonial Literature, An Introduction, (Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008) 109.

42Arjun Dangale, “Introduction Dalit Literature Past, Present and Future”, Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature (2009), Ed. Arjun Dangale, (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2012) xlviii.

43 In fact, revolutionary social thinkers like Phule are influenced by the Afro- American’s struggle for emancipation from bondages of slavery. Phule dedicated his book Slavery (1873) to the good people i.e. Blacks who fought for noble cause hoping that the lower caste from India too would take their example to fight against Brahminism. Keer writes: ‘Jotirao sang the glory of the American heroes and statesmen who nobly and untiringly fought for the liberation of the Negros…The brutality which skinned their backs, burnt their skins and broke their limbs had diminished in the land of the new world, Jotirao rejoiced to note it. He visualized a society in which the peasant and worker were freed from the Brahmin thraldom that crushed them under its various forms- dark superstitions, colossal ignorance, endless religious rites, never-ending debts, and the fear of God.’ (Dhananjay Keer, Mahatma Jotirao Phooley: Father of Our Social Revolution, (Bombay: Popular, 1964, 111).

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44J. M. Waghmare, The Quest for Black Identity,(Pune: Sugava, 2002)64.

45 Sharankumar Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature: History, Controversies and Consciousness (2004), Tr. Alok Mukherjee, (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007) 92.

46 Inspired by the Black movement and literature in America, youths like Namdeo Dhasal, Arjun Dangle, J. V. Pawar, Raja Dhale and a few others came together and formed the militant Dalit Panthers in Mumbai on 9th July, 1972 based on the Black Panthers of 1966 to fight against injustice and exploitation based on castes. The silver jubilee of independence, i.e. 15th August 1972, was observed as Black Day by the Panthers, and Black-flag demonstrations were held at various places to mark the protest against the atrocities on lower castes in India.

While analysing the Dalit literature of the 1970s in relation with Black literature, Eleanor Zelliot points out in her From Untouchable to Dalit, Essays on the Ambedkar Movement, ‘Like the American movements, the Dalit Panthers and the Dalit school of literature represents a new level of pride, militancy and sophisticated creativity.’ (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992, 267) Arjun Dangle points out in “Dalit Literature Past, Present and Future”, that ‘the Dalit Panthers came to be established through the Dalit literary movement. The leaders of the Dalit Panthers were all writers.’ (Poisoned Bread, xl-xli) Similarly Raj Kumar observes that ‘The main objective of this movement was to create an atmosphere of a counter culture and to bring a separate identity to the Dalits in the society. The call given by the Panthers for a social reconstruction was further activised by the Dalit writers, poets and activists through their writings and speeches in various forms. There emerged “Dalit literature” in Maharashtra which subsequently spread to the neighbouring states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and others.' (Dalit Personal Narratives: Reading Caste, Nation and Identity, 145).