Dalit Durdasha was a column of short stories published in the Janata[i] newspaper written by Daultrao Gulaji Jadhav, a close associate of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. D.G. Jadhav was elected to the Bombay Legislature in 1937 from Khandesh as a member of the Independent Labour Party and also served as the chairman of the Peoples Education Society.[ii] Between July 1933 and October 1933, D.G. Jadhav authored four short stories that were published in the Marathi language. Dalit Durdasha, the title of the column, signifies the pain and suffering of the lives of the Dalit. A brief reproduction of the stories here shows the plight of the depressed classes.
The first story published on 5th August 1933[iii], is about a poor Dalit family suffering under the burden of debt. The story opens with Rama Mahar (Mahar is one of the sub-castes under the Scheduled Castes), a Dalit laborer pleading before the money-lender for a waiver in the interest amount of the loan for the given month. In the middle of the scene, a Dalit volunteer, who is creating awareness in the village and professing the ideology of “Ambedkarism”, enters Rama’s house. On seeing the volunteer, Rama and his family beg for help. Rama narrates that his father had borrowed INR 50 from the money-lender for his wedding. After his father’s death, the debt was passed on to him; he has been repaying a hefty interest of INR 4 per month to the money-lender for several years. Rama’s wife, Manjula (a wage laborer), was responsible for the payment, though she could not pay that particular month’s interest owing to her illness. Manjula informs the volunteer how Rama splurged his earnings on liquor, how the money-lender outraged her modesty. Rama realizes his mistake and vows never to consume liquor. The Dalit volunteer not only snaps at the money-lender for his exploitative tact and warns him of legal action, but also assuages the Dalit family by saying, “Your time of emancipation is near, our messiah (indirectly referring to Dr. Ambedkar) has descended in this world to emancipate the whole Dalit community from oppression, and I have come to deliver his message in this village.” The volunteer tells Rama and his family that Dr. Ambedkar has proposed to open a cooperative bank for the Dalits to offer them loans at marginal rates and seeks support from the village to make it a success. The story ends in an optimistic way wherein Rama Mahar over a period has repaid his debt, built his own house and provided education to his children.
Published on 2nd September 1933[iv], the second story highlights Nago Mahar, his wife and their infant who live on a farm on the outskirts of the village. Their house is a small hut with thatched roof and walls. The story opens with D.G. Jadhav describing how beautiful everything looks after it rained heavily for two days. Nago Mahar, employed by a rich farmer to take care of his crops, is paid INR 6 per month; his wife sells grass in the nearby village. As a result of the heavy rain, water starts leaking from the roof of their hut, while their infant falls ill. Without any help in sight, they try all kinds of home remedies, although ineffectively. Nago Mahar then wades through muck in absolute darkness to reach the Ayurvedic clinic set up by the local board in the village. He steps on a snake and gets bitten, and without realizing continues to walk toward the clinic with the hope of procuring medicine for his baby. He reaches the clinic at midnight and calls out to the doctor who is fast asleep. Infuriated upon being woken up, the doctor shouts at Nago and orders him to return home. By then, the poison from the snake bite has begun to spread through Nago’s body. The doctor finds Nago half dead and still has no pity on him. On being shunned, Nago struggles to return home but dies on the way. Back in the hut, his wife is waiting for Nago to return with the medicine; she is angry because he is late. Night turns into morning, Nago does not return, and the little baby too breathes its last. The wife is hysterical. In the meantime, some villagers find Nago’s body, and inform his wife. Upon reaching his house, they are shocked to find the baby dead. The rich farmer only pays half the month’s salary to Nago’s wife. The story ends with Nago’s wife moving to a big city like Pune where she has taken the job of a domestic help in a household.
The third story published in two parts, first on 16th September 1933[v] and continued on 23rd September 1933[vi], is about a poor man called Eknath who belongs to the Maang community (one of the subcastes under Scheduled Castes). While returning home after selling bamboo baskets and ropes, he comes across a decorated Krishna temple where the festival of Gokula Ashtami (the birthday of Lord Krishna) is being celebrated. Eknath prays to the Lord from a distance; curses his fate and questions the Lord as to why he is born in this world to live a wretched life. He repents his lowly birth that prevents him from entering the temple. Lost in prayer he starts walking towards the temple and mistakenly hits the ladder kept near the pandal (a temporary structure housing a deity). Eknath falls on the ground hitting his forehead and begins to bleed. The temple priest, who lives a few yards away, hears the commotion of the gathered crowd. He steps outside to find Eknath wounded and being cared for by a swami from the Arya Samaj. The priest hurls casteist abuses at Eknath for polluting the temple premises. He calls the accident as divine retribution for violating the caste rules and further blames the Arya Samaj follower for their egalitarian approach. On hearing the news of Eknath’s accident, his wife hurriedly runs towards the temple. She is a beautiful woman who attracts the priest’s eyes. One night when Eknath is not at home, the priest’s henchmen abduct her. She begs the priest that she is a loyal wife, but he does not relent. Hearing her loud shrieks, a crowd begins to gather; so the priest allows her to escape from the back door. Eknath returns home late after attending a jalsa (fete) on social reforms. He gets worried to not find his wife at home. He heads out in search of her when he finds his wife running towards him. The shuddering wife narrates the whole episode. Eknath who loves and trusts his wife consoles her. The story ends with Eknath dismantling his hut and leaving the village the next morning. To protect the dignity and self-respect of his wife, Eknath quietly walks away to start a new life elsewhere.
Published on 7th October 1933[vii] and continued on 14 October 1933[viii], the fourth story is about Ganpat Mahar who is at the service of the village Patil and Kulkarni. He would run all the errands, visit all the houses and get a record of the deaths and births of the village. Sometimes he performs personal duties of the Kulkarni and the Patil. Ganpat Mahar was really fed up with the life he was leading. In return for all the hardships that he used to undertake throughout the day all he would get was some food from the villagers at night. One day a fauzdar (police officer) was supposed to visit the village for inspection. Arrangements were made, while Ganpat Mahar was instructed to wait a few miles away from the village and signal the fauzdar’s arrival. When Ganpat saw the fauzdar’s horse advancing towards the village, he began to run ahead of the horse. The fauzdar raced his horse, to a point that Ganpat could not keep pace with the horse and fell unconscious on the ground. After gaining consciousness he made his way to the village, where he was greeted with insults as to why he did not intimate the coming of the fauzdar. He was immediately summoned to do some work.
The story further discusses a young poor girl who is in love with a rich young boy of the village. One night the girl enters the house of the boy, where she finds the boy fast asleep. For a faint moment she is mesmerized by his youth but the next moment she looks at her hut from the window and reminds herself that, this rich boy would never love a poor girl like her. She then pulls out a dagger which she had carried with her and stabs the boy to death. She finds near the window a book on which is kept an envelope addressed to her. She reads the letter only to find that the boy had expressed his love for her. She feels guilty, writes on the note that she killed the boy and now is dying by suicide, and throws the letter out of the window. Ganpat Mahar who is returning home at night finds the letter, on hearing a moaning sound enters the house to find a dead boy and the girl with a dagger thrusted in her chest. He pulls out the dagger, but the girl dies. Ganpat is scared and runs out of the house. He hides his blood-stained jacket in a bag along with the letter and returns to inform the villagers and the fauzdar. The fauzdar visits the site, Ganpat narrates the incident, but no one believes him, instead he is considered guilty and sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment.
The four stories mirror the suffering and exploitation faced by the Dalits, leaving with them no agency to protest or seek justice. The stories only highlight how the Dalits live a life of rejection, subjugation and insult. Their subjugated life in the above stories is the outcome of caste system that has pushed them on the periphery of the society. The economic and social hardships of Rama Mahar, Nago Mahar, Eknath Maand and Ganpat Mahar have all stemmed from their respective caste locations, which in turn leads to the deplorable conditions. The author has interwoven the themes of poverty, sexuality, discrimination and violence. Caste system has imposed structural and symbolic violence on the Dalits as narrated in the story. The issue of Dalit women’s sexuality is evident in the above stories. Their precarious lives make them vulnerable to the prying gaze of the upper caste men. The simplistically written stories touch upon the complex issues of Dalit lives which they face in their day to day existence. Though these stories are set in 1933, it is reflective of the contemporary lives of the millions of Dalits in independent India.
The Dalit’s journey for human dignity is impeded by injustices and discrimination due to their caste location in Indian society. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, anti-caste crusader, champion of social justice and most importantly the emancipator of depressed classes, played a pivotal role in this struggle for human rights and dignity. Ambedkar holds an important place in the hearts of the millions of people who were freed from the bondages of slavery and inhuman living. The birth anniversary of Ambedkar on 14th April acquires a unique place in the identity formation and construction of the millions of erstwhile depressed classes. It is marked by cultural, literal, educational activities across several cities, towns and villages of India. Month-long celebrations are held in various parts to commemorate and pay homage to this messiah. It is through these various celebrations that the thoughts and literary writings not only of Ambedkar, but also a number of other intellectuals have reached the households of even the illiterate masses. This has proved instrumental in creating a critical consciousness and awakening among them. The message educate, agitate and organize[ix] has been the motivator for the people.
Ambedkar’s voluminous writings in the form of speeches, books and newspapers have an inspirational, transgressional, and transformational impact on the Dalit masses. It can be rightly said that Ambedkar has been the “initiator of discursive practices”. Thinkers like Marx and Freud through their writings “established the endless possibility of discourse”.[x] In the same vein, Ambedkar opened up cultural and literary space for vast possibilities of dialogue, critique and dissent alongside Dalit politics that questioned caste oppressions. His intellectual discourse problematizes the three aspects of Dalit life world–life, labor and language. Ambedkar’s emancipatory project is “biopolitical”.[xi] Modern state, economy, technology and education, according to him, were harbinger of new modalities of life. Modernity in his view restructured the spatial location of man, morality, society and religion. It resulted in the shifting of the center “from society to the individual”.[xii] The individual subjectivity is constituted by the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice. Ambedkar’s biopolitical notion of life is a mode of life which is “living worthily”[xiii].
Labor is man’s productive relationship with nature. This relation is not, however, purely natural because human beings from time immemorial have been part of social and political systems that have bearings upon the nature of labor. In his writings Caste in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, Annihilation of Caste, The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables, Ambedkar analyzes the interconnection between labor and caste. He said that the caste system is based on the division of laborers which has turned the Dalits into a servile class and forced them to survive on the periphery of the Hindu society. He problematized the Dalit discourse from the perspective of human rights and creatively used new language of modernity in order to reclaim Dalit subjectivity. The names of his newspaper mooknayak (the dumb hero), bahiskrit bharat (outcaste India), janata (the people) and prabuddha bharat (enlightened India) were not merely literary innovations but a political project delineating the exploitation of Dalits and their struggle for emancipation.
One of the hallmarks of Dalit cultural and aesthetic discourse is the importance of consciousness raising through literary engagement. It can be argued the theme of life, labor and language has been reflective in the alit literary discourse. The significance of Babasaheb’s newspapers were that they gave a voice to the voiceless masses. They became a speaking subject narrating the Dalit worldview. The above-discussed stories by D.G. Jadhav, who is part of mainstream Ambedkarite movements, must be seen as an emergent literary discourse that was inspired and shaped by the then contemporary movement for social justice.
The first story published on 5th August 1933[iii], is about a poor Dalit family suffering under the burden of debt. The story opens with Rama Mahar (Mahar is one of the sub-castes under the Scheduled Castes), a Dalit laborer pleading before the money-lender for a waiver in the interest amount of the loan for the given month. In the middle of the scene, a Dalit volunteer, who is creating awareness in the village and professing the ideology of “Ambedkarism”, enters Rama’s house. On seeing the volunteer, Rama and his family beg for help. Rama narrates that his father had borrowed INR 50 from the money-lender for his wedding. After his father’s death, the debt was passed on to him; he has been repaying a hefty interest of INR 4 per month to the money-lender for several years. Rama’s wife, Manjula (a wage laborer), was responsible for the payment, though she could not pay that particular month’s interest owing to her illness. Manjula informs the volunteer how Rama splurged his earnings on liquor, how the money-lender outraged her modesty. Rama realizes his mistake and vows never to consume liquor. The Dalit volunteer not only snaps at the money-lender for his exploitative tact and warns him of legal action, but also assuages the Dalit family by saying, “Your time of emancipation is near, our messiah (indirectly referring to Dr. Ambedkar) has descended in this world to emancipate the whole Dalit community from oppression, and I have come to deliver his message in this village.” The volunteer tells Rama and his family that Dr. Ambedkar has proposed to open a cooperative bank for the Dalits to offer them loans at marginal rates and seeks support from the village to make it a success. The story ends in an optimistic way wherein Rama Mahar over a period has repaid his debt, built his own house and provided education to his children.
Published on 2nd September 1933[iv], the second story highlights Nago Mahar, his wife and their infant who live on a farm on the outskirts of the village. Their house is a small hut with thatched roof and walls. The story opens with D.G. Jadhav describing how beautiful everything looks after it rained heavily for two days. Nago Mahar, employed by a rich farmer to take care of his crops, is paid INR 6 per month; his wife sells grass in the nearby village. As a result of the heavy rain, water starts leaking from the roof of their hut, while their infant falls ill. Without any help in sight, they try all kinds of home remedies, although ineffectively. Nago Mahar then wades through muck in absolute darkness to reach the Ayurvedic clinic set up by the local board in the village. He steps on a snake and gets bitten, and without realizing continues to walk toward the clinic with the hope of procuring medicine for his baby. He reaches the clinic at midnight and calls out to the doctor who is fast asleep. Infuriated upon being woken up, the doctor shouts at Nago and orders him to return home. By then, the poison from the snake bite has begun to spread through Nago’s body. The doctor finds Nago half dead and still has no pity on him. On being shunned, Nago struggles to return home but dies on the way. Back in the hut, his wife is waiting for Nago to return with the medicine; she is angry because he is late. Night turns into morning, Nago does not return, and the little baby too breathes its last. The wife is hysterical. In the meantime, some villagers find Nago’s body, and inform his wife. Upon reaching his house, they are shocked to find the baby dead. The rich farmer only pays half the month’s salary to Nago’s wife. The story ends with Nago’s wife moving to a big city like Pune where she has taken the job of a domestic help in a household.
The third story published in two parts, first on 16th September 1933[v] and continued on 23rd September 1933[vi], is about a poor man called Eknath who belongs to the Maang community (one of the subcastes under Scheduled Castes). While returning home after selling bamboo baskets and ropes, he comes across a decorated Krishna temple where the festival of Gokula Ashtami (the birthday of Lord Krishna) is being celebrated. Eknath prays to the Lord from a distance; curses his fate and questions the Lord as to why he is born in this world to live a wretched life. He repents his lowly birth that prevents him from entering the temple. Lost in prayer he starts walking towards the temple and mistakenly hits the ladder kept near the pandal (a temporary structure housing a deity). Eknath falls on the ground hitting his forehead and begins to bleed. The temple priest, who lives a few yards away, hears the commotion of the gathered crowd. He steps outside to find Eknath wounded and being cared for by a swami from the Arya Samaj. The priest hurls casteist abuses at Eknath for polluting the temple premises. He calls the accident as divine retribution for violating the caste rules and further blames the Arya Samaj follower for their egalitarian approach. On hearing the news of Eknath’s accident, his wife hurriedly runs towards the temple. She is a beautiful woman who attracts the priest’s eyes. One night when Eknath is not at home, the priest’s henchmen abduct her. She begs the priest that she is a loyal wife, but he does not relent. Hearing her loud shrieks, a crowd begins to gather; so the priest allows her to escape from the back door. Eknath returns home late after attending a jalsa (fete) on social reforms. He gets worried to not find his wife at home. He heads out in search of her when he finds his wife running towards him. The shuddering wife narrates the whole episode. Eknath who loves and trusts his wife consoles her. The story ends with Eknath dismantling his hut and leaving the village the next morning. To protect the dignity and self-respect of his wife, Eknath quietly walks away to start a new life elsewhere.
Published on 7th October 1933[vii] and continued on 14 October 1933[viii], the fourth story is about Ganpat Mahar who is at the service of the village Patil and Kulkarni. He would run all the errands, visit all the houses and get a record of the deaths and births of the village. Sometimes he performs personal duties of the Kulkarni and the Patil. Ganpat Mahar was really fed up with the life he was leading. In return for all the hardships that he used to undertake throughout the day all he would get was some food from the villagers at night. One day a fauzdar (police officer) was supposed to visit the village for inspection. Arrangements were made, while Ganpat Mahar was instructed to wait a few miles away from the village and signal the fauzdar’s arrival. When Ganpat saw the fauzdar’s horse advancing towards the village, he began to run ahead of the horse. The fauzdar raced his horse, to a point that Ganpat could not keep pace with the horse and fell unconscious on the ground. After gaining consciousness he made his way to the village, where he was greeted with insults as to why he did not intimate the coming of the fauzdar. He was immediately summoned to do some work.
The story further discusses a young poor girl who is in love with a rich young boy of the village. One night the girl enters the house of the boy, where she finds the boy fast asleep. For a faint moment she is mesmerized by his youth but the next moment she looks at her hut from the window and reminds herself that, this rich boy would never love a poor girl like her. She then pulls out a dagger which she had carried with her and stabs the boy to death. She finds near the window a book on which is kept an envelope addressed to her. She reads the letter only to find that the boy had expressed his love for her. She feels guilty, writes on the note that she killed the boy and now is dying by suicide, and throws the letter out of the window. Ganpat Mahar who is returning home at night finds the letter, on hearing a moaning sound enters the house to find a dead boy and the girl with a dagger thrusted in her chest. He pulls out the dagger, but the girl dies. Ganpat is scared and runs out of the house. He hides his blood-stained jacket in a bag along with the letter and returns to inform the villagers and the fauzdar. The fauzdar visits the site, Ganpat narrates the incident, but no one believes him, instead he is considered guilty and sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment.
The four stories mirror the suffering and exploitation faced by the Dalits, leaving with them no agency to protest or seek justice. The stories only highlight how the Dalits live a life of rejection, subjugation and insult. Their subjugated life in the above stories is the outcome of caste system that has pushed them on the periphery of the society. The economic and social hardships of Rama Mahar, Nago Mahar, Eknath Maand and Ganpat Mahar have all stemmed from their respective caste locations, which in turn leads to the deplorable conditions. The author has interwoven the themes of poverty, sexuality, discrimination and violence. Caste system has imposed structural and symbolic violence on the Dalits as narrated in the story. The issue of Dalit women’s sexuality is evident in the above stories. Their precarious lives make them vulnerable to the prying gaze of the upper caste men. The simplistically written stories touch upon the complex issues of Dalit lives which they face in their day to day existence. Though these stories are set in 1933, it is reflective of the contemporary lives of the millions of Dalits in independent India.
The Dalit’s journey for human dignity is impeded by injustices and discrimination due to their caste location in Indian society. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, anti-caste crusader, champion of social justice and most importantly the emancipator of depressed classes, played a pivotal role in this struggle for human rights and dignity. Ambedkar holds an important place in the hearts of the millions of people who were freed from the bondages of slavery and inhuman living. The birth anniversary of Ambedkar on 14th April acquires a unique place in the identity formation and construction of the millions of erstwhile depressed classes. It is marked by cultural, literal, educational activities across several cities, towns and villages of India. Month-long celebrations are held in various parts to commemorate and pay homage to this messiah. It is through these various celebrations that the thoughts and literary writings not only of Ambedkar, but also a number of other intellectuals have reached the households of even the illiterate masses. This has proved instrumental in creating a critical consciousness and awakening among them. The message educate, agitate and organize[ix] has been the motivator for the people.
Ambedkar’s voluminous writings in the form of speeches, books and newspapers have an inspirational, transgressional, and transformational impact on the Dalit masses. It can be rightly said that Ambedkar has been the “initiator of discursive practices”. Thinkers like Marx and Freud through their writings “established the endless possibility of discourse”.[x] In the same vein, Ambedkar opened up cultural and literary space for vast possibilities of dialogue, critique and dissent alongside Dalit politics that questioned caste oppressions. His intellectual discourse problematizes the three aspects of Dalit life world–life, labor and language. Ambedkar’s emancipatory project is “biopolitical”.[xi] Modern state, economy, technology and education, according to him, were harbinger of new modalities of life. Modernity in his view restructured the spatial location of man, morality, society and religion. It resulted in the shifting of the center “from society to the individual”.[xii] The individual subjectivity is constituted by the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice. Ambedkar’s biopolitical notion of life is a mode of life which is “living worthily”[xiii].
Labor is man’s productive relationship with nature. This relation is not, however, purely natural because human beings from time immemorial have been part of social and political systems that have bearings upon the nature of labor. In his writings Caste in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, Annihilation of Caste, The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables, Ambedkar analyzes the interconnection between labor and caste. He said that the caste system is based on the division of laborers which has turned the Dalits into a servile class and forced them to survive on the periphery of the Hindu society. He problematized the Dalit discourse from the perspective of human rights and creatively used new language of modernity in order to reclaim Dalit subjectivity. The names of his newspaper mooknayak (the dumb hero), bahiskrit bharat (outcaste India), janata (the people) and prabuddha bharat (enlightened India) were not merely literary innovations but a political project delineating the exploitation of Dalits and their struggle for emancipation.
One of the hallmarks of Dalit cultural and aesthetic discourse is the importance of consciousness raising through literary engagement. It can be argued the theme of life, labor and language has been reflective in the alit literary discourse. The significance of Babasaheb’s newspapers were that they gave a voice to the voiceless masses. They became a speaking subject narrating the Dalit worldview. The above-discussed stories by D.G. Jadhav, who is part of mainstream Ambedkarite movements, must be seen as an emergent literary discourse that was inspired and shaped by the then contemporary movement for social justice.
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End Notes
[i] The first issue of the Janata was published on 24 November 1930 and its last issue was published in 1956, thereafter the newspaper Prabuddha Bharat was started. Pradip Gaikwad (ed.), Compilation of Janta- The People, Part 3- 10 Dec 1932 to 2 December 1933,Samta Prakashan, Nagpur, 2016, p.14
[ii] Salim Yusufji (ed.), Ambedkar : The Attendant Details, Navyana Publications, New Delhi, 2017, p.94
[iii] Pradip Gaikwad (ed.),op.cit, p.264
[iv] Ibid, pp.296 & 293
[v] Ibid, p.312
[vi] Ibid, p. 319
[vii] Ibid, p.335
[viii] Ibid, p.346
[ix] Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, Vol. 17, Part 3, Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Govt. of India, New Delhi, 2014, p. 276
[x] Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author’, in Donald Bouchard (ed.), Donald Bouchar and Sherry Simon (trans.), Michel Foucault Language Counter- Memory Practice Selected Essays and Interviews, Cornell university Press, New York, p.131
[xi] Term popularised by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault stated that from the 19th century a new form of power (biopower) developed that takes hold of and over life. Power to ‘make live’. Modernity created a panoply of institutions and technology that enabled fostering of life and its processes. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population – Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977-78, trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave McMillan, London, 2009, p. 16.
[xii] Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar , Writings and Speeches, Vol. 3, Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Govt. of India, New Delhi, 2014, p. 22
[xiii] Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar , Writings and Speeches, Vol. 1, Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Govt. of India, New Delhi, 2014, p. 63.
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