Books: Dalit Unplugged

THE UNTOUCHABLES
BY O. MENDELSOHN and M. VICZIANY
CAMBRIDGE
PAGE: 289 PRICE: Rs 650

Scholarship on India is thriving -- outside India. Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, two distinguished Australian academics and long-time researchers on India, have distilled their field work of over two decades in this painstakingly detailed treatise that is destined to be a major reference work for those seeking to understand the current social ferment in India.

The competitive advantage of this book is threefold. First, it is comprehensive. It deals with the historical, religious, legal, economic, social and political issues impinging on Dalit society. Second, it is relatively recent, bringing its analysis up to the mid-1980s. Third, unlike most works which deal with the south and west this is among the minuscule few that examine politics and other aspects of Dalit life in north India both as phenomena in themselves and in relation to Dalit movements in, say, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The authors present an array of data to suggest there has been and continues to be great improvement in the quality of life of Dalits. There is increasing consciousness and resoluteness among this deprived and discriminated segment of our society and a new spirit of resistance. There is a mass of credible evidence from across the country that much of the contemporary violence surrounding Dalits, even in states like Bihar, is a conscious resistance to oppression.

The conclusions are varied. The duo writes that the whole apparatus of the Indian state has to be rebuilt if greater social justice is to be delivered. Economic liberalisation offers no prospect of early advantage to Dalits. This means that the safety net of social welfare must be vastly improved. The only quarrel I have with this study is the uncharacteristically off-the-cuff statement that the thrust of liberalisation is the very antithesis of massive state intervention on behalf of the poor. This is simply untrue

AUTHORSPEAK: SHANI MOOTOO
Novel Therapy
Writing to forget childhood abuse

When she was barely six, Shani Mootoo discovered that words spelt trouble. "I had told my grandmother I was sexually molested," she recalls. She was not only disbelieved but reprimanded for "dirty thoughts". Her parents were then in Dublin and she was being raised by her grandparents in Trinidad. Words got her into more trouble when at 10 she shared her poem with the family: Man loves man/ Man loves woman/ Woman loves woman. "I wasn't making a statement as such," Mootoo sighs, "I wasn't going to tell the world that I was a lesbian. I started off loving writing as a child. But the words I wrote made the adults angry and sad." So Mootoo, Indian by descent, Irish by birth, Caribbean by breeding and Canadian by nationality, took to making videos and painting: "Unlike words, paintings can be ambiguous forms of expression."

The words never went away though: "For many years I kept a journal, chronicling my pain, anger and also forgiveness." A friend took the journal to Press Gang, a small but respected publisher of feminist literature. But Mootoo did not want to publish her journals. Instead she put out a collection of short stories, Out on Main Street. Its success led to Cereus Blooms at Night (just published in India by Penguin). Anger, pain, retribution and reconciliation are the themes of Mootoo's first novel. Her formidable story-telling power is blessed by her luminous prose. The language is rich in imagery, sounds and, particularly, smells of the Caribbean. "I really, really love scents," Mootoo says, "one of the favourite scents is the stuff from the ocean, along the shorelines -- the seaweed and the crabs and insects ... that are dying out and dying. And that smell, I always think -- it's really the transference of life to death and back to life."

Survival and exaltation in the teeth of abuse is not only the theme of her novel but her life: "I am a survivor of incest and I am a lesbian." Mootoo's next novel revolves around a 60-year-old dutiful Indian wife from the West Indies. While visiting Canada, she meets a man who worked as a gardener for her family back home. "The distance that existed between them is bridged by the way Canada operates," Mootoo says, "She is not recognised in Canada and he is not the invisible man he used to be in Trinidad." The friendship leads to romance. Should the woman return to her husband? Mootoo is still figuring that out.

-- Arthur J. Pais