A Literary Crucible of Caste, Gender & Representation

When I saw the title, I assumed it was another anthology of translated stories of Bangla Dalit writers. Their stories have, of late, found space among English anthologies of Dalit Writings, but their numbers are few and far between. Aruna Chakravarti’s book adds to this growing corpus of Bengali Dalit stories in English translation. The book brings together stories foregrounding Dalit women’s struggles in a deeply patriarchal and caste ridden society. What is different about this collection is that it brings together both Dalit and Savarna writers under one cover. The narratives depict the Dalit subaltern’s gendered body as it negotiates the lived reality of belonging to the untouchable castes.

The selected stories are by Manoranjan Byapari, Bimalendu Haldar, Mahashweta Devi, Manohar Mouli Biswas, Prafulla Kumar Roy, Nakul Mallik, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Kalyani Thakur Charal, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, and Anil Ghorai. Six of the twelve stories are by Dalit writers. Overall, nine are by men and three by women, adding another dimension to the narrative of gender, caste and class. All the stories represent the lives of Dalit women of Bengal and offer a rich variety of representational strategies depending on the gender, caste, class and location of the writers.

Dalit studies have been grappling with the idea of what Dalit literature is? Is it literature written by the Dalits or about them? The Dalit Panthers had defined this literature as written by the Dalits, about them, for them. There was a clear declaration of a purpose, ideology and aesthetics. Writer-critic Sharan Kumar Limbale, in his An Aesthetic of Dalit Literature, says that Dalit writers write about their lived experience, of pain, suffering, humiliation, anger and therefore it is a literature about assertion, resistance and rebellion. It rejects the Savarna Aesthetic of beauty and pleasure. The trope of sympathy versus empathy is very often invoked to suggest that an outsider can view the Dalit experience with sympathy and not empathic understanding, which comes from living that life. This does not mean that all Dalit narratives will be radical or political. Aruna Chakravarti’s collection of short stories adds to this continuing debate. Here we find stories by well-known writers like Mahashweta Devi, Sharatchandra, Chattopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay and lesser-known Dalit writers, allowing for a comparative analysis.

The story, ‘The Fortress’ (Durgo) by Manoranjan Byapari, is a visceral narrative that presents the Dalit woman‘s body as the site of sexual violence from which her own people cannot save her. A sharp critique of the concept of Dalit solidarity. The woman, Sarama, refuses to be a victim and uses her body as the weapon and fortress of her revenge. ‘Salt’ by Bimalendu Haldar depicts the exploitation of the Dalit fisher folk living in the Sunderbans area by the upper caste warehouse owner Nishchay Ghosh. Haldar shows that when pushed to the brink, the Dalit women turn their fear and helplessness into collective strength. Chintay rallies her fellow fishwives to go downriver in search of their missing husbands despite the dangers of wild animals and hostile men. As they leave, Chintay sets Ghosh’s warehouse on fire. The Dalit woman scripts her fiery resistance to rewrite the caste laws, Dalit obedience and servility. The precarity of Dalit lives is reiterated in these narratives. Mahashweta Devi’s ‘The True Life Story of Uli-Buli’s Mother’ presents desertion, destitution and madness of a mother of four daughters who is a victim of patriarchal society. She shows no individuation. On the other hand, Nalini in Mahashweta Devi’s ‘Nalini’s Story’ de-mythifies scriptural dictates for Hindu widows from an experiential, practical perspective. It is a narrative of sisterhood, resistance, and survival. She gets support from her upper-caste/class employers as she is a good worker. The story marks the complexity of how caste, class and gender intersect and perform in our daily lives. Patriarchy manifests in multiple forms; it can be blatant, aggressive, like Nalini’s husband and son or subtle, like his master, who wants to grab Nalini’s land by pushing her into debt in the guise of elaborate funeral rituals for a husband who had long deserted her. Her refusal and final act of defiance mark the possibility of breaking the shackles of patriarchal imposition with quiet fortitude.

The stories are connected across time. Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s ‘The Witch’ casts its Dom protagonist as a mysterious woman possessing evil powers, “The old woman does not belong to these parts. No one knows where she was born…She had lived in three or four villages in the vicinity and destroyed them all” (129).

Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay makes her believe that she is possessed by some evil, which makes her harm those she loves. She conforms to the stereotype of the superstitious, ignorant, Dalit who internalise their stigma and accept to be represented as the malevolent other. By contrast, Manohar Mouli Biswas’s ‘Shonkhomala’ gives us an educated, articulate Dom woman whose beauty, humanity and practical sense threaten the caste, class and political order, and so the Savarna community unleashes brutal, sexual violence upon her. Biswas pulls us into the everyday horror of caste oppression, showing how real women are silenced and demonised.

Biswas explicitly invokes Tarashankar, “Why would a great writer like Tarashankar write his excellent story Chor-er-Ma …about Shashi Dom?.... A writer of Tarashankar’s eminence wouldn’t write such a story if he wasn’t sure of his facts...would he?” (63)

Biswas exposes how upper-caste narratives have historically represented Dalit characters through stereotypes of them being lazy, loathsome, uncouth, evil, polluted, dishonest, etc. Biswas critiques this tradition and insists that Dalit lives be represented with authenticity, reflecting their agency, pain and dignity.

‘Raikamal’, the other story by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, presents the low-caste Vaishnav girl as an emblem of feminine mystique, ethereal beauty and chastity. It is a story of love, longing, lust, and loss with the backdrop of Vaishnav philosophy, patriarchy and caste hierarchy. Raikamal deals with her life with quiet dignity. There is no resistance but quiet submission to the caste and gender hierarchy and its dictates.

‘Snake Maiden’ by Prafulla Kumar Roy is about the Bede, a marginalised, nomadic tribe. Shankhini, Raja saheb and Palanka are locked in a tale of love, jealousy, and forbidden desires. Shankhini is torn between her desire for Raja saheb and power; to continue to lead her group, she sacrifices love but is consumed by jealousy. The story ends in tragedy. The inclusion of this story in this anthology amplifies the Dalit to include the marginalised nomadic Tribes.

Stories by Nakul Mallik and Kalyani Thakur Charal remind us of the trials of the Dalit Refugees in Kolkata and the importance of education for the Dalit Motho (Matua community), respectively.

Anil Ghorai in ‘Insect Festival’ delineates the life of a not-so-good-looking Harhi girl, her aspirations, practical knowledge and ultimate betrayal in love. The narrative does not foreground Dalit resistance or selfhood, though it realistically depicts the caste-based skill of the tanner protagonists. Abhagi in Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s ‘Abhagir Heaven’ is a pious, chaste woman from the Duley caste who has been deserted by her husband. Her dying wish is to get the dust from her husband’s feet and be cremated like an upper caste woman with sindoor adorning her forehead and alta on her feet. Unfortunately, the zamindar doesn’t allow this, and she is buried on the riverbank. From birth to death, caste continues to be a harsh reality for the Dalits.

These stories about the lives of Dalit women have been translated with lucid brilliance. The flavour of the source language one can savour, as many words, colloquial terms have been retained. Bangla dialogues with English translation given in parentheses help retain the local flavour. The translation is fluid and reads so well that the stories seem to have been written in English. For instance ,names for grass, e.g. tussock, wattle, made me hunt for the Bengali word. Fen for Bil or jala is another example. The marks of Aruna Chakravarti’s creative self are clearly visible in these translations.

The stories have been well chosen, but one misses Dalit writers like Jatin Bala, Brajen Mallik, Manju Bala, Kapil Krishna Thakur, and Lily Haldar, to name a few. Together, these translations remind us that Dalit lives cannot be reduced to symbols of superstition or pity. Aruna Chakravarti’s lucid rendering lets these voices speak with their own urgency, exposing both the real violence of caste oppression and the resilience of its survivors.

The collection is provocative, problematises and amplifies the definition of Dalit to include all marginalised, ostracised communities. Maybe we are looking toward Dalit Bahujan solidarity, or is this consolidation an imagined Utopia? Dalit reality is one of fractured identities, where caste, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, region, and ideology intersect to create complex connections.

Dalit is an ideological, political statement; it is not enough to just belong to the Untouchable castes. Dalit Writings and writing the Dalit will necessarily have different representational strategies. This is amply reflected in the present anthology of stories dealing with marginalised women.

A must-have book for all involved in studies in caste, gender, and South Asian women.

The writer is Professor, Department of English, DSEC, DU.
Views expressed are personal