Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki PDF

Joothan  Joothan A Dalit’s Life Omprakash Valmiki Translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee columbia universit y press New York  columbia university press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex...

Joothan  Joothan A Dalit’s Life Omprakash Valmiki Translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee columbia universit y press New York  columbia university press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Joothan: A Dalit’s Life was first published by Samya, an imprint of Bhatkal and Sen, 16 Southern Avenue, Kolkata 700 026, India, in 2003. This edition is not for sale in South Asia. © 2003 Omprakash Valmiki English translation copyright © 2003 Arun Prabha Mukherjee All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Valmiki, Omprakasa 1950– [ Joothan. English] Joothan/Omprakash Valmiki; translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–231–12972–6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Dalits—India—History. I. Mukherjee, Arun Prabha. II. Title. DS422.C3V275 2003 305.5
122
0954—dc21 2002041710 designed by lisa chovnick Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Ma and Pitaji  contents foreword by Arun Prabha Mukherjee ix preface to the hindi edition xiii introduction by Arun Prabha Mukherjee xvii Joothan 1 glossary 155 Map of India: Places of Significance in Joothan  foreword Arun Prabha Mukherjee Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is among the few books that have had a profound effect on my consciousness. It brought to the sur- face, as a scalpel penetrating deep into the flesh, the details of my childhood and adolescence in a small town in northern India where casteism and untouchability were accepted, where untouch- ables cleaned our latrines and carried the excrement away on their heads. When they asked for water, it was poured into their cupped hands, from a distance. No untouchables studied with me in my school or later at college. My textbooks did inform me about the evil of untouchability and what Mahatma Gandhi had done to eliminate it, but they did so in a detached, abstracted manner, couched in a language that seemed to have no connection with my lived reality. My Hindi literature textbook included a poem by Siaramsharan Gupt. This poem, entitled “Achut ki Aah” (The Sigh of an Untouchable), narrates the sad story of an untouchable denied entry into a temple and how it broke his heart. Such por- trayals of Dalits (as untouchables are now called) as mute and ix x Foreword pathetic characters, unable to act or speak about their oppression, are characteristic of high-caste Indian writers. They portray Dalits as tragic figures and objects of pity, incapable of talking back or feeling enraged. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (1995) are also written in this appropriative voice, a voice that contains, rather than expresses, the Dalit experience. Joothan had a visceral effect on me because in writing his life story of being born in the Chuhra caste and growing up in Barla in northern India, Valmiki spoke of the realities and contradic- tions of my society that thick walls of denial had shut out. Although I had been introduced to Marathi Dalit literature in translation before I read Joothan, its impact was much higher on the Richter scale of my consciousness because it was speaking of my corner of India, in my first language, Hindi, in a way that no other text had ever spoken to me. I wanted to translate it the moment I finished reading it. I wanted to share this text with a wider readership in the hope that they too will feel its transformative power. I believe that here in Joothan, readers of English-language texts will find another answer to Gayatri Spivak’s famous question: “Can the subaltern speak?” Perhaps we need to ask another question: Can dominant society make space for the subaltern to speak? I have translated Joothan as my contribution to making that space. Hardly any Dalit literature is available in translation. High-caste and elite Indian voices, whether in India or in diaspora, continue to represent the Indian voice. It is time that this monopoly is ruptured and other voices heard. Joothan is one among a body of Dalit writing that is unified by an ideology, an agenda, and a literary aesthetic. It provides an apt introduction to this newly emerging school of writing, which is not just a school of writing but sees itself as part of a social move- ment for equality and justice. As is shown by the list of authors that Valmiki enumerates in Joothan, Dalit writers have read and been inspired by the work of writers from many parts of the world.  Foreword xi It is time now that they be read in other parts of the world. I hope that the English translation of Joothan will enlarge Valmiki’s read- ership many times. In Joothan Valmiki writes:“We need an ongoing struggle and a consciousness of struggle, a consciousness that brings revolution- ary change both in the outside world and in our hearts, a con- sciousness that leads the process of social change.” As a reader who believes in the important role that literature can play in the ongoing project of human liberation, I was inspired by these words, and I hope that others will be as well. York University Toronto  Omprakash Valmiki’s Family Tree Zaharia Great-grandfather Buddha (grandfather) Kundan great uncle Suganchand Chotanlal Molhar Shyamlal Solhar married Pitaji Chachaji Chachaji Chachaji Tauji (unnamed) married died, aged 22 married (later lived with Mukundi Ramkatori Ramkatori) (marriage broke up) Sukhbir Jagdish Jasbir Janesar Omprakash Maya Soomti died, aged 25 died, aged 18 married married b. 30 June 1950 married died, aged 2 married Rahti Devi Bimla Devi married Rahti Devi Bhabiji (Bhabiji) Chandrakala Bhabiji (younger sister 1. Sukhibir of Swarnalata, 2. Jasbir Maternal Uncle (Unnamed) Sturjan’s wife) Mamaji Surjan married Swarnalata Bhabiji (elder sister of Chandrakala) Seema Rajiv Vinita  preface to the hindi edition Dalit life is excruciatingly painful, charred by experiences. Experiences that did not manage to find room in literary creations. We have grown up in a social order that is extremely cruel and inhuman. And compassionless toward Dalits. I have wanted to put the narrative of my pain into writing for a long time. But even though I tried many times, I did not succeed. I started to write umpteen times and ended up ripping the written pages apart. I could not decide where to begin or how. Some friends suggested that I should write a novel rather than an auto- biography. Out of the blue came a letter from a publisher, Rajkishorji, in December 1993. He was planning a book called Harijan se Dalit (From Harijan to Dalit) in the Aaj ke Prashn (Questions for Today) series. He wanted me to write about ten or eleven pages in an autobiographical form for this anthology. Although I was free to change the names of the people involved, the experiences had to be true and verifiable. This letter caused me much turmoil. For several days I could not decide what to do. I did not write a single sentence. And then a second letter arrived from Rajkishorji with an ultimatum: “Send your stuff by the end of January. The book is ready to go to press.” I do not remember what xiii xiv Preface to the Hindi Edition else was in that letter, but that same night I sat down and wrote a few pages about my early life and posted them to Rajkishorji the next day. I waited a week for his reply and then rang him: he was going to publish those pages. My essay,“Ek Dalit ki Atmakatha” (A Dalit’s Autobiography), appeared on the very first pages of Harijan se Dalit. A stream of let- ters began to arrive for me as soon as the book came out. Responses came even from far-flung rural areas. Dalit readers had seen their own pain in those pages of mine. They all wanted me to write about my experiences in greater detail. Putting these experiences on paper entailed all sorts of dan- gers. After a long period of procrastination I started to write. Once again I had to relive all those miseries, torments, neglects, admo- nitions. I suffered a deep mental anguish while writing this book. How terribly painful was this unraveling of my self, layer upon layer. Some people find this stuff unbelievable and exaggerated. Many of my friends were astounded. Why was I writing an autobiography so early in my life? I beg to say to them: “Do not compare this narrative of pain with the achievements of others.” A friend worried that I was eating away my literary capital by writ- ing of my experiences autobiographically. Some others said that I would only contribute to the inferior status of my people by strip- ping myself naked. A close friend of mine fears that I will lose any prestige that I have if I write my autobiography. Why should one feel awkward in telling the truth? To those who say that these things do not happen here, to those who want to claim a superior status for Indian civilization, I say that only those who have suffered this anguish know its sting. Still, a lot remains unsaid. I did not manage to put it all down. It was beyond my power. You can call it my weakness. The distinguished editor Rajendra Yadavji helped me a great deal in choosing the title. He found time in his busy life to read my manuscript and make suggestions. The title Joothan was his sug- gestion. Expressing my gratefulness to him is a mere formality. His guidance has been of tremendous value. Kanwal Bharti and Dr.  Preface to the Hindi Edition xv Shyoraj Singh Bechain provided me with emotional sustenance while I was writing this book. And, finally, I am grateful to Ashok Maheshwariji; without him this book would never have been com- pleted. Just the interest that he showed in bringing it out solved many of my problems. Dehra Dun, 1997 Omprakash Valmiki  introduction Arun Prabha Mukherjee Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is among the first texts in Hindi that identifies itself as a part of Dalit literature, one of the most important literary movements to emerge in postindependence India. On one level this is an autobiographical account of Valmiki’s journey from his birth and upbringing as an untouchable in the newly independent India of the 1950s to today and his pride in being a Dalit. On another level Joothan is also a report card on the condition of people who are now routinely called “erstwhile untouchables” or “ex-untouchables.” Untouchability was legally abolished when the independent India adopted its constitution on November 26, 1949. Valmiki por- trays a slice of life that had seldom been recorded in Indian litera- ture until the advent of Dalit literature in Marathi, the language of the state of Maharashtra (its capital is Bombay), in the 1950s and its subsequent spread to many other languages, notably, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and English. Until then, literature had been the domain of high castes in India. Literary representations either ignored untouchables or portrayed xvii xviii Introduction them as victims in need of saviors, as objects without voice and agency. Dalits constitute about 16 percent of India’s population. For centuries they have been at the bottom of India’s social pyramid, denied even the most basic human rights, such as access to drink- ing water from public ponds and wells, freedom to walk on public roads, and freedom to choose an occupation (they were assigned one at birth). The transformation of the stigma of being an untouchable to the pride in being a Dalit is a story of collective struggle for centuries. The term Dalit forcefully expresses their oppressed status. It comes from the Sanskrit root dal, which means to crack open, split, crush, grind, and so forth, and it has generally been used as a verb to describe the process of processing food grains and lentils. Its metaphoric usage, still as a verb, is evident in descriptions of warfare and the vanquishing of enemies. Jotirao Phooley and B. R. Ambedkar, two towering figures in Dalit history, were the first to appropriate the word, as a noun and an adjective, in the early decades of the twentieth century to describe the extreme oppres- sion of untouchables.1 The term Dalit literature was first used in 1958, at the first Dalit literature conference, which was held in Bombay. However, as an identity marker, Dalit came into promi- nence in 1972, when a group of young Marathi writer-activists founded an organization called the Dalit Panthers. The name expressed their feelings of solidarity and kinship with the Black Panthers, who were engaged in a militant struggle for African Americans’ rights in the United States. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), also known affectionately as Babasaheb, or Father, to his followers, was a politician and lawyer and is considered the greatest leader of the untouchables. He received his doctoral degree from Columbia University in 1917. He was indeed much influenced by the U.S. Constitution, especially the 1. Jotirao Phooley (1827–90), a pioneering social reformer, was born into a lower-caste fam- ily in Maharashtra. In 1873 he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth-Seeking Society) to fight for the rights of the lower castes and for women.  Introduction xix Fourteenth Amendment, and by Booker T. Washington. Ambedkar became the minister for law in independent India in 1948 and wrote the draft of what became the Constitution of India (1949). It estab- lished a program of reservation, a system of quotas that gave Dalits a foothold in educational institutions, government jobs, and repre- sentative government, much like the later U.S. program of affirma- tive action. Conflict with the government led Ambedkar to resign his post in September 1951. The term Dalit found a ready acceptance among untouchable communities all over India. This was the first time that they had been able to choose their identity collectively, rather than be named by others. The names given by others, whether they were ancient names describing their untouchable status—such as Achut, Panchamas, Atishudras, Avarnas, Antyajas, Asparshyas, or Pariahs—or government-assigned bureaucratic designations such as Depressed Classes and Scheduled Castes, or the name bestowed by Gandhi with apparent goodwill, namely, Harijan (God’s people), evoked pain and conflict. People who oppose the Dalit movement continue to use many of these terms today as jibes and pejoratives. Dalit is a political identity, as opposed to a caste name. It expresses Dalits’ knowledge of themselves as oppressed people and signifies their resolve to demand liberation through a revolutionary transformation of the system that oppresses them. As Bishop A. C. Lal said in his address to the first Dalit Solidarity Conference, meeting in 1992 in the city of Nagpur, “The word Dalit is a beautiful word, because it transcends narrow national and sectarian frontiers. It is a beautiful word because it embraces the sufferings, frustrations, expectations and groanings of the entire cosmos” (Lal 1995:xiii).2 Arjun Dangle, a leading Dalit writer and founder of the Dalit literary movement, says: “Dalit is not a caste but a realization and is related to the experiences, joys and sorrows, and struggles of those in the lowest stratum of socie- 2. Nagpur is a place of immense symbolic significance in Dalit history because that was where Ambedkar converted to Buddhism on October 14, 1956. xx Introduction ty. It matures with a sociological point of view and is related to the principles of negativity, rebellion and loyalty to science, thus final- ly ending as revolutionary” (1992:264–65). By identifying themselves as Dalits, writers like Valmiki are embracing an identity that was born in the historic struggle to dismantle the caste system, which was responsible for their untouchable status, and to rebuild society on the principles of human dignity, equality, and respect. Their identification of caste as a central question of their discourse underscores the domi- nance of the high-caste Hindu point of view in all walks of Indian life—literary expression, education, or political gover- nance. High-caste Indian writers, both Hindu and non-Hindu (caste has infected all religions in India) who are published both in India and abroad as “representers” of Indian life, seldom deal with caste and caste oppression in their works. The dominant discourse of postcolonial and subaltern theories, which are often the frameworks that Western universities use to teach Indian lit- erature, mostly Indian English literature, not only refuses to notice the high-caste status of these writers but presents them as resistant voices, representing the oppression of “the colo- nized.” The situation is slightly different in India. Here main- stream critics and reviewers have responded to Dalit writers’ stark portrayals of caste discrimination with a sense of disbelief and accusations of exaggeration. They have claimed that caste is no longer relevant, either because it has already disappeared or because it is in the process of disappearing. In their view, therefore, Dalit writers are writing about old news. These crit- ics and reviewers have also declared Dalit writing to be lacking in literary merit. However, before we discuss the literary aspects of Dalit writ- ing or enter the world of a Dalit text, it is useful to discuss the long and complex history of the evolution of the caste system in India and the various struggles that were waged against it, because caste and caste-based oppression are the most important themes of Dalit writing. Quite pertinent here is the response of Prabhakar Mande,  Introduction xxi an eminent folklorist and distinguished scholar of Marathi drama, to critics who embrace the autonomy of the literary text:“The event of the development of Dalit literature is not just a literary event. Therefore this literature should not be viewed only from a literary perspective. Unless this literary chain of events is seen from a soci- ological perspective against the entire background of the changes happening in society, its significance will not be grasped” (Mande 1979, quoted in Limbale, in press). From Untouchable to Dalit Ambedkar himself declared that “the main cause which is respon- sible for the fate of the Untouchables is the Hindu religion and its teachings” (1989b:91). Although historians of ancient India have speculated on the origins of untouchability in the course of their larger surveys, and while modern sociologists have studied caste as a social phenomenon, there is, as Prabhati Mukherjee says, “some amount of hesitation and reluctance... among Indologists and historians to study the past history of the untouchables” (1988:12). Mukherjee is the only scholar besides Ambedkar to have done a book-length study of the origins of untouchability. Although Mukherjee’s book is extremely illuminating, Ambedkar’s compre- hensive and eloquent work investigates the problem of untoucha- bility from an insider’s perspective and is therefore unique for its combination of historical, sociological, political, and experiential perspectives. Little historical information of either a textual or archeologi- cal nature exists about the institutions of caste and untouchabili- ty. As Mukherjee says, “After a long and tedious wandering through the labyrinth of innumerable texts, one may find a word or a line about people not liked by that particular author” (1988:15). Many historians of ancient India echo her words of frustration about the lack of evidence. D. D. Kosambi, the pioneering histori- an of ancient India, answers Mukherjee’s question of who is writ- ing for whom:“Most surviving Sanskrit literature has been the cre- xxii Introduction ation of Brahmins or in their possession, or in some way stamped by brahminism” ( 1995:101). However, historians generally agree that the phenomena of caste and untouchability evolved over time, as a result of conflicts about land, resources, and cultural practices between a people who called themselves Aryans when they began arriving in India about the beginning of the second millennium b.c., and the vari- ous communities of indigenous people that ranged from citizens of highly developed city-states to forest-dwelling hunters and gatherers. In time these conflicts produced the chaturvarna, the system of society that categorizes all castes according to four major divisions, which were arranged hierarchically in a descend- ing order of “purity.” (The word varna literally means color, which refers to gradations within the hierarchy.) At the top of this power structure were the Brahmins, who were performers of rit- uals and keepers of sacred texts (the Vedas, the Smritis, and the Puranas), and the Kshatriyas, who, as rulers and warriors, patron- ized the Brahmins and commissioned the rituals, including the yagna, or fire ritual of animal sacrifices and gifts to Brahmins.3 Although the Brahmins and Kshatriyas were constantly feuding for control of power, these two varnas considered themselves superior to the Vaisyas—the cultivators and traders—and the Sudras, the servants and performers of menial tasks. The Brahmins, in alliance with the king or state, denied the Sudras the ritual of upanayana, the sacred thread ceremony, which gave the three varnas above them the status of dwija, or twice born. Hindus must undergo this ritual, which symbolizes a second birth, before 3. The Vedas (veda means knowledge), which date to between the second and seventh centuries a.d., are considered the most sacred texts of Hinduism and were transmit- ted orally for centuries before being written down. The Smritis (smriti means remem- bered), also sacred texts but of a later period, stress the religious merits of giving gifts to Brahmins and lay down codes of behavior and law. The Puranas (purana means old), sacred texts of lesser importance from the fourth to eighth centuries a.d., relate myths, legends, and genealogies of the gods, heroes, and saints; they became the scriptures of the common people (Sudras and all women) because, unlike the Vedas, the Puranas were not restricted to initiated male Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas.  Introduction xxiii they may study the Vedas. Because the Sudras had no right to participate in this ritual, they were born only once, from the womb of a woman. Mukherjee speculates that the Aryans made strategic alliances with the autochthonous groups, and the friend- ly or powerful among them were incorporated into the varna sys- tem at the higher level. The Sudra category, on the other hand,“in all probability owes its origin to the non-wealthy, conquered and hostile groups” (Mukherjee 1988:24). Mukherjee speculates further that as settled society, which was based on agriculture and industry, evolved in ancient India, the four-division varna system was further divided by a jati, or caste- based division; a caste was a group whose membership came with birth and maintained its separation by practicing endogamy and commensalism, that is, marrying and eating only with members of one’s own caste. The caste system, she suggests, allowed for a more closely knit social organization that permitted privileged groups to maintain their exclusiveness more stringently than in the four large divisions of the varna system. The number of castes, and stratifica- tion among them, increased as the varna system incorporated more and more newcomers. Although the doctrine of chaturvarna accounts for the begin- ning of the process by which the four varnas gradually proliferated into modern-day castes, Ambedkar points out that it does not explain untouchability and the branding of certain castes as untouchable. He theorizes that untouchability began after the great struggle for supremacy between the Brahmins and the Buddhists. According to him, Brahmins began practicing untouchability against beef eaters after the Brahmins stopped sac- rificing cows and eating beef in order to win an ideological battle against the Buddhists. The latter were preaching against yagnas and animal sacrifice, thereby winning over the cultivators and traders, who were greatly inconvenienced when Brahmins and Kshatriyas seized their cattle for ritual sacrifices without payment, as their entitlement. Ambedkar speculates that in order to regain the allegiance of the trading and farming classes, the Brahmins not xxiv Introduction only gave up animal sacrifices but went one step further than the Buddhists and banned the killing of cows and the eating of flesh altogether. The Gupta kings banned cow slaughter some time in the fourth century a.d. However, according to Ambedkar, certain sec- tions of the society continued to eat beef. These beef eaters were outside the four-varna system. They lived outside the villages set- tled by the savarnas, that is, those within the varna system. Theoretically, the beef eaters were not violating the laws against cow slaughter because they ate the flesh of cows that had died of natural causes; the beef eaters’ job was to remove dead cows as a service to the savarna villagers. Ambedkar calls these people “bro- ken men.” He believes that they were the remnants of conquered and fragmented tribes that settled outside the savarna villages and survived by performing the most degrading tasks for the savarnas. These people were called avarnas because they were outside the varna system, and they were untouchable because of their associa- tion with carrion and other polluting substances. Mukherjee suggests that the Aryans punished groups hostile to them by declaring them ritually impure and by keeping them outside the villages and towns:“One touching a chandala [untouch- able]... should bathe with one’s clothes on.... To touch, talk with or even to look at a chandala made one undergo penance.... For touching an Aryan woman a chandala was fined one hundred panas, and for adultery with her a shavapaca [untouchable] was sentenced to death (1988:41).” And further:“The chandalas were the lowest and the worst of all human beings.... Strong hatred for them is expressed not only by the Brahmanas but in the Jatakas as well.4 For instance, the sight of chandala was inauspicious,... and 4. The Brahmanas (ca. 1500–1000 b.c.) are ritual texts in Sanskrit that were created after the Vedas, giving details of the sacrifices and also indicating changes in the hier- archy of gods. Prominent in these texts is the word brahman, which refers to the cre- ative power of the ritual utterances and the sacrifice, which in turn underlies ritual and therefore cosmic power. The Jatakas, of which there are about six hundred, are part of Buddhist literature and focus on the incarnations of the Buddha before he attained Buddhahood. They too are a valuable historical source.  Introduction xxv daughters of a shresthi [merchant] and priest washed their eyes after having accidentally seen a chandala because he was not fit to be seen” (63). Ambedkar thinks that untouchability was born around 400 a.d.: “It is born out of the struggle for supremacy between Buddhism and Brahminism which has so completely moulded the history of India and the study of which is so woefully neglected by students of Indian history” (1990:379). One may agree or disagree with Ambedkar’s hypotheses regarding the origins of caste and untouchability; however, untouchables have long lived outside the village boundaries, sub- sisting on the flesh of dead draft animals that they had the duty to dispose of. During the independence movement many a leader of the Indian National Congress, the main nationalist political party, gave the consumption of carrion by untouchables as the reason that caste Hindus (as high-caste Hindus were then called; untouchables were called outcastes) practiced untouchability. Although Ambedkar also advised his followers to give up eating carrion, he replied to the caste Hindus that untouchables had resorted to eating it only because they were too poor to get any- thing else and not because they loved it. Whether the untouchables are Hindus became a highly sen- sitive issue during the early years of the twentieth century when leaders of the Indian National Congress were demanding home rule from the British colonial government, and matters of propor- tional representation for Hindus and Muslims came to the fore- front. Muslim leaders submitted a petition to the British govern- ment that claimed that untouchables, as outcastes, were not a part of the Hindu population. Ambedkar, along with other leaders of the untouchables, demanded separate electorates for untouch- ables.5 He argued that untouchables were not Hindus because they were not included in the chaturvarna system. For him, 5. These separate electorates are the equivalents of voting districts wherein only untouchable or Dalit candidates can be elected. Even non-Dalit voters must vote for Dalit candidates to ensure a Dalit presence in Parliament. xxvi Introduction Gandhi’s claim that untouchables were an indivisible part of “the Hindu fold” was merely expedient. He saw it as a ploy to allow caste Hindus to grab political power and continue to keep untouchables under their foot. Gandhi went on a fast unto death after the British colonial government of India announced its intention to grant separate electorates to the untouchables. He got his way. Ambedkar, forced to withdraw his demand, signed the so-called Poona Pact of 1932. Indian history textbooks today rarely mention his capitulation under pressure. However, Dalits see the pact that killed their demand for separate electorates as a great betrayal. (Independent India’s Constitution, which Ambedkar shaped to a considerable extent, declares its support for a more egalitarian society and per- mits separate electorates, which are “reserved” for Dalits.) Dalit lit- erature memorializes the idea of separate electorates in a variety of symbolic and thematic ways. Whether Dalits are Hindu remains a burning question to this day. At a mammoth meeting in 1935 Ambedkar had declared that although he was born a Hindu, he was not going to die as one. True to his word, he embraced Buddhism on October 14, 1956, along with millions of his followers, just three months before his death. Since then, Dalits have participated in many mass conver- sions. High-caste Hindu forces have tried to prevent these through various means. Kancha Ilaiah’s Why I Am Not a Hindu (1996) eloquently contests today’s dominant Hindutva forces (right-wing Hindu demand for Hindu political domination), which want to project a unitary Hindu identity based on Vedic principles. Dalit writers, including Valmiki, satirize this celebra- tion of “ancient glory” because it valorizes the very texts that sanc- tioned the unjust and inhuman treatment of the Sudras and the untouchables. Ambedkar’s attitude and actions vis-à-vis these ancient texts influence Dalit writers and leaders. In a famous but undelivered 1936 speech, later printed as “Annihilation of Caste,” Ambedkar proclaimed:“You have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the Shastras [the body of sacred literature of the  Introduction xxvii Hindus] which deny any part to reason” ( 1989a:75). And nine years earlier, on December 25, 1927, while leading the famous agita- tion to gain Dalits the right to draw water from Chavda Lake at Mahad, Maharashtra, Ambedkar had, in a powerfully symbolic act, burned the Manusmriti (The Laws of Manu) in a bonfire. Ambedkar decided to burn this text because its author, Manu, is the ancient sage credited with codifying the brahminical laws of untouchability and pollution. The ideological differences between Dalits and caste Hindus in regard to the Vedas and other sacerdotal texts, chaturvarna, and the caste system caused a deep rift between the Dalits and the leadership of the Indian National Congress, which was dominat- ed by high-caste Hindus and derided by Ambedkar as a “bour- geois-Brahmin” organization. Gandhi, for example, believed that the caste system and untouchability were distortions that could be purged from Hinduism without discarding chaturvarna, which he believed to be a unique gift of India to world civilization. He felt that untouchables must not stop performing their hereditary func- tions because that is what the varna system asks of every Hindu. Writing in Harijan on March 6, 1937, Gandhi said: What I mean is, one born a scavenger must earn his livelihood by being a scavenger, and then do whatever else he likes. For a scavenger is as worthy of his hire as a lawyer or your president. That according to me is Hinduism. There is no better Communism on earth. Varnashram Dharma [the duties/moral code of the four varnas] acts even as the law of gravitation. The law of Varna is the antithesis of competition which kills. Ambedkar differed radically from Gandhi on the question of reforming Hinduism. He declared that when Gandhi tried to sal- vage the varna system by saying that it had nothing to do with the caste system, he was simply quibbling, that the two were indeed symbiotically connected. Whereas Gandhi believed in the removal of untouchability through penance and acts of social service by xxviii Introduction caste Hindus, as opposed to mandated changes in the law, Ambedkar used the language of rights and legislated remedies. Similarly, while Gandhi and the other leaders of the Indian National Congress thought in terms of temple entry (forbidden to untouchables in the belief that their presence would pollute the temple) and “interdining,” Ambedkar linked untouchability to the economic destitution of the untouchables, constantly reiterating how they were denied access to education, ownership of land, and jobs above the level of scavenging, picking up garbage, cleaning latrines, and other menial occupations. He repeatedly pointed out how, besides being denied access to avenues for economic better- ment, untouchables were forced to provide their labor against their will and without any control of their wages. In the words of Gail Omvedt,“The point is that Gandhi, who feared a ‘political division... in the villages,’ ignored the division that already existed; in his warning against the spread of violence, he ignored the violence already existing in the lives of the Dalits” (1994:172). As Dalits waged battles for equality and dignity, the names that their oppressors had given them became an issue. So stigma- tized were untouchable caste names (I remember that my brother and I called each other “Chuhra” and “Chamar,” the names of untouchable castes, during our childhood quarrels) that the Dalits wanted to discard these terms. The new names asserted the Dalits’ claims that they were outside the chaturvarna and, indeed, were the aboriginal people of India. They adopted names like Adi-Dravida, Adi-Andhra, Adi-Hindu, and Adi-Karnataka to lay claim to an aboriginal identity (the word adi means “from the beginning”). This claiming of aboriginal status and a non-Aryan identity flies in the face of the Hindutva ideologues who see the Vedas, the texts of the Aryans, as the source of India’s civilization and who claim that the Aryans did not come from central Asia but were indige- nous to India. “Valmiki,” or “Balmiki,” was widely adopted as a caste name by the Chuhras of Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh under the influence of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement in north-  Introduction xxix ern India. Arya Samajists were alarmed by the conversion of large numbers of Chuhras to Christianity and Sikhism in the 1920s and the 1930s. The Arya Samajists started emulating the Christian missionaries by opening schools and hospitals for the untouch- ables and performing shuddhi, a purification ceremony to reconvert the Christian converts. Arya Samajists told Chuhras that they were the descendants of Valmiki, the creator of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana. Bhagwan Das suggests that caste Hindus appropriated the Chuhras’ patron saint Lal Beg, or Bala Shah, and renamed him Valmiki in order to “Hinduize” themselves (Das n.d.:193). In Joothan Omprakash Valmiki relates how a Christian convert, Sewak Ram Masihi, came to his locality to teach the Chuhra chil- dren the alphabet. Valmiki’s growing estrangement from Chuhra rituals made his father worry that his son might have converted to Christianity. When Valmiki’s father finds out that his son has begun to use “Valmiki” as his surname, a sign of his self-pride, the older man is ecstatic. Valmiki devotes several pages to the ironies that his new iden- tity entails. While in Bombay, he is taken to be a Brahmin by a Maharashtrian Brahmin family, indicating the possibility of “pass- ing” if one travels far enough from the place of one’s birth. In west- ern Uttar Pradesh, however, this surname does not lift the author up from his Chuhrahood and the attendant untouchability. The Buddhists see him as a casteist, a supporter of the caste system, because he refuses to shed this identity marker as a badge of self- assertion, a declaration that he does not want to hide his Dalit identity. Valmiki points out the daily dilemmas that Dalits face in a caste-based society that make it almost impossible to shed the caste marker and leave behind the stigmas attached to it. In addition to the terminology that the Dalits chose, the gov- ernment gave them bureaucratic nomenclatures. The term Depressed Classes, first used by missionaries in southern India, was later adopted by the British government in its official records. Ambedkar found the term “degrading and contemptuous” and sug- gested several alternatives for it, such as “noncaste Hindus,” xxx Introduction “Protestant Hindus,” “nonconformist Hindus,” “Excluded Castes,” and “Exterior Castes.” Nevertheless, in his own writings and speeches he continued to use Depressed Classes and untouchables interchangeably. Gandhi replaced the term untouchable with Harijan. He claimed that “several untouchable correspondents” who had com- plained about his use of the term asprishya suggested the alterna- tive to him. He explained in Harijan of February 11, 1933: “‘Asprishya’ means literally untouchable. I then invited them to suggest a better name, and one of the ‘untouchable’ correspondents suggested the adoption of the name ‘Harijan,’ on the strength of its having been used by [the] first known Poet-Saint of Gujarat.” Gandhi popularized the term Harijan, and the Government of India, bureaucrats, political leaders, and the national press later adopted it. Dalits, on the other hand, found it patronizing and infantilizing. Because of their vociferous protests, it has now gen- erally gone out of favor. A bureaucratic term that has stuck is Scheduled Castes. It refers to a list of untouchable castes that was prepared by the British government in 1935 and attached to the Order-in-Council issued under the Government of India Act of 1935. The Constitution of India uses Scheduled Castes in a more flexible way, leaving the making of the list, and deletions and additions to it, up to the gov- ernment. The Scheduled Caste identity is a bureaucratic necessity for Dalits when they apply for reserved positions, which are often derided by anti-Dalits as quotas, and for other government bene- fits. The term usually is shortened to SC, and many high-caste Hindus associate it with favoritism, unequal treatment, pork-bar- rel politics, and giving educational and employment opportunities to people lacking in merit and qualifications, as when high-caste Hindus complain about the SCs taking away all the jobs. In Joothan Valmiki draws attention to the bitterness and ambivalence that Dalits feel when they must use the SC identity in order to be considered for jobs reserved for them by law and when others thrust it upon them in contempt.  Introduction xxxi Dalitbahujan is a new term, proposed by Kancha Ilaiah, who, like many other Dalit writers and activists, thinks that the term Dalit should not describe the status and situation of untouchables alone but should cover all victims of poverty and exploitation. The term means the majority and was first used by the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Kanshi Ram, a Dalit from Punjab. Kanshi Ram, an Ambedkarite, proposed in the early 1980s that the untouchables, the Sudras (now given the bureaucratic name of Other Backward Classes—the word classes was thought to be more neutral than castes—usually abbreviated as OBCs), and other non-Hindu minorities, including the Scheduled Tribes (STs), together were more numerous than any single caste or eth- nic group. If they united, they could become a political power. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was launched on April 14, 1984, Ambedkar’s birthday. The party has been able to reduce the supremacy of Brahmins and Kshatriyas in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous province in India, where it is back in power for the third time. A measure of the complexity and oddity of identity politics in India today is that the party, unable to win an absolute majority on its own, is staying in office with the support of the Hindu fundamentalist, or right-wing, party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose ideology and platform are diametrically opposed to the BSP’s. Dalits are thus a major force in India today, playing a decisive role in shaping the future. Spread over the entire country, speaking many languages, and belonging to many religions, they are cer- tainly not a homogeneous community. However, they continue to face certain problems, which emanate from their status as untouchables. The Dalit scholar Bhagwan Das provides a compre- hensive snapshot of how untouchability affects the day-to-day lives of Dalits today: Land-holding upper caste people in villages do not allow the Dalits to wear decent clothes, cast votes freely, ride on a horse in marriage procession, draw water from a public xxxii Introduction well, sit on a cot while the upper caste man is standing. In cities a student belonging to Scheduled Castes is pur- posely given low marks, an officer is prejudged as incom- petent and inefficient just because of his birth in an untouchable caste. A professor, a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, born in an untouchable family, is considered inefficient and inferior without even seeing his perform- ance. A patient refuses to be treated by a Scheduled Caste doctor and a house owner refuses to let a vacant house to him for the fear of pollution. A superior gives bad reports to a Dalit subordinate in order to obstruct his promotion. In everyday talk in the canteens, buses, trains and air- planes, offices and establishments, aspersions are cast on the men and women of untouchable origin and derogato- ry remarks are passed. Universities and colleges abusing the power and authority given to “autonomous bodies” close the doors of progress to students, teachers and employees to protect “merit”—merit earned with fake cer- tificates, unfair practices in examination, nepotism and corruption. (1995:58) Das’s words portray only the day-to-day “normal” experiences of discrimination that Dalits undergo. In rural areas Dalits continue to face physical violence, including mass killings and rapes by vig- ilante groups established and operated by high-caste landowners, when Dalits ask for fair wages and freedom from molestation. The authorities seldom apprehend and punish the perpetrators of such violence. Dalits struggle against these injustices through political as well as cultural means. Dalit literature is one of the major sites of their resistance and creativity. Dalit Literature and Dalit Literary Theory Many Dalit writers have claimed a unique status for Dalit litera- ture, in response to established literary critics who want to sub-  Introduction xxxiii sume it under wider categories of literature in different Indian lan- guages and judge it according to criteria that they claim to be time- less and universal. As a rule, these judgments have been negative and even hostile. Dalit literary theory has emerged as a reaction to these critics. Sharankumar Limbale has summarized the objec- tions that the so-called mainstream literary critics have raised about Dalit literature: “It has been charged that Dalit literature is propagandistic, univocal and negative; that it does not represent the individual person; and that excessive resentment is heard in Dalit literature” (in press).6 Dalit writers have responded that Dalit literature appears to be propagandistic because it has emerged as part of the movement for Dalit liberation and its rai- son d’être remains the commitment to this movement. In his own book in Hindi on Dalit aesthetics Valmiki writes: “The Dalit lit- erary movement is not just a literary movement. It is also a cultur- al and social movement. Dalit society has been imprisoned for a thousand years in the dark mist of ignorance, deprived of knowl- edge. Dalit literature is the portrayal of the wishes and aspirations of these oppressed and tormented Dalits” (2001:97).7 Limbale reit- erates this sentiment by saying that “because Dalit writers have presented their anguish and their questions in their literature, their literature has acquired a propagandistic character” (in press). Dalit writers turn the tables on mainstream literary values by charging that the literature of the dominant group is not “good” lit- erature because it has ignored the suffering and exploitation of Dalits. Stating that high-caste Marathi literature is artificial and false, like a paper flower, M. N. Wankhade adds that “a Marathi writer’s understanding of life is restricted.... He has never seen that outside there is a vast world—a suffering, distressed, strug- 6. All quotations from Sharankumar Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature, come from the English translation by Alok Mukherjee of Limbale’s Marathi text (Delhi: Orient Longman, in press). I am thankful to the translator for giving me access to the manuscript. 7. This and all subsequent translations of the Hindi edition of Omprakash Valmiki, Dalit Sahitya ka Saundaryashastra (Delhi: Radhakrishna, 2001), are mine. xxxiv Introduction gling, howling world, burning with anger from within like a prairie fire” (1992:316). Valmiki finds similar problems of caste and class bias in con- temporary Hindi literature and says that since upper-caste writers do not know the miseries of Dalits, what they write remains superficial, born out of sympathy but not out of a desire for change or repentance. Dalit writers and critics have contested attempts by mainstream critics to include these high-caste portrayals of Dalits under the rubric of Dalit literature. They claim that Dalit litera- ture can be written only by Dalits:“Dragging and cutting dead ani- mals—how will non-Dalits write about this experience of Dalits with the power of their imagination? How will they feel the angry ideas rising in the hearts of untouchables on the basis of their helpless imagination?” (Limbale, in press). In a similar vein Valmiki ridicules the Hindi writer Kashinath Singh, who said that “one does not have to be a horse in order to write about one.... Only the horse, tethered to its stall after a whole day’s exhausting labor, knows how it feels, and not its owner” (2001:x). In making such claims, Dalit writers are not alone; aboriginal writers in the United States and Canada have made similar declarations. This battle about representation is reminiscent of the struggle between Gandhi and Ambedkar in 1932. At the roundtable confer- ence held in London to discuss the future of India, Gandhi denied Ambedkar’s claim to be the representative of untouchables, and Gandhi claimed for himself the identity of a “self-chosen untouch- able.” Dalit writers demand that their right to self-represent be acknowledged. However, not only has this right been constantly challenged but Dalit writers’ representations have also been denounced as false. Every time a Dalit writer’s story is published in the Hindi monthly publication Hans, the editor receives a flurry of letters claiming that the atrocities described in the story are untrue. Clearly, readers are strongly divided about the value of Dalit literature, and Dalit writers have decided to depend on their own value judgments. According to Limbale, “The standard of a work of literature depends on how much and in what way an artist’s  Introduction xxxv ideas embedded in the work affect the reader.... That literary work will be the best, which raises the highest degree of ‘Dalit con- sciousness”’ (in press). Responding to those who find Dalit literature lacking in aes- thetic sophistication, Limbale declares that “Freedom is the [high- est] aesthetic value.... Equality, freedom, justice and love are basic sentiments of people and society. They are many times more important than pleasure and beauty” (in press). Thus what detractors have enumerated as faults, Dalit writers have embraced as the distinct aspects of Dalit aesthetics. Defining Dalit literature and its characteristics substantively, Valmiki says, “Dalit literature is the literature of the masses. It is a literature of action, based on human values, which wages a struggle born out of anger and rebellion against feudalistic mindsets” (2001:15). There are many points of conjuncture between Marxist and Dalit perspectives on the world, society, and literature. Theorists like Limbale feel that Dalit literature and literary theory should not reject Marxism just because Indian Marxists have completely ignored caste-based oppression, forgetting the truth of Ambedkar’s observation that caste creates a division of workers. Nevertheless, many Dalit writers harbor considerable suspicion vis-à-vis Marxist theory and Indian Marxists. Ilaiah says that Marxism in India lost its revolutionary edge because it “fell into the hands of most reactionary forces—the Brahmins, the Baniyas [traders and merchants, i.e., the Vaisyas] and the neo-Kshatriyas” (1996:50). Omvedt says that “Indian leftists have not paid adequate attention to cultural and symbolic issues. They have thus not con- fronted the meaning and forms of the brahminic hegemonising of Indian culture” (1996:vii–viii). Dalit Literature and Autobiography Autobiography has been a favorite genre of Dalit writers. This is not surprising, in light of the emphasis that they place on authen- ticity of experience. Here again Dalit writers have faced criticism xxxvi Introduction from mainstream critics who say that autobiography is not a liter- ary genre. Moreover, they have claimed that Dalit autobiographies are unstructured, artless outpourings of Dalit writers’ unmediated experience and have become repetitive and stereotypical. Valmiki says that even some Dalit writers have internalized this negative view of autobiography. Valmiki quotes Das’s defense of the genre: “ ‘Dalit writers should write autobiographies so that not only our history will stay alive but also our true portrayals of wrongdoers. Dalit autobiographies will provide inspiration to our future gener- ations”’ (Valmiki 2001:20). Valmiki and other Dalit writers thus interrogate the main- stream critics’ allocation of a nonliterary status to autobiography. Ilaiah says that a narrative of “personal experience brings out reality in a striking way.... Ambedkar and Periyar spoke and wrote on the day-to-day experiences of the Dalitbahujan castes.8 I would argue that this is the only possible and indeed the most authentic way in which the deconstruction and reconstruction of history can take place” (1996:xii). Answering mainstream critics, Valmiki says that autobiography is not just a remembering of things past but a shaping and structuring of them in such a way as to help understand one’s life and the social order that shaped it, on the one hand, and to arouse a passion for change in the Dalit reader on the other. One main point of Dalit literary analysis is that Dalit litera- ture is based on real life and the lived experience of Dalit writers. While mainstream critics have seen this as evidence of a lack of imagination in Dalit writing, suggesting that Dalit literature is nothing but reportage, Dalit writers point to the authenticity of experience as the most important characteristic of Dalit writing. 8. Periyar means great soul, or mahatma, the honorific given to E. P. Ramasamy Naicker (1880–1974), the great leader of the non-Brahmins of Tamil Nadu. Naicker founded the Dravida Kazhagam, or Dravidian Federation, a party of political, social, and cultural reform that rallied south Indians against the Brahmin hegemony and called on them to take pride in their own distinct culture. He founded the Self- Respect movement for non-Brahmins.  Introduction xxxvii Reading Valmiki’s short story collection, Salaam, for example, one is struck by how many stories are based on the life experiences that Valmiki describes in Joothan. When I questioned him about it dur- ing an interview, Valmiki insisted that all his stories are based on real incidents.9 Another important credo of Dalit writing is the rejection of Hindu mythology as anti-Dalit and brahminist. According to Dangle,“The tradition and culture of ancient India do not contain anything which a Dalit can own with pride” (1992:264). Dalit analyses of ancient Indian sacerdotal texts have been irreverent, turning the heroes into villains and vice versa. Ilaiah retells the mythological stories about gods and goddesses like Ram and Sita, Shiva and Parvati, Vishnu and Lakshmi, and others from a Dalit point of view, rehabilitating the traditionally demonized charac- ters in them. He says: “All the Gods and Goddesses are institu- tionalized, modified and contextualized in a most brazen anti- Dalitbahujan mode. Hinduism has been claiming that the Dalitbahujans are Hindus, but at the same time their very Gods are openly against them” (1992:72). Valmiki says that Dalit literature has recuperated such stig- matized characters as Eklavya, Karna, and Shambuk from ancient epics and established them as heroes (2001:87). How consciously Dalit writers use language became evident to me when, during our interview, Valmiki explained that he used the analogy of the goddess Durga in Joothan to describe his mother’s anger when she throws away the basketful of joothan after the higher-caste character Sukhdev Singh Tyagi insults her. This is the only place in the text where he draws on traditional Hindu mythology. Like the goddess, who is the embodiment of shakti or power, his mother will not be submissive against such an insult but will avenge herself. Valmiki said that he used the analogy under duress, because he could not find another equivalent that would appropriately describe his mother’s heroic action and her 9. I interviewed Omprakash Valmiki in Dehra Dun on July 4, 2002. xxxviii Introduction anger. (The goddess Durga is the protective mother who will also use her power to rid the world of evil.) Dalit writers like Valmiki are thus producing literary analysis and literary theory simultaneously with their literary creations. They show tremendous independence of mind when they reeval- uate canonical literature, respond to conservative critics who talk about “literary standards,” and analyze Dalit writings from a Dalit-centric perspective. The high-caste literary establishment can no longer continue to present its choices as universal and timeless. Moreover, by producing their own discourse and pub- lishing it in small Dalit-run journals, Dalit writers have created a space for themselves. Joothan: A Dalit Literary Text In his preface Valmiki writes that Joothan presents “experiences that did not find room in literary creations.” Experiences like Valmiki’s—his birth and growing up in the untouchable caste of Chuhra, the bottom slot preassigned to him because of this acci- dent of birth, the heroic struggle that he waged to survive this preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution, his coming to consciousness under the influence of Ambedkarite thought, and his transformation into a speaking subject and recorder of the oppression and exploitation that he endured not only as an individual but as a member of a stigma- tized and oppressed community—had never been represented in the annals of Hindi literature. He therefore has broken new ground, mapped a new territory. Besides a few stray poems and short stories by canonical Hindi writers, which portray Dalit characters as tragic figures and objects of pathos, Dalit repre- sentations are conspicuously absent from contemporary Hindi literature. A literary critic, reared in an educational system that taught a canon of literature focused solely on the experience of the privi- leged sections of society, whether of India or of the West, must  Introduction xxxix tread cautiously in this new territory, using the benchmarks pro- vided by Dalit literary theory and continuously on guard against those kinds of formalist analyses that privilege form over content. How far removed Valmiki’s subject matter is from the day-to- day experience of an urban middle-class reader is evident from the very title, Joothan. It proves the truth of Dangle’s claim that Dalit writing demands a new dictionary, for the words that it uses are as new as the objects, situations, and activities that they describe (1992:252). The Hindi word joothan literally means food left on a plate, usually destined for the garbage pail in a middle-class urban home. However, such food would be characterized joothan only if someone else were to eat it. The word carries the connotations of ritual purity and pollution, because jootha means polluted. I feel that words such as leftovers or leavings are not adequate substitutes for joothan. Leftovers has no negative connotations and can simply mean food remaining in the pot that can be eaten at the next meal; leavings, although widely used by Ambedkar and Gandhi, is no longer in the active vocabulary of Indian English. Scraps and slops are somewhat closer to joothan, but they are associated more with pigs than with humans. The title encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of Valmiki’s community, which not only had to rely on joothan but also relished it. Valmiki gives a detailed description of collecting, preserving, and eating joothan. His memories of being assigned to guard the drying joothan from crows and chickens, and of his rel- ishing the dried and reprocessed joothan, burn him with renewed pain and humiliation many years later. The term actually carries a lot of historical baggage. Both Ambedkar and Gandhi advised untouchables to stop accepting joothan. Ambedkar, an indefatiga- ble documenter of atrocities against Dalits, shows how the high- caste villagers could not tolerate the decision of Dalits to no longer accept joothan and threatened Dalits with violence if they refused it. Valmiki has thus recovered a word from the painful past of Dalit history, and it resonates with multiple ironies. Gandhi’s paternalistic preaching, which assumed that accepting joothan was xl Introduction simply a bad habit that the untouchables could discard, when jux- taposed with Ambedkar’s passionate exhortation to fellow untouchables to not accept joothan even when its refusal provoked violence, press against Valmiki’s text, proliferating in multiple meanings. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the most powerful moments of the text comes when Valmiki’s mother overturns a basketful of joothan after Sukhdev Singh Tyagi humiliates her. Her act of defiance is an example of rebellion to the child Valmiki. He has dedicated the book to her and his father and portrays both as heroic figures who desired something better for their child and fought for his safety and growth with tremendous courage. His father’s ambitions for his son are evident in the nickname that he gave him, Munshiji. An honorific title, it meant an officer who kept and prepared records. The child Valmiki rises on their shoul- ders to become the first high school graduate from his neighbor- hood. He pays his debt by giving voice to the indignities suffered by his parents and other Dalits. Valmiki’s inscription of these moments of profound violation of his and his people’s human rights is extremely powerful and deeply disturbing. He constructs Joothan in the form of wave upon wave of memories that erupt in his mind when triggered by a stim- ulus in the present. These are memories of trauma that Valmiki had suppressed. He uses the metaphors of erupting lava, explo- sions, conflagrations, and flooding to denote their uncontrollable character. The text follows the logic of the recall of these memo- ries. Instead of following a linear pattern, Valmiki moves from memory to memory, showing how his present is deeply scarred by his past despite the great distance that he has traveled to get away from it. The text abounds in metaphors of assault, wound, dis- memberment, scarring, and so on, conveying the brutality and vio- lence of the social order that the narrator inhabits. Valmiki presents the traumatic moments of encounter with his persecutors as dramatized scenes, as cinematic moments. His narration of the event captures the intensity of the memory and  Introduction xli suggests that he has not yet healed from these traumas of the past. We see a full-dress reenactment of the event from the perspective of the child or the adolescent Valmiki. Many Dalit texts share this strategy of staging encounters between the Dalit narrator and peo- ple of upper castes. Often these encounters are between a Dalit child at his or her most vulnerable and an upper-caste adult in a position of authority. The fullness of detail with which they are inscribed suggests how strongly these past events are imprinted in the narrator’s mind. The Dalit narrator lives these traumatic experiences again but this time in order to go past them by understanding them in an ethical framework and passing judgment on them, something that the child could not do. Valmiki thus provides a double exposure, first capturing the event from the perspective of a traumatized child and the fear and danger that he experienced and then layer- ing it with the adult narrator’s perspective, condemning the social system that allowed the perpetrators of such atrocities to go unpunished. The theoretical glossing of the experience, then, is a sort of healing, a symbol of having overcome it by naming it and sharing it with a caring community. By documenting these experiences of the Dalit child, first by theatricalizing them so that we see them for ourselves and then by commenting on them in the ethical language of guilt and respon- sibility from the perspective of the victim, Valmiki and other Dalit writers break through the wall of silence and denial that had hid- den the suffering of the Dalits. Valmiki’s encounters with his var- ious schoolteachers show how Dalit children are abused verbally, physically, and publicly, without anyone coming to their rescue. He relives the agony of having to sit away from his classmates, on the floor, of being denied the right to drink from the common pitch- er, lest he make it jootha, and, worst of all, being denied access to the lab, which ensured his failure in an examination. The text, as testimony to a crime suffered, acquires the character of a victim impact statement. Valmiki intertextualizes his and his Dalit friends’ encounters xlii Introduction with upper-caste teachers and the Brahmin teacher Dronacharya in the Mahabharata. Dronacharya tricked his low-caste disciple Eklavya into amputating his thumb and presenting it as part of his gurudakshina, or teacher’s tribute.10 By doing this, Dronacharya ensured that Eklavya, the better student of archery, could never compete against Arjun, the Kshatriya disciple. Indeed, after losing his thumb, Eklavya could no longer perform archery. When peo- ple of high caste tell this popular story, they present a casteless Eklavya as the exemplar of an obedient disciple rather than the Brahmin Dronacharya as a perfidious and biased teacher. When Valmiki’s father goes to the school and calls the headmaster a Dronacharya, he links twentieth-century caste relations to those that prevailed two thousand years ago. By showing his father’s abil- ity to deconstruct the story, Valmiki portrays Dalits as articulate subjects who have seen through the cherished myths of their oppressors. When in a literature class a teacher waxes eloquent about this same Dronacharya, Valmiki challenges the teacher, only to be ruthlessly caned. Valmiki’s reconfiguration of the myth also intertextualizes Joothan with other Dalit texts, which frequently use the character of Eklavya as representing the denial of educa- tion to Dalits. The modern Dalit Eklavya, however, can no longer be tricked into self-mutilation. While Valmiki indicts the education system as dealing in death for Dalits, Valmiki pays tribute to the Dalit organic intellectuals who help nurture the growth of a Dalit consciousness in him. Although one of these is his father, who has the temerity to call the headmaster a Dronacharya, another is Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu, whose rendering of Ambedkar’s life is put into Valmiki’s hands by his friend Hemlal. Hemlal has shed his stigmatized identity as a Chamar by changing his name from Jatia, which identifies him as an untouchable, to Jatav, which is not readity identifiable.11 Reading 10 The Mahabharata is a classical Sanskrit epic composed between 200 b.c. and 200 a.d. 11. See page 79.  Introduction xliii about Ambedkar’s life is a transformative moment for Valmiki, rendered in the metaphors of melting away his deadening silence and the magical transformation of his muteness into voice. This moment, narrativized at length in Joothan, gives us a key to how marginalized groups walk onto the stage of history. Valmiki underscores the way that Ambedkar has been excised from the hagiography of nationalist discourse. Valmiki first encounters Ambedkar through the writing of a fellow Dalit, passed on to him by another Dalit, in a library run by Dalits. When I interviewed Valmiki, he told me that Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu used to pub- lish inexpensive and accessible materials on Ambedkar’s life and bought and sold these publications on the street himself. Valmiki says that he emulated Jigyasu and sold Ambedkarite literature on Ambedkar’s birthday in front of the Indian Parliament in Delhi. Valmiki mocks and rewrites the village pastoral that was long a staple of Indian literature in many languages, as well as a staple of the nationalist discourse of grassroots democracy. Valmiki por- trays a village life where the members of his caste, Chuhras, lived outside the village, were forced to perform unpaid labor, and were denied basic requirements like access to public land and water, let alone education or camaraderie. Valmiki describes in painstaking detail the process of removing and skinning dead animals, curing the hide, and taking it to the hide market, which is permeated with the stench of raw hides and fresh bones. We read about the clean- ing of stinking straw beds in the cattle sheds of higher-caste vil- lagers. He describes the tasks involved in reaping and harvesting in terms of intense physical labor under a scorching sun and the nee- dle pricks of the sheaves of grain. Valmiki shows that he per- formed most of these tasks under duress and was often paid noth- ing. The most painful of such episodes occurs when Fauza yanks Valmiki away from his books and drags him to his field to sow sugarcane just a day before Valmiki’s math exam. Such a portrayal of village life is very unlike the lyric mode of Hindi nature poetry where the sickle-wielding, singing farmworker is just an accessory of the picturesque landscape. xliv Introduction Valmiki does not trust that his upper-caste readers will under- stand his point of view or believe the veracity of his experience. He preempts such responses by addressing them in his preface: “To those who say that these things do not to happen here, to those who want to claim a superior status for Indian civilization, I say that only those who have suffered this anguish know its sting.” Every time Valmiki describes a violent encounter with the oppres- sor, he inserts the challenging and dissenting voices that constantly deny his testimony. By so doing, he provides readers with not only his experience as a victim but an inkling of how some people flatly deny such experiences ever occurred. His voice acquires a bitterly ironic tone when he addresses those who deny these experiences. In fact, one distinctive aspect of Joothan, which marks it as a Dalit text, is its interrogative discourse. The text is full of questions that demand an answer: “Why didn’t an epic poet ever write a word about our lives?”“Why is it a crime to ask to be paid for one’s labor?” “Why are Hindus so cruel, so heartless against Dalits?” Such inter- rogatory rhetoric, which brings out the contradictions in the dom- inant society’s ideology and behavior, reminds one of Ambedkar’s fiery writing and speeches, which are peppered with witty, pungent, and harsh questions: “I asked them [our Hindu friends], ‘You take the milk from the cows and buffaloes and when they are dead you expect us to remove the dead bodies. Why? If you carry the dead bodies of your mothers to cremate, why do you not carry the dead bodies of your “mother-cows” yourself?”’ (Ambedkar 1969:143). Valmiki, like many other Dalit writers, demands the status of truth for his writing, taking issue with those who find Dalit liter- ature lacking in imagination. Valmiki dismisses imagination as make-believe, insisting that he writes about the “suffered real.” Valmiki’s critical writing repeatedly stresses the authentic por- trayal of society as a Dalit literary value. One aspect of such an insistence on truth is Valmiki’s use of real names in Joothan. Valmiki’s insistence that all people and events in Joothan are true poses a considerable challenge to postmodernist critics who propose that autobiography’s truth is “constructed,” that the auto-  Introduction xlv biographic narrator shapes a presentable self by reprocessing his or her memories in order to fit the present. Dalit autobiography claims the status of truth, of testimony. Naming people and places by their real names is one strategy through which Valmiki estab- lishes the status of Joothan as testimony. The concrete materiality of his village and the cities that he later inhabits, and the render- ing of historical Dalit protests that he participated in or wrote about in the newspapers at a personal cost, give Joothan the status of documented Dalit history. The timbre of his voice is exhortatory. It demands answers and points out contradictions. While the text has many moments of deep sadness and pathos, its predominant mood is irony. The narrative comments are inevitably in an ironic voice, pouring sar- casm on the cherished cultural ideals and myths of high-caste friends. Valmiki makes fun of their well-meaning advice to him to write about universals rather than about the “narrow circle” of par- ticularism. He relentlessly exposes the double standards of friends who are greatly interested in literature and theater yet practice untouchability in subtle ways, such as having a different set of teacups for their untouchable visitors. Indeed, Joothan demands a radical shift from the upper-caste and upper-class reader by insisting that such readers not forget their caste or class privilege. Unlike canonical Hindi or English writing, where the reader’s, or the writer’s, caste and class are often considered irrelevant, Joothan’s dual approach problematizes the reader’s caste and class. While Valmiki directs his irony, satire, harangue, and anger at non-Dalit readers, he sees Dalit readers as fellow sufferers. Valmiki claims in his preface that his Dalit read- ers’ letters enabled him to continue to expand his narrative after a fifteen-page autobiographical piece was published in a Dalit col- lection aptly titled Harijan se Dalit (From Harijan to Dalit). While the indictment of an unjust social system and its bene- factors is one thrust of the text, its other important preoccupation is a substantive examination of Dalit lives. Joothan combines repre- sentations of struggles with the external enemy and the enemy xlvi Introduction within: the internalization by Dalit people of upper-caste brahminic values, the superstitions of Dalit villagers, the patriar- chal oppression of Dalit women by their men, the attempts by Dalits who have attained a middle-class economic status to “pass” as high caste and the attendant denial of their roots, their inferi- ority complex, which makes them criticize the practice of rural Dalits of rearing pigs—all these aspects of Dalit struggle are an equally important aspect of Joothan. This self-critique has earned him brickbats from many Dalits who find the frank portrayal of Dalit society to be humiliating. For them, it is tantamount to washing dirty linen in public. Valmiki accuses these Dalits of suc- cumbing to brahminism. His frank critique of his own family members who hide their caste and therefore deny their relation- ship to Valmiki in public must have been painful to the people involved, particularly because he named them. Joothan, then, is a multivalent, polyvocal text, healing the frac- tured self through narrating, contributing to the archive of Dalit history, opening a dialogue with the silencing oppressors, and pro- viding solace as well as frank criticism to his own people. Its over- all effect is truly paradoxical, for Valmiki’s becoming a speaking subject shows that Indian democracy has opened some escape hatches through which a critical mass of articulate, educated Dalits has emerged. On the other hand, the harsh realities that he portrays so powerfully underscore the failure to fully meet the promises made in the Constitution of independent India. Joothan stridently asks for the promissory note, joining a chorus of Dalit voices that are demanding their rightful place under the sun. A manifesto for revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness, Joothan confronts its readers with difficult questions about their own humanity and invites them to join the universal project of human liberation. I do hope that this English translation of Joothan conveys the timbre of Valmiki’s voice: its honesty, its anger, its mockery, and its sadness. No translation is a replica of the original text, and every translation necessarily entails a loss. My translation of Joothan is no  Introduction xlvii exception. At times the English version may sound awkward, but I have chosen awkwardness over falsification or softening. For exam- ple, the Hindi term jatak, as used by the village upper castes, does not translate as child or children because these English words have positive connotations. I have therefore used progeny to convey the coldness and contempt in caste-inflected interactions. It has, of course, been impossible to convey the different reg- isters of Valmiki’s Hindi. The speech and conversations of his family and villagers are in local dialect but with distinct variations, the linguistic equivalent of the social distance between them. The differences between the adult narrator’s literary Hindi and the dialect attributed to his childhood self poignantly mark the emo- tional and physical distance that Valmiki has traveled from illiter- acy to literacy, from the village to the city. All cross-cultural communication involves a loss in meaning. Valmiki constantly worries whether savarna Hindus who have not experienced the hardships of untouchability will understand him. Dalit literary theory cautions us against notions of mastery of Dalit texts, reminding us that the Dalits’ life worlds have been shaped differently because they had to make do with other people’s garbage and joothan. Limbale proposes that what the readers and critics need more than anything else when reading Dalit writing is empathy. Rejecting the traditional apparatus for evaluating and understanding texts because it is infected with caste- and class- based values, Limbale suggests that we measure the success of a Dalit text by how powerfully it affects the reader’s consciousness. If this translated version of Joothan manages to engage readers by appealing to their consciousness and arousing their empathy, it will have done its job. Delhi and Toronto August 2002 xlviii Introduction references Ambedkar, B. R. 1969. Thus Spoke Ambedkar: Selected Speeches. Vol. 2. Edited by Bhagwan Das. Jullundur, India: Bheem Patrika Publications. ———. 1989a.“Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi” [1936, 1944]. In Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches. Vol. 1. Compiled by Vasant Moon. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra. ———.1989b. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches. Vol. 5. Edited by Vasant Moon. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra. ———. 1990. The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables? (1948). In Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches. Vol. 7. Edited by Vasant Moon. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra. Dangle, Arjun. 1992. “Dalit Literature, Past, Present, and Future.” In Arjun Dangle, ed., Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature, pp. 234–36. Translated by Avinash S. Pandit and Daya Agarwal. Bombay: Orient Longman. Das, Bhagwan. n.d. “Editorial Note on the History of the Conversion Movement Launched by Dr. Ambedkar on 13 October 1935 at Yeola, District Nasik, Bombay.” In Thus Spoke Ambedkar: Selected Speeches. Vol. 4. Edited by Bhagwan Das. Bangalore, India: Ambedkar Sahitya Prakashan. ———. 1995. “Socio-Economic Problems of Dalits.” In Dalit Solidarity. Edited by Bhagwan Das and James Massey. Delhi: Indian Society for the Promoting Christian Knowledge. Ilaiah, Kancha. 1996. Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture, and Political Economy. Calcutta: Samya. Kosambi, Damodar Dharmanand. 1995. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. Lal, A. C. 1995. “Opening Address: Dalit Solidarity Conference, Nagpur, 1992.” In Dalit Solidarity. Edited by Bhagwan Das and James Massey. Delhi: Indian Society for the Promoting Christian Knowledge. Limbale, Sharankumar. In press. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature: History, Controversies, and Considerations. Translated by Alok Mukherjee. Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman. Mukherjee, Prabhati. 1988. Beyond the Four Varnas: The Untouchables in India. Shimla, India: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Omvedt, Gail. 1994. Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. Delhi: Sage. ———. 1996. Dalit Visions: The Anti-Caste Movement and the Construction of an Indian Identity. Delhi: Orient Longman. Valmiki, Omprakash. 2001. Dalit Sahitya ka Saundaryashastra. Delhi: Radhakrishna. Wankhade, M. N. 1992.“Friends, the Day of Irresponsible Writing Is Over.” In Arjun Dangle, ed., Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature, pp. 314–23. Translated by Maxine Berntsen. Bombay: Orient Longman. Joothan  O ur house was next to Chandrabhan Taga’s cattle shed. Families of Muslim weavers lived on the other side of it. Right in front of the cattle shed was a little pond that had created a sort of partition between the Chuhras’ dwellings and the village. The pond was called Dabbowali, and it is hard to say how it got that name. Perhaps because its shape was that of a big pit. On one side of the pit were the high walls of the brick homes of the Tagas. At a right angle to these were the clay walls of the two or three homes of the Jhinwars, another untouchable caste. After these were more homes of the Tagas. The homes of the Chuhras were on the edges of the pond. All the women of the village, young girls, older women, even the newly married brides, would sit in the open space behind these homes at the edges of the pond to take a shit. Not just under the cover of darkness but even in daylight. The purdah-observing Tyagi women, their faces covered with their saris, shawls around their shoulders, found relief in this open-air latrine.1 They sat on Dabbowali’s shores without worrying about decency, exposing their private parts. At this same spot they would have a conference at a round table to discuss all the quarrels of the village. The muck was strewn everywhere. The stench was so overpowering that one would choke within a minute. The pigs wandering in narrow lanes, naked children, dogs, daily fights—this was the environment of my childhood. If the people who call the caste system an ideal 1. Taga is the abbreviation of the surname Tyagi. 1 2 Joothan social arrangement had to live in this environment for a day or two, they would change their mind. Our family lived in this Chuhra basti.2 Five sons, one daugh- ter, and our uncles—two chachas, one tau, and his family.3 Chachas and tau lived separately. Everyone in the family did some work or other. Even then we didn’t manage to get two decent meals a day. We did all sorts of work for the Tagas, including cleaning their homes, agricultural work, and general labor. We would often have to work without pay. Nobody dared to refuse this unpaid work for which we got neither money nor grain. Instead, we got sworn at and abused. They did not call us by our names. If a person was older than we were, then he would call us “Oe, Chuhre.” If the per- son was younger than we were or of the same age, then he would use “Abey, Chuhre.”4 Untouchability was so rampant that while it was considered all right to touch dogs and cats or cows and buffaloes, if one [a higher-caste person] happened to touch a Chuhra, one got con- taminated or polluted. The Chuhras were not seen as human. They were simply things for use. Their utility lasted until the work was done. Use them and then throw them away. A Christian used to visit our neighborhood. His name was Sewak Ram Masihi. He would sit with the children of the Chuhras around him. He used to teach us reading and writing. The government schools did not allow us to enroll. My family sent only me to Sewak Ram Masihi. My brothers were all working. There was no question of sending our sister to school. I learned my alphabet in Master Sewak Ram Masihi’s open-air school, a school without mats or rooms. One day Sewak Ram Masihi and my father had an argument. My father took me to the Basic Primary School. There my father begged Master Har Phool 2. Basti refers to settlement. In the villages the huts would be built of mud, and usu- ally people of the same caste would live side by side. 3. See these and other kinship terms listed in the glossary. 4. These are slighting, pejorative ways of addressing someone: “You, Chuhre.”  Joothan 3 Singh: “Masterji, I will be forever in your debt if you teach this child of mine a letter or two.”5 Master Har Phool Singh asked us to return the next day. My father went. He kept going for several days. Finally, one day I was admitted to the school. The country had become independent eight years earlier. Gandhiji’s uplifting of the untouchables was having ramifications everywhere. Although the doors of the gov- ernment schools had begun to open for untouchables, the mental- ity of the ordinary people had not changed much. I had to sit away from the others in the class, and even that wasn’t enough. I was not allowed to sit on a chair or a bench. I had to sit on the bare floor; I was not allowed even to sit on the mat. Sometimes I would have to sit way behind everybody, right near the door. From there, the letters on the board seemed faded. The children of the Tyagis would tease me by calling me “Chuhre ka.”6 Sometimes they would beat me for no reason. This was an absurd, tormented life that made me introverted and irri- table. If I got thirsty in school, then I had to stand near the hand pump.7 The boys would beat me in any case, but the teachers also punished me. They tried all sorts of strategies so that I would run away from the school and take up the kind of work for which I was born. According to these perpetrators, my attempts to get school- ing were not justifiable. Ram Singh and Sukkhan Singh were also in my class. Ram Singh was of the Chamar caste and Sukkhan Singh was a Jhinwar, both untouchables like me. Ram Singh’s father and mother 5. In general, few adults are called simply by their first names. In northern India, where this autobiography is set, speakers always add the honorific ji as a courtesy suf- fix, because simply calling someone by a name is seen as presumptuous and rude; some people also believe that a name is something powerful, not to be taken lightly. In this context, to call to a person with “Abey, Chuhre” is extremely derogatory. 6.This is a pejorative that means,“You, offspring of the Chuhras.”Ka is the possessive case here meaning Chuhr’es offspring; ke is the vocative case of addressive: “Hey, you Chuhra.” 7. He had to stand near the pump and wait for someone from another caste who could touch the pump to notice and give him some water. If an untouchable touched the hand pump, it would need “purification” before the other castes could use it. 4 Joothan worked as agricultural laborers. Sukkhan Singh’s father was a peon in the Inter College [a junior high school]. The three of us studied together, grew up together, experienced the sweet and sour moments of childhood together. All three of us were very good in our studies, but our extremely lower-caste background dogged us at every step. Barla Village also had some Muslim Tyagis who were called Tagas as well. The behavior of these Muslim Tagas was just like that of the Hindu Tagas. If we ever went out wearing neat and clean clothes, we had to hear their taunts that pierced deep inside, like poisoned arrows. If we went to school in neat and clean clothes, our classmates said,“Abey, Chuhre ka, he has come dressed in new clothes.” If we went wearing old and shabby clothes, then they said,“Abey, Chuhre ke, get away from me, you stink.” This was our no-win situation. We were humiliated whichever way we dressed. I reached fourth class.8 Kaliram had replaced the headmaster, Bishambar Singh. Along with him had come another new teacher. After the arrival of these two, the three of us fell on terrible times. They would thrash us at the slightest excuse. Ram Singh would escape once in a while, but Sukkhan Singh and I got beaten almost daily. I was very weak and skinny in those days. Sukkhan Singh developed a boil on his belly, just below his ribs. While in class, he used to keep his shirt folded up to keep the boil uncovered. This way the shirt could be kept clear of the puss, and he thought that if the teacher could see the boil, he would be decent and not hit him. One day the teacher’s fist hit the boil while he was thrashing Sukkhan Singh. Sukkhan screamed with pain. The boil had burst. Seeing him flailing with pain, I too began to cry. While we cried, the teacher was showering abuse on us non- stop. If I repeated his abusive words here, they would smear the nobility of Hindi. I say that, because many big-name Hindi writ- ers wrinkled their noses and eyebrows when I had a character 8. Students in the fourth class are around ten years old.  Joothan 5 swear in my short story “Bail ki Khal” (The Ox Hide). Coincidentally, the character who swore was a Brahmin, that is, the knower of Brahma, of God. Was it possible? Would a Brahmin swear? The ideal image of the teachers that I saw in my childhood has remained indelibly imprinted on my memory. Whenever someone starts talking about a great guru, I remember all those teachers who used to swear about mothers and sisters. They used to fondle good-looking boys and invite them to their homes and sexually abuse them. One day the headmaster, Kaliram, called me to his room and asked: “Abey, what is your name?” “Omprakash,” I answered slowly and fearfully. Children used to feel scared just encountering the headmaster. The entire school was terrified of him. “Chuhre ka?” the headmaster threw his second question at me. “Ji.” “All right. See that teak tree there? Go. Climb that tree. Break some twigs and make a broom. And sweep the whole school clean as a mirror. It is, after all, your family occupation. “Go—get to it.” Obeying the headmaster’s orders, I cleaned all the rooms and the verandas. Just as I was about to finish, he came to me and said, “After you have swept the rooms, go and sweep the playground.” The playground was much larger than my small physique could handle, and in cleaning it my back began to ache. My face was covered with dust. I had dust inside my mouth. The other children in my class were studying and I was sweeping. The head- master was sitting in his room and watching me. I was not even allowed to get a drink of water. I swept the whole day. I had never done so much work, being the pampered one among my brothers. The second day, as soon as I reached school, the headmaster again put me to sweeping the school. I swept the whole day. I was consoling myself that I would go back to class the next day. The third day I went to the class and sat down quietly. After 6 Joothan a few minutes the headmaster’s loud thundering was heard: “Abey, Chuhre ke, motherfucker, where are you hiding your mother?” I began to shake uncontrollably. A Tyagi boy shouted,“Master Sahib, there he is, sitting in the corner.” The headmaster pounced on my neck. The pressure of his fin- gers was increasing. As a wolf grabs a lamb by the neck, he dragged me out of the class and threw me on the ground. He screamed:“Go sweep the whole playground—otherwise I will shove chilis up your ass and throw you out of the school.” Frightened, I picked up the three-day-old broom. Just like me, it was shedding its dried up leaves. All that remained were the thin sticks. Tears were falling from my eyes. I started to sweep the com- pound while my tears fell. From the doors and windows of the schoolrooms, the teachers and the boys saw this spectacle. Each pore of my body was submerged in an abyss of anguish. Just then my father passed by the school. He stopped abrupt- ly when he saw me sweeping the school compound. He called me: “Munshiji, what are you doing?” Munshiji was the pet name my father had given me. When I saw him, I burst out sobbing. He entered the school compound and came toward me. Seeing me crying, he asked,“Munshiji, why are you crying? Tell me, what has happened?” I was hiccuping by now. In between my hiccups I told the whole story to my father: that the teachers had been making me sweep for the last three days, that they did not let me enter the classroom at all. Pitaji snatched the broom from my hand and threw it away. His eyes were blazing. Pitaji, who was always taut as a bowstring in front of others, was so angry that his dense moustache was flut- tering. He began to scream,“Who is that teacher, that progeny of Dronacharya, who forces my son to sweep?” Pitaji’s voice had echoed through the whole school. All the teachers, along with the headmaster, came out. Kaliram, the head- master, threatened my father and called him names. But his threats had no effect on Pitaji. I have never forgotten the courage and the  Joothan 7 fortitude with which my father confronted the headmaster that day. Pitaji had all sorts of weaknesses, but the decisive turn that he gave my future that day has had a great influence on my personality. The headmaster had roared, “Take him away from here. The Chuhra wants him educated. Go, go—otherwise I will have your bones broken.” Pitaji took my hand and started walking toward our home. As he walked away, he said, loud enough for the headmaster to hear, “You are a teacher. So I am leaving now. But remember this much, Master: This Chuhre ka will study right here, in this school. And not just him, there will be more coming after him.” Pitaji had faith that the Tyagis of the village would chastise Master Kaliram for his behavior. But what happened was the exact opposite. On whatever door we knocked, the answer was,“What is the point of sending him to school?” Or,“When has a crow become a swan?” Or, “You illiterate boorish people, what do you know? Knowledge is not gained like this.” “Hey, if he asked a Chuhra’s progeny to sweep, what is the big deal in that?” Or, “He only got him to sweep; did not ask for his thumb in the gurudakshina like Dronacharya.” And so forth. Pitaji came back, tired and dejected. He sat up all night with- out food or drink. God knows how deep an anguish Pitaji went through. As soon as the morning broke, he took me along and went to the house of the pradhan, or village chief, Sagwa Singh Tyagi. As soon as the pradhan saw Pitaji, he said, “Abey, Chotan?... What is the matter? You have come so early in the morning.” “Chowdhuri Sahib, you say that the government has opened the doors of the schools for the children of Chuhras and Chamars. And that headmaster makes this child of mine to come out of the class and sweep all day instead of teaching him. If he has to sweep the school all day, then you tell me: When is he going to study?” 8 Joothan Pitaji was supplicating the pradhan. He had tears in his eyes. I was standing near him and looking at him. The pradhan called me near him and asked, “Which class are you in?” “Ji, the fourth.” “You are in my Mahendra’s class?” “Ji.” Pradhanji said to Pitaji, “Don’t worry. Send him to school tomorrow.” The next day I went to school with fear stalking my heart. I sat in the class in trepidation. Every second I worried that the headmaster was coming... Now he comes...