Dalit_Black_Project

Forming a depressed class of their own, both Dalit and Black women have been ghettoized (bowed down and chained to patriarchy) owing to their caste and blackness respectively and due to their gender; but now as this paper seeks to reveal (as seen in Bama’s ‘Sangati’ and Naylor’s ‘The women of Brewster place’) they journey towards achieving selfhood and individuality by promoting a collective consciousness. Bama’s, ‘Sangati’ and Gloria Naylor’s ‘The Women of Brewster Place’ and a comparative study of both these discourses from the margins reveal that the underlying differences between them are minimal. The novels aim at bringing about change, solidifying dreams for the future in which women are not walled out but become a part of mainstream society, with a voice of their own. The predicament of Dalit women is not different from that of Black women. Looking back in history Black women (slaves from Africa) were oppressed and to this day, following a trajectory, Dalit women (slaves in their own motherland) are trampled upon by the colossus (Caste and Patriarchy). According to Sircar, ‘Violent gang rapes, wife murders, child abuse...bride burning, infanticide, foeticide and abetted suicides plot the lives of innumerable unfortunate women in India and all other parts of the world’ ( 91, Narang ). Both Dalits and Blacks have a history of their own; a history in which they are bent down by the weight of oppression. But, even in these chronicles, the oppression of women remains unwritten as the major focus is laid on ‘his story’. Mary Hlen Washington in, ‘The Darkened Eye Restored: Notes Towards a Black Women’, questions: ‘Why is the fugitive slave, the fiery orator...always represented as a black man' Women are the disinherited’ (Narang,117). Naylor is an African American novelist and has obtained the national award for, ‘The Women of Brewster Place’. Described on the cover as a ‘novel of seven stories’, the novel chronicles the life of seven black women (Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Kiswana Browne, Luciela Louise Turner, Cora Lee, Lorraine and Therese) as they struggle to survive in a rapidly deteriorating neighbourhood. The wall at the end of the street that prevents through traffic, serves as a reminder that their lives here are restricted in ways they do not even fully understand. Belonging to a westernized culture, the Black women have more freedom of expression and movement when compared to Dalit women. But they too, are ill treated by the men in their lives and have ended up broken and fragmented, which is symbolically represented by the falling to pieces, ‘Brewster Place’. Dalit, literally means, ‘ground’ into the earth, that is ‘oppressed’, pressed into’ depressed’ (Narang,16). Bama, a Christian Dalit woman writer in her ‘Sangati’, portrays the condition of women in her society, bound to the patriarchal society. S.Thiainayagam in says, ‘endowing a Dalit woman with a literary voice...is an empowering form of women’s writing’ (Narang ). Dalit and Black women’s condition can be summed up using, Hira Bonsode’s poem, ‘Yashodhara’- ‘(she) absorbed the dark until (her) life was mottled ‘blue and black’, ‘a fragmented life, burned out’ It speaks of women’s pained silence throughout history wherein Buddha, the enlightened one is revered and respected across the world but the wife, he left behind is left unspoken about. That is, Buddha ‘went, he conquered, he shone while (she) listened to the songs of his triumph. (Her) womanliness must have wept She who lost husband... must have felt uprooted like the tender banana plant’ (31,Dangle). Black women and Dalit women are geographically separated but when it comes to brutal atrocities perpetrated against them, the difference in their situation in life is but minimal as they share a ‘common thread of pain and suffering’ (81,Narang ). Dalit Literature is more than a literature; it is writing that wants to bring about psychological transformation (16,Narang). ‘Sangati’ portrays the, ‘growth, decline, culture, and liveliness of Dalit women’, who suffer but is not broken down, and though wounded, tries to stand erect, hoping for a new tomorrow. These women in ‘Sangati’ and Brewster place become the very soul and very life of a depressed community. Nurturers, they embody hope for the coming generation. The walls of patriarchy close in on the Dalit and Black women, making survival claustrophobic. They are lured to the shackles by being reminded of the ‘joy of motherhood’, and their responsibilities as women. Dalit women face the triple burden of caste, gender and class. Now they are referred to as ‘triply oppressed’ (as told by Ruth Manorama), as they face exploitation from upper class men, women and their own men. Dalit girls have been forced into prostitution by upper class patrons. Along with this, they are also abused by their drunken husbands. Also, sexual abuse and other forms of violence against women are used by landlords and the police to inflict political ‘lessons’ and crush dissent within the community. And so – ‘the unscrupulous pundits...scattered (her) life , Unbalanced already, the life of the Dalits crushed By tyrant stones of grinding inequality’ . (Mute Existence-Yusoja) In, ‘The...Place’, the setting that is, ‘Brewster Place’, with ‘the moist gray air’, ‘as heavy as the sight that lay on her full bosom’ and the ashen buildings beginning to fade with cracks in the wall; clearly sums up the deteriorating existence of Black women(4,Naylor). Butch Fuller in the novel says black means poor, but, we realize having an additional burden gender that these women are poorer. From girlhood to old age, these women remain broken down and oppressed, obtaining release only through death. Hira Bonsode in her poem titled Gulam says; ‘Where the doors are decorated with mango leaves, where the houses are decorated with little flaming lamps In that country a woman is Still a slave’ (84, Chand) As children, we see, as portrayed in, ‘Sangati’ that the boy child is cared for more and pampered to their heart’s content. The mothers are more concerned about boys as when the baby boy cries he is picked up and given milk but the girl baby is weaned quickly. In case of an illness, the mothers run around and nurse them with the utmost care but in the case of the girl, does so, ‘half heartedly’. Boys played and went for a short while to schools that offered free education. It was not so with the girls as the narrator says, ‘In our streets, the girls hardly ever enjoy a period of childhood’ ( 75,Bama ). They remained at home, drawing water, cleaning vessals, sweeping the house, gathering firewood, washing clothes, taking care of young children. Objectified, from childhood she works as a mule and continues to do so till her death. According to Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.... Man is the subject, he is the absolute. She is the other...’ (108,Narang). Similarily in ‘The Women of Brewster Place’, Mattie is seen to take care of her son, Basil (the cause of her isolation from the comforts of her home) who she realized was ‘all she would ever have’(12,Naylor). She worried and planned for her child, lived for him and loved him as she believed that he had been, ‘mailed from heaven’. She leaves the ‘boarding house’, agonized by the fact that, Basil is bit by a rat vowing that, ‘she could never take him back to a place that had caused him so much pain’ (7,Bama). Unconcerned about her pain, her world now revolves around her son. They love ‘him’ and care for him as after all (as said in ‘Sangati’), ‘he’s the one to put food into their mouths as their daughters’ get married off’(7,Bama). But, inspite of the trouble they go through and the love that they bestow upon these male children, all is to no avail. Vellaiyamma who loves her grandsons more, ‘kept on going to work until she was quite old’, lived on her own, gathered firewood, lit her own hearth and ate her kanji(60,Bama). In the same manner, Mattie too is isolated and voiceless. She had been Basil’s refuge and as the boy grows into an ‘irresponsible’ man of about thirty she is the one who fends for him. As a result of a bar room brawl when accused of manslaughter, Mattie is the one who comes to Basil’s rescue. In order to bail out her son, she offers up her house (bought from thirty years of toil and hardship) as collateral. Though, initially grateful to his mother, Basil ultimately sours at the thought of having to endure a trial and just days before he is to appear in court, flees. Thus the same son for whom Mattie had lived, sacrificing her pleasures, the one who was to be her aid one day abandons her to the ‘silence’. In the Introduction to ‘Sangati’, Lakshmi Holmstrom says, ‘...Bama explores a Dalit woman’s relationship to her body in terms of diet, health, and safety, sexuality and notions of gender’. In the Dalit community, ‘Once a girl comes of age she has no more freedom’. As the narrator says in ‘Sangati’, ‘...Even if all women are slaves to men, our women really are the worst sufferers. It is not the same for women of other castes and communities. Our woman cannot bear the torment of upper caste masters in the fields and at home they cannot bear the violence of their husbands...’ ( 65,Bama). Young girls are to be safeguarded and protected as Paati tells the narrator (when out gathering firewood) that women must never go out of their homes on their own as, ‘If upper-caste fellows clap eyes on you, you’re finished. They’ll drag you off and rape you, that’s for sure’(6, Bama ). In the same manner, Mattie’s father in, ‘The...Place’, warns her against Butch whom he calls, ‘a no-count ditch hound’(4,Naylor). Vellaiyamma’s husband, Goyindan had disappeared within four years of marriage. Paati, ‘waited and waited’, for him to return but at last when a terrible famine came, ‘took off her tali and sold it’ (4,Bama). And she told herself that she had become a corpse without a husband and struggled single-handedly to care for her two children. In ‘The...Place’, Mattie is lured by Butch Fuller who believed in not staying, ‘long enough to let the good times turn sour’ (7,Naylor). Fully pregnant (because of Butch) she is forced to move from the comforts of her parents’ home to a cramped boarding house room with cheap furniture and dingy walls. Later, with thirty years of hard work she acquires a home of her own, ‘with an entire sun porch’ (17,Naylor). But in order to bail out Basil (her son), lets the house as collateral and thus she’s forced to move to a rambling Brewster place where, ‘with no sunny porch her plants would die’. And ‘there just wasn’t enough life left for her to do it all again’ (5,Naylor). The men are revealed to be exacting, who leave the women once they have squeezed out her very life. It is told in ‘Sangati’, ‘If women are openly seen to be acting in unexpected ways, it is true that everyone will abuse them’(95,Bama). This is clearly seen in, ‘The...Place’, wherein Lorraine and Therese (who are lesbians) are seen ostracized from society. And also later, C.C.Baker (the neighbourhood gang leader in Brewster place along with his comrades) rapes Lorraine, leaving her ‘sprawled’ on the ground, bloody, dishevelled and disoriented. In the Dalit community, upper class men prey upon their women and ill treat them. Vellaiyamma when working as a Kathachi is ill treated by the landlords as she is made to walk, ‘up and down ten times a day like a dog’(62,Bama). Furthermore, Mariamma (the narrator’s cousin) when on her way back home (seeing water in Kumarasami Ayya’s field goes to quench her thirst) is pulled aside by the Ayya but luckily escapes. Now worried about his reputation, he complains to the headman of the Paraiya community saying that he had seen Mariamma, ‘behaving in a very dirty way’ with Manikkam. Humiliated, now, Mariamma is forced to plead forgiveness and is branded a whore (owing to no fault of hers) due to which, later she has to marry the good for nothing, drunkard, Manikkam. No one is ready to pay heed to what actually happened, and defends the ‘mudalaali’. Even worse, it is Mariamma’s father who beats her up and makes her ask forgiveness. Even the fines are unjust as Mariamma has to pay a fine of 200rs while Manikkam has to pay just 100. Thus ‘Whatever a man does, in the end the blame falls on the woman’ ( Bama). In the same way, in, ‘The…Place’, Ben’s (caretaker of Brewster place, a wino) daughter is sexually exploited by Mr. Cloyd , her employer. Though knowing things to be so, Ben and the men of the Dalit community won’t stand up against the ‘mudalaali’, and turn a blind eye to whatever they do, though; as said in Maya Angelou’s poem, ‘ To a Freedom Fighter’; their ‘breast is hot’, but their ‘anger’ is ‘black and cold’. This is clearly revealed as the ‘naatamai’, says after the proccedings (discussing Marimma’s behaviour); ‘It is you female chicks who should be humble and modest. A man may do a hundred things and get away with it. You girls should consider what you are left with in your bellies’( 26,Bama). Thus, concerned about their safety and protection; girls when come of age ( in the Dalit community) are married off as, ‘keeping young women at home is like keeping a fire going in your belly’(10,Bama). Now the ‘rattle’ has ‘changed hands’. But from the day the ’talli’ is tied , women are enslaved to their husbands and are physically and sexually abused. The narrator’s ‘periamma’, did not want to get married but is forcefully married off, as a result of which she procures seven to eight babies in a row after which she closed her eyes. And ‘vellaiyamma’(her mother) says, ‘I reared a parrot and then handed it over to be mauled a cat’. The men consider their wives as mere animals as they say, ‘she is my wife, I can beat her, even kill her’ (10,Bama). Rakkamma is abused in the same manner by Paakiaraj who is drunk and violent everyday. Thaayi who was forced to marry against her will is dragged along the street and flogged like an animal by her husband with a stick or with a belt. The women like Raakkamma might shout out obscenities in order to vent out frustration and anger. Thus, ‘if he shows his strength of muscle she reveals the sharpness of her tongue….what else can she do'’ but women like the narrator’s mother resign to their fate as she says, ‘once you’ve put your head in the mortar can you escape from the pestle'’A woman, ‘must continue to suffer until her head rests on the earth at last’(44,Bama). We see that ‘voices and protests of Dalit women are invisible’ (2,Jogdand ).In the same manner; Ciel in, ‘The…Place’, is abused by her husband, Eugene. And for Cora Lee, ‘a pot of burnt rice would mean a fractured jaw, or a wet bathroom floor a loose tooth…’ ( 85,Naylor). For these men, a woman is merely a sexual being, as Simone de Beauvoir says (in her introduction to ‘the second sex’) is essentially ‘the sex’. The body of a woman becomes a hindrance, a prison, weighing her down. According to Beauvoir, ‘women have ovaries, a uterus and thus, ‘these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature’. In the Dalit world, the position of women is painful and humiliating as, ‘in the fields they have to escape from upper caste men’s molestations’, in church they must lick the priest’s shoes and even when they go home (after a back breaking day of work); before they have had a chance to cook some kanji or lie down and rest a while, they have to submit themselves to their husband’s torment’(35,Bama). Women without proper food or drink die at childbirth and the men almost immediately marry a second time. Sterilized, women lose their strength to work and without working cannot eat. In spite of this, men refuse to do birth control. They also take on mistresses. Ciel in, ‘The…Place’, thinks, ‘you can find him to have it, but can’t find him to take care of it’(46,Naylor). Eugene, her husband, leaves her, sick and alone with her new born child. In the same manner, ‘shadows’ come and go in Cora’s life. She submits to them, as she wants someone (is obsessed with babies) and believes them to be better than the ‘men’ in her life who either physically abused her or left her (like Brucie’s father who did). Women are seen to engage in backbreaking jobs after which she has to do all the domestic chores. Men work hard but they have their freedom, wherein they control their wives, rule over them and find pleasure. They go off to the market spend their money, drinking or doing whatsoever they please. And so, it is mostly the women who manage homes. ‘Mariamma’, with a drunkard as father (Samudrakani) runs her home. Engaged in a job, digging wells, she has as accident due to which she lies helpless and suffers for seven or eight months. And later when she arrives home she begins to work within a few days. In the same manner, ‘Maikkanni’, at an age when she should have been running around at her own will….and playing games’, went to the match factory. She managed her home each time her father impregnated her mother. This small wisp of a girl is beaten by the maistri, and by her father (for not handing in wages), but unhindered by her woes, she moves on. For weddings too, while men sat chatting, women were engaged in cooking and even though the ‘andas’ were really huge, they managed all the work themselves. Similarly, Mattie is the one who manages her home even after Basil is old enough to fend for himself. She buys a house with thirty years of pay but has to put it up as collateral for Basil’s release. Thus unquestioning and uncomplaining they moves on as- ‘ on her head, a burden, her legs a –totter Thin, dark of body…my mother. All day she combs the forest for firewood. We await her return. When she brings no firewood to sell We go to bed, ‘hungry’. (Mother- Waman Nimbalkur) Thus, woman is sustainer and nurturer; the roof that shelters homes from storm. Silence is the code of the day for women as she becomes a mere puppet in the hands of men. She is the voiceless and cannot speak against injustices happening. When a meeting is called by the headman, women are required to be silent and if not is abused and called, ‘she-donkeys’. Paati in the course of the novel tells the narrator, ‘it’s better for women not to open her mouth ‘as she will only get beaten and trampled for her pains’ ( 29,Bama). The same is seen in, ‘The…Place’, wherein one sees an unquestioning Cora Lee and Mattie. Women of the older generation have internalized their situation in life as in Vellaiyamma’s case. But the narrator, representative of the younger generation is an active voice for change as she questions the set norms in her community. The question churning inside the narrator after Mariamma’s humiliation is, “Why women were pushed aside always and everywhere” (28,Bama ). The narrator in ‘Sangati’ and ‘Kiswana Browne’ in ‘The... Place’ (representing the younger generation) is in conflict with the older generation. Browne is all energetic and is a potential vehicle for change. She belongs to a middle class family, situated at, ‘Linden Hills’, is filled with black pride and becomes a voice for change as she takes the initiative to move into Brewster place , begins a tenant’s association and desires to bring about change by hoping to voice out complaints against the crumbling down Brewster place to its landlord. She is at loggerheads with her mother but later on in the course of her meeting with her mother realizes that her mother (as she assures her) wants her children to be, ‘prepared to meet the world on its own terms; not to be afraid to face anyone’(34,Naylor). And so Kiswana looks at her mother, ‘the woman she had been and the woman she was to become’. Thus the younger generation at this point identifies with the older generation and later pertaining to her mother’s wishes joins community college (though once again she asserts her individuality by taking up black studies). These women of Brewster place are, ‘hard edged, soft centred, brutally demanding and easily pleased’ ( 3,Naylor ). Mattie becomes a central character as she dreams about the ‘Block Party’ wherein Ciel (who near dead owing to her daughter’s death) returns rejuvenated, announces her, about to be marriage; and the wall is deconstructed. Courageous and valiant are the women in ‘Sangati’ too; as Vellaiyamma though old, fends for herself, women suffer the abuse of men but still moves on. Women like Sammugha Kizhavi become defiant agents of change as she demands a ride back after cating a vote(from the upper caste man, Govaalsami), threatening to tell the women of her community not to vote for him. But in reality, she expresses rebellion as she herself had not voted but had just folded in a piece of blank paper. Alice Walker in her , ‘In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens’, speaks reverently of those mothers and grandmothers as they had sown seeds in , ‘vacant and fallow fields’, the fruits of which her generation now enjoys. In the same manner though Bama questions the older generation as they internalize their slave-dom, one should also note that she has dedicated, ‘Sangati’, to the same mothers’ and grandmothers’. Both, Bama and Naylor express the need for a collective consciousness as they make use of sisterhood. In ‘Sangati’ women ease themselves of pain as they sing together. What is expressed subtly is a language composing of jokes, banter, lampooning, songs that lead the way to the language of insurrection ( kalaga mozhi). Also, when Mariamma is injured, it is the women who come to her aid. In, ‘The…Place’, Etta Mae Johnson flees from Simeon and comes to Mattie for solace, feeling at home as, ‘their laughter now draws them into a conspiratorial circle against all the Simeons outside of that dead end street….’( 32,naylor). Later on, after her short affair with Reverend Woods, Etta is gripped with fear but on hearing Mattie’s records playing, fear vanishes as she realizes that someone is waiting for her. Thus she laughs softly and, ‘steps towards the light and love and the comfort that awaited her’ (43,Naylor ). Also, as Ciel is almost ‘lifeless-worse than death’ after her daughter’s (Serena) death, Mattie is the one who pulls her out of the situation and now an exorcism of pain is reflected as Ciel moans (as Mattie rocks her). She is bathed and handled reverently as if a newborn. This bathing can be viewed as ritualistic, a testament to the healing powers of sisterly love and bonding, particularly in the face of a chauvinistic world. Ciel now cries and we know as Mattie realizes that she would sleep and morning would come. The block party wherein, the women come together also represent a collective consciousness, the victory of sisterhood, as the wall is deconstructed. Thus, both the novels calling for change end on a note of hope as it voices the dreams for a new tomorrow. Bama tries to propagate a collective consciousness as she asks, ‘Why shouldn’t a woman belong to no one but herself ’(121,Bama). Bama says in the acknowledgements that Sangati grew out of the hope that Dalit women would read it, get inspired and begin their struggle as pioneers of a new society thus walking towards victory’(123,Bama ). Thus we see that the ‘Dalit woman is rebellious, change oriented and thoughtful questioning the existing social order’. The narrator has educated herself but faces trials as she lives alone. A call for action is expressed as she speaks of bringing up girls, teaching them, ‘to think in these new ways’ ( 123,Bama). She says that boys and girls must be educated alike so that there will come a day when no differences exist between men and women. And she ends saying, ‘then injustices, violence, and inequalities will come to an end and the saying will come true that, ‘Women can make and Women can break’. I am hopeful that such a time will come soon’ ( 123,Bama ). In both the novels to the end, rain pours down symbolizing renewal as grief and pain is washed away. The block party is significant as the women come together, as men and children move away, thus representing the emergence of a collective consciousness (as even Therese the lesbian who was earlier shunned by the women joins in) as bricks are handed from woman to woman and the wall is deconstructed. Finally ‘after a week of continuous rain Brewster place was now bathed in a deluge of sunlight’ ( 152,Naylor). The novels depict the subjugation of Dalit and Black women but to the end express a hope for renewal, imparting a message, the need for a collective consciousness. And thus women must journey towards selfhood wherein they stand erect creating a history of their own. Thus as expressed in Angelou’s, ‘Still I Rise’- ‘…leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wonderfully clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave, I rise I rise I rise’ . Bama, through her novel hopes to change the mindset of inferiority to awaken the consciousness. And so, both the novels try to bring about a critical awareness and share an intense need to change society.. And we see that Dalit and Black women’s suffering follow a common trajectory as they struggle to achieve solidarity. Both the novels, thus portray women, ‘the wretched of the earth’, victims of violence (both physical and psychological) in an exploration, a quest for selfhood in order to win back their ‘womanhood’ and ‘emotional wholeness’. Bibliography Bama. Sangati. , New Delhi :Oxford university press,2005. Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. London,1988. Jogdand, Prahlad Gangaram. Dalit Women in India:Issues and Perspectives . Gyan Publishing House, New Delhi,1995. Sircar ,Roopali. “Sex Violence and Agression in African Literature”. Writing Black Writing Dalit(Essays in Black African and Dalit Indian Writings. Ed. Harish Narang.Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study,2002. Kirpal,Viney. “A Study of Recent Marathi Dalit Poetry”. Writing Black Writing Dalit(Essays in Black African and Dalit Indian Writings . Ed. Harish Narang.Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study,2002. Chand,Neerja Jayal. “Moving the Centre:Canadian and Dalit Literatures”. Writing Black Writing Dalit(Essays in Black African and Dalit Indian Writings . Ed. Harish Narang.Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study,2002. Limbale Sharan Kumar. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature,History, Cotroversies Considerations. Trans. Alok Mukherjee.Orient Longman Pvt Ltd,2004. Angelou , Maya.The Complete Poems of Maya Angelou.NY:Random House,1994. An anthology edited by Arjun Dangle-Poisoned Bread (publication details not avilable)