Review ofViramma: Life of an Untouchable:
Unesco Press, to be republished next year by Scribbners.
As I mentioned in an email to members of our list, Scribbner’s publishing house will be putting out Viramma:Llife of an Untouchable next year. For those of you who are considering buying the book I thought it might be helpful to have a short synopsis to give a sense of what you will find in it. Whenever possible, I will just let Viramma’s words speak for themselves.
The book is the product of 10 years of conversation between Viramma and Josaine Racine in their native Tamil language. Both women were born in Tamil Nadu, where Viramma has spent here entire life. They met while Racine, an ethnomusicologist who has lived most of her life in France, was studying the folk songs and music of southern India. They became close and it is not difficult to see why Racine would have seen Viramma as an excellent subject for interviewing. Viramma is a wise, interesting, and complex person, with a distinctive voice and personality and an excellent sense of humor, who has seen a lot and seems to remember almost all of it. She is also forthright and outspoken in her views, which are often expressed in colorful four letter language . With such an engaging and opinionated subject, the book is only partly the story of Viramma’s life. It is just as much a picture of the world and people around her according to Viramma.
The basic facts of Viramma’s life are easy to recount. Her family has lived in the village of her birth, the community of Velpakkam, for at least three generations. Her paternal grandfather was what might be described today as a ‘serf’ to a family from a higher caste (a Reddier). After a brief stint working in town nearby, her father returned to the village and there she was born. Viramma’s birth date is uncertain. Racine estimates that she was born sometime in the early- to mid-1930’s. Her name derives from that of the god, Viran. She passed a happy childhood, but one filled with long hours of work in the fields, at home and the home of the Reddier. She did not attend school. She had an arranged marriage in early adolescence to Manikkam, a much older man. After she wedding, she moved in with her husband and his parents in a town within walking distance. Unlike some of other women she describes, her life with her in-laws was relatively free from abuse. She was an agricultural worker and a mid-wife and is known in her community as a great singer and lamenter. She bore 12 children, six boys and six girls, three of whom survived, two girls and a boy. At the time the book was published, the children had given her five grand children.
What is interesting and useful about this book are not the events of Viramma’s life per se but the wealth of detail it provides about the culture of this region of India and the insight it gives into a life lived in a full 2/3 of the 20th century at the bottom of the caste system and the effect these experiences can have on a person. The take you get on this life is even-handed and optimistic, reflecting Viramma’s personality and voice. She is a careful observer of human behavior and gives detailed descriptions. She readily expresses pleasure and seems rarely to exaggerate or express anger or hostility, even when it would seem justified. You get a flavor of this at the start of the book when she discusses her parents disappointment, reflecting the standing bias in society, that she was a girl. You might expect some resentment at this state of affairs, but none is expressed and it really appears that none was felt. She says simply:
Disappointments or misfortune don’t last long among us, the poor; we can’t live if we brood on them the whole time. So the disappointment of my birth was quickly forgotten and I was welcomed into the household very well [4].
The tone extends to deprivations experienced by her family as a whole, which she recounts matter-of-factly. For example, her family’s need to pay a dowry had catastrophic consequences. She doesn’t vent. She merely explains:
First money for the ceremony and the dowry had to be found. Dad borrowed a large sum by pawning the two plots of land which Grandfather owned. After he’d tried to pay the interest for a long time, not to mention the loan itself, he had to give them up. That’s how we lost our fields [19].
Dowries, then and now, are paid by the bride’s parents, which accounts, in part, for the prejudice against female offspring; because they go to live with or near the grooms’ parents, they bring economic costs and almost no economic benefits to their own parents.
Viramma’s sense of humor is also constant presence in the narrative. She can find something funny in almost any situation. Her capacity to do this rests on her ability to step outside of a situation, even one in which she is involved, shed whatever feelings she might have had at the time and caste her observant eye on what is happening. The stories she tells about her early life show that this sensibility and her highly personal style of rebellion were present very early. The effects of her outlook are magnified by the fact that nothing is off limits in this book. She talks freely about the details of her sex life and those of others in her village, her views of other castes, the spirits she sees everywhere, the petty jalousies between women in the family, as well as harassment by upper caste men and everything else. There are hilarious passages about the early part of her marriage when she sought avoid all physical contact with her husband and refused to play the good wife, episodes she recounts with some amusement:
I was forced to do everything for my husband: serve him meals, heat the water for his bath, take his meal to him in the fields, give him betel…Once again, it wasn’t the work that made me recoil, it was doing it for this stranger who hurt me at night and disappeared during the day. But the only answer was to obey. If I refused, then I had smacks in store. I was definitely not going to be sweet talked! So I sulked, I scowled, I never laughed, I took my revenge in my own way. I’ll give you an example. There were seven of us girls who took lunch to their husbands in the fields. All of them rolled up the fold of their sari on their heads and put their pot of kuj on top. But I used to say to myself that the executioner did not deserve it and I’d arrive with the pot flat on my head: I didn’t show him proper respect and I annoyed him everytime [45]
She continues:
I had another way of annoying him. When I’d go and take him his kanji, I’d put the pot near him on the ground and I’d sit farther away turning my back on him and scratching the soil with my big toe. That made him beside himself and he’d shout, ‘All these women have come and brought kanji to their husbands, they’ve served them their food and they stay by their side while they eat! And look where Velpakkatta is! Ten feet away from me!’ Everyone started laughing and they’d shout back, ‘Hey! Manikkam! The scales aren’t tipping your way. You don’t know how to get it right. If you gave her a good hiding, she’d get back on the right track! I was furious and I’d throw them a look of contempt and mutter, ‘What the fuck has it got to do with the rest of you, you herd of buffalos!’[46]
She looks back at the episodes of youthful rebellion with regret, laying the blame on her own immaturity. It is clear that since that the early period she has had an excellent relationship with her husband, who she describes as kind, gentle, and good natured.
The book will be extremely interesting for readers of many different interests. For those curious about the culture of Dalits in Tamil Nadu, the book contains a wealth of information. You get a deep sense of the rhythms of daily life as well as the rituals and practices surrounding needs like fertility and good harvests and special occasions such marriages, births, and deaths. Her marriage was arranged by an older friend of the family. She goes into detail about how the contact was made, the formality of the meeting of the prospective in-laws, the ritual of the first meeting with the husband, and the marriage ceremony. She recalls how she felt through the whole experience and how her views changed. She gives similar detailed descriptions of other ceremonies and occasions.
Another aspect of the culture that pervades the narrative is religion and the book could easily serve as informal introduction to Hindu theology. From Viramma’s explanations and analyses one gets an image of her community as deeply religious and superstitious, where supernatural phenomena pervade all of experience. The actions of spirits account for everything that occurs, good and bad. For example, a great deal of significance lies in the birth order of children. Certain positions are blessed or damned depending on whether they are a boy or a girl. And the predictions are specific:
The daughter born ninth will be happy. She’ll always be called Omakkanni. The third-born girl will bring stability to the family. But she musn’t have spirals in her hair, either in the front or the back. Otherwise her first husband will fade away and her second as well. Only the third will be able to enjoy the knot which he’s tied at the back of her neck, because she’ll have three marriages in all. Oh, it’s not her choice, the poor thing! Him who has drawn these spirals on her skull: when you’ve got them, you have to live with it! For a boy born third, it’ll be the same: if he’s got spirals, his first wife will die. His second as well. His marriage will only work the third time [82].
Spirits are generally no laughing matter for Viramma. They cause very serious events such as illnesses, infertility and economic bad luck. Sorcerers are consulted for illnesses, mental and physical. Hospitals are only for births and obvious wounds. Still her humor comes out even on this subject:
We see others who walk through the countryside with a little imp and some skull and bones from first-borns; they do black magic. And then there are those crooks who come with their cobras. They sit down just near here in Guardian street. They make their cobra come out of the basket to the sound of the magudi [the charmer’s wind instrument] The cobra comes out, ‘takes the photo’ [stands up and opens its hood], turns round three times, then hits his head on the ground. That’s all: the performance is over. But afterwards those bastards pick up their cobras and release it outside of every house as they’re asking for alms. People don’t wait to be asked! They’re on their doorstep pouring out some grain for them before the snake’s even there! [ 95]
For those with interests of a more political or social character, the most interesting chapters of the book are 15-17 in which Viramma discusses caste. I have to confess that when I sat down to read this book I had certain expectations of what these attitudes might be. I thought Viramma would give vent to anger against the caste system and the deep and abiding discrimination to which it consigned her and the members of her community. I fully expected that Racine would pick up on this rage and channel it into her narrative. I was completely wrong about this. Viramma is not angry. She does not decry the system under which she lived and suffered. She is a conservative and deeply religious Hindu woman, who accepts all aspects of the caste system, including the concept of untouchability and the place to which it consigns her. Moreover, because she accepts the basic principles of classical Hinduism she sees herself and members of her caste in the same way that upper caste individuals do and describes her community from this point of view. Speaking to Racine, regarding the roles of the castes, the distribution of land and why members of her caste are unclean, she says:
Just as there are the rich high castes, so there are the poor low castes. God gave the land to the rich high castes and he gave the poor low castes the duty of cultivating the land. The duty of the rich high castes is to employ us, the Palli, the Pariahs, the Kudiyanar…Other low castes have their particular trade. They are a little higher than us because they don’t eat beef. They eat eggs, vegetables, fish, poultry, they drink milk like you. But meat is unclean, it’s waste. Milk is pure. And as we eat waste, we’re unclean. That’s the difference between low castes and high castes. [160].
There are a range of castes in the local township each with its own trade. There are also pig farmers, cobblers, joiners, barbers, carpenters, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, traders, launderes, and potters. Each has its place in ordering. While Viramma is friendly with people on an individual basis, it is clear that she shows greater respect for individuals from higher castes. Her relationship to the Reddier family for whom she works is emblematic, and she speaks of them in glowing terms. She refers to father of the family as her ‘master’ and seeks him out to mediates disputes and loan her money when she needs it. She believes that lower caste individuals should show respect for higher caste individuals—out of respect, she does not sing when working in the presence of the Reddier—and, personally, she herself does not breach to the boundaries that the caste system imposes between people:
The Sanar are people of low rank. They’re only just above us. A Sanar ought to act pretty much the same as us when the Reddier goes by: he should stand up and speak to him humbly [163.]
There’s also the Sakkili, the cobblers. They’re much lower than us. You know Selvam, the horn player: he gets cooked food from us. When there’s a marriage, we give him a measure of rice and rupee. His duty is to play the horn for us every time it’s needed. We never go and drink or eat at his house, but we talk together normally, and we’re warm to each other when we meet [163-4].
Similarly, she only interacts with high caste individuals if they are her employers or professionals such as nurses, doctors or civil servants with whom she has some business. Outside of these casual encounters and her association with Racine, Viramma’s world is almost entirely segregated. She does not complain about this, but accepts it as how things should be.
Viramma is actually quite suspicious of efforts of politicians to diminish the role of caste in social life. She has low expectations of life for her caste and, in her view, the system has worked fairly well. On this point, she often clashes with her son, who rebels against the oppressive constraints of the system. There is no doubt that her beliefs stem from an honest desire for what is best for her family, but this does not make these passages any less depressing to read. In her view, security and well-being stems from the good graces of the Reddier, but society is changing around her and she uncomfortable with the trends:
They want the world to be one, and everybody to be the same, all with the same rights…It’s good people want us to be raised up, but it’s better if we stay in our place. That’s what I always say to my son, but he doesn’t want to hear any of it. He thinks I’m wrong and says ‘Who is this miserable God that made us Pariahs? We’re all conceived in the same way! The husband screws the wife and we spend ten months in the womb! So why at birth do they become superior and us inferior? And we should have to accept that and work for a ten-rupee note? Who is the bastard of a God who’s done that? If we ever meet him, we’ll smash his face in! Why did he do that, that bloody God: them rich and us poor?’
My answer is; ‘De, Anban! Don’t talk like that! Be humble and polite. Don’t throw away the people who employ us. Honour them instead, that will do us much good…
She believes that by staying in line she will maintain good dharma that will be passed onto her children [148-9].
Living in the US one can’t resist making comparisons between the situation of the Dalits in India today and those African-Americans under Jim Crow (prior to the latter stages of the civil right’s movement). Discrimination has a common structure in different societies and results in many of the same postures, e.g. a relatively oppressed group buying into the system because it places them one step above someone else. (Viramma is not free from prejudice herself and expresses bigoted views toward people from castes below hers and against muslims [54]—bigotry of the kind one often hears from African-Americans.) When one makes the comparison to US, the question arises as to whether she is any different from her counterparts among African-Americans in the past, conservative and religious individuals, who felt the weight of the suffocating and limiting racism, but did not take part in the civil rights activism. Many African-americans may have thought that the civil rights activists were pushing too far and too fast, but it seems unlikely that one would hear them defending Jim Crow.
The reason for this, I believe, is that Jim Crow was not an essential part of the religion of African-Americans. While christianity is commonly used to keep people content with their lot in this lifetime, the versions that black Americans embraced in the mid-20th century did not tell them that they belonged at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Viramma had to make a choice that African-americans were not forced to make. If she were to reject the caste system, she would have to reject the basic religious assumptions with which she was brought up. Her son has done this, but it is not an easy thing to do, especially for someone for whom religious plays such an organizing and inspiring role.
Thought she accepts the caste system, her sympathy for it does not insulate her from the myriad humiliations, small and large, that come with it. She is sensitive to the fact that the name of her caste is treated as an insult by higher caste individuals, but at the same time refuses to newer terms such as ‘Harijan’. (As Racine points out in her epilogue Viramma never uses the term ‘Dalit’ and does not even seem to know what it means.) She expresses pain caused by caste-driven insults. Here she writes of her relationship with the upper caste family for which she and her husband work:
You don’t have to look far, just look at the son of our Reddiar. He’s a handsome young man now, good and strong. He was born the same time as one of my children, my first one I think. I gave him the breast. In those days, when he was a baby, his mother had lots to do in the house… The woman of that house had so much to do that they handed the baby over to me. I was told, ‘Look after him in the garden. Give him a bit of your milk! I used to take him to the ceri and I fed him like my own child. If I’d cooked beef, I gave him some. He liked the taste and he’d ask for it! And now he’s a man, he doesn’t respect me and if I’m at his house, in the courtyard, he says to me, ‘Aye! Stop there, you! It smells of Pariah here!’. One day I’d taken the cattle to graze in the sun and I’d come back parched, without having been able to stop and have a drink on the way. I tied up the cattle and said to him, ‘Little brother! Pour me out some water, I’m dying of thirst!’ He turned to his mother who was in the kitchen and said to her, ‘Mother, Velpakkatta is asking for some water.’ And his mother told him to go and get some in a tumbler. He’d drunk at my breasts, and now here he is, thinking twice about giving me a little water!’ [76]
She also tells a gut-wrenching story of Dalit woman who has her male child stolen from her just after birth and exchanged for an upper caste girl with the help of the hospital staff. Another attempted theft was thwarted because it did not have the complicity of the doctors and nurses. It is difficult to imagine that the caste of the women played no role in these plots.
She also describes being flashed and propositioned by upper caste civil servant. In spite of the obviously traumatic effect this event had upon her at the time (it sent her away shaking and in tears), she manages to zero in her husband’s drunken reaction and threatening bravado. She has an intuitive understanding of why people act they way they do and is often ready with psychological or sociological explanations of events. She gives the following analysis of her husband’s behavior:
A Pariah had no rights in those days; he’s always lies flat on his stomach in front of his masters. He couldn’t make any claims like now. So he’d go and get drunk and shout abuse at the entrance to the ur [the main village where the upper castes live]. That’s what my husband was doing. No one would take it seriously: they’d say it was drunkard’s talk and that’s all there was to it. The people shouting abuse never went further than the ceri and the matter would be buried. Nowadays, if we wanted, it would be different, because the party men are always ready to help us. Mind you, they don’t do it for free, they’ve got all our votes….
As this last remark suggests, Viramma believes that in many ways things have changed for the better and you get a sense of this change from her narrative, but there is still obviously a long way to go.
|
