"Karukku" (Bama)

 About the Author: Bama is one of the most powerful voices in dalit fiction and short stories.  She has made a tremendous impact on Tamil fiction with the publication of her first novel “Karukku” in 1992 (Palmyara).  It is a semi-autobiographical fiction, portraying the struggles and experiences of a dalit girl.  In this novel, Bama has used a technique that was largely unpremeditated and a narrative style which is racy and colloquial.  Her second novel Sangati (1994) (The News) makes use of a larger social canvas within the world of dalit experience.  In Vanmam (2002) (Revenge), she extends the range of her theme by focusing on the clash between two subdivisions of dalits.  Her collections of short stories “Kusumbukkaran” (1996)- and Oru Thathavum  Aerumaiyum (2003) represent a distinctive contribution to modern Tamil short stories.

Introduction: Bama’s “Karukku” (1992) is a semi-autobiography in which she tells her personal crises as a Christian dalit woman and the collective humiliations and oppressions experienced by her own community in the hands of caste Hindus.  “Karukku” recreates Bama’s past life as a paraya girl, a teacher and a nun.  Bama’s “Karukku” translated into English by Laxmi Holmstorm is considered the first Tamil dalit text by a woman that went to win the Crossword Translation Award in 2000.   “Karukku” means “palmyra leaves which with their serrated edge on both sides, are like double-edged swords” (“Karukku” xiii).  This novel is written at its finest form such as fearing nothing, unabashedly radical, and shaped by the strength of personal experience.

Discussion: Bama’s novel, “Karukku” mainly discusses the development of the protagonist’s mind and character from her childhood through varied experiences and the recognition of her identity and role in the world.  The novel “Karukku” highlights Bama as a dalit who moves towards self-discovery, self-definition and self-affirmation.  Her only mission is to uplift her dalit community by writing a real story of her own people for the world to know their pathetic plight and thereby demands the authorities to provide them opportunities to live a decent life.  In writing the novel “Karukku” she has made use of her first hand knowledge about her own community.

Bama begins the book, “Karukku” by giving detailed description about the various water bodies, small hills fields, places and streets amidst which the dalit live a so-called life.  The posh description about the hills and mountains makes the readers to think that the book may be about a romantic story.  But Bama ironically tells the story of pain and pangs of dalits in this novel.  She begins as “Our village is very beautiful” . The village is situated in the middle of the Western Ghats.  The people of the village call the ghats as “Marakaa puucchi malai.  She states that there are many different communities of people live in the village and painfully introspects, as a small girl how and why these caste divisions came into India especially to this part of Tamilnadu.

 

Bama states that she and her people live in the thatched houses.  The small boys and girls wander in the street with bare-bottomed.  The women fetch water from the common tap found in the corner of the street.  Such is the condition of dalits in Tamilnadu.  As a child when she is studying in third standard many sights on the way to school attract her.    Bama grows from this innocent stage to an experienced dalit woman, in order to establish not only her identity but also the identity of her dalit community.

Bama’s “Karukku” is at once a spirituous-literary and socio-cultural endeavor on the part of an oppressed creative artist whose soul surges towards self-discovery as a result of realizing and reinterpreting the meanings of her experience both as an oppressed in an oppressive community and as an emancipated in the larger fellowship of free human souls who aspire for greater things of life.  The novel, “Karukku” is also concerned with the single issue of caste domination and social discrimination within the Catholic Church and its institutions and it presents Bama’s life as a journey towards self-discovery and spiritual identity.  It is her driving quest for integrity as a dalit and Catholic and that shapes the book, gives it its polemic. S. John Peter Joseph makes an observation of the novel and comments how Bama establishes her ‘self’ and stamps the identity of her dalit society.

Bama humorously depicts an incident that tells the dangerous effect of casteism which has deeply rooted in the Indian soil.  As a little girl, Bama once happened to see a man from dalit community working in the fields of Naicker bought “something like vadai or green banana bhajji in the packet, because the wrapping paper was stained with oil.  He came along holding out the packet by its string, without touching it” As he was a dalit, he was not allowed to touch the parcel. Such is the condition of deeply rooted untouchability in Indian society.  Her young mind is shocked to see this incident.

The inquisitive mind of Bama then analyses various incidents and events and questioned the attitudes of the upper-caste people.  Bama says that her grandmothers worked as servants in Naicker families.  Their conditions in the Naicker families are very pitiable.  Even the small child in the house calls her grandmothers by their names.  She relates how they were treated as unwanted in the houses of Naickers.  Naturally the humiliations meted on her own people have made Bama to raise voice against those caste people.  However, as a little girl she buried the spark of fire in her heart to turn it out into flame in future.

Even though young Bama works in the fields, she gets inspiration from her own brother who is in the city college pursuing his M.A. degree.  He says that education alone can bring reputation to them as they belong to “Paraya jati”. Hence, Bama pays more attention in her studies and always stands first in the class.  Even in school the dalits are treated as lowest of lowly.  The teachers exploit the dalit students though the dalit students show remarkable performance in their academic pursuits. The process of dalit subjugation starts from school but that is the place where students must be taught of equality devoid of caste, gender and class divisions.

The pathetic plight of the dalit children in villages gets worse when they complete their primary education in the village school.  They have to go to neighboring town in order to get their high school education.  As Bama is good at her studies, she makes herself adaptable to the new school environment in order to continue her studies.  However, even there, in the hostel the dalit children are humiliated and insulted.

The young mind of Bama cannot afford all this humiliation.  She could not interpret why her teacher often reads the name of dalit students and asks them to stand in order to note something on her note book.  Later, however she understands that the government gives some special financial assistants to the scheduled caste students and so that for the same reason the teacher asked the SC students to stand.  Though the purpose is good but asking the dalit students to stand during lessons, Bama and other SC students feel unhappy about the segregation and standing in front of other students. Besides her mental trauma that she experiences at school, Bama is able to stand district first in her S.S.L.C. examination. 

She joins in a college after her school education.  The college life gives a strange kind of revelation to Bama.  She comes to understand the reality of deep-rooted caste system in India.  The very understanding kindles her rage and so she decides to be more rigid and authoritative in order to overcome the worst effects of casteism.  The humiliation that Bama has while travelling by buses causes a lot of pain and agony in her.  Upper caste women never sit with the “cheri” women or low caste women even in buses.  They either move to other seats or stand in the bus till they reach the destination. Bama’s experience with a Naicker woman in the bus has marked a wound in her heart and that stays as a scar in her psyche for ever.   

Bama also gets her B.Ed. and finally understands that “because of my education alone I managed to survive among those who spoke the language of cast-difference and discrimination.   Then she becomes a school teacher and starts teaching the students of the school at where she studied.  Most of the students in the school are dalits.  Bama, herself feels happy and sometimes wonders at “standing up to the authorities and teaching with some skill and success” .  Yet the ill-treatment meted on her and the dalit children in the school makes Bama to take a drastic decision of becoming a ‘nun’.  Hence she resigns her teaching job and joins in a religious order.

The psyche of Bama from her childhood to her adulthood wants to erase her caste-identity.  She becomes furious whenever she is addressed as dalit.  Such is the mental trauma of many dalits in India.  Even after nearly seventy years of independence, the dalits in India are still treated as non-humans in many parts of India.  Even though activists and reformists like Ambedkar and Periyar worked for the cause of dalits, the dalits are still experiencing all kind of humiliations in the socio-political sphere.  Hence Bama turns into a nun and joins in a convent to overcome the humiliations meted out on her and her people.  But, after her entry into the convent, she comes to know that how her people are treated as non-humans even in convent like places.

Bama announces the readers that her religious faith has got different shapes after experiencing insults in the hands of Christian nuns. She describes her religious life and spiritual growth in an elaborate manner, in this book.  From her childhood onwards she had been taught by her mother, grandmother, teachers, nuns and priests about the devotion to God.  She used to attend catechism classes and masses regularly.  She learnt various prayers by rote.  She used to make confession and fulfill the act of contrition with piety and seriousness.  She even became a member of the holy childhood movement.  As soon as she and other members of her family returned from church there would be prayers at home.  In her house there was a rule that dinner always came after prayers. 

   

Bama also remembers how horrible stories of the devil were told by the nuns in order to convey the concept of sin and retribution to young children.  She later realized that the stories told by the nuns about the ghost were empty and meaningless threat.  Moreover, she even remembers even for small lapses, how the children were cruelly punished by the nuns and the priests in the church.  Though there were few Christians among the upper caste people, the church, the school, the convent and the priests’ bungalow were located in the areas where upper caste communities lived. 

It is the custom for the dalits in the village to meet the Parish Priest and the Mother Superior on the first day of every year in order to pay them due respects, by giving them fruits and biscuits.  Though her people never taste the fruits themselves yet they somehow take every effort to buy the fruits for the religious authorities.  But the church elders namely the Priest and Mother Superior make the sign of cross on their foreheads and send them away empty handed.  On one such occasion, a woman asks the Priest for a new-year calendar.  The Priest tells her that he would sell them only for money.  Similarly, when someone asks the Mother Superior to give him at least some holy pictures, but the mother retorts by saying “have you given me some money in order to buy you holy pictures?  Very well now, you may all go home quickly without leaning on the walls or touching anything”.

Bama’s religious faith during the early part of her life is based on fear, compulsion, threats and superstitious beliefs.  But when she enters into college for her higher  studies she begins to realize that one could see or approach God through one’s mind’s eye or in the ordinary events of everyday life.  Therefore, she decides to reach God only “through prayers learnt by rote, through pious practices, through the novena and the rosary”.  Hence, Bama thinks that all the religious rituals are meaningless.  The varied experiences mould the young Bama and lead her to become a matured writer and so she demands equality in social, political, religious, and economical domains, through her writings.

 

However, Bama does not bear when her own people are humiliated at the hands of caste-people.  Hence, she leaves the convent relinquishing her position as a teacher there.  Then, she searches job in many places, but everywhere, the caste discrimination comes forward to insult her. She thinks, “if a woman so much as stands alone and by herself somewhere, all sorts of men gather around her showing their teeth” (102).  Above all,  she does not want to live in luxury that the convent life provides her, while her people are struggling even for a single meal.   As an educated and emancipated woman Bama does not feel sorry for her present jobless condition.  She wants to be true to her ‘self’.  She realizes the truth that instead of being treated as dalit by the upper caste nuns in convent, it is better to be jobless to enjoy the bliss of freedom by being away from the hypocrite nuns.  She says that she cannot live a deceptive life, smiling and nodding to the attitude of the fanatic nuns who vigorously adapts caste divisions in their nunnery.  She strongly feels that “I comfort myself with the thought that rather than live with a fraudulent smile, it is better to lead a life weeping real tears” .  Thus, Bama ends the novel by stating that her indomitable spirit will not get sagged down for anything that happens in her life.  She feels free, rich  and happy which the convent job fails to provide her.  

Conclusion: Bama who is the champion of Tamil dalits especially the Tamil dalit women, openly expresses her inner furies through her creative writings. While depicting her community she is true to the core.  She never hides the strength and weakness of her community and thereby makes the world understand the feelings of the dormant community of India, dalit.  Her first novel, “Karukku” which describes the life of Bama, can be compared to that of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and Mulk Raj Anand’s Coolie for the use of the bildungsroman technique.  Bildungsroman has become an important literary tool at the hands of Bama while depicting the growth of the protagonist of “Karukku” from her childhood to womanhood.