– Ravikumar
VAASANTI’S SHORT STORY ‘Thinavu’ (The Itch)2 has a clear reference to Mayawati. It portrays her as having become the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh by fluke, and denigrates her as someone who was a mistress of a Thakur. Vaasanti needs to be introduced to non-Tamil readers. She is a well-known journalist and writer in Tamil. For many years she was the editor of the Chennai-based Tamil edition of
the English newsmagazine India Today. A translation of her short stories was recently issued in English. She continues to write regular columns in India Today (Tamil) and New Indian Express (English), and regarded as a leading political commentator in Tamil circles.
The plot of Thinavu is as follows: Chameli’s mother is forced to send her daughter to ‘feed the lust’ of the arrogant Thakur, Ratan Singh. One day, in an orgasmic moment, Ratan Singh decides that Chameli should contest the elections. Frightened, Chameli says she is not eligible. Rattan Singh’s response: ‘what kind of eligibility do you need? The law says you can contest.’ Thinking that she should not shy away from ‘blind luck’ and refuse a position of such power, Chameli changes her name to ‘Charumati’ and contests. She also changes the way she carries herself (she cuts her hair, dinks masala tea that is denied to ‘lower castes,’ and eats buttery parathas).
One day, a group of men from Sohanpur, her constituency, come to see her, but for some reason, they leave without doing so. She sets out in search of the men and meets them by the roadside. Though Charumati has ordered that the public well be accessed by everyone in the village, the Thakur has warned them against even touching the well, as Grandpa Kaalu of the group informed her. ‘That you are in this position is a result of some silly gesture shown by the Thakur. Nothing will change,’ says the old man. Realizing that the village folk are accusing her of being an incapable woman, Charumati orders that the Thakur’s application for a tender be kept pending. As expected, Ratan Singh turns up at her door pretty soon. He warns her: ‘Don’t try to introduce what is not part of the village tradition.’ Charumati replies: ‘I am doing only what is in accordance with the law.’
Ratan Singh shouts: ‘You, who survive on my charity, how dare you talk about the law? Have you forgotten that in these parts what I ordain is the law?’
The same day, the police barge in to Ratan Singh’s bungalow, wake him from his sleep, and arrest him in a brash manner. The Thakurs now fall Chameli’s feet. ‘The world is turned upside down… Chameli has now become a Thakur. Is it for the better or for the worse?’ wonders a confused Grandpa Kaalu. Chameli, who has never slept peacefully, now rests in peace. There is a copy of the text of POTA under her pillow.
Some may ask why we must think that this story is about Mayawati. There are several unmistakable indications to this effect throughout the story. The protagonist ‘Chameli’ is referred to as a ‘lower caste women’: who has ‘cropped her hair; the ‘Sohanpur’ of the story sounds like Saharanpur, a district which houses Mayawati’s present assembly constituency, Harora. The fact that the villagers are dalits and Chameli one of them becomes clear over the issue of access to the public well. That Chameli holds the post of chief minister is evident from the fact that she is in conversation with the Prime Minister over the phone, as also from her order that the village wells be thrown open to everybody. Moreover, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) is newly enacted, and the ‘lower caste woman’ chief minister who used this law is obviously Mayawati (and cannot be confused with Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalitha, or Delhi’s Sheila Dixit or Bihar’s Rabri Devi).
There are enough indications in the story for us to realize that the character of Thakur Ratan Singh is based on Raja Bhaiyya, the Uttar Pradesh MLA recently arrested under POTA by the Mayawati government. (According to the story, his backyard is filled with hidden wealth, his house has secret chambers full of weapons, and nobody has kept a record of the murders he has committed.) That Raja Bhaiyya is a Thakur is well known.
Sitting in an air-conditioned room, Charumati is disturbed by memories of her mother. She hears mother calling out to her by her old name, Chameli. As her mother’s terror-struck eyes envelop the room, Chameli uses her whip and revolver to chase the memories away. Any memory of the past drives her mad.
Charumati’s mother was a domestic servant. She was mortally scared of high caste people. She sent her daughter to Thakur Ratan Singh to satiate his lust (Vaasanti uses the words ‘udal passikku theeniyaaga,’ literally, to feed the body’s hunger’). As a child, Charumati/Chameli/Mayawati was someone who roamed the streets half-naked, dressed only in underwear and a piece of her mother’s torn sari wrapped over her torso. She was someone who while sweeping the verandah of Seth Laal’s shop, would yearn for drop of the spiced tea that the Seths enjoyed. That Lakshman Seth threw hot tea on her when she spilt a little of it on his dhoti is an event ingrained in her memory. When mother sent her to sleep with Ratan Singh, Chameli understood that ‘Mother had no choice.’
Even as a chief minister engaged in telephonic conversation with the Prime Minister, she amorously observes the body of Ratan Singh seated on the sofa and his rough hands that smell of lust. She notes the movements of his body. She recalls his expression at the ‘moment of orgasm’ when she was sent as ‘fodder for his lust’. Once armed with POTA, not only does Charumati clumsily effect the midnight arrest of Ratan Singh, but also directs the police to arrest Lakshman Seth who had thrown hot tea on her face. This is Vaasanti’s conception of Chameli who is Charumati, who is in fact, Mayawati. This chief minister of India’s largest state; the leader of a party that wields influence not only on Uttar Pradesh which has 23 per cent dalits, but also the neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh; Mayawati was described by a news magazine as the person who mobilized dalits most effectively after Ambedkar.3 According to Vaasanti such a leader has come to power by mere chance. Vaasanti seems to be of the view that a dalit cannot come to power without the support of a caste Hindu. A dalit leader thus elected makes use of the law only to settle personal scores according to her personal likes and dislikes. Once she wields authority, she too becomes a “Thakur”. This is Vaasanti’s idea of justice. To ascertain if Vaasanti’s views and her perceptions of Uttar Pradesh are right we need to know a little about the state’s politics
The growth of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is an example of how dalit assertion can be achieved through electoral politics. In 1998, the BSP won 60.6 per cent of the dalit vote in UP. In the 1996 general election, the party contested 201 seats and won eleven. Of these only three were won in reserved constituencies. At the all-India level, the party won 12.1 per cent of the dalit vote-share and according to the Election Commission’s data, the party secured 20.16 per cent of total votes in UP. Since 1985, the BSP’s vote share has steadily increased. Having won 4 per cent of the overall vote in that election, it won 10.8 per cent in 1993 and this shot up to 20.16 in 1996. Among those who vote for the BSP, a majority (62.7 per cent) are unlettered, rural dalit masses who are, however, politically sensitized.4
The rise and growth of Mayawati and the BSP is not a result of ‘mere chance’ or the benevolence and support of Thakurs, as Vaasanti portrays it. The background to this can be trace to the history of the dalit struggle in Uttar Pradesh, played out over the past seventy-plus years. Dalit politics in UP came under the umbrella of the All-India Scheduled Caste Federation in the 1940s. There was a history of a refusal to do traditionally-assigned degrading jobs; a refusal to provide ritual labour (beggar) for no wages; a struggle for fair wages, or to start with, any wage at all—dalit struggles manifested themselves in several forms. The participation of dalit women in these struggles was notable.5 Until the formation of the Republican Party of India, the SCF was active in UP politics. Till 1969, the RPI was an influential player in the state elections. There was only one decade without any dalit political party in the fray, till the BSP was formed in the 1980s.
Vaasanti seems to have an urge to write despite being absolutely ignorant of this history of dalits in electoral politics in UP. But can this account of the history of UP’s electoral politics render Mayawati beyond criticism? That is not our point here. Dalit activist and intellectuals with standing such as S.K. Thorat, Udit Raj and Chandrabhan Prasad have been critical of Mayawati at times. In fact, several dalits have been critical of Mayawati’s ways of conducting politics. But non-dalits who criticize Mayawati never mention the good work she has done over the years.
During her earlier six-month stints, she offered land to the dalits, effected a two-fold hike in the scholarships to dalit students, established more than 5000 Ambedkar Model Villages, saw to the effective implementation of the SC/ST prevention of Atrocities Act, filled the long-unfilled vacancies in reserved posts, and much more. In the fifty-years of Indian independence, no other state could boast of such achievements.6 During her present term, Mayawati, by pioneering reservation in the state judiciary, and by suggesting that the union government suitably amend the law to ensure proportionate representation to dalits in the cabinet, has been broadening the scope of Indian democracy. No non-dalit ever comments about these issues. Why are caste Hindus who suddenly remember Ambedkar’s ideals when they see Mayawati celebrating her birthday in grand style and chide her for not living up them—silent about those policies of Mayawati which are a realization of the ideals of Ambedkar? It is another matter that caste Hindus seems to think that Ambedkar’s ideals and philosophy are applicable only to dalits (like Mayawati) and are not for them to follow in their own lives.
Even newspapers and magazines that criticize Mayawati are more direct. But Vaasanti avoids such straightforwardness. Her allegations come draped in the garb of fiction; under the guise of appreciating Mayawati, she indulges in mudslinging. She has indulged in slander that even Mulayam Singh Yadav would not have thought of. Her charge is that Mayawati/Charumati was someone who offered her body to a Thakur. Vaasanti often identifies herself as a feminist. And the feminist perspective that Vaasanti offers in her story is that a woman can rise to a position of power only by being the mistress of an influential man.
In a recent interview Vaasanti sobbed over the fact that she was subjected discrimination for being a woman and a Brahmin in Tamil Nadu.7 She also admitted in the same interview that her knowledge of Tamil Nadu was superficial. When you read this story, what is evident that it is not just a question of Tamil Nadu, her knowledge, of many other important issues is also superficial.
Is Vaasanti a feminist or not? Is she an intellectual? Is she a writer? These are not the issues here. We do not even need to look at whether what she has written can pass muster as a work of fiction. It is the disgust and contempt she has packaged in the form of a story that concern us. Vaasanti seems to have indulged in ‘transborder terrorism’ by crossing the boundaries of state and language to humiliate and demean Mayawati.
Vaasanti has titled her story, ‘Thinavu’. The Tamil Lexicon (1982) says thinavu means arippu (itch). Undudal (insolence), thimir (haughtiness) are the other meanings offered by the Dictionary of contemporary Tamil (Tharkala Tamizh Agharadi, Cre-A, 1992). We must also examine what the word has come to mean in usage. Tinaveduttha Thol (‘haughty shoulders’) is a phrase that connotes a man’s bravery, and his urge to go make war. However, when a woman is said to be ‘strutting with an itch’ (thinaveduthu thirigiraal) it has a sexual connotation, indicating that the woman is keen to satiate her lust. In Vaasanti’s story, though it is said at one point that ‘thinavu’ (the itch) springs from the tip of a whip (connoting authority), the itch here equally refers to the desire with which Chameli casts a glance at the Thakur’s rough hands. The choice of the title only reveals the author’s contemptuous attitude.
A novel written after the 1968 massacre of forty-four dalit labourers in Tanjavur’s Keezhvenmani village offered a psychoanalytical rationale to the mass murder by portraying the male landlord who orders the killings as impotent (Kurudipppunal by Indira Parthasarathy, which won him the Sahitya Akademi award). Similarly, Vaasanti has sought to understand the arrest of Raja Bhaiyya in Uttar Pradesh not only in terms of the lowborn status of the woman chief minister, but, in fact, in terms of her desire. While one Brahmin male writer traced an atrocity to the landlord’s phallus, another Brahmin woman writer today seeks to locate ‘dalit revenge’ in a dalit woman’s vagina.
Not just Mayawati, but dalits and dalit politics have been ‘uglified’ here. Realizing the repercussions she might have faced if she had expressed such base thoughts in the form of an article/essay, Vaasanti has taken advantage of the licensee fiction allows. She may be under the impression that she has spit out a precious gem; however, the dalits will realize the kind of vicious venom that it actually is. Vaasanti might have felt emboldened by her belief that ‘snake worship is our culture’. However, people belonging to a different culture also live in this land. For them, the snake is no god, just a snake. And they also know how to protect themselves from a snake.
Ravikumar is a political activist-theoretician of the dalit movement in Tamilnadu.
Translated from the Tamil into English by S. Anand.