Gurbani Walia Summary 2

Akkarmashi – Sharankumar Limbale

The word baramashi is used to describe something that’s pure. The word opposite to that is akkarmashi, something that is impure. It is an abuse used within the Mahar community to refer to someone who is an illegitimate child. Calling someone an akkarmashi is more profane and demeaning than calling them a bastard. Sharankumar Limbale’s life was such that the title of his autobiography is an abuse. Through his autobiography he gives us a look into the culture of exclusion and exploitation within the Dalit community.

 The two things that stand out are: (i) the strong visual imagery of hunger and the lengths it can drive a person to, such as eating jowar picked from dung-heaps and the leftovers of the better off in the village. As the author comments having a stomach is a terrible thing because it can literally drive you to eating shit. (ii) the author is a half-caste, born of a Dalit mother and an upper-caste Patil man. As he comments almost every village in India has a patil and that patil has a mistress, often from the Dalit castes. The author is the offspring of such a union. This exposes not only the sexual exploitation of Dalit women which is widespread but also the hypocrisy of the brahminical caste system which on the one had grades castes hierarchically according to ritual norms of purity and pollution and on the other underpins and legitimizes sexual relations between them; making the practice of formal untouchability, preposterous. It being an autobiography reveals the self of a dalit and what all they have to suffer because of the traditions of the upper caste and their hypocrisies in spite of the protection granted by the constitution. 

Limbale very graphically showcases what it is to live without any social capital at all. He narrates how he and his mother survived by selling cheap liquor to customers at their home and how harrowing it was. From police raids at their place of work and stay to unsolicited flirtation from the customers which sometimes also got physical. He writes how he got into bad company and smoked discarded butts of cigarettes and bidis. He talks about bathing and brushing his teeth everyday as if it was something exclusive. His books opens you to the reality of so many people in India, it's raw and therefore a little unsettling but very important for sure.  

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