Week 12- Abhijay Srekanth

Dalit poetry like any form of dalit-literature is a reflection of lived experiences. The familiar themes of hunger, humiliation and emancipation appear quite frequently. This short piece will go over a few poems, and analyse them.

Ekalaivan

This note comes as a consolation:

                 You can do a lot of things

                 With your left hand.

                 Besides, fascist Dronacharyas warrant

                 Left-handed treatment.

                 Also,

                 You don’t need your right thumb,

                 To pull a trigger or hurl a bomb.

I found this piece to be a particularly interesting call to action. The poem references the Mahabharata, where a tribal-child who was a better archer than Arjun, came to Dronacharaya for training. When asked how he became so good, he replied that an image of the teacher helped him. Drona, so as to ensure Arjun remained undefeated, based for the child's thumb as tuition-arrears, effectively crippling the boy. 

The poet curses the underhanded tactics of the upper-caste to ensure they never possess the tools they may need for their emancipation. The disgust he has for the upper -castes is reflected in his call for "left-handed treatment (the left hand being considered generally unclean and reserved for the washroom). While the last line may allude to a violent uprising, a case may be made by Dalit scholars that violence begets violence and that ahimsa notions by a renowned casteist are privileges they cannot afford.