Poetry

Voices of The Children of The Gurus, Part II:
Dalit Punjabi Literature

by RAJ KUMAR HANS

 

 

CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY ...

The rise of the Ad Dharm movement in Punjab in the 1920s unleashed the most virulent opposition to caste under the leadership of the Gaddharite Babu Mangoo Ram Mugowalia. The autonomous movement drew inspiration from the Sikh Gurus as well as Bhagats from the Guru Granth Sahib, such as Ravidas, Kabir, and Namdev, and assailed the brahmanical structures of social inequality and domination.

The Ad Dharm movement aimed at securing a distinct identity for the Dalits, independent of both the Hindu and Sikh religions. In addition to political mobilization, the Ad Dharm movement brought about cultural transformation in the lives of the 'untouchables' in Punjab by its emphasis on moral principles for bringing a sense of self-respect among them. It also attempted to forge unity among the different untouchable castes by bringing them under one banner of Ad Dharm, emphasising they were the original inhabitants of the region.

Two weekly newspapers played a significant role in raising Dalit consciousness in Punjab : Adi Danka in the 1930s and Ujala in the early 1950s.

Gurdas Ram Aalam and Chanan Lal Manak set the trend of radical Dalit poetry in Punjab via Adi Danka’s prestigious columns.

Gurdas Ram Aalam (1912-1989), who was born in a poor Dalit family of Bundala village in Jallandhar district, happens to be the first Punjabi poet with dalit consciousness. Aalam was not able to go to school and learnt basic gurmukhi letters from his friends. Even though illiterate, Aalam emerged as one of popular folk-poets of the stage before the Partition of Punjab.

All the four books of his poems were full of social and economic issues of the deprived and oppressed caste-communities. On political and social issues, Aalam wrote like a revolutionary. No wonder, even Pash (who has become a symbol of Punjabi revolutionary poetry) considered Aalam the first revolutionary poet of Punjab.

Hazara Singh Mushtaq (1917-1981) was different from his predecessor dalit poets. He was an ardent nationalist, a flag-bearer of the Indian National Congress and was also jailed a few times during the late-colonial rule for his nationalism. Of his seven books published, Kissa Mazhbi Sikh Jodha (1955) directly reflected his dalit concerns. Though he does not chide ‘Independence’ in the context of the poor dalits like Aalam, he expresses his disillusionment with the post-Independence developments, brings in socialist ideology to disparage the social and economic disparities, and calls the dalits for a revolutionary rise in his 1977 Noori Ghazal.

The revolutionary rise that Punjab witnessed in the form of Naxalism in the late 1960s produced two dalit poets with revolutionary as well as dalit consciousness. These were Sant Ram Udasi (1939-1986) and Lal Singh Dil (1943-2007).

Sant Ram Udasi was born in a dalit Mazhbi Sikh landless labour family. He grew up with a strong dalit consciousness and had tried to find dignity in his religion of birth, but soon he experienced that caste discrimination and untouchability had struck deep roots in the community. During 1970s he emerged as one of the powerful radical poets and published three books of poetry, viz. Lahu Bhije Bol (Blood-soaked Words), Saintan (Gestures) and Chounukrian (the Four-edged).

He was arrested and tortured for his Naxal connections. The tortures to him were far more severe than were meted out to the  jutt Naxals who falsely claimed to be of a 'high-caste'. Another dalit Naxalite poet, Lal Singh Dil, was born in a Ramdasia Sikh (Chamar) family in 1943. He was training to be a basic school teacher when Naxalbari sucked him in. In the dream of a society free of caste and class, Dil saw a new dawn for the oppressed. He was arrested, incarcerated and tortured, excessively so because he was a dalit, while his tormentors purported to be from 'high' castes and claimed dominance.

Dil was a sensitive poet and his poetry was true to life and the experience of poverty, injustice and oppression was so real and told so well that he was hailed as the bard of the Naxalite movement in Punjab. A great poet he was undoubtedly, and his collection of poetry Satluj di Hava (1971), Bahut Saare Suraj (1982), and Sathar (1997) as well as his autobiography Dastaan (1998) enjoy an exalted place in Punjabi letters.

It is remarkable that Dil’s Dalit consciousness and identity was free from feelings of hatred, vengeance and malice. Though he remained and died a faqir, Dil has come to be acknowledged as the one of the best Punjabi poets of last half a century.

The two powerful revolutionary dalit poets were an upsurge on the Punjabi literary stage which had remained dominated by the so-called 'upper-caste', 'upper-class' litterateurs and they became a major source for the bursting of dalit literary energy in 1990s. If their poetry was looking for a revolutionary class change, it had the vivacity of dalit identity which was capable of challenging the hegemonic discourses.

Sukhdev Singh Sirsa puts this change in perspective:

The question of dalit identity has given a new ideological context to the contemporary Punjabi literature. The new Punjabi poetry has given a new expression to the dalit concerns of existential and social identity. This new perspective disentangles itself from the class-conflict approach to the understanding of dalit identity in the varna system and looks at the changing dalit philosophy. Hence, this poetry does not only reject the established assumptions and hypotheses but also produces an alternative.

“Dalit Punjabi Kavita: Itihasak Paripekh” in Hashia, I, 1, Jan-March 1908, p 27 (my translation) 

Contemporary poets include Balbir Madhopuri, Siri Ram Arsh, Sulakhan Mit, Gurmeet Kalarmajri, Madan Vira, Manjit Kadar, Bhagwan Dhilon, Buta Singh Ashant, Manmohan, Mohan Tyagi, Mohan Matialvi, Jaipal, Iqbal Gharu, Harnek Kaler and Sadhu Singh Shudrak.

They are assertive about their dalit identity as dalit political assertion in the past few decades has empowered them to re-read historical traditions and situate themselves by providing a pride of space in the otherwise historical trajectory denied to them. This is obvious from the following lines of two contemporary dalit poets.

Manmohan in ‘Agaz’ raises his voice: 

It is said to me

The colour of your poem is black

Flat features

Tattered dress

Full of patches

Asymmetrical rhythm ...

Sorrow appears before pleasure does

Pains peaks before peace ...

Tell me now

If I don’t write poems like this

What should I do?


Listen to what Balbir Madhopuri has to offer in his ‘Bhakhda Patal’ ('Smouldering Netherworld'):


For smoked skinned people like me

I do want

My poems

Should be part of that anthology

That contains

Stories of Eklavaya and Banda Singh Bahadar

Struggle of Pir Buddhu Shah

Sensitivity of Pablo Neruda

 

The Punjabi short story had remained a story of the peasant jutts who had claimed dominance on the dubious strength of a purported 'high-caste' status, or of the urban elite for long time, although stray empathetic notes could be seen in the second generation of story-writers in the 1950s-60s.

It is only in the 1970s with Attarjit’s ‘Bathlu Chamiar’ that the Punjabi short-story weaves a complete dalit character from a dalit perspective. His collections of story ‘Maas-khore’, ‘Tutde bannde Rishte’, ‘Adna Insan’, and ‘Anni Theh’ construct the assertive dalit consciousness.

Similarly if Prem Gorkhi and Bhura Singh Kaler bring vitality to the dalit short story, Lal Singh and Nachhatar’s stories give a distinct personality to dalits. During the 1980s and 90s, the dalit story consolidates itself with Makhan Maan, Bhagwant Rasulpuri, Ajmer Sidhu, Des Raj Kali, Jinder, Gurmit Kadialavi, Sarup Sialvi, Gulzar Muhammad Goria and Mohan Philoria who declare themselves as dalits with pride and élan as they are inspired by Ambedkar’s ideology.

The Punjabi novel was the product of the early twentieth century and its nature was religious in context and content. It is only after independence that its scope gets widened. From Gurdial Singh’s dalit character, Jagsir, who is still seen in the dominant-subordinate landed relations, the novel enters into a different terrain of dalit consciousness.

Gurcharan Singh Rao’s Mashalchi (1986), Karnail Singh Nijhar’s Sarghi da Tara, Surjit Sokhi’s Aurat te Aurat (1983), Karamjit Singh Aujhla’s Ooch Neech (2000), Nachhatar’s Buddhi Sadi da Manukh (1988) and ‘Nikke Nikke Asman’ (2004), Gurmel Madahad’s Dulla and Des Raj Kali’s Parneshwari (2007), have chartered a speedy journey of producing the fulsome dalit novels.

Gurcharan Rao’s Mashalchi holds untouchability practiced by so-called 'high' castes responsible for the educational backwardness of dalits. Nachhatar weaves a progressive story of the dalit march onward as compared to some of the peasants (known as 'jutts') who sometimes come to them to borrow money. Even on the question of sexuality, one finds role reversals where girls from so-called 'upper' castes fall in love with dalit boys, especially the educated ones.

Madahad’s protagonist in Dulla is a dalit woman, Tej, who does not consider herself less than any man. Not only does she add to the meagre family income but by igniting the dead body of her mother at cremation, otherwise prohibited to women by hindu social practice, she raises the status of women in general. Tej emerges as a courageous, strong and intelligent woman who shows independence of character. She is conscious of good living and the struggle to progress in life and does not succumb to anybody.

In Parneshwari, Des Raj Kali looks deep into the Dalit past, seeking to lend them an identity when the contemporary social realities fail to respond to their aspirations. His work is rooted in Punjab ’s legacy of Sufism and Buddhism and challenges the cultural hegemonies of the  Sikh peasants. The novelist creates his own style of writing and one needs to discard the old practises of reading Punjabi literature when one reads Kali. 

One important genre used by dalit writers that becomes an explicit expression of dalit consciousness is autobiographical writing. It authenticates the real world of exclusionary orders and practices; of social ostracism, caste discriminations, economic and sexual exploitation, and political subordination; of wants, miseries, insults, humiliations but also the world of dalit dreams, aspirations, struggles, sacrifices and rise. Understandably, the dalit autobiographies appeared late on the Punjabi literary horizon.

The first such work happens to by Pandit Bakshi Ram’s Mera Jeevan Sangharash [My life Struggle], hardly known and referred to as it was not published by any established publisher but by Punjab Pradesh Balmik Sabha, Jalandhar, a caste-community organization, in 1983 and the Balmiks happened to be the lowest of the low, mainly working as scavengers in the towns and cities.

Lal Singh Dil’s Dastan is a poignant account, almost poetic (essentially being a poet, his prose in Dastan reads like poetry) of his life as a dalit, as a revolutionary, as a person on the margins of every facet of life. He goes into those issues of everyday life where he felt humiliated, neglected, ignored, despised, dismissed and tortured as he also records those who befriended, encouraged, stood by, helped and consoled. Balbir Madhopuri’s autobiography Chhangia Rukh (The Lopped Tree) appeared in 2003 and stirred the Punjabi literary world by baring the real rural social life the way it was not done before. It is a powerful portrayal of the dalit world.

Equally important is the 2007 autobiography by another dalit writer, Gurnam Aqida, called Kakh Kande: Nij ton Haqiqat
Val ['Blades of Grass and Thistles: from Self towards Reality']. Written in a novel stylistic prose it is a poignant account of the rural-urban continuum as far as the dalits’ position is concerned. It challenges the dominant strains and takes the dalit story forward in a progression.

He looks at the changing times with a positive glare where a silent revolution seems to be taking place with the dalit movement from villages and getting free from the day-to-day exploitation and oppression by the so-called upper castes. His account hints at the steady rise of dalit consciousness and assertion. Being an upright and honest journalist he had to face caste prejudice and attacks where he came to be considered as a kanda (thistle) by his corrupt superiors and jealous colleagues.

The autobiography of Attarjit adds another dimension to the dalit life-world of Punjab where dalits match the dominant jutt/peasant community on the question of self-respect, even engaging them in fights, including murders. It was known in the surrounding villages that people should be careful confronting dalits of Attarjit’s village, especially from his own family. Thus, the dalits have come a long way.

*   *   *   *   *

The essay had begun with a comment on the state of literary histories that show the elitist approaches in history writing have systematically excluded dalit writers only because of their caste and social marginalisation. We have seen above a rich heritage of Punjabi dalit writings, the vitality of dalit creativity and the best informed in Punjabi literary circles and historians are either just ignorant of these fascinating figures or they feign ignorance.

Even when one can understand ignorance about the writings of Bhai Jaita and Sadhu Wazir Singh as they came to light only in the last three decades, how does one makes sense of this neglect when one talks of Daya Singh Arif’s poetry which ruled the Punjabi minds for a century?

This section will take account of writings on histories of Punjabi literature even while focussing on Daya Singh’s case.

The first ‘path-breaking’ A History of Punjabi Literature in English was written by Mohan Singh Oberoi Diwana in 1932. He was a sound scholar with facility in Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, Hindi and English languages besides being a creative writer.

Sadhu Daya Singh was Diwana’s contemporary and by the time the latter wrote his history the former had made a mark as one of the most popular poets of his times. It is unlikely that Diwana would be ignorant of Daya Singh’s work, and yet he does not mention his name even in his chart of minor poets of the British period.

One can give him the benefit of doubt in his first edition. But omitting Daya Singh in the second edition of his history published in 1956 is not easy to understand.

Here, Tejwant Singh's observation seems to be apt about “his haughty temperament that led him to deal arrogantly with his contemporaries.” (“Studying Punjabi literature of the Past” in Muse India.

In the case of Daya Singh, Tejwant’s further assessment of Diwana appears to be problematic when he continues: “So much so, while dealing with the modern period, he had the audacity to ignore them altogether, and mention only those who wrote in the commonplace idiom and did not have claim to literary achievement worth the name.”

Daya Singh could surely be counted among ‘those who wrote in the commonplace idiom’, and yet he does not even get mentioned in Diwana’s list where only writers’ names and their works are given.

Mohan Singh Diwana was a pioneer, the trend-setter in the historiography of Punjabi literature. While he wrote in English, those following him in this respect and writing in Punjabi followed him literally as a revered authority. If Diwana included or excluded someone in/from the history, his successors would not do otherwise. This is remarkable for the culture of history writing in Punjab.

After a decade of the Diwana tome, Gopal Singh came up with Punjabi Sahit Da Itihas in 1942, Surinder Singh produced the same title in 1950, Piara Singh Bhogal wrote Punjabi Kavita De Sau Saal (from 1850 to 1954) in 1955, Heera Singh Dard  with the tired out title ‘Punjabi Sahit da Itihas’ in 1976, while Jeet Singh Seetal produced Punjabi Sahit da Alochnatmak Itihas in 1979, to count only the major ones.

And a host of scholars of Punjabi literature turned their attention to the recent developments in the history of Punjabi literature. Most of them have followed the 'master' of the genre and have not bothered to look at poor Daya Singh in their histories. Tejwant says that they “were so overawed by his scholarship that they did not acquire confidence to gaze critically at the nomenclature, methodology, explication and evaluation provided by him.”

Selection, of course, is a necessary methodological device and also a prerogative of the author that could also be called ‘subjectivity’ which incidentally is in abundance in literature. Diwana quotes Andrew Lang of ‘The History of English Literature’ in the first edition of his history:

The writer would indeed have willingly omitted not a few of the minor authors in pure literature, and devoted his space only to the masters. But each of these springs from an underwood, as it were, of thought and effort of men less conscious whom it were ungrateful and is practically impossible to pass by in silence. (History, 1956, p. V) 

Diwana adds to what Lang was saying: “The reader has his orthodoxies and heresies; so has the writer and it will be much good if both recognize …” Surely, Diwana had a right to his ‘orthodoxies’. But if he was pitching Lang as an authority on history of literature, one would expect him to follow the master of the game in spirit if not in details.

Even if Daya Singh was a ‘minor’ poet in Diwana’s eyes, which he was not as highlighted above, Daya Singh certainly wielded the capacity to ‘spring from an underwood of thought’, and should not to be bypassed ‘in silence’. Yet Daya Singh was indeed silenced as if popular lips who sang him in bazaars and in the fields were being stitched together.

It is in 1971 that Kirpal Singh Kasel in the 2nd volume of his ‘Punjabi Sahit Da Itihas’ takes some note of our neglected poet. At least he writes three lines about Sadhu Daya Singh. The historian admits that Daya Singh wrote so well that he has been very popular among common people. But even in these three lines, Kasel errs on the titles of both the works that he cites. He cites Jindagi Bilas as Jindagi Vilas, a minor error, and Fanah da Makan as Fanah da Muqam.

Diwana’s exclusion is carried through decades to an authoritative work of historiography of Punjabi literature produced by the Sahitya Akademi in 1992. Sant Singh Sekhon and Kartar Singh Duggal, like Diwana, do not mention Daya Singh even as a minor poet in their ‘A History of Punjabi Literature’ although in the interregnum a well-researched monograph on the poet had appeared in two prints (Atam Hamrahi’s Sadhu Daya Singh Arif was published by the Publication Bureau of Punjabi University in 1970. The book was out of print in the late-1980s; hence a second print was brought out in 1990).

There should be no doubt that Sant Singh Sekhon was a towering Marxist figure of Punjabi literature. In the last phase of his life, he also turned to writing a history of Punjabi literature. There is a gap of nearly 60 years between Diwana’s and Sekhon’s histories. Much water had flowed in the river of Punjabi literature in the interregnum. Sekhon in his 2nd volume of A History of Punjabi Literature (1996) shows no less generosity than Kasel had done in 1971, a gap of 25 years, towards our poet under discussion.

It is another matter that he seems to have just picked up from Kasel and commits the same errors in the titles of the two works of Daya Singh. It is surely an improvement on the 1992 volume, jointly edited with Duggal and produced by a national body on Indian literatures, viz., the Sahitya Academy.

A slightly better space is given to Daya Singh in the most recent work in this trail of histories on Punjabi literature since the appearance of Diwana’s path-breaking work. Rajinder Pal Singh in his Adhunik Punjabi Kavita da Itihas (2006)  - which is the 8th volume in the series on 'The History of Punjabi Literature’ brought out by the Punjabi Sahit Akadmi, Delhi  - gives eight lines of information on Daya Singh.

It is a remarkable correction over the earlier histories in the sense that he gives the full name of the poet, viz., Sadhu Daya Singh Arif and that also with the correct dates of his birth and death and also with correct titles of all his works, including Sputtar Bilas.

This, in short, is the history of the ‘coverage’ of Sadhu Daya Singh and his works in the 70 years of historiography of Punjabi literature. Indeed, it is a history of selective ‘silence’, of neglect and, above all, of exclusion. Not that Daya Singh’s contemporary ‘minor’ poets and writers get the similar treatment at the hands of historians. In the first place, Daya Singh is not a minor poet as discussed in this paper. He is one of the most popular poets of the first half of the twentieth century.

But obviously he gets shadowed by the much lionised and valorised trio of Bhai Vir Singh, Puran Singh, and Dhani Ram Chatrik. Undoubtedly the three were towering literary figures and are held on a high pedestal not without foundation. Each of them came from affluent families.

On the other hand, Sadhu Daya Singh was born in an ‘untouchable’ poor family of labourers where social stigma and heaps of insults in daily life were surely detrimental to any comfortable creative activity. Being born a Dalit was a sufficient reason to be excluded from the charmed circle of so-called 'high-caste' writers.

And surely, this treatment was not only ‘reserved’ for Daya Singh alone.

Another popular Dalit poet chronologically following him has also been treated in the same cavalier fashion, in this respect without discrimination. Gurdas Ram Aalam was born in a poor Dalit family of Bundala village in Jallandhar district. Even though illiterate, Aalam had emerged as one of popular folk-poets of the stage before the Partition. He used to share the stage with the better known names in the Punjabi literary circles, viz. Kartar Singh Ballagan, Vidhata Singh Teer, Nandlal Nurpuri and Dhani Ram Chatrik.

Unlike Daya Singh who focussed on moral and spiritual crises confronting the universal man, Aalam clearly grew up with Dalit consciousness and composed his poems and lyrics on the working people. All the four books of his poetry were full of social and economic issues of the deprived and oppressed caste-communities. He wrote with commitment and convictions and publicly presented his poetry powerfully on stage. On political and social issues, Aalam wrote like a revolutionary.

This widely known, popular poet of the stature of Daya Singh was also written off from the pages of histories. There must be social structural and psychological reasons for their exclusion. An attempt needs be made to unravel the sources of such silences, neglects and exclusions.

CONCLUDED

 

[Courtesy: Roundtable India. Edited for sikhchic.com]

December 18, 2011

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