Dissent of a Dalit Gandhian

is a portrait of the prosperous and verdant Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka, with its unique Tuluva culture and traditional art forms such as the Bhootaradhane, a kind of ancestor worship through dance in which the performer goes into a trance. A local art form, it is played out in fallow fields all night, after the winter harvest, when there is some leisure and money in the countryside for such indulgences.

The book, however, uses the art form as a heuristic device to explore deep questions of Dalit identity and politics. Moily looks at the Pambada community, which performs these arts, through the eyes of two brothers, Lakana and Aitha. The former rejects the art form as a way in which society has trapped the Pembada community and instead holds the view that a rejection of the past and acceptance of modern education are the only way forward. The other brother holds fast to the old ways, and yet tries to transcend his oppressed condition through what he knows and privileging his traditional knowledge. The entire book is the journey of the two brothers as they search for answers about their place in society and the surest way to overcome the position accorded to them in the caste hierarchy. What we get along the way are snapshots of south Karnataka, one of the most beautiful and unique parts of the country. The Tuluva culture of Mangalore, which finds mention in 12th century tracts of Arab merchants and travellers, and its aspects of high and low culture are depicted in visual prose.

The most significant part of the book, for me, appears in the penultimate chapter, when Lakana, now an officer in the state bureaucracy, is approached by another Dalit officer to form an association of Dalit officers against oppression. Lakana resists the idea and argues ferociously that publicity and posters will not be their salvation. Instead, he argues for the Gandhian route of political participation, education, hygiene and standing against oppression through the legal channels available to Dalits. His pointing out that a few Dalits who have gained modern education have built walls within their own communities is not a popular argument, especially for a politician, to make. Moily through his characters says that though reservations are important, they remain just one of many things that the Dalits need to do to transcend their condition. He says through Lakana that Dalits need to educate their brothers and sisters, give testimony when atrocities against Dalits are committed, make sure that Dalits are pulled out of degrading occupations and politically participate whenever questions related to them are debated in society.

Moily's conclusion that truth and self-respect, whether as an English-educated babu or as a practitioner of traditional medicine, are the only route to overcoming oppression is significant. Lakana's cry that social movements have been reduced to a hysteria of victimhood is a telling comment. The Dalit movement in the south has often been held up to the one in the north, with not just participation in power but a distribution of resources and a genuine intellectual engagement with basic questions of identity and categories at the base of it. The historical trajectory in the south has been quite at variance with that of the north. The undermining of this intellectual engagement is what has been the reason for the Dalit movement in the north being all about political power sharing rather than genuine progress. Moily's book is thought-provoking and a welcome relook at not just politics but at the politician himself who had been awarded the unfortunate sobriquet "Oily Moily", but who is one of the few of the old breed of creative politicians equally at ease with literary soiries as the hurly burly of politics.

The Edge of Time

M Veerappa Moily,
Translated by C N Ramachandra
Rupa & Co
Rs 295; xxvi+230 pages