అసత్యం నిస్సిగ్గుగా ..రాజ్యం యేలుతుంటే … సత్యం చచ్చు బడ్డ కాళ్ళ తో పరారయింది …

అసత్యం నిస్సిగ్గుగా ..రాజ్యం యేలుతుంటే …
సత్యం చచ్చు బడ్డ కాళ్ళ తో పరారయింది …
నిజమే ..ఆయేషా హంతకుడు
సత్యం బాబేనా ??
సత్యానికి ఉరి …అ సత్యానికి సగర్వ రాచమర్యాద ..
నా మిత్రుడు ఓ సందర్భం లో అన్నాడు
అసత్యం నిస్సిగ్గుగా ..రాజ్యం యేలుతుంటే …
సత్యం చచ్చు బడ్డ కాళ్ళ తో పరారయింది ……
బరితెగించిన న్యాయ వ్యవస్త నిలువెత్తు నిర్లక్ష్యానికి పరా కాష్ట..

సత్యం బాబు కు యావజ్జీవ శిక్ష..

దొంగలు దర్జాగా రాజ్యాన్ని యేలుతుంటే ..అమాయకులు
అంగట్లో …శవాలుగా.

.మారే అన్యాయ న్యాయ వ్యవస్తకు తలకొరివి పెట్టాలని ఉంది ..
ఇక నుంచి జైళ్ళు నోరు తెరుస్తాయి ..
సత్యాన్ని ..ఇక్కడ కాపాడినా ..

ఏదో ఒక రోజు ఎక్కడో ఒకచోట ..మొద్దు శ్రీను లాగా
మాయం కాక తప్పుడు..
మరణం తప్పదు ..
సోదరా ..నేను తప్పు చేస్తే
నన్ను ఉరి తీయండి అని సగర్వం గా చెప్పావే ..
నీ కున్న పాటి ధైర్యం కూడా న్యాయ వ్యవస్తకు లేదు

అది దొంగలకు సద్ది మొసేది..
నీకు తెలియదా
ఇక్కడ సమాధులు ..
గుడులు… కొంపలు కూల్చే వాళ్లకు స్తానం

నీ లాంటి వాళ్లకు కాదు

నీ సచ్చు బడ్డ కాళ్ళకు తెలుసు …
నిజమేమిటో

నీవు పారిపోయావని

నిన్ను..ఎన్కౌంటర్..చేయబోయిన

కాకి కి తెలుసు .కలిగిన వాళ్లకు అవెంత..విశ్వాస పాతంగా..ఉంటాయో
నిన్నుఏకాకిని చేసిన వ్యవస్థ
మీద కాండ్రించి ఉమ్మాల్సింది ..
ఉరి తీయమంటవా…..

Literature of Marginal People

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Literature of Marginal పీపుల్ గుర్రం సీతారాములు

Literature is basically secondary because it is reactionary, Foucault’s Function of the literature suggests that we stop treating literature as a sacralized object that stands separate from above the politics of culture, and that instead we treat literature as a part of a cultural/political field. Literature then becomes available as a tool for examining cultural and political processes. This is unfortunate that now a days in modern domain some reactionary literature is being Marginalized. We can find how power operates through hegemony to decide central and Marginal. It has several dimensions one can experience the humiliation in the name of haves and have-nots, one can experience in the name of Gender , and in the name of Racial discrimination. For instance In Kenya the native peoples were driven to revolt by segregation, exploitation and theft their lands. The colonizers were reluctant to give equal pay for equal work. They are Marginalized in the name of skill “A skilled minor is one who has a white face” according to Peter Abrahams in “Return to Goli.” When a white miner does a drilling job, it becomes a skilled job. When a black miner does it, it is unskilled”. Dominated western societies saying that gave civilization to the African countries “To civilize the savages” such words used by the colonizer to justify their invasion of the so called Dark Continent. Rene Maran attacked in the preface of Batouala: “Civilization, civilization, pride of Europeans and their slaughters- house of innocence, Rabindranath Tagore the Indian poet once, in Tokyo told what you are! You build your Kingdome on corpse. Whatever you wish whatever you wish. In Indian literary history and theory as well as the teaching of Indian literature, are spectacularly silent about Dalith literature. Yet Dalith cultural and
Critical production makes a significant critical intervention in the thinking and writing about Indian society, history culture and literature Though Dalith literature if powerful., but it is being marginalized by the Dominant upper caste Hindu fundamentalists.

Arjun Dangle, the Marathi Dalith writer, editor, and activist, says, ‘Dalith literature is marked by revolt and negativism, since it is closely associated with the hopes for freedom by a group of people who as untouchables are victims of social, economic and cultural inequality’ Dangle traces the origin of dalith literature to Ambedkar ‘His revolutionary ideas stirred into action all the Daliths of Maharastra and gave them a new self- respect. Dalith literature is nothing but the literary expression of this awareness
Peoples those who are Lesbians, gays Homosexuals Transsexuals are thrown a way from mainstream literary discourse. In this paper I would like elaborate the literature of the Marginalized people with reference to Afro American literature.
A person may become marginal because of change demographic, caste, religion, and regional patterns, even with in his/her own caste he/ she may be marginal because of consideration of the sub caste for their consideration it may seem, yet the person may be marginal but being a member of religious majority he may be centered even when we move from one locality to another locality in the same place on the same day or even hour the margin and center identities or categories keep shifting. Making it difficult for any one to conclude if these identities draw the barer draws them
The question of Margin or Marginal, Marginalized/ Marginalization is related to identity to self. Identity and self and individual have been major concerns of individualistic societies like the west and not India where inhalation or surrender of the self has been the ideal to achieve. Now a days Marginality become Universal phenomena one can become marginalize in the name of the Caste, region religion, or Gender. Seldom can we find these voices discussed any ware. The last twenty years has witnessed an explosive growth of interest in African literature as well as Marginal literature. There has been an outpouring of anthologies, papers and book length studies. This kind of the African Literature continuous to grow, and there is every reason to believe that the voice of the African writers will be heard and studied for a long time to come, as artist social analysts and literary critic. But with in the Afro American literature Woman writers are being marginalized.
In this way the women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. Bell hooks a renowned Afro American Feminist Ideologue and a distinguished professor of English at city College University of New York. In her book “Feminist Theory from Margin to center” criticized western domination in with in the women liberation movement in United States. She said “There are white women who had never considered resisting male domination until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should “ Her awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance, she grew up in Southern black Father dominated, working class house hold she experienced (her mother, sister and her brother) various dangers of patriarchal tyranny and it made her angry and raised her question the politics of male domination enabled her resist sexist socialization.
She says” how has the women been depicted in literature? This is the crucial question that needs our attention. Since literature reflects the socio cultural realities, the depiction of the women in literature has been according to the social status enjoyed by the women, but the status of the women has not been the same at all times and all societies there fore it is difficult to make organized generalized statements which would be universally valid. Yet by and large women all over the world have enjoyed a secondary status Visa-a vis men.” The tremendous blossoming of the women writers in Africa after the 1960’s has led to a vigorous questioning of Eurocentric masculinist world view. The literary fashion of ignoring women writers has been challenged by voices which were virtually unheard till a few decades ago.” She provoked discussion between among the blocks and white women about the issue of racism and American feminism. It represented one of few efforts at black feminist analysis; and it was accessible to people outside of academics.
To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside of the main body. It explores, that the masses of the poor and minority women are marginal to feminist activism and theory building, her analysis of how racial sexual and class and class oppression are inextricably intermingled proves to be powerfully illuminating. She provides comprehensive well documented critique of contemporary American feminism. Most of issues considered to be to a feminist agenda are addressed female sexual oppression.
She also explodes why black women and other women of color remained alienated from the feminist movement. The reason include a general unfamiliarity with the language and traditions of feminism, the media misrepresentation of feminists the portrayal of all men as enemies and attacks on mother hood and family by some feminists as well as recognition of white women racism. Literature is closely related to society. It has to reflect the Social reality it not only reflect but also shapes the complex ways in which men and women organized themselves, their inter personal relationships and their perceptions of the socio cultural reality . The attitude of the male author towards men and women depicted by him and in his works and the attitude of the characters male and female to one another highlights the gender relationships as well as the authors’ attitude towards these relationships. Literature thus offers the best possibility of expressing the politics of gender. She suggest that how to come up with racial discrimination She says” I have been working to change the way I speak and write, to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of place , of not just who I am in the present but where I am coming from, the multiple voices with me. I have confronted silence, inarticulateness. When I say then, that these words emerge from suffering, I refer to that personal struggle to name the location from which I came to voice- that space of my theorizing”
Chinua Achebe’s “Things fall Apart “ is the first title in Heinemann’s African writers series at the same time Flora N wapa’s Efru the first novel in the series by a women .
Heinemann’ was the major English publisher of African literature between 1958 and 1986. Flora N wapa was the first Female authored work in the series .The next work in the series by a women “Idu “ also by N wapa, did not appear until 1970, thirty male authored texts later. What are the factors to which the relativity small number of women authors can be attributed? Male bias in education is clearly one such factor.
Colonial policies in Africa favored the education of boys over girls and operated to cut women off from the written world. The same male bias is evident in education in postcolonial Nigeria. The number of women writing in Africa has always been rather small when compared with their male counter parts. The contributions of women to African literature have not been limited to the modern period. Women have always played considerable role, as storytellers and performers, in the oral traditions. The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. The situation in South Africa is similar. It is therefore great importance that black Africans and women and other marginalized people become involved in every spear of South African life. This must especially get involved in African literature. Until recently black African writers were ignored and pushed aside to the periphery.
Jerry Gaffio Wattes In his book “Ameri Baraka “explains about the social marginality He says “A fundamental assumption of this study is that traditional afro American intellectuals have as one of their priorities the re production of themselves as intellectuals. That is black intellectuals want to write and black painters want to paint whatever provides the time and space to write to paint becomes a priority for intellectuals. One of the greatest tensions of twentieth century traditional afro American intellectual life is that the attempts of black intellectuals to flourish were severely hindered by the viciousness of white American racism. For most of the twentieth century black American intellectuals did not have reads access grants fellowships research positions at elite universities or even membership on the editorial boards of the prominent American intellectual journals. The condition of being denied access to the mainstream (i.e. White controlled) intellectuals resources and critical audiences while belonging to an ethnic group that did not have the resources and or educational attainment sufficient to sustain serious traditional intellectual activity placed traditional black intellectuals in unique voice For most of the black intellectuals have been socially marginalized to the white and black communities”.
Ameri Baraka another marginalized voice in afro American writers. He was a poet, play Wright, novelist, fiction writer essayist jazz critic, political reader social activist and Marxist. Jerry Gafio Watts a leading critic of afro American literature in his book “ Amiri Baraka” Of the Afro American artists/ intellectuals who came to prominence during the 1960’s no single figure was more politically active than Le Roi Jones/ Amiri Baraka . More than any other American writer white or black Baraka is the committed artist par excellence from the mid 1960’s and through the mid 1970’s Baraka devoted his artistic skills to the creation of art particularly poetry and drama that affirmed the new assertive militancy of black people. We cannot separate Baraka name when we are discussing about the Black Nationalist movement. Ameri Baraka who was known as LeRoi Jones was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of middle class parents. He demonstrated unusual oratorical skills as a child when he memorized and recited lengthy speeches for family gatherings. He became a gifted student who graduated two years early from high school. Although he received a two year scholarship in 1951 from Rutgers University, He apparently felt an outsider there and transferred to Harvard University. He published his first book of poetry, preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. In the year he followed, he wrote numerous plays, poems, and short stories, along with commentaries on literature, music and society. Most of his writing focused on white racism on black liberation during these decades, Jones moved from Greenwich Village to Harlem, and then to New York There his political outlook changed from liberalism to Black Nationalism, then to Marxism- Leninism, and later to socialism. Then he joined the Kawadia branch of the Islamic faith and changed his name Imamu Ameri Baraka.
Throughout these changes he remained a radical spokesman for the black community. Jones arrived at Howard University in Washington, D. C after one year He was shocked particularly by the discrimination among the University students. Lighter-skinned blacks refused to associate with darker- skinned blacks. The students who had come from urban areas like Philadelphia or New York ridiculed those who had come from rural areas in the South. When Jones become a Muslim he discarded his “slave name “ from a traditional African or Islamic one LeRoi Jones became Imamu Ameri Baraka, Which one Biographer has interpreted as meaning spiritual leader Blessed Prince(Hudson p. 34) Baraka Political orientation had changed. He had moved from hollow rhetoric to real politics. Later he realized the limitations of organizing under the banner of Black Nationalism by 1974. His adoption of a Marxist- Leninist Political Philosophy expressed his desire to elevate economics and class to a level equal to that of race. He was convinced that capitalism played a large part in the under development of black Americans and that Nationalism contained serious short comings as a liberation program because it failed to adequately address economic issues.
“The black nationalist movement of the late1960’s and early 1970’s temporarily succeeded in establishing Black Nationalism as a hegemonic ideology in the Afro American intelligentsia. For a brief moment, afro-American intellectuals who were not black nationalists were scrutinized and even labeled ethnically traitorous. Writing in 1960 as a doyen of Black Nationalist movement in afro American arts and letters, Baraka displayed his intolerance of non black intellectuals and artists
The Negro artist who is not a nationalist at this late is white artist, even without knowing it. He is creating death snacks, for and out dead stuff. What he does will not matter because it is in the shadow, connected with the shadow and will die when the shadow dies. The assassination of Malcolm X on February 21 1965, Represented a critical turning point in the life of LeRoi Jones. After the death of Malcolm X, Jones left his wife and children in Greenwich Village in order to join the black Revolution. Further in his identity transformation, Jones married the black actress and dancer Sylvia Robinson of Newark, New Jersey. Symbolizing the depth of Jones’s transformation, the man who buried Malcolm X renamed LeRoi Jones Ameer Barakat, “blessed prince” in Arabic.
Like many other black revolutionaries of that era, Baraka attempted to follow the path out lined by Malcolm X: the most popular themes were those of self determination, self respect, and self defense.
Langston Hughes was perhaps the most wide ranging and persistent black American writer in the twentieth century James Langston Hughes was born to Carrie Langston Hughes and James Nathanial Hughes on February 1 1902 in Joplin. His father moved to Kansas in search of grater racial and financial freedom. “ In 1907 Langston mother took him with her library in Topeka, where he fell in love with books, in part because he was impressed that the library did not have to pay rent .Though the double perspective of boy and man, he recalled: Even before I was six books began to happen to me, so that after a while there came a time when I believed in books more than in people which, of course, was wrong” (Hughes TBS 26) Hughes satirically pictured the deep pathos and hypocrisy in American society Once a black women was seduced by he under taker who enjoyed her favors, she became pregnant but wasn’t sure who was the father. When doctor performed an abortion, the girl died .The undertaker took charge of her body, and the minister preached at her funeral that is also responsible for her death. Hughes re worked the tale into an interracial story that appeared in “The Ways of the white Folks (1934).
“At school, too he was sometimes set apart from other black students He began school in 1908 in Topeka, where he had been temporarily re united with his mother. Carrie successfully appealed to the school board to allow Langston to attend the Harrison Street School, which was more convenient to her residence but which otherwise had only white pupils rather than distant school for Negro children located on the other side of the railroad tracks. However, the boy was harassed by his teacher, who seated him in a black corner, and by some of his classmates, although others befriended him. In one specific incident that Langston long remembered, his teacher confiscated some licorice from one of his classmates. She warned him against eating the black candies: They’ll make you black like Langston. You don’t want to be black, do you?” (Life of Langston Hughes 1:32) In the same school the teacher forced all the black children to sit together in a separate row, Langston made up cards that said JIM CROW ROW and placed them on each desk in the row. When the teacher moved to reprimand him, he ran out of the classroom, yelling that his teacher had a Jim Crow row .Though Hughes was expelled, he was allowed to return to school after protests by several black parents. It indicates even Blacks were not allowed to sit with White students this incident made Langston to start Thinking. He came to know Race plays the vital role in the life.




Steven Carl Tracy in his Book on Langston Hughes “ A historical guide to Langston Hughes “ says “ The Blues I’m Playing “, one of the Hughes’s most carefully developed fictions, express a natural tension between classical and innovative art. The pianist plays her bluesy sound in folk time, but the Persian vases exist in the patron’s drawing groom within elegantly modern space. An interface between history and fiction occurred on October 29 1929, the day the New York stock exchange crashed, ending so many opportunities for publication and artistic performance during the New Negro Movement.


Long stone Hughes one of his early poems described “The time of Martyrdom”
The white man killed my father
My father was proud
The white man raped my mother
My mother was beautiful
The white man bent my brother under the High way sun
My brother was strong
The white man turned toward me
His hands red with black blood
And in the voice of a master:
Hey boy! bring me whisky, a napkin, and some water!

In those days
When civilization kicked us in the face
When holy water slapped our cringing brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their



Bibliography:
1. Baraka, Imam Ameri. The autobiography of LeRoi Jones. New York Freundlich Books .1984.
2. Baraka, Imamu Ameri. LeRoi Jones Reader William J Harries New York Thunder’s mouth press, 1991.
3. Cook, Mercer and Stephen E. Henderson. The militant Black Writer in Africa and the United states, Madison: Wisconsin Press, 1967.

Community and Personal Identity in the works of African writers

Community and Personal Identity in the works of African writers
With Special reference to, Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa.





The last twenty years has witnessed an explosive growth of interest in African literature.
There has been an outpouring of anthologies, papers and book length studies. This kind of the African Literature continuous to grow, and there is every reason to believe that the voice of the African writers will be heard and studied for a long time to come, as artist social analysts and literary critic. In this paper I want to write Community and personal identity in the works of African writers with special reference to Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa .

The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. Bell hooks a renowned Afro American Feminist Ideologue and a distinguished profession of English at city College University of New York. In her book “Feminist Theory from Margin to center” criticized western domination in with in the women liberation movement in United States.
She said “There are white women who had never cosider resisting male domination until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should “

Her awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance, she grew up in Southern black Father dominated, working class house hold she experienced (her mother, sister and her brother) various dangers of patriarchal tyranny and it made her angry and raised her question the politics of male domination enabled her resist sexist socialization.

Privileged, and middle and upper class white women need the theory to inform than that they were oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression.
The fact that black women does not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of Feminism (many of black women does not know or use the term). Nor the fact that they have not had access to the machinery of power that they would allow to share their analysis or theories about gender with the American public.

Bell Hooks says “the understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young middle class white women. When I entered my first women studies class at Stanford University in early 1970’s white women were reveling in the joy of being together to them it was an important momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness.
I did not feel sympathetic to while peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experience of Black women.
“When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude to wards me and other non-white participates. White women did see equals; they did not treat us equals. But they expected and provide First hand accounts of black experience they felt it way their role to decide if these experiences were authentic”.
Chinua Achebe,s “Things fall Apart “ is the first title in Heinemann’s African writers series at the same time Flora N wapa’s Efru the first novel in the series by a women .
Heinemann’ was the major English publisher of African literature between 1958 and 1986. Flora N wapa was the first Female authored work in the series .The next work in the series by a women “Idu “ also by N wapa, did not appear until 1970, thirty male authored texts later. What are the factors to which the relativity small number of women authors can be attributed?
Male bias in education is clearly one such factor. Colonial policies in Africa favored the education of boys over girls and operated to cut women off from the written world. The same male bias is evident in education in postcolonial Nigeria. The number of women writing in Africa has always been rather small when compared with their male counter parts. The contributions of women to African literature have not been limited to the modern period. Women have always played considerable role, as storytellers and performers, in the oral traditions. The traditions always had significant place for the voice of the women singing or reciting tales from her own perspective as wife, mother and housekeepers. Flora N wapa’s two novels (Efru, Idue ) are the most imaginative and ambitious attempts in Nigeria and Africa as a whole to integrate oral forms with the literate design of the novel.

Flora N wapa was Africa’s first published female novelist. She was born in Ugwuta, Nigeria in 1913 in to wealthy family, the first daughter of six children, she educated in Nigeria finished her primary and secondary school in Ugwuta., Elelenwa and Lagos . She later studied English, History, and Geography, at University of Edinburgh where she obtained a diploma in education. Following her return from Scotland, she became an education officer in Calabar in 1958 and then proceeded to teach at Queen’s school Enugu in 1959. From 1962 to 1967 she held the position of assistant registrar at the University of Lagos, and it was during this period of her life her literary carrier was launched with the publication of her first novel Efru by Heinemann in 1966.

Flora N wapa’s personal life has therefore involved a certain degree of public service that has invite by exposed her to the works of public institution in contemporary Nigeria.
The life style in Nwapa’s cities is dominated by the continuous round of vicious sexual intrigues, tribal conflict and civil war, her choice of genre, are interwoven with her most fundamental perspectives. Her perception of contemporary in urban Nigeria demands a short story format, one that does not depend to any significant degree on the kind of oral modes that are so integral to much of Adoo’s Short fiction. It is a form at which reflects the largely literate, western middle class with in which her women move. In N wapa’s short story seems especially appropriate for brief even deliberately unfinished glimpses of urban life. The N wapa novel is a typical of the kind of African novel that resists purely western oriented approaches to the genre.

It has been a truism for some time now that the African novel is a western import, differing from the drama and the short story in that the latter have partly developed from ritual folk drama and the oral tale respectively. N wapa novels depend on a narrative form rooted in the oral modes of every day village life and in turn those oral forms are intrinsic to ever y details of women’s life. Unfortunately some writers in African writings have been taken the issues of social realism, the study of the novel from the west to Africa.
What may be socially unrealistic or romantic for the west reader is not necessarily so far the Yoruba reader of Amos Tutuola’s fiction. Similarly, the issues of individualism that so often dominate western society and literature are not always as crucial in novels by some African, The cultural destination that are involved here were summed up in 1938 by a young anthropologist, Jomo Kenyatta.

“If it is true that the European system of education aims at individuality, is it then to be wondered at that Europeans educated in this way have some difficulty in finding the right place for the original tribal relationships of the Africans? We may some up by saying that to the Europeans “individuality is the ideal of life” to the Africans the ideal is the relations with, and behavior to other people. No doubt education philosophy can make a higher synthesis in which these two grate truths are one, but the fact remains that while the Europeans place the emphasis on one side the Africans place it on the other “
The question which Kenyatta both rises and answers has immediate significance for the study of the novel in Africa. Give those organic tribal relationships which notes, how useful is it to discuss those African novels which describe traditional, or non westernized African society by applying to such novels those criteria of individualism which are so sacrosanct in western society and literature ? this kind of question that is being raised by a few critics in west itself , among them the American James Only who has emphasized what has always been obvious but not always conceded by western students of non western fiction . We argue with Kenyatta argument because study of those aspects of African literature which originate with and describe indigenous cultural traditions or the interaction between those traditions and non African civilizations. The plays of Whole Soyinka, for example much of Chinua Achebe’s fiction and all of Tutolas novels

Flora N wapa novels deserve special attention because they have been the most neglected yet the most striking examples of African novel writing manifested by motivated and shaped by a communal rather than predominately individualistic perspective. More specially, The N wapa novel is not so much a study of the individual as it is a resentment of the relationship between individual and community.
Her tittles “Efru” and “Idu” are likely to mislead those western readers whose literary experience may encourage the expectation that Nwapa, like her European predecessors, concentrate primarily on the individual’s private perceptions. Community’s collective perceptions of “Efru” or “Idu” are as crucial in the novels Theme an struggle as her relation to the community and its tradition. N wapa’s name little therefore identifies the focal point of the community attention as much as it pinpoint the individuals personal experience with in the community .To read the Nwapa novel is to be immersed to a remarkable degree in ceaseless flow of talk .N wapa leaves no doubt about the extent to which this oral format has been consciously incorporated with in her themes and narrative design. Betty Friedan’s in her book “The Feminine Mystic” argues and she criticized the main stream white women Feminist organizations

“Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who or most victimized by sexiest oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority .A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question without organized protest without collective anger or rage”.

The problem that has no name often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college educated middle and upper class, married white women house wives bored with leisure, with home , with children with buying products who wanted more out of life .Freidan concludes her first chapter by stating
“We can no longer ignore that voice with in women that says “I want something more than carries my husband and my children and my house”.
Friedan was a principle shaper of contemporary feminist thought significantly the one dimensional perspective on women’s reality presented in her book became a marked featured of the contemporary feminist movement White women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective on women’s reality is true to the lived experience of women as collective group.

The two West African women writers, Flora N wapa, Buchi Emechita have made their departure to alien lands in different directions. N wapa to America and Buchi Emechita to England .The divergent cultures and ideological fuzziness of the adopted cultures have made these writers contemplate problems of social justice and humanity in her charged contexts, The feminist environment in America or England has provided them with a scope to suggest alternative based on a combination of conformity and rebelliousness, facilitating comparisons with western feminism. The insight full critical enquiry made by those African women writers to suggest a distinct identity for their women needs to be studied at a time when problems of women have become global causes

Flora N wapa’s “Efru” is set in rural Igbo land in a town calls Ugwuta, the time of the novel is the late 1940’s and early 1950.In this novel she unveils the impact of colonial occupation but it is an average of rapid social and cultural transformations, remark such as “Things are changing fast these days serve as a refrain in the novel. She recreates Igbo social, political and religious life, and portraits the effects of colonialism on Igbo society. N wapa’s fiction places considerable emphasis on mother daughter relationships. Efru as a mother less girl her mother having died when her daughter was in child hood .Efru misses her mother ‘ the time her mother died is her first point of reference when made miserable by her inability to find fulfillment in marriage or mother hood ,she ravines her life in an attempt to locate her error . Efru development is delayed until she is well. On in her adult years because she has no mother .She denied patriarchal authority by marrying a poor former without her father‘s permission and without the bride price being paid him before marriage. Reading Efru from the vantage of N wapa’s
Later novels suggest that the death of Efru’s mother is also linked to the colonial oppression of women that it is symbolic of the decline in Igbo women’s power under colonial order. Efru story tells of a daughter’s search for a lost mother. It begins where Efru is on the verge of entering adult life, having decided to leave her father’s house for the second time divorced women. African women writes tend to the marriage not only race but also gender as developmental issue, thus for example N wapa provides a critique both of colonialism and of Igbo patriarchy through her depiction of the forces that inhibit female development.

Buchi Emechita :

Buchi Emechita is one of the most acclaimed writers in present times. A mid western Igbo Nigerian by birth, Buchi Emechita has written regularly for the lost more than three decades, she has gained international recognition through her writings. Her writings have been translated in to fourteen languages to date. These include thirteen novels three autobiographical works four children’s books .and collection of photographs. Her autobiographical works include her first two novels: “In the ditch” and Second class citizen”, Head above water: An autobiography. Her novels are the Bride price The slave girl The joys of mother hood , Destination Biafa, Double Yoke Our own freedom is a book of photographs of black women and numerous essays published in anthologies scholarly journals news papers and magazines in Africa, Australia Europe and United states
Born in Logos Nigeria on 21 July 1944, in the home of her parents Jermy Nwa Budike Emechita and Alice Ogbanje OjebetaEmechita, Buchi emechita’s own life reads like a Nigerian women’s success story.

The issue if Feminism in the novels of Buchi Emechita

As I discussed before the existing trend in the literary criticism of African women writing has largely been adopt a western feminist perspective. Reading African women’s writing with in a feminist frame work is a use full strategy because it introduce Gender as a fundamental category in literary analysis enabling the critic to see representations in texts as mediated by sexual difference and the political and aesthetic assumptions that surrounded gender .In her introduction to a collection of essays titled “Emerging perspectives on Buchi Emechita ” Marie Umeh observes that the novels of Buchi Emechta reflect what Kate Millet calls Sexual politics the patriarcheal principle by which all males dominate females and elders dominate the young ( Kate millet’s Sexual politics) .
Catharine Frank an American Feminist critic in her book “Women without men “The feminist novel in African literature today where she goes to the extreme point of adopting a totally western feminist perspective on African women writers and comes to the controversial conclusion that Emechita and other women writers of Africa are more radical than their western counterparts and embrace solution of women without men or lesbianism. To quote fully: The feminist novel in Africa is not only alive and well it is in general more radical, even more militant than its western counter parts ….
All these novels (by African women writers) embrace the solution of world without men. Men is enemy the exploiter and oppressor. Given the historically established and culturally sanctioned sexism of African society, there is no possibility of a compromise or even with the enemy. Instead, women must spurn patriarchy in its entire guise and create a safe sane supportive world of women. A world of mothers and daughters sisters and friends .This of course amounts to feminist separatism... A logical outcome of this ideology lesbianism”

It is important to note this basic ambiguity in Emechita’s assumption about the needs of her women because it suggests that she does not readily fit in to the ranks of those middle class feminists in the west who are now discovering her works. Buchi Emechita’s first novel “ In the ditch” was published 1977 six years after Ogot’s The promised land, and N wapa Efru. Asked an interview about her relationship to other female writers such as Flora N wapa , Emechita described herself as their new sister she acknowledge the debt to the women who have preceded her placing herself within the literary tradition that has emerged with her writing . Buchi Emechita declared Flora N wapa as a role model. She made a point of distancing herself from western feminism finally she declared If iam now feminist than I am an African feminist”.

The Joys of Mother hood is Emechita’s best known novel but it is also a work which is clearly influenced by Emechita’s reading of other African authors. N wapa Efru “The Joys of mother hood “confirms the existence of a female tradition in fiction; we can see the similarity of the protagonist’s psychological experience. In her Joys of mother hood main protagonist Nnu Ego is like Efru. She from an Igbo village from Emechita’s home town of Ibuza. Like Efru too she loses mother at an early age which leaves her dependent on her Father’s house on the failure of each marriage and for a time she too is held in disrepute by her inability to bear children

The Joys of mother hood protagonist Nnu Ego is the daughter of the slave master Agbadi, the grate chief of Ibuza. Feminism in the novels of Buchi emechita as we have discussed the prevailing trend in the literary criticism of African women’s writing has largely influenced western feminist perspective. On this issue from her well known essay title “Feminism with a small” f” “Being a women and African born I see things through an African women’s eye chronicle the little happening in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist but if iam now a feminist than an African feminist with small “f”

There are so many feminist women dogmas I believe in like education and the freedom of the individual in fact I am a feminist plus but there is no root in middle class feminist attitudes now for the black women plight. She says in the same interview and they are beginning to be proud of me although when I started they felt I was pushing into a man’s world. She is constantly pre occupied with the term feminism and expresses a recurrent sense of discomfort at being called a feminist to quote again “I did not start as a feminist I do not think I am one now most of my readers would take this to be the statement of a cowered. But it is not I thought before that I would like to be one but after my recent visit to the United states when I talked to read “Feminists” with a capital “F” I think we women of African background still have a very long way to go before we can really rub shoulders with such women . So my sister in America, I am not shunning your advanced help in fact I still think women of Africa need your contribution and at the same time we need our men”.
N wapa’s harsh realism results from her close involvement in public life in Nigeria. Her University education provided her with an opportunity to associate herself with public institution in Nigeria. Though she is basically indentified as a modern Nigerian writer, her concentration is on the lives of women in Nigeria’s modern urban life. Especially writes about communities expectations from its women as well as the women’s response to both the community and their own needs. Her women characters are extremely conscious of their bodies in relation to their roles as a wives and mothers. This body consciousness encourages them to accept their roles as inevitable and necessary.
Her novels “Efru” and “Idu” are fine example to access the nature of the narrative of domesticity .These women authoredneo works in colonial/ neo colonial situations insists on the virtues of their protagonists and on the complicated structural patterns of Igbo community .Her characters are strong individualized women who are not burdened with baggage of patriarchal societies .These women often question the general assumptions about women and their course of life without denying their Igbo identity and humanity .
Her female characters are extremely independent and have determine their course if life without denying their Igbo identity .The writers locate her ideal representation of Igbo female power and independence at the turn of the century .The actions of her female characters such as catalytic agents on the facts of other characters .Her women take center stage by exerting their industry ingenuity and resitence. Efru stands for self assertiveness, through continually circumscribed by the imperatives of male universe .She is attracted to tradition but is strong, independent and free spirited .She un conditionally accepts traditional practice such as circumcision and polygamy, beliefs and attitudes towards wife wood and infertility .

Being a black immigrant women in a white society, Emechita focuses her works on the lives and problems of Black immigrant women exclusively. Establishing her as a black British women writer .She often tries to bring about a fusion between original African culture and her adopted alien culture. She says” I keep my two worlds, my two cultures”. Emechita emphasizes the individual right to freedom of choice the slave girl is a board sexual archetype. Slavery is not simply a status or role in Emechita’s work but a condition. She ironically implies that women are their worst enemies because they lack the sprit to rebel.









Bibliography:

N wapa,Flora “ Efru” . African writer’s series: Heinemann, 1966.

N wapa,Flora “Idu “ African writers series: Heinemann , 1966.

Bell,Hooks “Feminist theory” south End press,Cambridge,1984.

Lloyd,W. Brown” Women writers in Black Africa” Golden wood press,London:1981.

Emechit,Buchi” Joys of mother hood” 1975.

Emechit,Buchi “ The Bride Price “ Allison and Busby, London,1976.

Emechit,Buchi “The second class citizen ,New York:1975.

Shyam. S Agarwalla ”The African fiction” Prestige, New Delhi.2006.

Bruci king & Kolawole ogum gbesan “A celebration of Black and African writing”
Oxford, 1975.

C L Innes “Critical perspectives on Chinua Achebe” Heinamann, 1979.

New world Politics and Role of Creative writers With reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe

New world Politics and Role of Creative writers
With reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua అచేబే by గుర్రం సీతా రాములు


When we are reading a novel, short story or poetry, we may ask some questions .How good is the work? What does it mean? What moral values emerge from it? What does the work reveal about the society, directly or indirectly or is it irrelevant to society? We expect something from that work to the society. We cannot separate the literature from the society. In this paper I want to write new world politics and role of creative writer with reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe

‘African literature is politically committed’, declared Leopold Sedar Snghor at the first international conference of Negro writers and artists at the Sorbonne in 1956, most of the African writer’s revolt against colonial rule resentment at racial discrimination. The ugly face of the colonial rulers and their slave trade, inspired African poets in the first place. We can see slavery is still one of the main themes of Negro poetry. The development of black writing has been closely connected with the renewal of African culture and political consciousness after the demoralizing effects of the slave trade and colonialism. In its earlier stages,, African and black written literature was a matter of racial pride showing that black men could succeeded and answer back within European cultural forms. This was followed by the gradual evaluation of the African Black cultural experience to an equal dignity the European. The period of cultural Affirmation has now passed.

“The rise of independent African and west Indian states during the late 1950’s and 60’s was parallel by a phenomenal flowering of Black writing as writers have turned from the older problems of colonialism towards the new issues resulting from political independence, some of the new issues resulting from political independence, some of the original pan African idealism and concern for arrival cultural heritage have been lost the second Black and African arts festival therefore seems on occasion to see black literature in its historical and intercontinental perspectives”.

‘Aime Cesaire’ another West Indian also from Martinique was to play a much more important role in the development of French African Literature. Aime Cesaire is primarily a poet. The popularity of poetry among black writers stems from that genres capacity for experimentation with language so as to allow for the rendering of a new and very special experience. It is Cesaire who claims.... In the beginning was the world no one has believed this mere fervently than the poet. The power of the poetic ‘’word’’ becomes Cesaire miracles weapon, the beating of the wave of the mind against the root of the world. Cesaire’s poetry represents a pioneering effort to impose a new subjectivity upon an inherited literary form. Aime Cesaire gave the definition of Negritude is the most important thing in the history of African literature. The desperate optimism of 1930’s
Spread the ideology of negritude now confronted with the harsh unyielding reality of postcolonial societies, this effervesces scene seems frustrated.
The group ‘Leon Damas’ , ‘Aime Ceasire’, ‘ Leopold Senghor’ and ‘James Baldwin’ called “That ache to come in to the world as men finds the political and cultural implication of negritude under attack. In recent interview Ceisere explained,
“Negritude has brought with it same danger it has tended to become a school, a church, a theory an ideology, I am for a negritude which is literary and somewhat like a personal ethic , but I am against an ideology founded on negritude .. I refuse to be considered in the name of negritude, the brother of Francois Duvalier critiquing myself to only the dead.”

“I believe it is impotent to write anything in Africa without some kind of commitment, some kind of message, some kind of protest...because there were people who thought we didn’t have a past. What we were doing was to say we did- here it is”
Chinua Achebe


“Violence in order to change an intolerable, unjust social order is not savagery: it purifies man. Violence to protect and preserve an unjust, oppressive social order is criminal, and diminishes man”
Ngugi wa Thiong’o


Both Chinua Achebe and Ngugi are committed writers. The two statements quoted above by Achebe and Ngugi clarify the nature of their commitment as writers


Chinua Achebe:

‘Chinua Achebe’ is probably the most widely read of contemporary African writers, both on the African continent and abroad. His reputation was quickly established with his first novel ,’Things fall Apart’ which won him the ‘Margeret Wrong Memorial Prize’ as well as scholarships and grants, After the publication of his second novel , No longer at Ease, He was awarded the’ Nigerian National Trophy’ for literature, and for his third novel Arrow of the god he received the New states man Jock Campbell award .over the last decade, Achebe lectures and essays have provoked much debate the criteria for assessing African writers and his influence on younger novelists has been considerable. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. ‘Chinua Achebe ‘Born in Odgidi, in the eastern part of Nigeria in 1930, his father was an evangelist and church teacher, although many of his relatives and neighbours adhered to the Ibo religion and customs ,Thus Achebe writes , he grew up “at the crossroads of cultures”

“The literature written about Africa during this time generally tended to reinforce those assumption of the British and helped them defend colonial rule as enlightenment to primitive peoples without a valid civilisation of their own Hence Africa was seen as a dark continent a symbol of irrational, nourishing undifferentiated and child like peoples governed by fear and superstition rather than reason, a people only too ready to welcome and, indeed, worship, the Whiteman. “

Chinua Achebe grew up at a time when Africans were not only opposing European rule through political action, but also beginning to question with increasing vigour and clarity the cultural assumptions used to justify that rule .Like many other people of his generation, Achebe was given a British education, first at the local mission school then at the government school then government college in Umuahia, and finally at University college Ibadan, Where he had planned to study medicine. Both as a creative writer and as a critic, Achebe has had a great influence, particularly on younger African writers. His novels have made an especially powerful impression upon young Ibo writers who first became acquainted with his works as high school or University students.

“The African writer has been very much influenced by politics, probably because the African intellectual is a part of the political elite. The writer is a sensitive point within his society .Thus, African literature has tended to reflect the political phase on the continent .Chinua Achebe is a very suitable example. Beginning during the colonial days his writings spans the succession of political crisis which has beset Nigeria. Also, more than any other Nigerian writer, He has made statements on the role of the writer in his society.
His conception of the writers’ duty is has also tended to change with the political situation in his country. By examining the both his creative and his pronouncement, we can obtain an interesting picture of how the quality of the literature cab be directly influenced by the degree of the writer’s political commitment.”

Achebe’s first statement on the social responsibility of the African writer was made in lecture entitled “the role of the writer in a New Nation” Delivered to the Nigerian Library Association in 1964. Achebe talked specifically about the role of the writer in what he called the new Nigeria. The major problem all over the world, he said, was the debate between white and black humanity, a subject which presented the African writer with a great challenge:

“It is in convincible to me that a serious writer could stand aside from this debate or be indifferent to this argument which calls his full humanity in question .For me at any rate, there is a clear duty to make a statement .This is my answer to those who say that a writer should be writing about contemporary issues – about politics in1964 about city life the lost coup d’état.
Of course, these are legitimate themes for the writer but as for the writer but as far as i am concerned the fundamental theme themes must first be disposed of. This theme put quite simply is that African people did not hear of culture for the first time From European; that their societies were not middle but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty that they had poetry and above all, they had dignity .It is this dignity and self respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost.
The writer can tell the people where the rain began to beat them. After all the novelist’s duty is not to beat this morning’s headline in topicality, it is to explore in depth the human condition. In Africa he cannot perform this task unless he has a proper sense of history.”

He refused to believe that African writer could be alienated from his society in spite of the fact that the education of Africans was largely Western-Oriented, the relationship between European writers and their audience will not automatically re produced itself in Africa . In Africa Achebe said, Society expects the writer to be its leader. He revealed that many people have asked him to bring out more forcefully the lessons to be learned from his stories. Achebe said that the role of the African writer should be that of a social transformer and revolutionary. In a paper presented at a political science seminar in Makerere in 1968, entitled “The African writer and the Biafran cause “he said that a writer is only “a human being with heightened sensitive’s” and therefore “must be aware of the faintest nuances of injustice in human relations The African writer cannot therefore be unaware or indifferent to, the monumental injustice which his people suffer”. African writers are committed to a new society which will affirm their validity and accord them identity as Africans, as peoples. On the relationship between politics and the writer, He says that some measure of politics is bound to intrude in to writing epically in Africa. He himself could not abstain although he would not deny the right of any writer to do so. For him however one can only avoid commitment by pretending or by being insensitive. Achebe is correct that politics and social affairs cannot be kept out of literature in Africa; at least not for some time .Yet the writer’s approach to these issues will be crucial to the quality of his work. In order to be objective, he must be detached, must not become emotionally in involved.

In African literature the town has become a symbol of contact with the west, with it blemishes and attractions. The shock of the invasion of the European civilisation in to tribal African society has been dealt with even more explicitly. Several African writers here found it fine subject for novel. First there is the Nigerian Chinua Achebe with Things Fall A part. This is the story of the Decay of the social structure of an igbo villege under pressure from administration and missionaries the suicide of the hero Okenkwo after he has taken part in burning down the missionary school and killing a British official with his own hand is an admission of his importance to stop the course of history as much as final gesture of rebellion, against the new order He chooses to die rather than submit.


Ngugi wa Thiong’o:

Like Achebe, Ngui wa Thiong’o has also attracted critical attention from different parts of the world and there is a large body of critical writings on Ngugi works. As we discussed earlier, it is with the intention of studying this functional relationship between literature and politics closely that study of the writings of only one writer. Ngugi wa Thiong’o who is not only the most prolific of contemporary Kenyan writers but who is also the most prominent one.

Besides having a tradition of oral literature – Orature , as Ngugi wa Thiongo would like to call it which various communities in Kenya share with most other communities in other parts of Africa . Kenya has also had a tradition for over two hundred years of written literature primarily poetry in Swahili which as we know is a kind of trade’ Language ‘ used around the coastal areas of east Africa .Of the various British colonies in Africa , Kenya was perhaps the last emerge on the map of literary writing in English. Finding it difficult to express their thoughts in Swahili particularly poetry , Kenyan writers took the writing in English primarily prose in a big way ,It is Ngugi wa Thiong’o who has singlehandedly through his writings fictional as well as nonfiction forced scholars and critics of African literature to pay serious attention to Kenyan writing in English

Born in 1938, in the family of a land less squatter on the land of a well to do farmer in Kimiithu village Near Limeru in Kiambu district, Ngugi wa Thiong’o went to mission run school Kamaandura school in Limeru and later to a school of the independent schools Movement, Later, he joined the Alliance High school Kenya’s first full fledged school for Africans run by an alliance of the protestant denominations in Kenya. It is here that Ngugi’s religious awareness about Christianity a fact which is more than obvious from his writings.
Ngugi was fourteen when a state of emergency was declared in Kenya in 1952 on October 20. His passion for education seems to have weighed heavily with him in his decision to continue with it and as a result he missed out on actual participation in the movement. This fact seems to have given him a kind of guilt complex and is perhaps one of the major reasons for making the freedom struggle, particularly the Mau Mau phase, reputedly the theme of most of his books. After finishing his school education at alliance High school, Ngugi joined B A in English at Makerere University college at Kampala, Uganda which was the only University college in the whole Africa. Ngugi got trouble with political Authorities over the portions of His ‘Petals of Blood’ in which he dealt for the first time with situations in post independence Kenya. Also the text of play ‘Ngaahika Ndeenda’ ( I will marry when i want) about presents independent Kenya which he wrote together with’ Ngugi wa Mirii’ in his mother tongue Gikuyu and which was performed at the kamirithu community education and cultural Centre, Limeru in 1977, was objected by the authorities who eventually banned its performance on November 16, 1977. On the 31 st December 1977 Ngugi was taken to a police station near his residence for routine questioning but was detained without trial for almost a year Until December.

Ngugi has made Kenyan history, including the freedom struggle, as the theme of his powerful writings. For reasons consistency and homogeneity of analysis, the study has been confined to only one genre, namely fiction, although Ngugi is an equally, powerful play Wright, short story writer and essayist.

According to G.D Killam who wrote the book” An introduction to the Writings of Ngugi” in his book “The life in his novels is shaped by the presence of Christianity and his first novel The River Between was written when he was a devout to Christian Christianity is a major influence in both the colonial and neo colonial novels of Ngugi.
‘A grain of wheat’ and’ Petals of Blood’abound in biblical allusions
History is yet another major influence on Ngugi’s fiction His first four novels cover a span of six decades and draw on documented historical fact as background Both Achebe and Ngugi focus on the historical aspect in their fiction. Killam also accounts for the influence of Marx and Fanon on Ngugi writings,

With the publication of “Weep not child” in1964, Ngugi appeared on the African literary scene, becoming the first novelist from East Africa. Ngugi’s appearance marked the belated beginnings of the novel in East Africa at a time when the West African novel was already well established. Ngugi most serious commitment lies in his quest for a socialist order and a revolutionary culture through the process of the Decolonisation of mind and decolonisation of African literature His ‘Petals of the Blood ‘attempts this direction.
Ngugi concerned with the history of his people and seeks to extrapolate from his consideration of the influence of Europe on Kenya the means for making a better future. There are tow predominating influences on his third and forth novels these are Karl Marx and, epically Frantz Fanon .It is Marx who articulates a political and economic philosophy which will suit Ngugi’s conviction about post independent Kenyan development. It is Fanon who places the thinking of Marx in the African context.
Killam says “Ngugi strength as a novelist proceeds from the way in which he encrusts his political vision with material derived from his own Kenyan background ,the present values which are the real values as opposed to those new First World values which are taken on by the blacks who became the leaders in the post- independence circumstance .These are contemptible people so far as Ngugi is concerned because of the way they exploit their own kind and secondly, for their repudiation of the heroes of the revolution who brought about those circumstance in which they are able to act as they do. Thus ‘Dedan Kimati ‘ is legitimate hero his vision was straight forward unflinching uncompromising ultimately successful”.

After Petals of The Blood” Ngugi wrote’ Ngaahika Ndenda” (I will Marry when i want), the play which brought about his arrest .At least and at last in the production of the Kikuyu play Ngugi seems to have found an answer for a question he raised as far back as 1969 when he said “I have reached a point of crisis; I don’t know whether it is worthy any longer writing in English ....The problem is this – I know whom I write about. But whom do I write for? “He has found the medium to convey his message and though he knew all along what he wished to say and on whose behalf he wished to say it, he discovered that the audience for what he had to say was the same as those on “(p 15).

We can see two phases in Ngugi’s life one is before independence another one is after independence. In Kenya, “Weep not child,”the first published novel but the second written brings Ngugi to his central theme which is the struggle for Kenyan independence and the effect of the struggle on the lives of individuals within the Kenyan context. Both of the novels “Weep not Child” and “A grain of Wheat “The themes are the same where we find reference to various historical revolutionary activities before Mau mau independence movement got under way in1950s. In both “weep not child” “A grain of wheat”, causes and the prosecution of Mau mau aspirations are dramatised. The independence struggle is important to Ngugi and he has written this novel to explain inartistic terms and through a sustained comparison with Christian teaching action and theology the origins of the struggle and epically its legitimacy .He does in detail drawing in much of the same historical and political material as he has used in Weep not Child and River Between”

Ngugi lists the names of those Kenyans who martyred themselves over a fifty year period for Kenya’s independence the list includes Waiyaki, Harry Thuku, and Jomo Kenyatta and their activities are briefly sketched into show their inspirational effect on Kihika sees in Waiyaki’s failure and death, the seeds of future success. I want to conclude this article with the Argument
“The novels of Achebe and Ngugi”by K Indra Sena Reddy
..Political power for supremacy and self-rule dominate the colonial novels of” Things Fall apart”, Arrow of the god, The River Between “and to a large extent in A Grain of wheat which culminates in Kenyan independence. Petals of the Blood, and Anthills of the Savannah the two post colonial novels are concerned with the misuse and abuse of power by the Native black masters and call for a resolution with a sence of urgency about it through a sustained struggle The motifs of power and struggle run as an undercurrent in all the novels under discussion and provide a connecting link between Achebe and Ngugi’s fiction.








Bibliography:

1. Ngui wa Thiong’o Weep not child: Henemann, 1964.


Ngui wa Thiong’o The Revier Between: London: Heinemann, 1964.

3 Ngui wa Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat: London: Heinemann, 1967.


Ngui wa Thiong’o Petals of The Blood. London, Heinemann, 1977.

Chinua, Achebe. Things Fall Apart, London, Heniman, 1958.

Chinua, Achebe. No Longer at Ease, London, Heniman, 1960.


Chinua, Achebe. Arrow of the God, London, Heniman, 1964.


Chinua, Achebe. Anthills of Savannah, London, Picador, 1987.

Killam,G D An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London Henimann,1980.

Tradition, Modernity and Decolonizing the mind In Ngugi and Achebe

Tradition, Modernity and Decolonizing the mind In Ngugi and Achebe


Tradition is how we interpret the past; Modernity is how we understand the present and future. Language is a social discourse. In this paper I am attempting to relate How Ngugi wa Thiongo and Chinua Achebe are attempting to bring their post colonial concerns within the social and political discourse of African languages in relation to English. In the process I am attempting to situate tradition and modernity as two forces that can be reconciled through the decolonization of the mind.
The British Philosopher H.B Acton defines tradition as “a belief of practice transmitted from one generation to another and accepted as Authoritative, or differed to, without argument.” Samuel Fleischaker defines tradition as “a set of customs passed down over the generations, and set of beliefs and values endorsing those customs”.
Africans are basically rural, village-conscious and traditional oriented people caught in a state of transition between tradition and modernity. When they are exposed to modern urban culture, one can notice certain ambivalence in their attitude towards alien culture and behavior patterns. We can see these kinds of conflicts in Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiyango’ and women writers like Flora N Wapa and Buchi Emechita. In their novels they go back to the pre-colonial and post colonial situations and record the cultural conflicts with the impact of the west on the native society.
Chinua Achebe expressed his views with respect to the feelings of many African novelists when he said.” We must seek the freedom to express our thoughts and our feelings; even against ourselves without the anxiety that what we say might be taken as evidence against our race. We have stood in the dock for too long pleading and protesting before ruffians and frauds masquerading as disinterested judges “(Achebe “The Black writers Burden” 139.).
African literature as a major segment of commonwealth writing in English, with its phenomenal, growth has attracted the English speaking world outside Africa thus leading to the arrival of Modern African literature in English. The new voice of Africa is countering the western thesis of cultural denigration of the African peoples and their histories. Most of the major African writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa thiyango, Floran n Wapa, Buch Emechita, and others are deeply concerned with the task of restoring character and cultural identity to African society through the discovery of the past in the light of the present.
Writers like Ngugi wa thiyango took a leading role decolonizing the school and University curriculum in Kenya. When he first became a lecturer at Makere University in Uganda, no African books were included in the literature curriculum; not even any in the secondary school syllabus. Here writers like Achebe argued against the assumption that literature is universal but instead saw the value of literature in its detailed and concrete depiction of a community in a particular place and a particular historical moment seeking to understand and create itself. Ngugi also introduced the study of local oral literature into the curriculum and said that these should be central rather than peripheral for students of literature.
In his essay “Return to the roots” he says: “To choose a language is to choose a world, once said a West Indian thinker and although I do not share the assumed primacy of language over the world, the choice of a language already predetermines the answer to the most important question for producers of imaginative literature, for whom do I write? Who is my audience? I f a Kenyan writer writes in English no matter how radical the context of that literature he cannot possibly directly talk to the peasants and workers of Kenya. If a Kenyan acts in a play in English, he cannot possibly be assuming a truly Kenyan audience “
He believes that the African writer’s duty to his people is to nourish the language and culture that exist there. He goes on to say that Kenyan national literature should mostly be produced in the language of various nationalities that make up modern Kenya. Kenyan nation liberation can only get its stamina and blood by utilizing the rich national traditions of culture and history carried by the languages of all the Kenyan nationalities. In Kenya Ngugi led his lives in terrible conditions, contradictions and his experiences have changed his attitude toward his writings. Ngugi has said about his early life:
“My parents were not Christians. But at the same time they did not practice much of the Gikuyu forms of worship. My father was skeptical of religious and magical practices that went with rites of passages and rhythms of the seasons. He believed in land and hard work “(C Brian Cox African writers 1997 p 537). From 1955 to 1959 he attended Alliance High School; that is the country’s most prestigious secondary school. He is the first student from his area of the country to be admitted and he excelled in his studies, during that time he read widely texts of Shakespeare, Shaw, Tennyson, Wordsworth and his own selections from the school library Tolstoy, Dickens, R L Stevenson and Alan Paton. He also gained familiarity with the Bible. The strongest influence in his period was the struggle for independence in the shape of armed resistance of the Mau mau uprising (1952-1956). The Kenyan government declared a state emergency (1952-60) and Ngugi family and village suffered in a number of ways. His brothers joined in the guerrilla movement and another brother was shot dead by the police. This is the main cause we see in his writings. He mentions his brother who fighting in the forest against the colonial powers still found time to send him message to “cling to education” that was provided by the colonialists even though it was an education meant to bolster the image and culture of the empire, thereby creating colonized subjects. Finally he is arguing that Western culture, education has done more harm than good.
Describing this incident Ngugi says “Although I was in the school, I remember quite vividly standing up and trembling with anger saying that Western education could not be equated with the land taken from the peasants by the British. And I remember holding up the fountain pen and giving the example of someone whom comes and takes away food from your mouth and then gives you a fountain pen. I asked the audience: Can you eat a fountain pen? Can you clothe yourself with a fountain pen or shelter yourself with it? ” (C Brian Cox, African writers .1997 p). During this period Ngugi threw himself into various activities as writer, editor and organizer.
In 1967, Ngugi return to Kenya as a special lecturer in English at the University of Nairobi and become the first black African Member of the Department, He soon issued his famous proposal along with two other colleagues to abolish the department of African literature and language, because he felt that African Universities needed to emphasize their own national culture.
Ngugi’s attempt at change was only partly successful. Even he resigned from his position to protest against increasing restrictions in academic freedom. He says language as communication and culture are products of each other; communication creates culture: Culture is a means of communication. Language carries culture and culture carries particularly orature and literature the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. He is looking into language in colonial aspects; the aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth. It imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. Ngugi is arguing that colonialism by destroying and deliberately undervaluing of peoples culture, art, dances, history, geography, education, orature, and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer.
Ngugi wa Thiongo demanded to abolish English departments in African countries. In his view language, any language has dual character; it is both a means of communication and a carrier of a culture. He says English is spoken in Britain and Denmark. But for Swedish and Danish people English is only a means of communication with non-Scandinavians. It is not a carrier of their culture. For the British, and particularly the English, it is additionally and inseparably from its use as a tool of communication, a carrier of their culture and history.
He argues that the use of the language in Africa must be understood within the context of the European domination, marginalization and exploitation. The politics of revenge is deeply intertwined within the cultural imperialism represented by Eurocentric domination of Africans and other third world peoples in the past four centuries He says “For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process. The destruction and the deliberate undervaluing of peoples culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. The domination of a people’s language by the language of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (Decolonizing the mind). His main argument is that English, French, German, and Portuguese are not supposed to be seen as natural languages. They were used as tools of subordination during the colonial era and English language and literature, philosophy, culture and values were carried and elevated to the skies.
African languages and the literature and philosophy they carried were brutally suppressed.” It is very important to cultivate African language is the only one solution to overcome colonial suppression. That’s why Ngugi wa Thiong’o declared in 1986 while Writing his famous book “Decolonizing the mind as “his farewell to English as a vehicle for any of his writings.” He chooses to write Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. This was undoubtedly a difficult decision, coming as it did after seventeen years of writing in English. He justified his decision thus:
“I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, and an African language is part and parcel of the anti-human relation between the nations and peoples of Africa and those of other continents. For these reasons I for one would like to propose Kiswahili as the language for the world.”
One can understand no language can sustain in front of colonial languages because it suppressed other languages .This languages cannot be cultivated under these conditions. Ngugi calls for widespread usage of African languages as a way to counter their previous suppression. He says Black English developed in the black community as a crucial element in the formation of the cultural identity of Afro-Americans.
Chinua Achebe another major literary figure and African Ideologue from Nigeria defend Ngugi’s argument. These renowned exile writers continue to share a deep love for their continent. Each has suffered by the colonial power; they were being exiled because of their commitments. Achebe wrote a paper entitled “The African writer and the English Language. “He declared “Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it.” “What does he mean when he says that there is no other choice? Achebe means that for practical purposes, European languages have become the languages of the world. This is the painful reality contemporary Africans must face. We, third world countries adopting the tongues of colonizers have no other choice or option.
Ngara has commented, “By 1967 Ngugi felt that the African writer had failed. The failure referred to here was in fact not that of the African writer alone. It resulted from the Failure of the African Bourgeoisie to give meaningful freedom and independence to the broad masses of the people. In less than a decade of their rule, many African leaders proved that they were incapable of shaking off shackles of neo colonialism. The essence of Ngugi’s complaint, therefore was that by failing to challenge this new state of affairs, the African writer was guilty of neglecting his duty to society in general and to the African masses in particular. It was now incumbent upon (the writer) to throw in his lot with the masses once more by confronting the ideology of the new ruling elite. A new rift had surfaced in independent Africa, not between Blacks and whites, But between the haves and have-nots, what Ngugi has called a “horizontal rift dividing the elite from the mass of the people” (35 -35).
Ngugi was imprisoned without charge for almost a year in 1978, and stripped of his position as chair of the department of literature at the University of Nairobi, and has subsequently been obliged to seek exile in the west.
“When I myself used to write plays and novels that were only critical of the racism in the colonial system, I was praised. I was awarded prizes, and my novels were in the syllabus. But when toward the seventies I started writing in a language understood by peasants, and in an idiom understood by them and started questioning the very foundations of imperialism and of foreign domination of Kenyan economy and culture, I was sent to Kamiritu Maximum Security Prison” (Barrel of gun, 65). Since the 1960’s Ngugi has moved to redefine the situation of the writers along the axis of class solidarity rather than Romanticism and mysteries of imagination. He insists that the African writers cannot be assessed separately from those of the other categories of intellectuals and cannot be assessed without addressing the larger and more embracing questions of national culture and political justice.
In other words while both Ngugi and Achebe agree on the basic argument against colonialism their strategies are different. Ngugi embraces the use of African languages and Achebe insists that we’ve no choice but to use western languages. But both are definitely for the decolonizing of the mind. The African has to reconcile both tradition and modernity. He has to bring the past and the present together in order that he may have a bright future.


Bibliography:
Ngugi wa thiongo: Decolonizing the Mind: The politics of language in African literature: Heinemann, 1986.
Ngugi wa thiongo: Moving the Center: The struggle for cultural freedom: .Heinemann, 1993.
Chinua Achebe: Morning yet on creation day: London, Heinemann, 1975.
Killam,G D : An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London, Henimann,1980.
Ngui wa Thiong’o : The River Between: London, Heinemann, 1964.

Ngui wa Thiong’o: Home coming London Heinemann 1972.

కంచర్ల గోపన్న నుండి ఉసికిల గోపన్న దాకా…

ఆగస్టు 5 వ తేదీన ఖమ్మం నుండి కొంతమంది సాహితీ మిత్రృలం ముదిగొండ మృతవీరుల కుటుంబాలను పరామర్శించి, ఓ చిన్నపాటి కవి సమ్మేళనం నిర్వహించాలని వెళ్ళాం. మాతోబాటు కొత్తగూడెం, పాల్వంచ, విజయవాడ, హైద్రాబాద్‌ నుండి విరసం, జనసాహితీ, సాహితీ స్రవంతి మిత్రులమంతా యాదృచ్ఛికంగా ముదిగొండ సెంటర్‌లో కలుసుకున్నాం.ఆ బృందంలో కొంతమందిమి ఆ నరమేథం జరిగిన ప్రాంతాన్ని పరిశీలించి సమీపంలో ఉన్న ఓ స్కూల్‌లో చిన్న బ్యానర్‌ ఏర్పాటు చేసుకొని కవి సమ్మేళన సన్నాహాలు మొదలుపెట్టాం. అక్కడ ఓ ఇరవైమంది యువకులు క్రికెట్‌, మరేదో ఆట ఆడుతున్నారు. వాళ్ళలో గత కొన్ని రోజులుగా దేశవ్యాప్తంగా ఎంతోమంది అక్కడకు రావడం మూలాన ఎవరొచ్చినా ఏం జరుగుతుందిలే అనే అనాసక్తతనూ గమనించాను. వెళ్ళిన మేమే శ్రోతలుగా, వక్తలుగా కొన్ని మాటలు కలబోసుకొని ముగించాం.
ఆ తర్వాత కాల్పుల్లో చనిపోయిన ఉసికిల గోపన్న ఇంటికి వెళ్ళాలనిపించింది. కాల్పులు జరిగిన రోజు అతను ముఖ్యమంత్రి దిష్ఠిబొమ్మను ఊరేగించాడనీ, రిక్షా కార్మికుడిగానే తన కొడుకును ఇంజనీరింగ్‌ దాకా చదివించాడని తెలిసి సెంటర్‌లో అతనిల్లెక్కడ అని అడిగాను. ఎలాగో వెతుక్కుంటూ అతనింటికి చేరుకున్నాను.
దాదాపు పాతికేళ్ళ క్రితం కట్టిన ఓ పాత ఇల్లు అది. మొరంతేలిన వాకిలి, మసిబారిన గోడలు, వానకు కురిసిన నీళ్ళచారలు, ఎప్పుడో కట్టిన తడికెలు ఇగ్లూను తలపించే ఆ ఇంటిలోకి నిటారుగా వెళ్ళలేం. నేలమీద కనీసం బేస్‌మెంటు కూడా లేకుండా నాలుగు ఇటుకలు పేర్చి కట్టిన ఆ ఇంట్లోనే గోపన్న కుటుంబ ఆవాసం. అతనితోబాటు భార్య, కొడుకు, కోడలు, పెళ్ళై ఇంటికి తిరిగివచ్చిన కూతురు, ఆమె పిల్లలు, అంత చిన్న ఇంట్లోనే అంతమంది. వాళ్ళకు నాలుగు గజాల స్థలం అవసరం కనుకనే ముఖ్యమంత్రి దిష్ఠిబొమ్మను ఊరేగించే పనికి పురికొల్పింది. ఇంటిముందు ఓ చిన్న చిరుగుల చాపపర్చి భార్యతోబాటు కొడుకూ, కూతురూ, కోడలూ బాసికం పట్లు వేసుకొని కూర్చున్నారు. ఆ తర్వాతరోజే గోపులు కర్మకాండలు, మోచేతులదాకా తొడిగి ఉన్న ఆమె చేతి గాజులు చూస్తే రాజ్యం చేసిన కసాయితనం కనిపించింది.
నేను వెళ్ళేటప్పటికి విరసం మిత్రులు వాళ్ళతో మాట్లాడుతున్నారు. ఎవరో ఫోటోలు తీస్తున్నారు. ఒకళ్ళిద్దరు వివరాలు నోట్‌ చేసుకుంటున్నారు. కూర్చున్న వాళ్ళంతా చేతులు దీనంగా జోడిస్తూ అర్థిస్తూ మాట్లాడుతున్నారు. వచ్చినవాళ్ళు ఎంతో కొంత ఇచ్చివెళతారనే ఆశకూడా వాళ్ళకుంది. గోపన్న కొడుకు పట్నంలో ట్రిపుల్‌ 'ఇ'లో ఇంజనీరింగ్‌ పూర్తిచేసి నాలుగు సంవత్సరాలు అవుతున్నా కార్పొరేట్‌ కుల కళ్ళకు ఆ డిగ్రీ కనిపించలేదు. తన ప్రతిభ కుల తక్కెడలో తూగలేక సమీప గ్రానైట్‌ కంపెనీలో గుమస్తాగిరి మాత్రం ఇప్పించగలిగింది. అంత చదువుకున్న అతను వరవరరావు గారు మాట్లాడి వెళ్ళగానే ఆయనెవరండీ! అని నన్నడిగారు. పేపర్లలో, టివిలలో నిత్యం కనిపించే ఓ సామాజిక ఉద్యమ కార్యకర్తను అడిగాడంటే ఆ కుటుంబ రాజకీయ నేపథ్యం, స్థితి కొంతమేరకు అర్థం చేసుకోవచ్చు.
నేలకొండపల్లి, ముదిగొండ పరిసర ప్రాంతాలకు తెలంగాణా సాయుధ పోరాట నేపథ్యం ఉంటే ఉండవచ్చు. యాదృచ్ఛికంగా కంచెర్ల గోపన్న ఈ ప్రాంతం వాడే. ఆ గోపన్న నుండి ఈ గోపన్న దాకా వ్యవస్థకృత దాష్టీకానికి బలి అవుతూనే ఉన్నారు. ఆ గోపన్నను తన భావదారిద్య్రం జైలుపాలు చేస్తే నేటి గోపన్నను మాత్రం నాలుగడుగుల స్థలం అడిగినందుకు శ్మశానంలో ఆరడుగుల బొందను సగౌరవంగా చూపిందీ వ్యవస్థ. నిజానికి రిక్షా గోపన్న రిక్షా కార్మికుడిగా కాకుండా వ్యవసాయ కూలీగా గ్రానైట్‌ కంపెనీ వర్కర్‌గా వెళ్ళి ఉంటే బ్రతికేవాడు. తనకు రిక్షా ఉంది. కాబట్టి ముఖ్యమంత్రి దిష్టిబొమ్మను తీసుకొని వచ్చాడు.ఓ ఇంజనీరింగ్‌ విద్యార్థి ఓ ప్రజా ఉద్యమకారుణ్ణి గుర్తించలేదంటే, ఆ కుటుంబానికి నిజంగా రాజకీయ నేపథ్యం, చైతన్యమే ఉంటే చాపమీద కూర్చొని దీనంగా చేతులు చాపి నిరాసక్తంగా కూర్చోడు. ఏదిఏమైనా ఈ వ్యవస్థ చేసిన గాయం ఆ కుటుంబాన్ని కుదేలయ్యేటట్లు చేసింది. కానీ ఉసికిల గోపులు మాత్రం వీరోచిత తెలంగాణా సాయుధ పోరాటయోధుడు కాడు. వారి వారసుడుకాదు. రోజూ కూలీగా దిష్టిబొమ్మను తీసుకెళ్ళిన అతన్ని అదే దిష్టిబొమ్మ ఎకె 47గా గర్జించి ఏడుగుర్ని ఉసురు తీసుకుంది.
ఆ నేలకు తెలంగాణా సాయుధ పోరాట నేపథ్యం ఉన్నమాట వాస్తమే. ఆనాటినుండి ఈనాటిదాకా ఆ వారసత్వాన్ని కొనసాగించడంలో జరిగిన అలసత్వాన్ని, భూసమస్యపట్ల ఇంతకాలం నిరాసక్తంగా ఉన్న సమూహాలను గత నలభై సంవత్సరాలుగా కొన్ని సమూహాలు ఈదేశంలో రైతులే కూలీలుగా మారుతున్నారనీ, భూమి సమస్య పరిష్కరించడం ద్వారా ఉపరితల నిర్మాణాలు మారవనీ, కేవలం ఓటు ద్వారానే జనత ప్రజాస్వామిక విప్లవాలను కలగంటున్న కొన్ని శక్తులను కొన్ని ప్రశ్నలు అడగాలనిపిస్తోంది. ఆ సాయుధపోరాట యోధుల వారసులమని చెప్పుకొంటున్న వారి చైతన్యం నేడెక్కడ తాకట్టు పెడుతోంది అనే ప్రశ్నా ఉదయించక మానదు.
విద్యుత్‌ ఉద్యమంలో కాల్పులు జరిపిన అభినవ నీరోచక్రవర్తి వారసుడు, శవాలతో ధర్నా జరిపి పదిలక్షల డిమాండ్‌ చేస్తున్నాడు. ఆయన దాష్టీకానికి బషీర్‌బాగ్‌లో బలైన సత్తెనపల్లి రామకృష్ణ (మహా కూటమిని రామకృష్ణ క్షమించుగాక) భార్య మంగ నేడు నాలుగిండ్లలో పాచిపనులు చేసుకుంటోంది. ఆమె అతనిమీద విరుచకపడ్డది.
ఆనాటి కాల్పులలో జరిగిన బాధితులకు నష్టపరిహారం అందించడంలో జరిగిన అలసత్వాన్ని సూటిగా ప్రశ్నించింది. ఒకటిమాత్రం నిజం. ఇక్కడ జరిగిన ప్రతిహత్యకూ ఓ వర్గం ఉంది. కులం ఉంది. దాంతోబాటు ఓ 'వెల' కూడా వుంది. రామకృష్ణ హత్యకూ ఓ వెల ఉంది. గోపుల హత్యకూ ఓ వెల ఉంది. కానీ గోపుల భార్య వేసుకొన్న గాజులకు రేపటితో ఏ వెలా ఉండదు.
కాల్పులు జరిగిన రోజు యాదృచ్చికంగా చారుమజుందార్‌ అమరత్వం పొందినరోజూ, ఆరోజు సెంటర్‌లో కాల్పులు జరుపుతుంటే చావుకు సమీపంలో ఉన్న ఆ విగత జీవుల్ని ఈడ్చుకొంటూ సెంటర్‌లో నిరసన వ్యక్తం చేసే క్రమంలో శవాల్ని ఓ దగ్గరకు చేర్చిన కొందరు కార్యకర్తలు చనిపోయిన వ్యక్తి జేబుకు పెట్టిన బ్యాడ్జీ తిరగబడితే దాన్ని సరిచేసి సరిగా తీయండి అని కెమెరాలకు చూపడం లక్షలాది మందిమి టీవిల్లో గమనించాం. అక్కడ నిరసన వ్యక్తం చేయడం కంటే వాళ్ళను హాస్పటల్‌కు తరలించడంతో జరిగిన అలసత్వమూ గమనించాం. ఎక్కడకు వెళ్తున్నాం మనం! కాకుంటే ఆ బ్యాడ్జి ప్రయోజనాలు దానికున్నాయి. అధికారం ఆధిపత్యం పొందే క్రమంలో ప్రతి కాల్పులకూ ఓ ప్రయోజనం ఉంది. ఆ ప్రయోజనం వెనక అధికార మార్పిడీ, నాలుగు సీట్ల తపనా ఉంది.
కాకుంటే ముదిగొండలో చనిపోయింది కేవలం దళితులు, కార్యకర్తలు మాత్రమే. నాయకులు ఎందుకు చావలేదు అనే ప్రశ్న నేనడగను. కానీ ముదిగొండలో జరిగిన హత్యలలో ముగ్గురు మాదిగలు, ఓ మాల, మరో ముగ్గురు బహుజనులు ఉన్నారు. కనుక చనిపోయింది ఏ కులం అనే చర్చ నాకనవసరం. ఆమాటకొస్తే నమ్మిన విశ్వాసానికి ప్రాణం పణంగా పెట్టిన సాకేతరాజన్‌, శ్యాం, మహేష్‌ వీళ్ళంటే నాకు గౌరవం కానీ ముదిగొండ గోపులుకి అది అంటగడితే చరిత్ర మనల్ని క్షమించదు.
భూమిసమస్య పరిష్కరించాలని చిత్తశుద్ది వుంటే - ముదిగొండలో ముష్కరుల పాలన లేదు. అలాగని నైజాం వారసుల పాలనాలేదు. కమ్యూనిస్టు పార్టీకి కంచుకోట ఆ గ్రామం. కేవలం గ్రామం యూనిట్‌గా తీసుకుంటే అక్కడ వున్న మిగులు భూమి వివరాలు సాక్షాత్తూ స్టేట్‌ రెవిన్యూ వ్యవస్థకంటే ఆ గ్రామ సర్పంచ్‌, పెద్దలు లేదా గ్రామ కార్యదర్శికి స్పష్టంగా తెలుసు. ఆ ఊర్లో బంజరు ఎంత? సాగుభూమి ఎంత? మిగులు భూమి ఎంత? బంచరాయి ఎంత అనే విషయం స్పష్టంగా తెలుసు. గ్రామాన్ని నమూనాగా తీసుకొని మిగులు భూమి పంచి ఆదర్శంగా బయటి ప్రపంచానికి చెప్పవచ్చు కదా? ప్రతి గ్రామంలో ఆధిపత్యంలో ఉన్న పార్టీ నాయకుల, ఆధిపత్యకులాల చేతుల్లోనే ఈ మిగులు భూములు ఉన్నాయి. అంతేకానీ ఏ ఒక్క దళితుని చేతుల్లోనూ గజం నేల లేదు. అలాగని ప్రభుత్వ ఆధీనంలోనూ లేవు. మరి కాల్పులు ఎందుకు జరుగుతున్నాయి?
ముదిగొండ పరిసర ప్రాంతాల్లో దాదాపు నూటయాభై గ్రానైట్‌ ఫ్యాక్టరీలు ఉన్నాయి. అక్కడ వున్న వందకు పైగా ఫ్యాక్టరీలు ఒకే సామాజిక వర్గానికి, ఒకే రాజకీయ పార్టీ చేతుల్లో ఉన్నాయనే విషయం మనమెవరం ధైర్యంగా చెప్పలేకపోయినా, చనిపోయిన వాళ్ళకు మాత్రం తెలుసు. అక్కడ పెరుగుతున్న రియల్‌ఎస్టేట్‌, గ్రానైట్‌ కంపెనీల విస్తృతి మూలంగా స్వపక్ష, విపక్ష పార్టీల ఆధీనంలో ఉన్న మిగులు భూముల మీదికి ముందు ముందు జెండాలు పాతే విషయాన్ని ముందే పసిగట్టిన కొంతమంది ఆధిపత్య కులాలకు, కబ్జాదారులకు కంటగింపుగా మారింది. దాంతోబాటు పార్టీలోని అంతర్గత వైరుధ్యం వెరసి అక్కడి నాయకుడైన బండి రమేష్‌ను అంతచేయాలనే కుట్ర. (దాని పర్యవసానమే నిప్పుకు చెదలు, పార్టీలో ఎక్కువమంది ప్రజారాజ్యం తీర్థం పుచ్చుకున్నారు.) ఆ నాయకున్ని కాపాడుకొనే క్రమంలోనే ఈ కాల్పులు జరిగాయనేది ఓ కథనం కానీ, గోపులు వీరోచిత పోరాటయోధుడూ కాడు వారి వారసుడూ కాడు.
గత కొంత కాలంగా దేశవ్యాప్తంగా భూముల్ని ఆక్రమించుకొనే క్రమంలో ఆధీనంలో ఉన్న భూముల్ని అన్యాయంగా, అక్రమంగా గుంజుకొనే క్రమంలో జరిగిన కాల్పులకు కాయకల్ప చికిత్స చేసే పనిలో, మేధోమధనంలో పడ్డారు. ఈదేశ బుద్ధి జీవులు అదేం అంటే నందిగ్రాం వేరనీ, ముదిగొండ వేరనీ, కళింగ నగర్‌, సింగూరు వేరువేరు అనే అంటున్నారు. తేడా ఎందుకు లేదు? అక్కడ నిక్షేపణంగా సాగులో ఉన్న వ్యవసాయ భూమిని బలవంతంగా గుంజుకోవడం ఇక్కడ జానెడు భూమికోసం ప్రభుత్వ భూమిల్లో జెండాలు పాతడం. అక్కడ మహిళలను క్రూరంగా రేప్‌ చేసి శవాలను మాయం చేయడం, ఇక్కడ చనిపోయిన మహిళల శవం మీద బ్యాడ్జీని సరిచేయడం, అక్కడ నష్టపరిహారం, న్యాయ విచారణకు అవకాశం లేదనడం ఇక్కడ న్యాయ విచారణతో బాటు ముఖ్యమంత్రిని మార్చాలి అని డిమాండ్‌ చేయటం అంతే తేడా ఏమిలేదు.
నాలుగు గజాల స్థలం మీద నాలుగు రోజులు జెండాలు పాతినంత మాత్రాన అవి పోరాటాలు అవుతున్నాయి. ఇప్పుడు ఆందోళనలకూ, పోరాటాలకూ హద్దులు చెరిగిపోతున్నాయి. హైవే పక్కన నాలుగు గజాల స్థలంలో ఎలక్ట్రానిక్‌ మీడియా హంగామా మధ్య జెండా పాతినంత మాత్రాన అవి పోరాటాలు అవుతున్నాయి. ఈ జెండాలు, సత్యం కంప్యూటర్‌ కొన్ని వేల ఎకరాల బినామీ భూముల మీద ఎందుకు పాతరు?
మరి గడచిన నాలుగు దశాబ్దాలుగా సిలిగురి, శ్రీకాకుళం నుండి, కోరుట్ల జగిత్యాల దాకా నాలుగు లక్షల ఎకరాల భూమి పంచి నాలుగు వేలమంది చేసిన బలిదానాన్ని ఏమందాం? నాలుగు రోజులపాటు జరిగే సీజనల్‌ రెడీమేడ్‌ ఆందోళనలకు పత్రికలలో ఫ్రంట్‌లైన్‌ కవరేజ్‌లు ఇస్తున్న మీడియా- దాని వెనుక దాగిన ప్రయోజనాలు దానికున్నాయి. ఎనిమిదేళ్ళ క్రితం ఆగస్టు 28న రాజధాని నడిబొడ్డున జరిగిన విద్యుత్‌ ఉద్యమ హత్యాకాండ మరోవాగ్దానాన్ని చేసింది. ఆ వాగ్దానం ముదిగొండలో జులై 28గా పరిణమించింది. అసహజ మరణాలకు నిలయమైన ఈ రాష్ట్రంలో ఈ హత్యలు ఇంకా పునరావృతమౌతూనే ఉంటాయి. మానవ హక్కులు మృగ్యం అవుతూనే ఉంటాయి.
రేపు రాజ్యం ఇవ్వబోయే చిల్లరతోబాటు గోపన్న కొడుకు అదే రాజ్యం ఇవ్వజూపుతున్న అటెండర్‌ ఉద్యోగంలో కొలువు కుదురుతాడు.దాంతోబాటు అదేరాజ్యం వితరణగా విదిల్చిన చిల్లరతో గోపన్న మనుమడు మరో భూపోరాటానికి సన్నద్దం అవుతాడు. చిత్రగుప్తుడు మరో ముదిగొండ లాంటి ప్రాంతాన్ని వెతుకులాడి మరో ముహూర్తం సిద్ధంచేస్తూ ఉంటాడు. చరిత్ర పునరావృతం అవుతూనే ఉంటుంది. పవర్‌ పాలిటిక్స్‌ గురించి రా.వి.శాస్త్రి ఓ మాట అన్నాడు. పల్లకీలో వర్మగారు కూర్చున్నా శర్మగారు కూర్చున్నా బరువు దాన్ని మోసే బోయీలదే. వర్మగారు ఎంత వేగంగా శర్మగారిని దించి అంతవేగంగా పల్లకీ ఎక్కినా బరువులో మాత్రం తేడారాదు. ఆ పల్లకీల మార్పు వేగవంతం చేసేపనిని మహాకూటమి పేరుతో వామపక్షాలు చేస్తున్నాయి. పల్లకీ మోసాలను తలకిందులు చేసేవరకూ బోయీలు బోయీలుగానే మిగిలిపోతారనేది చారిత్రక వాస్తవం.

ఆంధ్ర జ్యోతి లో వ్వ్యవస్తీ కృత దాష్టీకం పోఎదేప్పుడు గా ప్రచురణ

Few Bones and a Few More Grains

‘"The flesh is heavy on my back; she’s my daughter, just turned fifteen. Feel her and be back soon."
This sentence, from Jayanto Mahapatro’s "The Hunger," disturbed me a lot.
It’s about a father aged sixty and a daughter aged fifteen, who struggle in their lives fishing in the sea. The shack they live in at the coast might get blown away even at a slight rainy-wind. The father and the daughter were not dressed adequately. Hers was a miserable plight of not having even a length of cloth to conceal her physic that was beyond her age. She used to accompany her father to the coast everyday. Her daily chore had been to wait for her father till the evening loitering at the coast. She was a burden; a responsibility beyond what the old man could manage. It became impossible for him to make the ends meet. Survival itself was a problem for them. He didn’t have either courage or leisure to think of marrying her off. It’s misfortune that inhabited in their house.
‘He reached back home from the sea. The sky seemed as though it might collapse any time with a thunder. He lost patience to remain standing, as he didn’t have food for two-three days. He was not in a position even to cry. The tears in his eyes seeped long ago. The coast was turbulent like the mind of the old man. As the visitors were hurrying up to leave for their houses, the coast was almost vacant. Each one was rushing in hurry. The university students would visit the shore for fun everyday. Groups together they would make fun jostling and shoving one against the other; they would scream and shout to tumble their sorrow into the waters. Some of them would come over there only to quench their bodily desires. As soon as they reach, they would gaze all eyes at the women folk. Those who could afford would come regularly; those who couldn’t, rarely. The old man noticed several times a youth coming over there for prostitutes to satisfy his desire by making some payment. He was fair and sturdy. He seemed to have hailed from a rich family since he sported a ring, chain and a costly watch. He seemed masculine. He was walking towards the old man dragging his feet in the sand and kicking the shells, complaining that he didn’t find anyone that day. The hopes of the old man that he had nurtured all these days got evaporated. He felt as though the sea that he had trusted swallowed him. He had been defeated in life for a long time; he got defeated only to survive. He would no longer stand the defeat. He had taken a decision only by means of bowing to his defeat. Having bowed to the plight, he called out to the boy. After conversing for some time, he could make out what the boy was looking for,
"Boy! ‘This is my daughter; just turned fifteen the other day.
The flush is heavy on my back; feel her and be back soon.
Look boy! It might rain. It’s time for the last bus too. Go over there, and come back after completing the work," holding back his sorrow, the old man handed her to him, and disappeared from there.
‘The girl’s eyes seemed like the worn out marbles devoid of glow. When seen through her eyes, her bones could be seen. Having followed him disinterestedly, she spread her thighs involuntarily, and surrendered herself to him. The fish in the basket of the old man flickered.’
This poem, which I was teaching in the class, depicts the helplessness of the father who sold his daughter for quenching the hunger, and how an inert girl inevitably turns into a doll being crushed under the masculinity of the man. The poem narrates the fate of those who live by depending on their caste-occupation. While the poem was taught, some of the girls grew somewhat restless, head brooding. A few boys smiled to themselves enjoying amorously. I noticed the whirlpools in the eyes of some students the colors of whose faces changed. We were all in a kind of daze in the class for some time.
I came to normalcy after a prolonged silence when someone said,
‘Sir! The bell rang.’
The pages of the anthology of Commonwealth Poetry seemed to be smeared by the powder of the bones, and the powder seemed to be dribbling along the way. It smelled the whiff of bones. I started for the staff room holding the book in the hand. Some of the people were running helter-skelter as though being chased by someone. They were screaming. I was walking towards the staff room. Groups of the senior students were ragging the newcomers while some others were sitting on the lawns. A few others were munching popcorn. Some were shouting.
The premises of the college were abuzz with the visitors and parents. The welcome banners and hoardings of students’ organizations of various hues added festive atmosphere on the campus. Every student on the campus seemed to me like Jesus carrying the Cross. Amid emotional atmosphere, I reached the staff room, and relaxed in the chair. Yadaiah, a Telugu lecture, sitting beside me greeted,
‘Sunder Raju! What’s the matter? You seem dull?’
I told him that there was nothing specific, and took out a sheet of paper to make notes for the seminar to be held in the evening. When I was searching for my spectacles,
‘Here, sir your specs,’ a student by name Shyam handed them to me. Being the in-charge of the student’s welfare, I knew a little about every student.
Yadaiah said, ‘Shyam too seems to be presenting a paper in the seminar?’
‘Yes!’
He added, ‘Shyam is a good student; he takes active part in social activities.’
I was the in-charge of the hostel. I saw him first at the time of admissions when he came with a bag in one hand and an old suitcase wrapped in a rag in another. The handle being broken, he found it difficult to hold it. Though his hair was unkempt, and wore worn out sandals, there seemed a sense of determination in his eyes. He came into my room with very little luggage. I had learnt about him then. After completing the formalities of admissions, he left for his room.
Shyam was an orphan hailing from a remote village at Palamuru, known for migrant labor. His father used to sew sandals. His mother died of anemia a few months after his birth. He lost his father too who died of ulcer having dragged on life without food. He underwent the trauma of hunger, untouchability, insults and hatred. Having been an unwelcome inmate in the welfare hostels, he used to live in the hostels by eating stale food and drinking water in the streets.
He could reach the university braving the difficulties. I could learn these details about him because of the interest that he evinced in studies. I thought that it was this kind of background that made his eyes welled up in the class while teaching the poem. Thinking so, I immersed in making notes again. I didn’t feel like having lunch. I managed with tea, and continued to make notes. It was getting five in the evening. My colleagues were getting ready to leave. When my colleague asked me if I would accompany him for home, I said that I would participate in the seminar on the literature of the suppressed castes. I invited him should he be interested. When I started, I saw Shyam at the gate of the collage. I asked him, ‘How do you go to the seminar?’
‘I’ll go with friends, sir.’
‘It’s OK. But come to my house some time tomorrow,’
I caught the bus. The bus was overcrowded as some of the passengers were hanging on the footboard as though being chased. It got late by the time the seminar ended. A few prominent poets gave their messages. The seminar ended with the address of the vice chancellor. I started for home.
* * *
I read Victor Hugo’s The Last Day of a Condemned Man late in the night. He portrayed emotionally the last moments of a man who was sentenced to death and about be hung shortly. I didn’t quite know when exactly I fell asleep.
I awoke when the sunrays fell on my face. The bed was full of papers and books. My eyes turned red these days because of sleeplessness. I came out of the house brushing my teeth. The women at the public tap were quarrelling among themselves. Some of them were returning with empty brass-pots. I washed my face, and switched on the TV. There was a panel discussion among a few editors of new papers; they were shouting on some issue. An editor, who seemed to be a Brahmin, was speaking on the freedom of editors that they didn’t have an agenda for themselves but to carry forward the agenda of the owners. As the discussion sounded lousy, I browsed through the newspapers that were full of routine news. Then there was a knock on the door. When I opened the door, it was Shyam.
‘Come on young man, how are you?’
I gave him some literary magazines for reading, and went into the kitchen to make tea. After a wile I came back with a bottle of water and two cups of tea. We watched the discussion on the TV while sipping tea.
He commented, ‘What do they mean by freedom?
Do they mean the freedom of journalists or owners? One is being pitted against the other.’ We turned off the TV as the discussion was lousy.
‘Sir! Where is madam? What are your children studying? Shyam asked me.
‘Nothing of that sort; I am not married so far,’ I continued,
‘How is your study going on? How do you find the hostel facility?’ He answered briefly. His attitude seemed as though he had come to discuss a big issue. Taking liberty he asked,
‘Sir I feel like knowing about your background. Please tell me about yourself,’ he asked. Though his question was not curious, I began so as not to discourage him. When he asked about my past, forty-five years of my life was running like a reel before my eyes. My eyes were streaming. The throat was getting parched. Yet, I overcame a bout of emotion, ‘There’s nothing great to tell about myself; I underwent travails like you. Having been born into a poor family from one of the remote villages, I faced acute hunger and the problem untouchability in my childhood. I can’t narrate artistically. Whatever I have to speak or write about my childhood, it is inevitably about hunger and untouchability.
‘By then, the Lal Bahadur canal of Nagarjuna sagar was yet to be dug. My village used to be reeled under severe draught. The Madigas of my village used to work as the annual field-laborers in the fields of farmers. One of such laborers was my father, Lachaiah. The villagers didn’t ever address him by his name. They used to address him ‘Lachchiga’ derogatively. Had he been born into a touchable caste, they would have perhaps addressed him Laxmaiah gaaru adding a respectable epithet. He became Lachchi gaadu only because he was born into an untouchable caste. I am the last of the six children in my family. I am the only one to have learnt the alphabet in piecemeal. We don’t possess even a cent of land. Amma and ayya, mother and father used to work as laborers.
Our folk used to divide the houses of the upper castes into shares for rendering caste-services to them. Our folk used to work in their families during festivals and other celebrations too. They used to remove the carcass of the dead animals, and keep guard of the pyres if someone died in the upper castes. The Madigas had to remove shit from the dry lavatories manually. I didn’t use to understand their ethics of assigning the menial work to us.
‘My folk used to spend their lives in the agricultural work. What they ultimately used to get in turn was the left over grains in the threshing ground. At the most, they used to dole out a few measures of grains by means of alms. However hard they might have worked, they used to be bestowed with the empty grains mixed in the soil. I never used to understand as to why they did never fight for their share in the heaps of grains.
‘My childhood was spent most dreadfully. There were days when I used to pick the discarded betel leaves at the shacks, roast the tubers, roast and pound the millets, and eat by the side of the trenches. There were days when I used to gather grains by gleaning, bundle them in a shoulder-cloth, bury it in the ground, and have it cooked by burning twigs over ground. Though semi-cooked, I used to eat the same because of hunger. I used to gather raw grams for eating. Half of my childhood was spent in gathering nuts and wild fruits. After the school hours, we used to assemble at the main junction of my village. We used to fish in the rivulet and trenches, and bring home sundry varieties of fishes.
Most of the days we used to eat this kind of stuff. There never used to be curds or curries available in my house. If at all anything was available, there used to be dry bullock meat and cucumber. We didn’t own a cent of land; affection among our folk used to be the sole asset. In fact the poor are capable of great love. If there is anything to speak about myself, it is but love and affection. Annayya, my elder brother was fixed for the annual field-labor right in his childhood. He used to eat his food at the landlords. On many an occasion, he would eat his morning-food, and hand me the lunch in the school, skipping his own lunch. If I were to write about the hunger that I underwent, the ink in my pen may not be sufficient to pen it. I feel like turning the blood that dripped from my eyes, into ink and write!
‘I told you already about the dry bullock meat. Several people didn’t allow us near them because we used to eat bullock meat. What’s wrong in eating the meat of the dead cattle as long as one does not kill the human beings for one’s selfish needs? In this country, the fourfold varna system had eaten the people alive. While they were arrogant, we at the dead cattle only to be alive. There is nothing wrong in it.
Another incident worth remembering in my life is selling the dry bones of the cattle. It used to be difficult to collect them. When an animal died, they used to throw it far away from the village. Our houses used to be away from the village too. The carcass of the animals used to be dreadful even to look at. Having been putrefied, they used to smell. When it rained, the carcass used to swell. It used to be very awful even to go near by them. In spite of the smell, the white-warms used to swarm on them. As though competing with them, some red worms used to pound the bones. Eagles and vultures used to prey on them like the capitalists who suck and turn the economy of this country into pulp. One didn’t know how, but the moment an animal died, they would arrive timely. They used to eat away the flesh of the animal with a lot of understanding among themselves. They are more disciplined in eating than the human beings. We used to be in need of the bones left out by the vultures and the dogs.
‘Due to the prolonged draught in the villages, the people didn’t use to stay in the villages. They used to migrate en mass in search of work. The children and the aged used to be left out in the village. In the process of searching for livelihood, every village used to seem like parched crops. The locked doors used to mock at us. The children left behind used to be divided into groups for gathering bones. Having bound them into small bundles, we used to bring them home. At times they used to slip off the bicycle. It used to be very difficult to re-bundle them as the bones used to smell horrible stink. If the bundling was delayed, the villagers used to scold us. The kind of humiliation I used to undergo while bundling the bones in a hurried manner could only be understood by one’s own experience. The dry bones used to waft sever odor. I didn’t use to understand as to how the buyer of the bones would bear the odor for so long. He used to buy them visiting every village by his bicycle with a couple of gunny bags. He used to eat his lunch on his way at the trench in the outskirts. He would eat with the same hands that held the stinking bones. Gathering them the whole day, he used to sell them in the factory. One couldn’t afford to give up bone picking on the pretext of odor.
There used to be a lot of quarrels, shouting, curses and abuses in the process of gathering them. W used to beat each other at times. The bones used to turn into weapons at times wounding ourselves. The wounds, the blood that dripped and the humiliation we underwent were countless.
* * *
As we felt sultry in the room, we both were sweating, and felt like eating something. There were some sweetmeats sent by Premalatha. We came out with the sweetmeats in the plates. When we were eating, the sky grew cloudy seeming like raining.
‘And then?’ asked Shyam.
‘There used to be a factory of bones just beside our village; it’s no longer there now. It belonged to a Leftist leader. He was one among thousands of people who migrated to our village in search of livelihood. A poor man that he was in the beginning, he has now earned crores of rupees. Either because of his caste or his party, he has earned a lot of clout, expensive apartments and foreign cars too. There might be several of his kind in the Telangana region. Today they accuse us that our ignorance is as big as the sky. To be a millionaire being a Leftist seemed strange. Further he teaches the Leftist ideology himself being in possession of a lot of wealth. The bones that we collected, we used to sell in his factory. The bones couldn’t change our lives; but could turn him into a millionaire.
After a few years the villages of Telangana became barren. The cattle were pushed to the slaughterhouses instead of allowing them die of starvation. How long could the farmers feed them, themselves committing suicide by consuming pesticides that they had bought by mortgaging the thali, the nuptial string of their wives.
‘The flush was heavy on their back.’
The cattle became a burden to them. They had sold out their cattle herds and lorries together holding back their tears. It became a curse to have been a farmer in this country. Having been a cursed community, they became helpless in selling them out. Not merely cattle. The unnatural death of human beings too was usual to us. The pylons raised in memory of the martyrs would stand a witness to the number of people who had died. Then there was a draught of bones in my village. Our gaze, that used to explore the bones of the dead animals, had turned to the graveyards. We had dared to dig the graves of human beings.
We had spent our nights more in the graveyard. The half-burnt logs in the pyres used to be afire at the winds. We used to get scared being reminded of the childhood tales of the peys; we used to get scared at the flames of pyres. But the fear was never a matter in the light of the hunger. We had dug graves for bones and for money because of hunger. So many graves were exhausted but we didn’t cease to search for the bones. Having noticed the difference in the size of the bones, the buyer of the bones once questioned us. Everybody came to know about it in the village, and made it a big issue. The vultures that were knocking away our wealth termed us the thieves. They scolded us and thrashed us. They proposed to excommunicate us from the village. They suggested for the consecration of the village so as to purify the portent that had taken place. But I didn’t really understand who the real thieves were.
‘We heard someone knock the door. It was a postman who delivered a parcel containg Siddi, a novel sent by its author Vemula Yellaiah.
‘The dress I used to wear was rather embarrassing since I had to go to the school in the same ragged dress. We used to make use of amma, mother’s old rags both for the bedding and bed sheets. Ever since my childhood I had been wearing torn rags. Baindla Veeraswami used to reside at next door. He used to serve in the shrines of Muthyalamma, Mysamma and other deities. People from the neighboring hamlets used to approach him for exorcising the evil spirits. He used to utter some chanting and make loud shouting. We were not allowed to speak to him. Once when I was roaming in the cemetery, he had flung aside the shroud of a dead body at the time of cremation.
Everybody used to look at it with fear. I saw Veeraswami bring it home. Once I mustered courage, and went to his house. I saw lemons and other paraphernalia of exorcising at his threshold.
I got scared. Having mustered courage I asked him, ‘Peddayya! I want a piece of cloth; can you spare one?’
‘Why do you need it ra?’ he asked me.
‘I want to get a shirt stitched.’
I got a couple of shirts stitched out of the shroud he had given me. I used the shirts for a long time. This incident made me bold in speaking on certain occasions. Ever since, I began thinking rationally. It made me a rationalist. My teacher, Asha Devi helped me in studies after my high school. She made me stay with them for education. They were Brahmins, that too pious Vaishnavas. She had to fight with her family for making me stay with them; spend on my education. They were the chief priests in Bhadrachalam shrine. Having joined as a domestic help to them, I pursued my studies, and could reach up to the university education.
It’s because of the similarities in suffering and ideology between us that made me share my experiences with Shyam. The upper castes showed discrimination against me; and the same kind of discrimination continues against Shyam too. Why does the discrimination continue even after a generation? Why hasn’t anything changed? The intellectuals claim using empty jargon that there is so much of development. If anything, there is a change only in the statistics. But everything remains where it is.
* * *
As we felt hungry, I said ‘Let’s get in. we’ll cook something and eat,’ we entered into the kitchen. I cooked some rice. Then I was reminded of Premalatha, my junior in the university who invited me for initiating maiden feeding to her daughter. Though I didn’t like the convention, I felt like going. I went there considering that it was a chance to pay a visit to them. I took along poornam, an eatable that she liked most. After meals when I was starting, she handed me a neat packet offering dry-bullock meat saying that I liked it so much. I opened the packet and cooked it. After having meals, finally we discussed about the deliberations in the seminar. He seemed a widely read man.
There was a sudden change in the sky. It began to drizzle. The wind was blowing powerfully with lightening and thunder. And then there was a power cut. I took him into the reading room and drew the curtains. There was a little light. Our discussion then focused turned to caste versus class.
‘Sir! One thing is true. In this country there is caste in everything; including a dead body and a cemetery. Why so much. Let the intellectuals cite where there is no caste references. There has been a treachery against the ideas and arts of the sundry castes. The upper caste scholars have been belittling the arts and literatures of the Dalits. What they had dubbed became arts; literature. That’s why there was no place for our arts and ideas. We didn’t record our arts. They created a gulf between the arts of the upper castes and those of the lower castes. There is a great need to bridge the gulf; to create an alternative culture and literature. They discriminated against us thus far. Several intellectuals shed crocodile tears like the hired mourners at the mummies of Emperor Pharos.
If we keep silent, they’ll take it for weakness. They will bury us, and laugh happily. One has to write one’s identity. We could work enough to sow the seeds of self-respect and identity movements. We’ll spread the seeds in all the directions. There’s a need to change drastically the falsified syllabus of the battles that took place for safeguarding the hegemony.
‘Sir! We have been the vanquished for thousands of years; cheated having been vanquished. How long would it last? The winners have constructed history. How I wonder the vanquished were the writers of the history! Our mfolk lived only to be vanquished all these years, one has to battle desperately. Who knows we might win the battle.’
I remained silent for a while after Shyam spoke. The silence seemed strange to me. I looked at Shyam intently for a while. I heard the noise of rattling bones.
Original: (Telugu): konni emukalu inkonni ginjalu
Gurram Seetaramulu EFL University
seetaramulu@gmail.com