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Empathy of Power and Effect on Knowledge-Perspectives from Dalit Studies

Preprint · July 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32264.65288

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 Empathy of Power and Effect on Knowledge–Perspectives from Dalit
Studies

Dr. Preeti Oza

St. Andrew‟s College
University of Mumbai
Preetioza1@gmail.com
Abstract:

According to Michelle Foucault, truth, morality, and meaning are created through
discourse. Every age has a dominant group of discursive elements that people live
unconsciously. New approaches in Literature studies like New Historicists and Cultural
Materialists are interested in recovering lost histories. Education and the idea of democracy
reached many sections of the society after Independence, awakening the masses all over the
country, as well as Dalits, Adivasis, and Nomadic and other tribes living in and outside villages.
The democratization of education enabled its spread among farmers, women, and workers. The
idea of the equal worth of all people was widely expressed, but social conditions did not change.
There were revolutionary transformations in the lives of the nation, society, and individuals due
to the consciousness of such humanistic values as equality, liberty, fraternity, and justice. Yet, at
the same time, sentiments of pain and revolt were also kindled because of dissatisfaction with an
inequitable system. This paper reflects upon some important areas of Dalit Studies where the
subjugation of Knowledge is done through the power of caste supremacy.

Empathy is understood as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to,
and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another of either the past
or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an
objectively explicit manner.
 According to Michelle Foucault, truth, morality, and meaning are created through
discourse. Every age has a dominant group of discursive elements that people live
unconsciously. New approaches in Literature studies like New Historicists and Cultural
Materialists are interested in recovering lost histories. They try to re-explore mechanisms of
repression and subjugation. The major difference is that New Historicists tend to concentrate on
those at the top of the social hierarchy (i.e. the church, the monarchy, the upper-classes) while
Cultural Materialists tend to concentrate on those at the bottom of the social hierarchy (the
lower-classes, women, and other marginalized peoples).

Subjugated knowledge is defined by Foucault in Power-Knowledge as being “the

historical contents that have been buried and disguised in functionalist coherence or formal
systemization”. Most of the marginalized groups all over the world have a similar system of
oppression but the titles are different as per the class and class divide. In India, it was under the
pretext of the Caste and in the Western World, it was under the name of the Race. Inequality was
the main source of this marginality which led to insecurity, injustice, and exploitation.
Marginalized sections were always on the periphery and distanced from the power centers. This
paper discusses the issue mainly concerning the following dimensions:

 The dichotomy of power v/s knowledge in the study of Dalit literature

 Need and importance of authentic translation in Dalit Literature

Education and the idea of democracy reached many sections of the society after
Independence, awakening the masses all over the country, as well as Dalits, Adivasis, and
Nomadic and other tribes living in and outside villages. The democratization of education
enabled its spread among farmers, women, and workers. The idea of the equal worth of all
people was widely expressed, but social conditions did not change. There were revolutionary
transformations in the lives of the nation, society, and individuals due to the consciousness of
such humanistic values as equality, liberty, fraternity, and justice. Yet, at the same time,
sentiments of pain and revolt were also kindled because of dissatisfaction with an inequitable
system. The literature of the post-independence period expressed these sentiments. The new
writers emerged from various sections of society. They presented in their writings, their
language, environment, condition, and issues.
 Dalit literature attracted considerable discussion because its form and objective were
different from those of the other post-independence literature. Its presence was noted in India
and abroad. Dalit writing is a post-Independence literary phenomenon. The emergence of Dalit
literature has great historical significance. The causes and effects leading to the age-old existence
of oppression and despair of the lives of a marginalized class of the nation‟s vast population are
also observed in many other parts of the world. Dalit literature represents a powerful emerging
trend in the Indian literary scene. Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, a champion of Dalit‟s rights has beautifully
summed up the essence of Dalit Literature:

“ My words of advice to you is to educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself.
With justice on our side, I do not see how we can lose our battle. For ours is a battle not for
wealth or power. It is a battle of freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of human personality.”

The untouchables or Dalits in India have remained socially discriminated and deprived
for centuries. Though the government of India, after the adaption of the constitution in 1950, has
legally banned the practice of any form of social discrimination against the Dalits their
deprivation continues in different forms even today as politico-economy changes do not
necessarily go hand in hand with the change in the mindset of people.

Dalit literature is trying aggressively to prove this point. Many firebrand writers have
consistently asserted this objective of Dalit studies. Baburao Bagul has claimed that “ those who
have made the mistake of taking birth in this land must be the ones to rectify it, either by leaving
the country or through the open war”. Another writer Om Prakash Valmiki, a writer of “Joothan”
said that there is segregation in every village in India and Dalits are forced into Ghetto.

Some current examples are evidence of these brutalities. A Dalit mother and the daughter
were stripped on 12th June 2008 in Ajmer. In another incident, a Dalit woman was branded as a
witch and stripped in Bihar in September 2006. A Dalit woman died in Midnapore West Bangal
after going without food and water for a week in August 2006. A Dalit boy was fined and
lynched for touching the upper cast boy in Tamilnadu. School gives no entry to Dalit kids in a
village in Panipat. All these are happening even after so many initiatives taken by the
government of India to stop these menace.
 The Indian constitution abolishes untouchability yet it is only for names' sake, the
dominant cast still forces them to perform the traditional occupation. The Dalits are still
marginalized and despite many movements and ongoing struggle, the rolling upper cast doesn‟t
consider the Dalits as people. Dalit movement has emerged in response to the numerous
injustices suffered, mostly in silence, by Dalits for centuries. The term „Dalit‟ itself represents
their struggle for humanity. But the idiom „Dalit‟ represents a political identity rather than just a
caste name. And this precise idea is the nucleus of the Dalit activism.

It aims to raze down the caste system and earn for them the rights and freedom they
deserve. Part of this innate movement for Dalit liberation also stands the Dalit literary
movement. It has brought about many social and cultural changes. It has given voice to many
dreams and ambitions, angsts, and afflictions. Many Dalit writers take an active part and
endeavor to become part of the Dalit literary movement.

In the line of Black Literature in America, Feminist Literature, and other marginal kinds
of literature, it comes with disturbing contents and ideologies rather than experimental forms and
expressions. At present, Dalit writers can show not only the hostile circumstances in which
Dalits live but also their struggle for emancipation from caste. It has emerged as a new genre of
literature as an answer and justify its existence. It aims to disturb the status quo and challenge
mainstream writings.

Another major concern here is the inclusion and exclusion of Dalits in socio-economic
categories. It is a well-known fact that Dalit is not a homogenous community. It is divided into
different castes and sub-castes, one above the other and one below the other. They have their
notions of superior and inferior status. There is no unity or fraternity among them; they are
equally loyal to their caste as other Hindu castes. They also practice segregation and
untouchability among themselves. They have their housing area in the villages, own separate
caste councils and usually, admission to their ghettos is restricted and reserved for their sub-caste
people only. In the study of Dalit literature at the academic level, there are some inherent issues
involved. In India, the education system has been a matter of government policy rather than an
ideological discourse. And when most of the Dalit writings are in regional languages, the
translation of the original text into either Hindi or English becomes a subjective issue.
 Any literature is a mirror of society and society is viewed always in light of the condition
of people in a cross-section. But unfortunately for many centuries the other side of this mirror
never came to light and literature primarily remained an elite concept: Literature of the elite, for
the elite, and by the elite. Indian Dalit literature, being a product of a multilingual context suffers
a lack of authenticity because of the limitation of translations. Despite the equivalence suggested
by bilingual dictionaries, it is common knowledge that people do not say precisely the same
things in different languages. Facial and corporeal gestures differ. Often colors are not
designated similarly in unrelated languages. The social functions of the various meals of the day
may be widely dissimilar in various parts of the world. (Oza, 2017)

And when one combines infinitely multiplied commonplace terms such as these with the
difficulties presented in interpreting such abstract notions as political sovereignty and individual
identity from one language to another, one begins to glimpse both the difficulty and the vital
interest of translating across languages. For instance, studies have found that people given power
in experiments are more likely to rely on stereotypes when judging others, and they pay less
attention to the characteristics that define those other people as individuals. Predisposed to
stereotype, they also judge others‟ attitudes, interests, and needs less accurately.

As Jose Maria Rodrigues Garcia in “Introduction” to the special issue of Diacritics on

“Literacy into Cultural translation” argues, “The cumulative work carried out between 1965 and
1980 by such thinkers as Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, who treated the concept of „origin‟,
„author‟, „reality‟, and „truth‟ as functions of a discourse rather than as pre-linguistic entelechies,
created the conditions for the appearance of more sophisticated thinking about translation in the
years to follow.”

Here the idea of literature is more about the assertion of human rights, self-pride, revolt
against social injustice, chronicles of personal and collective suffering, and hopes and aspirations
for a new society devoid of discrimination. It is a weapon for the struggle for selfhood. Here, the
subjugation of power as defined by Michael Foucault is used to understand the relationship
between power and knowledge. The construction of the image of a Dalit in the Indian system is a
very systematically drawn and ethnically nourished process
 Dalit literature emerged as the radical literature and challenged the norms, standards, and
principles of the so-called mainstream Brahminical literature, aesthetics, and literary theory. It is
not the literature of mere protest or negation but aims at dismantling the existing structures of
exploitation and restructuring the global society. Started in Marathi during the seventies, Dalit
literature is now being written in several Indian languages. This literature, barring languages, do
share the egalitarian ideology and expose the exploitative mechanisms latent in Indian society.
But unfortunately, despite setting very high literary standards, it had to suffer negligence and
severe criticism at the hands of the mainstream. For long, Dalit literature was not translated into
English.

S. Anand has attempted to provide a causal relationship between the emergence of Dalit
literature in translation and many factors including the market. In 1992, Mulk Raj Anand and
Eleanor Zelliot translated Marathi Dalit's poems as An Anthology of Dalit Literature. This was
the first attempt of this kind. In the same year, Arjun Dangle, one of the founding members of
Dalit panther in Maharashtra, edited Poisoned Bread. It was a collection of prose, autobiography,
poetry, etc. After a long gap of seven years, Karukku, an autobiographical novel written by Bama
in Tamil in 1992, won worldwide acclaim only after Lakshmi Holmstrom translated it to English
in 2000.

Lack of comprehensive translation theories sensitive to the nature of Dalit

Literature:

Historically, translation studies have long been normative (telling translators how to
translate), to the point that discussions of translation that were not normative were generally not
considered to be about translation at all.

According to Sharan Kumar Limbale, a well-known Dalit activist, writer, editor, and
critic, 'Non-Dalit literature emerges from imagination whereas Dalit texts emerge from
experience'. As Armstrong notes how feminists question male subjectivity in undertaking
translations of women writers and argue that Dalit writing must not be appropriated by the caste-
Hindus but must be translated by the Dalit themselves because of their natural impulse,
sensibility and emotional affinity towards the text. Anushiya Sivanarayanan, a caste-Hindu
translator herself, describes her experience, "One of the initial reasons I felt uneasy about even
trying to translate Tamil Dalit poetry was my uncomfortable awareness that I was attempting to
take on the task of interpreting and illuminating voices of a culture that had for centuries been
silenced by those belonging to my caste."

The different ways in which people go about the task of translating interlingual
communication can perhaps be best described in terms of different perspectives. These four
different perspectives could be regarded as essentially philological, linguistic, communicative,
and sociosemiotic. But Dalit literature cannot comprehensively fit into any of these approaches
because of the following problems: The source texts are all in different Indian languages. These
languages involve a lot of colloquial references, slangs, dictions, and terms. The settings used in
these writings are mostly rural or semi-urban India where the casteist differences are very
profound as compared to the urban areas.

The varieties of Dalit experiences of pain, anger, frustration, injustice, insult, agony, and
sheer helplessness are very difficult to translate if the translator doesn‟t share similar codes of
communication. The most challenging dimension here is that Dalit literature is experience-based.
Here „experience‟ takes precedence over „speculation‟. To Dalit writers, history is not
illusionary but the first-hand experience. That is why authenticity and liveliness have become
hallmarks of Dalit literature. These writers make use of the language of the out-castes and under-
privileged in Indian society. Shame, anger, sorrow, and indomitable hope are the stuff of Dalit
literature. Because of the anger against the age-old oppression, the expressions of the Dalit
writers have become sharp and this edge sometimes is not captured in the translated text.

The dichotomy of power v/s knowledge in the study of Dalit literature:

Translating a language is the transference of meaning from a source language to a target

language, which is both linguistic and cultural. It transverses communication to a multicultural
group and is an activity that destabilizes culture, enacts cultural identity, and serves as a vital
facet in understanding new modes of cultural exchange.

As Sripad Bhat observes in, Translating the translated: Interrogating the Postcolonial
Condition, "Translation referred not only to the transfer of specific texts into European languages
but to all the practices whose aim was to compact and reduce an alien reality to the terms
imposed by a triumphant western culture...”. Perhaps, this desire to experience the familiar has
emerged as the dominant equation behind translation in the post-colonial world, particularly
from the Third World languages to the master language, which in today's globalized world
happens to be English". The postmodernist philosophers like Michael Foucault, Julia Kristeva,
and Jacques Derrida were not there but the determiners of the norms and writers of Samhitas
knew the power of knowledge. They allowed this power (Education) only to Brahmins. In the
modern times, this is extended in the study of Dalit literature when the translators were mainly
from the English-speaking upper class educated strata of the society and what, why, who, when,
and where to translate was determined by them. The majority of the translations of Dalit texts
have been undertaken by caste-Hindu translators. It automatically curtails the liberating objective
of Dalit literature.

Pedagogically, the study of Dalit literature is increasingly becoming popular in Indian

universities. But in practice, teaching translated Dalit texts poses a challenge to casteist attitudes
that have been ingrained in the Indian psyche. As prof. Meena Kandasamy in her essay
„Translating and Teaching Dalit Texts‟ explains, there are several issues in the teaching-learning
of Dalit literature: “…Often, the tendency to read/interpret Dalit literature has been coupled with
reading Black literature, Aboriginal literature, and other kinds of the literature of protest. It is
considered as an important theme in cultural studies and is (mis)read as being the voice of the
marginalized groups…”

Conclusion:

Knowledge has intricate linkages with forces that govern our social life. Invariably, the
production and denial of knowledge are akin to the production and denial of power. For
centuries, the caste system in the Indian subcontinent has controlled regulated and hierarchized
knowledge. Brahmanism, as it evolved over some time, has sought to legitimate the servitude of
Dalit castes through its hegemony over the social universe of knowledge. Today Dalits claim a
stake, both in knowledge and the power that it serves more strongly than ever before.
References:

 Arjun Dangle, Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature,
Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1992.
 Armstrong, S. “Translating Dalit Texts: A Note on Rendering a Tamil Dalit Drama
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Mumbai, 10-11 December 2004.
 Bama, Karukku Tr. Laksmi Holmstrom. Chennai: Macmillan India, 2000.
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 Foucault, Michel. 2003. The Essential Foucault: Selections From the Essential Works
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