“You watch on idly when women are raped in your temple,
Your worshiper too is violent, just like you”
This verse is a fine illustration of Tamil poet Sukirtharani’s unapologetically provocative style of poetry. If you haven’t guessed already, she is addressing God in the above verse (translated into English by Isvarya V.), which is a part of a poem titled God, The Terrorist.
Sukirtharani subverts the idea that humans derive virtue from their belief in the divine, and takes aim at worshippers who commit violence and spread hate in the name of God and religion. But this is not a generalized criticism of the institution of religion, it is a fierce protest against the Hindutva ideology, which continues to oppress Dalit women like her.
On December 2, 2023, Sukirtharani and three other Dalit poets came together for a special virtual reading organized by South Asian poet collective Matwaala. They were Aranga Mallika, who also writes in Tamil; Umesh Solanki who writes in Gujarati; and Chandramohan Satyanathan who writes in Malayalam and English.
This was Matwaala’s seventh event in a series that spotlighted poets from marginalized communities. All four poets’ work is shaped by their experiences as Dalits, but each has a unique voice that distinguishes them in the immensely diverse canon of Dalit poetry.
Oppression and Salvation Come Together
For instance, in her series of poems titled Father, poet and educator Aranga Mallika pays tribute to her father – and countless others like him – who toiled day and night to educate her, while persevering in a system built on social inequities. Aranga Mallika sifts through her memories of him to paint a picture of dignity in the face of hardship.
“I try to trace in the burnt up plough, your body reduced to ashes,
I search in the refuse pit for your traditional wisdom on the science of seeds,
As I search, there remain in your callused hands – cowherd and cow dung stenched – the land and lifetime of a whole generation”
(translated into English by Isvarya V.)
She also read Shade, a poem about the Buddhist tenets of universal love that she learnt growing up in a Dalit household. While the themes of her poetry seem disparate, she believes that they are related, as the Buddha’s teachings are a shining light for the marginalized communities who work the land for little remuneration.
Lost in Translation
Next was Chandramohan Satyanathan, who writes predominantly in English. “Times are changing, Dalits are writing in all languages now!” he said wryly before talking about why he chooses to write in English. “A lot of Dalit writing is studied in translation, and there is an element of taming or pasteurizing it. The original voice is severely dented.”
The rest of the panel echoed Satyanathan’s point about the loss in translation that takes place when someone from outside the community translates Dalit poetry from regional languages into English. His most innovative presentation was a poem that reads like a news report pronouncing the death of poets and translators. It starts like this:
“Twenty bodies of poets and translators were discovered from the banks of a river near the state capital.
The bodies were like couplets, intertwined,
and the river criss-crossed the border between two states, built along thoughts on linguistic states.”
The evocative poem paints an eerie scene, but also makes a deeper point about the inevitable wrangling that takes place between poets and translators when translating poetry from one language to another. In his concluding remarks, he hoped that soon Dalit translators will be translating Dalit poetry into English, allowing for a fuller, more nuanced expression of the community’s artistic voice.
The Dalit Poet Label
If Satyanathan’s tongue-in-cheek humor brings a wry smile to your face, Sukirtharani’s poems promise to shock you and make you uncomfortable.
In the provocatively titled Please Kill Yourself, she pushes against the notion that people belonging to a certain caste group can only engage in select occupations. Inspiration for this poem came from a 2018 incident from Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, where upper caste parents refused to send their wards to a government school that employed a Dalit cook:
“We are sewage cleaners, you clean your own drainage.
We are miscegenators, you f*** yourselves.
We are the writers of the Constitution, if you don’t want that either, please kill yourself” (translated into English by Isvarya V.)
On being regarded as one of the leading Dalit voices in Tamil poetry she said, “This label of a Dalit poet is not one that I have taken upon myself, but it has been foisted upon me by society. I would rather be a casteless poet, but society only views me as a Dalit poet.”
However, she believes that this label is a small price to pay if it means that she can continue to write about the issues that matter to her. She has been writing poetry in her distinct, biting style for the past 25 years, and there have been attempts to censor her too. However, she sees this opposition as inevitable given that her poetry is highly provocative, and takes aim at religion – specifically the Hindutva ideology – which she believes underpins casteism and patriarchy as it operates in India.
The Surrealism of Umesh Solanki’s Poetry
For the final reading of the event, Gujarati poet Umesh Solanki read poems that evoke wondrous images: an all-consuming darkness fearing a tiny speck of light; vegetables turning into stone; and lovers walking hand-in-hand down paths that eventually diverge. A departure from the activist bent of the other panelists’ works, Solanki’s poems sparkle with his penchant for surrealistic imagery.
Nowhere is his flair for creating stark visuals more visible than in the love poem “She is on her own”, which recounts the poet’s dream-like adventure after separating from his lover:
“A red trail escaped the step, climbed up and turned into a stream, climbed down like a stream, it turned into a river
What a wonder was that river, I stumble like a wave…
“The caravan of time passes, there’s no sign of the sea, my eyelids flutter an incessant flutter” (translated into English by Pratishtha Pandya)
Gopika Jadeja, who has translated some of Solanki’s other poems and read them for the event said that while the visuals he conjures up in his poetry are sometimes a crutch for the translator, the rhythmic lyrical nature of his Gujarati verse is a syntactical challenge.
In another poem titled “Tradition,” Solanki puts himself in the shoes of the nomadic and denotified tribes of India, and articulates what their response might be to the question, “What is India?” The poem is a highly reflective description of everything that Indian society represents, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
His poetry abounds with innovative premises that elicit thoughtful introspection, laughter and awe-inspiring imagery all at once, a fitting final act for a session that featured stellar poets whose critique of society is as sharp as their ability to look inward and give voice to their own lived experiences.
Watch the full recording of the event here.
