EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. I, Issue 12/ March 2014

ISSN 2286-4822 Impact Factor: 3.1 (UIF)

[Link] DRJI Value: 5.9 (B+)

Resistance and Assertion in Om Prakash Valmiki’s

Joothan

OM PRAKASH RATNAKER
Department of English & MEL
University of Allahabad, Allahabad
India

Abstract:
Dalit Literature is the literature about the Dalits, the
oppressed class under Indian caste system forms an important and
distinct part of Indian literature. Though Dalit narratives have been a
part of the Indian social narratives since 11th century onwards, with
works like Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam portraying Dalit women like
half-naked and sexually exploitable and praising the killing of
thousands of Dalits on "Kazhumaram" in the hands of
Gnanasambandan, Dalit literature emerged into prominence and as a
collective voice after 1960, starting with Marathi, and soon appeared
in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Tamil languages, through self-
narratives, like poems, short stories and most importantly
autobiographies known for their realism, and for its contribution to
Dalit politics.

Key words: Dalit literature, Indian Caste System, Dalit politics,

autobiography.

Dalits literature deals with not only about Harijans, Mangs,

Mallas, Chambhars, Pulayas but also the upper caste people
who are suppressed by the domineering people. The writers say
the emergence of low-caste literature has taken place alongside
a broader growth of consciousness and activism, particularly in
urban India. As an individual a dalit cannot forget his past. The
humiliation tries to remember his past. A writer should speak

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about his people for his people. A writer, who writes about the
exploitation, speaks not as an individual, but as a member of a
community and must therefore, avoid individuated expression
The marginalized people had to suffer because of the
lack of proper food and nourishment. They had to tolerate a lot.
They got maltreatment from the upper castes people. They had
muffled their voice. The people who were poor and lived in the
slum basti and had no means to earn proper bread for their
children were compel to tolerate everything from rich people.
The honour, respect, and self-esteem had been only its names
for them. They had their own identity as poor, weak and dirty
men and had no respect in society. Omprakash Valmiki asserts:
Most people of our basti suffered everything in silence.
Honour and prestige had no meaning for them. Being
threatened and controlled by the higher-ups was on
everything occurrence for the basti dwellers (1)

The aim of this paper is to show how a dalit writer uses his
autobiography as a means of assertion against untouchability
by looking a well-known dalit autobiography of Hindi Joothan
(1997) by Om Prakash Valmiki. The paper attempts to show the
resistance of a marginalized group against the system of
domination and exploitation. Barbara Harlow writes,
If resistance poetry challenged dominant and hegemonic
discourse of an occupying or colonizing power by attacking the
symbolic foundations of that power and erecting symbolic
structures of its own resistance narratives go further still
analyzing the relations of power which sustain the system of
domination and exploitation.

Valmiki portrays the picture of caste discrimination in Joothan.

He asserts,
‘Caste’ is a very important element of Indian society. As soon
as a person is born, ‘ caste, Being born is not in the control of
a person. If it were in one’s control, then why would I have
been born in a Bhangi household? Those who call themselves
the standard- bearers of this country’s cultural heritage, did
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they decided which homes they would be born into?’ Albeit

they turn to scriptures to justify their position, the scriptures
that establish feudal values instead of promoting equality and
freedom'. (Valmiki 133-134)

In the book, Joothan-A Dalit’s life, Om Prakash Valmiki writes,

“One can somehow get past poverty and deprivation but it is
impossible to get past caste”. With this statement, Valimiki
highlights the rigidity of the caste system in India that has
resulted in the socio-economic oppression of thousands across
India over centuries merely because of the “lesser caste” to
which they belong. The title of this autobiographical account,
Joothan, encapsulates the pain, the humiliation and the
poverty of the “untouchable” Chuhra community of Uttar
Pradesh, to which the other belongs. The untouchable or Dalits
who were social outcaste not only had to rely on the joothan of
others but also had to relish it. The treatment meted out to
them was worse than that of animals.
Valmiki expresses the realities of societies which is
delineates by Arun Prabha Mukherjee, translator of Joothan
form Hindi into English, “Joothan had a visceral impact on me
because in writing his life story of being born in the Chuhra
caste and growing up in Barla in North India, Valmiki spoke of
the realities and contradictions of my society that had been
shut out with thick walls of denial”.
In Joothan, Valmiki describes the harsh reality of his
childhood in the village in Barla district of Uttar Pradesh. He
writes about the ill treatment meted out to him when he was at
school because he was an untouchable. He describes the trauma
he went through when he was asked to spend three days
sweeping the school courtyard instead of accompanying his
classmates belonging to the higher castes in the study class.
There is a story which is narrated by a teacher in the
book Joothan. He is narrating a story of Drona’s poverty where
his son Ashatthama got the flour dissolved in the water, in lieu
of milk. The story has been written in an epic named
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Mahabharata by Vyasa. Valmiki was listening very attentively

the story of Drona, Valmiki enquired to teacher,
Master Saheb Ashwatthama was given flour mixed in water
instead of milk, but what about us who had to drink mar?
How come we were never mentioned in any epic? Why didn’t
any epic poet ever wrote a word on our lives?

Master saheb became furious when he listened the questions of

such types and he was about to response the boy as he asked no
questions but wanted his daughter’s hand. Valmiki described
the incident in Joothan.
The whole class stared at me. As though I had raised a
meaningless point. Master Saheb screened, ‘Darkest Kaliyug
has descended upon us so that an untouchable is daring to
talk back.’ The teacher ordered me to stand in the murga or
rooster pose. This meant squatting on my haunches, then
drawing my arms through my inner thighs, and pulling down
my head to grasp my ear, a painful constricted position.
Instead of carrying on with the lesson he was going on and on
about my being Chuhra. He ordered a boy to get a long teak
stick. ‘Chuhre ke, you dare compare yourself with
dronacharya...Here, take this, I will write an epic on your
body.’ He had rapidly created and epic on my back with the
swishes of his stick. That epic is still inscribed on my back.
Reminding me of those hated days of hunger and
hopelessness, this epic composed out of a feudalistic mentality
is inscribed not just on my back but on each nerve of my brain.
(23)

Valmiki struggles through his life. He writes. “We need an

ongoing struggle, and a consciousness of struggle, a
consciousness that brings revolutionary change both in the
outside world and in our hearts, a consciousness that leads the
process of social change the rigidly and narrow-mindedness of
casteist India, which is as relevant today as it was in the early
part of the last century”.
Valmiki’s objective here doesn’t stop at evoking

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compassion towards the oppressed Dalits in the mind of the

reader but questions, “Why is my caste my only identity?” This
one query leads the reader into introspection. In India caste has
always defined the socio-political scenario of the country
whether it is the debate on the reservation policy for
government jobs and education to aid the socially and
economically backward classes or political gimmickry,
everything has and undertone of caste and religion.
Valmiki writes that despite government undertaking for
the development of oppressed classes, through reservations
their achievements are hardly noticed and are ridiculed often.
Many of us, at some stage of our lives have been discriminated
against because we belong to go community and due to our
beliefs and practices. The mention of caste, community, and
religion on admission forms to school and college is one such
example.
When Valmiki passed his seventh class, he was in top
four students. Noticeably he was a bright and an intelligent
student of the class. His success was the root cause of jealousy
in the eye of upper caste’s students and teachers. Which is why,
one day Valmiki was going to school followed by Brajesh a
Taga’s son. He (Brajesh) was an arrogant boy. He hadn’t any
respect for intelligence but for higher caste people. He said to
Valmiki, ‘You will remain a Chuhra…….however much you
study’ it seems that people had no respect in societies who
belong to dalit community whether they were wise or
intelligent. There was respect for community not for people.
Joothan presents those experiences that did not find a
place in literary representation. Experiences like Valmiki’s
birth and growing up in the untouchable caste of Chuhra, the
heroic struggle that he wages to survive this preordained life of
perpetual physical and mental persecution, and his
transformation into a speaking subject and recorder of the
oppression and exploitation he endured, not only as an
individual but also as a member of a stigmatized and oppressed

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community, had never been represented in the annals of Hindi

literature. He, therefore, has broken new ground, mapped a
new territory. Besides a few stray poems and shorts stories by
canonical Hindi writer, which portray Dalit characters as tragic
figures and objects of pathos, Dalit representations are
conspicuously absent from contemporary Hindi literature.
The term joothan, actually carries a lot of historic
baggage. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi advised
untouchable to stop accepting joothan. Ambedkar, an
indefatigable documenter of atrocities against Dalits, shows
how the high caste villagers could not tolerate the fact that
Dalits did not want to accept their joothan anymore and
threatened them with violence if they refused it. Valmiki has
thus recuperated a word from the painful past of Dalit history
which resonates with multiple ironies. Gandhi’s paternalistic
preaching, which assumed that accepting joothan was simply a
bad habit the untouchables could discard, when juxtaposed
against Ambedkar’s passionate exhortation to fellow
untouchables to not accept joothan even when its refusal
provoked violence, press against Valmikmi’s text, proliferating
in multiple meanings.
Valmiki has shown caste discrimination in Joothan. He
has depicted his bearing and his sufferings in Joothan. There is
caste discrimination in India. In another country it is but in a
different way. It is existed in India since ancient period.
Someone has related it to religion and Hinduism but as well as
scholars think there is no connection between caste and
religion. It may be understad by the below excerption:
Caste has nothing to do with religion… it is harmful to both
spiritual and growth. Varna and Ashrama are institutions
which have nothing to do with castes. The law of Varna
teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by
following the ancestral calling…The calling of a Brahman-
aspiritual teacher-and of a scavenger are equal and their due
performance carries equal merit before God and at one time
seems to have carried identical reward before man. (5)

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Valmiki presents his experiences. There is caste system in

India even today. One day Valmiki was invited to go to the
teacher’s house to take some grain. There, they (His friend and
Valmiki) were welcomed with open arm. The elders of the house
offered them meal. As soon as they finished their meal, they
were asked a question which revealed their identity. And then
they were tied with rope to the tree. The people of the upper
caste behaved with them as they have raped an upper class girl.
He asserts:
I answered his question, ‘We are of the Chuhra caste.’
Both exclaimed together, ‘Chuhra?’ Lifting a heavy stick from
underneath the charpai, the elder hit Bhikhuram on his back.
He had a lot of strength and Bhikhuram crumbled.
Obscenities began to rain from the elder’s mouth. His eyes
were fierce and his skinny body was harbouring the devil. We
had dared to eat in their dishes and sit on their charpai, a
crime in his eyes. I was standing below the porch, frightened.
The elder was screaming and his voice had drawn a crowd.
Many people suggested that we should be tied to a rope and
hung from the tree. (51)

The notion of caste system has not been changed if even the
lower caste people got education. They were behaved worse
than the beasts. They had no value in the society. An animal
was worshiped in those days but person who belongs to the
lower caste had no place in the society.
Fauza was shouting and swearing: ‘Abey Chuhre ke… Just
because he has learnt to read a little he has gotten above
himself…Abey, don’t forget who you are… (57)

When Valmiki was ill-treated in the upper class society he

began to curse himself being born into a Hindu family. Though
‘it must be recognized that there never has been a common
Indian Culture, that historically there have been three Indians,
Brahmanic India, Buddhist India and Hindu India, each with
its own culture…It must be recognized that the history of India
before the Muslim invasions is the history of a mortal conflict
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between Bramanism and Buddhism.’275 Valmiki asserts:

But something came to a boil inside me,…. ‘Neither am I a
Hindu.’ If I were really a Hindu, would the Hindus hate me so
much? Or discriminate against me? Or try to fill me up with
caste inferiority over the smallest things? I also wondered why
does one have to be a Hidu in order to be a good being…I have
seen and suffered the cruelty of Hindus since childhood. Why
are Hindus so cruel, so heartless against Dalits? (41)

Valmiki met a girl named Savita. She invited him at her home
for a cup of tea. He asked to savita when he saw an SC
candidate who was given a cup of tea in another pot. He
enquired,
‘You had given him tea in a different cup?’
‘Yes, the SCs and the Muslims who come to our house, we
keep their dishes separate,’ Savita replied evenly.
‘Do you think this discrimination is right?’ I asked. She felt
the sharp edge in my voice now.
‘Oh…why, are you mad? How can we feed them in the same
dishes?’
‘Why not? In the hotel…in the mess, everyone eats together.
Then what is wrong in eating together in your home as well?’ I
tried to reason with her.
Savita defended the discrimination as right and justified by
tradition. Her arguments were infuriating me. However, I
remained calm. According to her, SCs were uncultured. Dirty.’
(57)

Valmiki questioned himself that what is Dalit? The answer can

be explained as members of the scheduled castes and tribes,
neo-Buddhists, the working people, the landless and poor
peasants, women and all those who are being exploited
politically, economically and in the name of religion.
To reach before the conclusion it can be said that
Valmiki suffered a lot in his lifetime. He had bad experience of
the life. Therefore, that one of the most powerful moments of
the text is Valmiki’s mother’s overturning of the basketful of

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joothan after she is humiliated by Sukhdev Singh Tyagi. Her

act of defiance sows the seeds of rebellion in the child Valmiki.
The Joothan is dedicated to her and Valmiki’s father, both
portrayed as heroic figures, which desired something better for
their child and fought for his safety and growth with
tremendous courage. Valmiki’s father’s ambitions for his son
are evident in the nickname, Munshiji, that he gives Valmiki
reses on their shoulders to become the first high school
graduates suffered by them and other Dalits.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Ambedkar, Babasaheb. 1987. “Revolution and Counter-

Revolution in Ancient India.” In Writing and Speeches,
Volume 3. Bombay: Government of Maharashtra. 275.
Print.
Bama, Karukku. 2000. Trans. Laksmi Holmstrom. Chennai:
Macmillan India. Print
Harlow, Barbara. 1987. Resistance Literature. London:
Methuen and Co. [Link]
Iliah, Kancha. 2009 [1996]. Why I am not a Hindu? Calcutta:
Samy. Print.
Ravikant. 2006. “The Dalit Betrayal of Hindi-Hindu-
Hindustan.” 9 November, [Link] (accessed on
20 September 2012).
Valmiki, Om Prakash. 2010. Joothan- A Dalit’s Life. Arun
Prabha Mukherjee (trans). Kolkata: Samya. Print
Http//:[Link]
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an%20by%20Dr.%20Ratan%[Link]

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