“Women’s entry to Sabarimala is a raging topic, but 90 years ago, close to 95 percent of Hindus said the Dalits can’t enter temples. But this was challenged. In the mid-1920s, a resistance began with three people trying to enter the Vaikom temple in the Kerala,” said historian Ramachandra Guha at the Banagalore Literary Festival.
They defied the law and entered the temple and were beaten up, said Guha. When they were taken to the hospital, three others took their place. “This extraordinary story of Vaikom was the beginning of the temple entry movement across India. It took sacrifice and courage, but eventually there came a time when Dalits couldn’t be stopped from entering a temple,” he said.
Guha, during his session on ‘Is There an Indian Road to Equality?’, said there was need to strive for three kinds of social equality – equality before the law, equality in social practice and equality in the eyes of God. He added that it was time said women were given equality in the eyes of God.
Discrimination against women is an intrinsic reality of every religion and community, he said. “I thought caste discrimination had waned in urban areas. But Rohith Vemula’s suicide indicates otherwise. The revelations of the #MeToo campaign reveals that discrimination and harassment of women, sexual or otherwise, is an everyday reality. Recent data on women withdrawing from workforce also paint a scary picture,” he said.
Athol Williams, a South African poet, was among the speakers for the panel discussion, “Descendants of Indenture”. The session including Athol had four dual heritage writers sharing stories of the descendants of Indian- bonded labourers who were taken to several parts of the world in the last century.
Continuing the story of the surname, he said it was changed by his grandfather, who decided to identify himself more as a ‘coloured’ person than an Indian, to ensure a better quality of life for their family. The new surname Williams, which even Athol bears, gave his grandfather a right to own land in South Africa.
“There were too many doors I was told I shouldn’t go look behind, especially about my history. The South African libraries had no books on history of the Indians. When I grew up, as a poet, I wanted to understand stories that run through my veins. I’m the product of the history of many people who have gone before me. So, that is the reason I write,” he said.
Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde, whose Goa residence was raided by Pune Police in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case in August last week, was deliberating on ‘Questioning the Foundations of the Republic’. He expressed his deep concern over people’s inability to understand the implications of the rise of the religious right fascist forces in the country.
“It only exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of our political class. Most ills of Indian democracy were started by the Congress, now aced by the BJP. The Congress and other opposition parties will do better by consolidating the secular vote, which even today outnumbers the majoritarian vote,” he said.
Shilpa Mudbi is a part of the Urban Folk Project and is trying to spread the word about Jana Pada Geeta – rural Karnataka’s folk songs. These songs are narrated in the distinct dialect of north Karnataka, but her performance at the Bangalore Literature Festival had a little twist – she narrated them in English for the urban audience.
“Initially, we thought of making an archive project but we realised that the best way to keep the form alive was to share the experiences with people in a medium they’d understand. In the rural parts, these performances would go on for hours and it used to engage them. So, if there was an excited viewer or even if someone slept off , the performers would improvise to include them in the act,” she said.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)