Verisimilitude is Meena Kandasamy's Selected Poems
Name – Jheel Barad
Roll No.: 12
Enrollment No.: 4069206420210003
Paper no: 202
Paper code: 22407
Paper name: Indian English Literature (Post- Independence)
Sem.: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023)
Submitted to: Smt S.B. Gardi Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University
E-mail- jheelbarad@gmail.com
About Meena Kandasamy
Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator,and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She developed an early interest in poetry, and later adopted the name Meena. She completed a Doctorate of Philosophy in Socio- Linguistics from Anna University, Chennai. She began writing poetry at age 17 and began translating books by Dalit writers and leaders into English.
As a writer, Meena's focus was mainly on caste annihilation, feminism and linguistic identity. She prefers to use it for her activism. She is an anti-caste activist, poet, novelist and translator. Her writing aims to deconstruct trauma and violence, while spotlighting the militant resistance against caste, gender, and ethnic oppressions.
She says-
"Poetry is not caught up within larger structures that pressure you to adopt a certain set of practices while you present your ideas in the way that academic language is"
Given her impassioned politics, it is perhaps not surprising that she wrote her first love poem only two years after she started writing her “angry, militant” verse. The poems in this edition reveal more than militant rage, however. There is fierce and exuberant wit and wordplay which make one look forward to more of Kandasamy’s work in the years to come.
ARUNDHATI SUBRAMANIAN, Poet,
Poetry International Web
Read more about Meena Kandasamy
Early Life
Kandasamy was born in 1984 in Chennai, India, the daughter of a mixed-caste Tamil marriage. She offloaded her anger at India’s “very rigid caste system, which doesn’t give acknowledgement to anyone except the Brahmin [high-caste] population, and even women are excluded from that”
Contemporariness of her poetry
We all know that India is a country which is filled with Brahminical thoughts, scriptures and life. And as Meena Kandaswamy felt we have always seen around us the people of lower caste always have to face a variety of issues. Dalit society is a post- independent thought, it was named by Gandhiji to resolve the caste discrimination which existed in Pre- independent India. Even today Dalit is an emerging voice in India. As a by-product of nation building, the privileged sections of society attain dominance over the weaker working class.
The vestige of caste discrimination triggered the literary people of Independent India
to take up writing as resistance. The transformation that took place in the Dalit sensitivity and
consciousness gave birth to Dalit Literature. Dalits adopted cultural, political and social resistance against the upper caste culture of India through their literature and other art forms. Literature becomes one of the effective mediums to reveal their identity in its full-fledged form.
The non-Dalit writers with their representation of the subjugation of Dalit on the basis of caste hierarchy attempted to claim social equality rather than to construct cultural Dalit identity. Indian
poetry captures the collective mindset of middle class people, abject poverty of proletarians and rarely echoes the plight of Dalits. However, the Dalit writers choose poetry as a platform to promote their voice to be heard outside the brahminic discourses.
Beyond the boundaries of time and space, Kandaswamy attacks the evils as social, cultural, political and historical through her strong questions raised in her poems. writes poems
denouncing the established social history of the depressed classes.She speaks out the
marginalization of every subaltern group in the society plagued with gender discrimination,
sexual harassment, casteism, racism, and so on. The poet especially questions the Hindu ideology and its perpetrators who skillfully inculcated its manifesto into its followers
Advaita
Her poem Advaita: The Ultimate Question, questions the concept of Advaita in Hindu philosophy. She says according to the concept of Advaita, she, as an untouchable outcast, also be a god. But the Indian consciousness could ever agree to that. Then she asked as a final question whether non-dualism is a true concept, her untouchable Atman and Brahmin Atman could ever be one. She throws these questions of nondualism to the mind of Hindus and she provokes them to question their own scriptures, religion and even their nationality.
Meena Kandasamy’s two collections of poems Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010) are the manifestations of her anger over the dehumanized state of Dalits and the unjust taboos perpetrated by the upper caste people.
One- Eyed
In the poem titled “One-eyed” poignantly reveals the story of a child whose eyesight was snatched for drinking water in the glass that is meant only for the upper castes.
‘her left eye, lid open but light slapped away,
the price for a taste of that touchable water.’
( Ms.Militancy 9-10)
The teacher of the school considers it as an act of violating the rule whereas the media looks at it as a fresh headline to publish.
This poetry was written a year back, after that we see a lot of changes in this world. But has our way of looking at lower caste changed? Have we come out from class and caste discrimination in our mind? And the answer is no.
Recently in Rajasthan dalit boy beaten to death for touching water pot.
Rajasthan: ‘Were asked to compromise, not file case’, says family of Dalit boy killed for ‘drinking water from pot meant for upper caste teacher’
Read in detail about this case.
Ekalaivan
Meena Kandasamy demystifies the mythical stories to drive home the social conditioning on the unprivileged sections of society. In the poem Eklaivaan she relates the myth of Eklavya to modern society. Eklavya here becomes a symbolic representation of the victims of Dalit community. In Mahabharata, Eklavya, the skilled outcast was demanded his thumb by his Guru for being a rival to the prince Arjuna in archery. Kandasamy reviews it from the subaltern perspective and proclaims that Eklavya was silenced in the name of loyalty. This kind of circulation of power and hegemony is exercised on the underprivileged in the past. Gramsci points out that such a world of ideas have been produced and circulated by “Traditional individuals.” Gramscian Hegemony is exerting domination “not by force … but by more subtle and inclusive power over the economy… by which the ruling class’s interest is presented as the common interest” She consoles Eklavya that he could do so many things with his left hand and moreover he could not need the right thumb to pull a trigger or hurl a bomb. She presents new ways of reactions which are more powerful than old armours. Here the left hand also shows her support for communism which advocates equality and an organization worked for the upliftment of peripherals. She says that the new innovations of the world will help the Dalit to forget the old threats. In a short poem she presents a powerful idea. She recalls Eklavya who vanished silently in history and tried to give a new life to him. Moreover, she assumes the Dalit are modern counterparts of Eklavya. Here Dronacharya is a symbolic representation of fascism in modern society.
Here we see that a great Guru Dronacharya took away the powers of the lower caste so that his students, the privileged one, could rule over. Even today such incidents happen. How? Is it possible in modern education?
Eighty-four percent of the SC/ ST students surveyed said examiners had asked them about their caste directly or indirectly during their evaluations. Click here to read in detail
"I desperately want to finish my PhD and realized that it would not be possible till I publicly called out the campus discrimination I had faced for years," Mohanan, 36, said in a phone interview from her home in Kottayam in southern India. Read more
The victim Deepa Mohan had a hunger strike against the authority for not letting her complete Ph.D. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Conclusion:
Kandasamy expresses her resistance through writing and she takes poetry to enlighten and empower the subaltern. Through her powerful depictions, Meena Kandasamy targets the readers to whom she wants to transform into a sensitive and sensible agent for social change. She made her poems unique in its unfamiliar content, its special means and mode of expression and humanist ideology. Her usage of foul language, venomous sarcasm, sacrilegious ideology, vengeful expressions altogether make an aesthetics of resistance.
Works Cited
“ATTACKING THE ICONS OF INDIAN CULTURE WITH THE AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE: A READING OF MEENA KANDASWAMY'S SELECTED POEMS.” IJCRT.org, https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2002003.pdf. Accessed 5 November 2022.
“BIO | meenakandasamy.” Meena Kandasamy, https://www.kandasamy.co.uk/about. Accessed 5 November 2022.
“India's Universities Are Falling Terribly Short on Addressing Caste Discrimination.” The Wire, 21 November 2017, https://thewire.in/caste/india-universities-caste-discrimination. Accessed 5 November 2022.
Kandasamy, Meena. “Advaita: The ultimate question - Advaita: The ultimate question Poem by Meena Kandasamy.” Poem Hunter, 16 March 2018, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/advaita-the-ultimate-question-2/. Accessed 5 November 2022.
Kandasamy, Meena. “Ekalaivan - Ekalaivan Poem by Meena Kandasamy.” Poem Hunter, 20 June 2012, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ekalaivan/. Accessed 5 November 2022.
Kandasamy, Meena. “ONE-Eyed - ONE-Eyed Poem by Meena Kandasamy.” Poem Hunter, 4 August 2016, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/one-eyed-2/. Accessed 5 November 2022.
“Kerala Varsity Removes Prof Accused of Casteism From Post, PhD Scholar Calls for Expulsion.” The Wire, 7 November 2021, https://thewire.in/caste/casteism-kerala-deepa-mohanan-hunger-strike. Accessed 5 November 2022.
“Meena Kandasamy's Poetry: an Angry Young Woman's Counter Narrative.” Academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/47788440/Meena_Kandasamys_Poetry_an_Angry_Young_Womans_Counter_Narrative. Accessed 5 November 2022.
“PhD student's fight against caste discrimination raises Dalit hopes.” Deccan Herald, 30 November 2021, https://www.deccanherald.com/national/south/phd-students-fight-against-caste-discrimination-raises-dalit-hopes-1056028.html. Accessed 5 November 2022.
“Rajasthan: 'Were asked to compromise, not file case', says family of Dalit boy killed for 'drinking water from pot meant for upper caste teacher.'” The Indian Express, 14 August 2022, https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/jaipur/rajasthan-were-asked-to-compromise-not-file-case-says-family-of-dalit-boy-killed-for-drinking-water-from-pot-meant-for-upper-caste-teacher-8090201/. Accessed 5 November 2022.
Self, John, and Meena Kandasamy. “Meena Kandasamy: 'If I was going to write my life story, I would condense that marriage to a footnote.'” The Guardian, 25 November 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/25/meena-kandasamy-interview-exquisite-cadavers. Accessed 5 November 2022.
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