9: Dr. JS Rohan Savarimuttu

Abstract 09: Dr. J. S. Rohan Savarimuttu

Discerning Dalit literature as literature of dissent:
its historically derived sensibility, tradition and culture of metaphysics

To understand Dalit Literature objectively is not to deploy an incorrigible method of disinterested analysis but to understand it as an object produced by certain historically derived sensibility or by certain actions.  The reading of Dalit Literature is a production of meaning, and is done from a locus of context of the dissent, as a result what is relevant is not the projected ‘past’ of the text, but its ‘futurity’—i.e., its suggestions as a pertinent message for the life of the one who seeks it out.

Dissent means nonconformity, difference, dissidence, heterodoxy, disagreement, heresy, objection, contradiction, refusal, denial, non-compliance, etc., to ‘Great Tradition’, which in a sense primarily refers to ‘autonomy’.  Dissent is different from… or disagreement with…or refusal of…’Great Tradition’; this definition of the essence of dissent as nonconformity with i.e., as independence, the absence of dependence on ‘Great Tradition’, involves a denial of dependence on something else too i.e., ‘Little Traditions’.  Every civilization has the ‘high’ cultural traditions of the reflective few, communicated by intellectual specialists i.e., literati (the ‘Great Tradition’) and the ‘low’ folk traditions of the unreflective many (the ‘Little Traditions’).  At this juncture it is pertinent to consider that the learned specialists or the reflective few codify a Great Tradition only out of the rationalisation of Little Traditions and this Great Tradition that has been rationalized out of a Little Tradition is known as “orthogenetic” civilization.  In this instance, a culture’s literati can be faced with an alien tradition only when it is reconciled with, or integrated into, their own orthogenetic Great Tradition.  In another sense Great Tradition could be equated to the universal and Little Tradition to the particular, where the orthogenetic civilization is that which has the particular of one thing, contained within the universal, because universal is the universality of various particulars determined by it.  This is one of the reasons to believe that literature of dissent is not just the denial of ‘Great Tradition’ but also the ‘Little Tradition’ suggesting towards newer mediations of meanings.   

When Dalit Literary texts or contexts are analysed, one should be careful in not to take the course of interpretation towards ‘negative dissent’ since it is built on the steering medium of the hatred for the ‘Other’.  Negative dissent means, a breaking loose, releasement, a away-from.  It is the ‘positive dissent’ that as to be employed in the course of understanding Dalit Literature, since it would be not ‘away-from’ but ‘towards-which’, where ‘positive dissent’ means ‘being-open-for’.

Comprehending the dynamics of repugnance between freedom and slavery in India and Sri Lanka, which are in the forms of caste, language, and geographical territories can be done only by identifying the symbols and signs that denote metaphysical aspects, in relation to their polarised differences since opposites imply both conjunction and disjunction.

All these days Dalit Literature has been approached with an impromptu of empathic understanding, unconditional positive regard in congruence to the sufferings as communicated by these texts in order to help the reader overcome inhibitions through a systematic desensitisation and also simultaneously creating self-actualization—a system of paired opposites.  However, such a reading is a mar in the philosophical-literary circles due to over-emphasis of subjectivism and therefore this paper imputes amelioration through suggesting an objective platform for an efficacious understanding of Dalit literature as suggestions of ‘towards-which’.  This paper’s articulation is built upon a proposal that objectivity is axiological for all subjective speculations as a conjoint since meaning is already present and preserved through culture and history.