The Other Side of Silence: Discourse on Partition https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794694

The Other Side of Silence: Discourse on Partition

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794694

Author(s): Sakshi Thakur

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10794694

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Volume 15 | Issue 1 | Feb 2024

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-I, February 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
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Gypsy Goddess: Writing Resistance
Sakshi Thakur
Lecturer in English,
Tehsil Ramnagar, District Udhampur,
Jammu and Kashmir, India.
Article History: Submitted-17/01/2024, Revised-15/02/2024, Accepted-18/02/2024, Published-29/02/2024.
Abstract:
This research paper focuses upon a particular class of society i.e. have-nots. It is a fine
revelation of the ill treatment meted out to workers and farmers in the hands of landlords in
town of Kilvenmani in Indian state of Tamilnadu. It evokes rage and shock from all corners
of society. The author tries hard to be a representative of voiceless communities in India
living below poverty line. In India, if there are people whose every step seems to be
politically motivated, contrary to this, there are sections who are not only recognized by their
meagre salaries but also by their pain and struggle for survival. Resistance is a secondary
solution to them as their main motive is an urge to satisfy their hunger. To reduce this
economic divide between rulers and ruled, haves and have nots, land owners and farmers is
an inevitability, so as to maintain country’s democratic character. Kilvenmani is therefore the
hero of this novel.
Keywords: Communism, Slavery, Haves, Have nots, Kilvenmani, Socio-Political
Realignment, Economic Inequality.
The Gypsy Goddess is Meena Kandasamy’s debut novel. It is an exposition of
problems faced by the labouring class who work for an inadequate salary in hard and
deplorable conditions. The area of concern is the state of Tamilnadu. The writer ponders deep
into the process of class divide between labourers and landlords. This class consciousness
prompts one class to have control over other. The novel also focuses upon the infamous
incident that occurred on Christmas eve in Kilvenmani in 1968. The author not only works
upon entangled set of relationships in society but also deals with technicalities of how to
write a novel. Meena Kandasamy finds the traditional linear plot of novel as inapt. According
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to her the best way to handle the complications exposed by a storyline is the technique of
postmodernism.
The tension between the two warring communities which surfaced from beginning to
end in the storyline could be deftly dealt with by the way of postmodernism there by
transgressing conventional pattern used in Indian English novels. The novelist always felt an
urge to write about complex set of principles which enmeshed society i.e. one set of moral
grounds for one community and another set of desires to be reached upon by other
community. The writer also recognized poetry as a distinct medium to expose a society
ridden with class-consciousness. The novel being a powerful tool exposed the plight of Dalits
in class conscious society of Southern India- Tamilnadu. Meena Kandasamy raised issues
which remained latent in society owing to certain set patterns as well as performed rituals or
practices. She was of the view that people and their social positions were already fixed as per
their class. Her motive was to deconstruct such class ridden ideology. The writer not only
constructed original pieces of fiction but also translated Dalit literature into English. The plot
deals with myths prevalent in Tamil and Hindu culture.
Meena Kandasamy’s first collection of poetry was ‘Touch’. The fiery rebellious spirit
in Meena transformed her into a woman who refused to be accountable to societal norms and
practices. When her husband ill treated her, she refused to oblige and divorced him. When
she found poor and downtrodden around her working for low wages, her conscience pricked
her and she turned to literature as a medium. Gypsy Goddess was its direct result. According
to James Kidd: “Gypsy Goddess was a novel of self conscious experimentalism and
unmistakable fury and it throws down a gauntlet to conservative literary and political
sensibilities especially in India” (Kandasamy, 2014: Interview). Meena’s family had suffered
the brunt of poverty. Her father completed his PhD under hard circumstances. Moreover the
bloody incident at Tanjore, Tamilnadu in 1968 in which many women and children died due
to fire massacre which was a deliberate attempt by callous authorities to stop the ongoing
agitation of workers who demanded increased wages. This inhuman event shocked people to
the core and numbed the psyche of the author.
In the novel, postmodernist methodology was used by the author so as to avoid
shortcomings raised by the traditional plot. A complex postmodern style along with serious
issues of Dalit community and their longing for economic and spiritual freedom
complimented each other. The discrimination against these communities is a burning social
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issue which deserves attention and a peaceful reconciliation with the past is the only way left
for catharsis of violent emotions and tragic stories. According to Linda Hutcheon, a reputed
figure associated with postmodernism, in her work A Poetics of Postmodernism stated: “Facts
are events to which we have given meaning. Different historical perspectives therefore,
derive different facts from same events” (Hutcheon, 1988:57). The way of presenting facts
on a piece of paper is different for different people around. Interpretations of various kinds
from intellectual minds tend to change monolithic nature of truth which gets enriched while
confronting reality around it. In Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious
Fiction, Patricia Waugh said,“There are two different ways to reveal a truth- to create fiction
and to make a statement about creation of that fiction. The two processes are held together in
a formal tension which breaks down the distinction between creation and criticism and
merges them into the concepts of interpretation and deconstruction (Waugh, 1984:6)”.
When the forces of socialism and democracy tear apart the bourgeoise fabric of
society, it is not only a matter of exposition of gruesome reality but a quest for identity of the
entangled self. Literature has the necessary capacity to deconstruct or question dominant
historical narrative there by turning the table in favour of marginalized sections of society
whether it is race or class or sex or culture. Therefore, one of the contemporary genres in
fiction that questions or interrogates the myth of dominance of haves over have-nots is Dalit
literature. One such work that serves as a mode of defiance in class-ridden society of
Tamilnadu is Gypsy Goddess. When compared with Kuruthipunal, another work of fiction
exposing the brutalities inflicted upon people in Kilvenmani, Kandasamy’s novel is crystal
clear in its approach- barriers of caste and colour are as serious modes to propagate racism as
sexism. According to P. Sivakami in Tamil Dalit Literature: Some Riddles, “Dalit literature is
subjective and based on narrow identity politics… it constitutes a celebration of the marginal
and denial of all other concerns (Sivakami, 2012:436)”. In the beginning of the novel, there is
a prologue. It contains a memorandum written to the Chief minister of Madras by the
president of Paddy Producers’ Association- Gopala Krishna Naidu. He writes about the
lurking danger of forces of communalism in the village as the government is not paying heed
to demands of farmers who work hard with determination to sow paddy in the fields. Meena
Kandasamy used an accent different from actual English to satirize the British rule in the
country. She felt that British government ate up fair share of Indian economy that actually
belonged to the working class. Her technique to grab reader’s attention was not the bombastic
style but simple prose.
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The first part of the novel was termed ‘Background’. Here the primary concern of the
novelist was the background and historical significance of Nagapattinam district which had
adjusted Kilvenmani into it demographically and spiritually. Demographically because
Kilvenmanni belonged to it and spiritually due to the deeper wounds of massacre and its
effect upon the psyche of the town- Kilvenmanni. The town symbolized multiculturalism due
to presence of Dutch, Portuguese and finally British in the respective area. The novel is rich
in stylistic devices as the author alludes to Conrad, Vonnegut, Steinbeck, Dostoevsky etc and
prompts readers to remain active and form varied interpretations to already rich and profound
matrix. The author does not shy away and frankly tells her readers that people of
Kilvenmanni were also responsible for their miseries. So were all Dalits in India. The
beginning of the novel opens about a woman in a tiny village. No other information is given
about this woman so as to add a touch of ambiguity to the plot. Her name is Maayi. After the
massacre in which many people were scorched to death, it was Maayi’s responsibility to unite
the village people. The author had innumerable choices for the title of the novel such as Tales
from Tanjore, Butcher Boys, Kilvenmanni, Christmas day, Long Live Revolution etc. But
finally Gypsy Goddess was selected. A new connection seemed to be formed between Maayi
and ‘Gypsy Goddess’.
According to the myth of Gypsy Goddess, she was an epitome of seven gypsy women.
These women were brutally murdered along with their children so that the titular Gypsy
goddess was an embodiment of seven gypsy women who were transformed into nymphs in
the other world. The title was also a symbol of people who were victims in the heart-rending
incident of Kilvenmanni. In the part two, the first chapter- ‘Cutthroat Comrades’, the central
point of discussion was Gopala Krishna Naidu. He was the medium of exchange of words
between Paddy Producer Association and government. It was an emergency meeting called
up by Gopala Krishna Naidu as it was quite difficult to suppress the rising emotions of
working class. Their oppression by the landlords had acquired gigantic proportions. The
workers class stood for people who earned low and mean wages but it was also the story of
every Dalit in India. The long history of discrimination was quite familiar to bureaucracy and
government who always used to put a deaf ear to demands of people in Tanjore district in
Southern Indian state of Tamilnadu. The time of setting of the novel was the year of 1968. In
India it was the time of much hyped Green Revolution. The communist party formed moral
grounds for workers to demand greater share of the produce. In different parts of the country,
the landlords and workers were at logger-heads and the callous employers and landlords
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crushed the movement successfully. But the rise of greater antagonism between the two
stratas of society in Kilvenmanni turned into a new direction. It was the direction of
destruction and warfare that the workers questioned the sanity of their employers and
demonstrations were held. It was an ominous night of twenty fifth December, 1968 when
landlords sent their goons to attack the workers. Most of the villagers had to flee away
leaving aside children, women and older people who could not escape the wrath of troubled
fate. As they hid in a hut, the goons locked them up.
If this was not enough, they put the house on fire and innocent lives were lost. Around
forty four people were burnt alive. It was followed by police investigations and litigations but
of no use. The evidences in favour of criminals were removed or wiped off. The victims and
relatives of people killed in gruesome incident were booked as criminals for the armed
rebellion as it was deemed unethical and unaccountable to law. “We burned all over
again…that was it….We think the problem with politicians is that they have seen too many
deaths….The death was the climax. The death was like the moment in the movies that no one
wanted to miss and where everyone cried (Kandasamy, 217)”. In India it was one of the
instances where it could be deduced how non dalits used to eat up economic and social rights
of dalits. According to Anupama Rao:
Unlike capitalist relations of production to which labour was central, caste
society was not organized around bourgeoise accumulation[…] In this scheme,
the Untouchables labour did not count; It was extraneous because it was
already defined as defiled and impure… The problem […] involves the
collision of two kinds of body history- of body as value and the body as
dispossessed and disposable life. (2013:53)
While Marxist ideology states that society should be independent of caste and class
based distinction. This trajectory of social inequality does not include within its ambit ‘dalit
identity’. Dalits and lower classes- their study is a process which is uniform. Beneath this
strife, the Dalit life remains untouched. Meena Kandasamy is of the view – No one listens to
them. It is quite fortunate that texts like Gypsy Goddess throw light upon misfortune awaiting
those who form part of Dalit kinship system. The communist leaders regard removal of
inequality among people of different classes and castes as their agenda. This has an adverse
impact upon the scientific study of Dalit psyche as they feel rejected.
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“The communist leaders in the novel believe … that caste is their main enemy to
fight…since it is the caste mentality that divides the working classes…Whenever the issue of
caste was raised, this was done only at the edges, at the wing tips so that it could be brushed
off before [they] would launch into fight (Kandasamy 218-19)”. Another interesting aspect of
the Dalit movement in Kilvenmanni and in the novel was the wave of Dalit feminism. The
inticacy in the plot is heightened when women raise up their moral concerns in the novel.
Their courage and fortitude could be witnessed when they refuse to be voiceless in their
aspirations. Although the women in the storyline had to bear years of slavery yet it fails to
bury their determination to attain equal rights to education and jobs on one hand and respect
as well as dignity on the other hand. The novel could also be taken as study of traumatic lives
of Dalits of Kilvenmanni. The ominous incident which claimed lives of forty four people has
been registered in written form in political registers of Tamilnadu.
But choosing it as one of the main thematic concerns in the storyline provides a new
direction to this struggle for equality. “When Kandasamy deploys her pen, her keyboard and
her passion, her anger, her rage at the ease with which the villagers were blamed for what
happened to them […] she turns the very notion of what makes a novel on its head (Butalia,
Outlook 2022)”. The novel is not character specific and contains a set of disjointed voices so
that the complex narrative aligns with complicacy in lives of people in Kilvenmanni. There is
one chapter in the novel which is a group of jumbled words in one line. Other chapters voice
the concerns of Gopala Krishna Naidu and the communists as well. The novelist reveals how
the journalists dig deep into past but their search is futile as all records and impressions to
catch hold of culprits are deftly washed out. The story moves to-and-fro between indifferent
political structure in India, lust for power among demagogues and people below the poverty
line. Though the novel plays between first, second and third narrative yet it maintains

unity and coherence so that the main idea is not obscured. Chapter thirteen- ‘A
Survival Guide’ is an amalgam of personal stories of survivors of the trauma. It is the
character of Maayi that provides cohesion to fragmented structure of the plot. “The living in
Kilvenmanni lack life. Everyone is something else. The survivors of this shocking incident
behave in a manner which amounts to insanity. Some of them fail to accept what happened to
them while others are haunted by their past. Some among them ended up their lives in state of
unconsciousness” (Kandasamy 211). One of the chapters ‘Mischief by Fire’ does not make
use of punctuation mark and continues as a single sentence. It is a deliberate step to magnify
the amount of pain and hatred inflicted upon the poor farmers in Kilvenmanni. When the
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police tried to enquire about the incident they did not put into consideration the dead bodies
of two babies. “Male age not known, nobody can identify body height – fifty centimetres”
(Kandasamy 151).
In the chapter – ‘A Walking Corpse’, the readers were acquainted with the fact that
Gopala Krishna Naidu and the narrator-author were ironically assigned the task by the
government to write a letter to chief minister that his life was in danger as he was unable to
resolve the stalemate between farmers and landlords in Kilvenmanni in Tamilnadu. The
author states the bitter fact that whether it is she- herself or a journalist or a man like Gopala
Krishna Naidu- no one can write a balanced article about this incident. Although the
perpetrators of violence may be punished in the end but the destruction of peace in the
personality of every single life or person who lost their near and dear ones could not be
settled down for good by anyways or means. No amount of compensation can arouse the
numb psyche of sufferers.
“The experimental nature of the Gypsy Goddess allows
Kandasamy to confront readers with death, extreme violence… and an unfair and unbearable
reality that no conventional realist novel could have possibly depicted with such poignance
and forcefulness… The question of postmodernism […] is the question of survival, of living
on after the dead” (qtd. In Crosthwaite, 2009:17).
The novel is not only a narrative about lost lives but life after death- revival of
traumatic loss, haunting memories, illusion and delusion as well. Although the world is a
corporate reality yet the thin lines of divide between haves and have-nots, between possession
and loss continue to haunt the surface of modern world. The Dalit literature needs a special
treatment and it would not be unfair to say that looking into the matter as a political agenda
and literary approach to it would help to assist the people living below poverty line to live in
a democratic and reformed world. In Kilvenmanni, the workers and farmers were denied
sufficient wages by their landowners. Therefore, the working classes took refuge under the
banner of communist party of India which could not yield good results. Kandasamy had been
a part of this circle and her novel had such emotional notes which were significant for readers
and political circles to understand her point of view or her side of the story.
The author could feel easily for stifled aspirations of poor people and so were readers
who felt uncomfortable at different points in the story. Equal weightage is given to women
characters in the story so that their struggle does not remain hidden like a moss beneath the
stony cliff. Her rage and passion are constructive. In India, there is a greater need to study the
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violence and its causes. Sometimes the violence is religious or class or caste based while it
could also be gender based. In this context, writers like Urvashi Butalia, Meena Kandasamy
and others have contributed to Indian psyche. The two towering literary figures also put
emphasis upon psychology of perpetrators of violence and those who were refused a humane
treatment. The post traumatic ills that could be triggered by violence are depression, anxiety,
schizophrenia. The marginalized communities for a long time have been treated in an unjust
manner. Physical abuse, sexual savagery. slavery, rape, torture etc. are some forms of
violence in society that play against human mind in a subtle manner.
These sections have been denied basic rights like Right to Education, Right to
Profession, Right to assemble peacefully. It leads to disruption of will power in these people
on an individual level due to which they remain backward throughout their lives. These
sections of society have no access to wages, healthcare, cleaniness and other basic rights
conferred by constitution of India. Their lives are very embodiments of trauma which
manifests itself in latent form in their lives. The writer urges and pleads before the readers her
cause and demands attention from them. She wants people who are privileged to live a life in
a world which is outside their smaller space and use this consideration for those whose voice
is lost in silent spaces. The novel is a poignant tale of human suffering. The oppressed
belonged to the state of Tamilnadu which witnessed this human loss. It was loss of principles
of unity, integrity and justice. If this was social loss, the curbing of economic freedom and
other mental health issues were no less a matter of serious concern.
According to Kandasamy, in Kilvenmani brutal forces of tyranny propagated dark and
destructive imagery. In such a scenario, literature is one of the finest mediums to evoke
positivity and mutual cooperation. “Her pen is not afraid of unveiling that which dercorum
usually hides and carries ‘the tale of their cunts and their cuntress and their cuntenants’…
(Kandasamy 67) for she is on a fearless mission. The wave of Marxism tried to provide a
stuff which the villagers were in dire need of. It was like a ray of hope. The communist party
had a different vision for poor villagers. Little did they know that a cruel fate awaited the
innocent villagers. Communism had become a popular idea among Dalits in Kilvenmani.
When landlords tried to suppress the villagers and this mass movement, the Dalits showed
resistance. The hatred of landlords reciprocated itself in the form of harassment of Dalit
women, police action and fines imposed upon villagers. The local goons forcibly stuffed the
villagers in the hut and set it on fire. The flames ate up vitality of villagers. The mass
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movement turned into a death dance. In this context, it would be apt to quote from W.B.
Yeats’ Second Coming, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world” (Yeats 19). Our country has witnessed since times immemorial, the
discrimination against women, children and men in general, especially from lower strata. The
constitution of India therefore conferred upon every citizen equal rights like Right to
Equality, Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of caste, creed, religion, sex or place of
birth. But the privilege could be enjoyed by educated people. The people below poverty line
strive only for minimum wages.
A similar instance was witnessed in Kilvenmani where action was taken against
weaker sections. The people whose relatives lost their lives were sent to jail rather than the
goons who attacked them. A similar fate awaited Maayi (Thangamma) whose struggle
against caste based discrimination deserved applaud. It was a two forked attack on her right
to live with dignity- one as a woman and other as a dalit. Maayi was uneducated and her
plight was not only social ostracism but also lack of economic freedom. One such incident
was where a woman was treated in a sadistic manner- “…caught her hair, pushed to the
ground, stripped naked, beaten up- scars on her left cheek, a sickle split on the right side of
her hip, red welts on the palm from fighting the men…(Kandasamy 206)”. When these
marginalized sections were acquainted with Marxist ideology, they realized about sheer
ignorance on their part. How a mischievious web was created by educated upper class people.
They wanted to question the evil minded oppressors. Kandasamy shifted her attention from
one chapter to other, one character to other so that the reader sees a fragmented piece of
novel. This helped her to create an equal impact upon her readers and all sections of society
are covered up in the novel. Gypsy Goddess becomes a socio-political work and an example
of Dalit literature analyzed from Marxist point of view. It is an effective, intricate, erratic
work with postmodernist genre. The novel does not remain restricted to one state but
becomes a national narrative.
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Crosthwaite, P. Trauma, Postmodernism, and the Aftermath of World War II. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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