Games,Mimesis and the Environmental-Imagination: Childhood in Select Dalit Autobiographies

Introduction

Dalit-literature, though written in many genres, its most celebrated and researched genre is autobiography. Most researches which have been carried out on Dalit autobiographies have focussed on the ‘darker-side’ of the childhood of the Dalit children. By focussing only on the socio-economic deprivations (food, clothes and shelter), plight, and the mental trauma and physical abuse, humiliation, and pain that Dalit children have been undergoing over centuries, the researchers, however, have often overlooked the diversifying aspects of Dalit childhood. It is an undisputable fact that the darker stories of humiliation and sociocultural deprivation form an integral part of their childhood. However, Dalit children’s lives are not entirely a saga of agony and sorrow. Despite all the caste-based prejudices and bias against them, and despite a number of barriers causing turmoil, vulnerability and obstructing their growth, they still remain invincible and succeed in life against all odds. Though caste system pushes Dalit children to the outer social realm of ghettos, and secluded inhabitations, they still create their own imaginary world within the confines of their Dalit inhabitations by playing games with things available at hand, by role-playing some characters seen in their environs, by celebrating traditional festivals, and by listening to the elders’ stories! Their stories, therefore, are also stories of embodied experience through which they forge an important relationship with nature. The article, therefore, attempts to examine how the playful activities of Dalit children, as represented in the select autobiographies, embody an ecological imagination of inter-connectedness. By inscribing their lived experience of subjugation in nature, Dalit children not only share a relationship of common oppression with the environment, but such an entanglement sheds new insights on the human–non-human relationship. Four Dalit autobiographies selected for researching the topic are; The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth: A Dalit’s Life by B. Kesharshivam (2008) (Gujarati), Against the Night: An Autobiography by Balbir Madhopuri (2010) (Punjabi), The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoir by Urmila Pawar (2008) (Marathi), and My Father Baliah by Y. B. Satyanarayana (2011) (Telugu). The afore-mentioned Dalit autobiographies would exemplify the fact that through their games and play Dalit-children nurture an ‘intra-active’ (Barad, 2007) communication between humans and the non-human environment which in turn makes ‘multispecies liveability possible’ (Gan et al., 2017). The article draws insights from eco-criticism to reflect on the embodied experience of Dalit childhood.

Casteized Spaces and Dalit Childhood

Since ages Dalits live in the segregated spaces in the villages of India; the demarcation of spaces is systematically arranged by the scriptures based on one’s caste status in the Hindu society. Dalit inhabitations are situated far away from the so-called upper caste or mainstream society, and the practice has been persistent time immemorial. The Laws of Manu (Manusmriti) direct the priest that, ‘he should not live with who have fallen nor with “Fierce” Untouchables, “Tribals”…men of the lowest castes’ (Doniger, 1991, p. 242). Dictated by those Manu-laws, the Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) all over India are forced to live in segregated dwellings which are away from the mainstream social setup till date. Their dwellings are called by different names in different states of India such as Wadas, Mohollas, Cheris, Harijan-wadas, and so on. As Madhopuri (2010) rightly points out, ‘The village appeared to be one, but every group had its own drinking well’ (p. 4). Furthermore,

The settlements of the untouchables are always in the lower ends—the western part—of a village, in Punjab, as it is all over India. This is because this class of people, in accordance with the Hindu social system, are not part of the caste system and do not belong within the four varnas; even their shadows are to be avoided… That is the way they have been kept out of the mainstream. (Madhopuri, 2010, p. 9)

Mukul Sharma terms these spaces as ‘casteised spaces’ (2010, p. 10). As Sharma (2010) notes:

We have vast landscapes of purity and pollution in India that maintain strict lines for caste identity, dominance, and exclusion. From sacred groves to natural water bodies, from village to city, these demarcations between cultured and uncultured, holy and unholy, natural and unnatural are alive and active through natural and social dispositions. The caste of a place is naturalized in different ways—boundaries of village are identified with caste; areas of ponds, wells, and rivers are marked by caste; and landfill sites have caste. There is thus a ‘spatial delineation of issues of power, hierarchy and inequality’. (p. 14)

However, despite being constrained to casteized spaces and ‘socio-environmental othering’, the Dalit-children’s capacity to turn the socially constructed inconveniences into vibrancy and joyfulness for themselves, in fact, brings them closer to nature and enables them to lead a life of what Donna Haraway (2008) terms as ‘cohabitation’ based on mutual interdependence. The natural space, as such, not only provides them refuge from the oppressive regimes, but it also helps them to construct an alternative identity that does not confine to the normative grid of childhood. As Deepa Srinivas (2011) argues in her article ‘Different Tales’, Dalit childhood

is not invested in the anxious maintenance of the adult–child boundary critical for establishing child-hood ‘innocence’. On the contrary, the identity of the child is consolidated through her or his involvement in adult negotiations and struggles. This leads to a disturbance of the clearly drawn lines between innocence and experience, work and play, good and evil. (p. 322)

What can be deciphered from Srinivas’s argument is the fact that unlike normative childhoods, Dalit childhood is not constrained by the hegemony of adult-child binaries, where the adult imposes their control and dominion over the child. A Dalit child, therefore, is free from the adult constructions of ‘control’ and ‘decorum’ which curtails their ‘natural’ spontaneity. They are exposed to the ‘world and experience of the adults/elders’ and in fact, they draw their sustenance from nature, and they also owe their allegiance to nature. Unlike the mainstream childhood, as Mukul Sharma (2019) points out, ‘Dalit eco-experiences have their own vibrancy and dynamism. Living with nature, they are constantly negotiating with, and challenging, caste domination, while simultaneously articulating their environmental imagination’ (p. 8). The ‘casteized spaces’ therefore, give Dalit children the liberty to act and play beyond the confines of restrictive norms of ‘mainstream childhood’.

Becoming One with Nature

As an innate drive, children use their physical and mental calibre to imitate, imagine and create their own unique world based on things they associate with, and people they interact with in everyday life. They would perceive and aspire to be the same or different from the characters they encounter. The games, thoughts, aspirations, imagination, creativity, and so on, presented in the Dalit autobiographies, reflect their sociocultural and politico-economic status in the society, and the things they are made to experience as being Dalit children. In his ground-breaking work, The Environmental Imagination, Lawrence Buell (1995) states that, ‘the nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history’ (p. 7). Similarly, the games and the material surroundings of Dalit children are not merely signifiers of their marginalized identity. The engagement of the Dalit children and the material things surrounding their natural environment, in fact, leads to formations of ‘intertwined stories of multiple subjects, including the human subject’ (Oppermann, 2019, p. 111). As stated earlier, Dalit childhood is very close to nature, and their formative years are spent in the abode of nature. Nature acts as a rich source for their unending imagination, playfulness, and happiness. They grow up in nature, and become one with nature. Recollecting his childhood games, Madhopuri (2010) notes, ‘my friends and I would dig shallow holes in the earth with our small fingers and recite these lines; Simsimpaniya/Qui tithaiaa…(Ooze o water, ooze/the dove is thirsty…), again and again. In no time, these pits would be full of water…’ (p. 1). Such an act, though apparently playful, reveals the deep-seated concern of humans for nature. By becoming one with (Haraway, 2015) nature through games and play, the child-nature cultivates a relationship of interconnectedness which ‘come into and out of existence through each other’ (p. 7). As Haraway (2015) rightly points, ‘becoming with is a performance, a cultivation of interconnections, and an act of resistance against the threats of extinction which inevitably involves how we tell stories through hand with other stories’ (p. 7).

The Dalit autobiographies which are chosen for the study further reiterate the fact that Dalit children have a close association with nature than anything else in their bildungsroman stage, and they indulge in nature and learn from it many lessons for their future. Their childhood without nature is incomplete and joyless too. Urmila Pawar (2008) affirms in her book The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs,

the village held a terrific attraction for us children. Whenever there was a holiday and no school, we rushed to our village, which was located in a far-flung corner among the hills. Swimming in the rivers, plucking raw mangoes and berries to eat, roaming in the hills…these attractions drew us like a magnet… (p. 3)

Kesharshivam (2008) considers himself very fortunate for being able to enjoy the beauty of nature: ‘…Such sights were common and I was fortunate to watch nature’s own creatures fighting such battles of survival in the lap of Mother Nature’ (p. 27). He witnesses the fierce fights between a peacock and a snake, and later how the ants enjoy the half-dead snake as a meal. Nature for the Dalit children, therefore, is not merely a landscape of ‘childlike pleasure’ but rather it is a space where Dalit children learn lessons about survival and existence by nestling themselves within the larger network of beings. Kesharshivam also reveals his deep respect towards nature by addressing it as ‘Mother Nature’. Madhopuri (2010) refers to the happiness they received from nature,

…I and other children were excitedly racing about, looking for frogs. We happily bisected the earthworms, and saw how two pieces would start crawling in different directions after being cut up! We threw pieces of broken pottery into the water and gleefully watched them float away… (p. 58)

In the light of Haraway’s concept of becoming, it can be argued that by becoming one with nature, Dalit children and the non-human nature simultaneously liberate themselves from the oppressive power regimes by articulating their sense of co-habitation and co-existence in the world.

Toys, child and ‘intra-action’

Games are an integral part of children. The chosen autobiographies portray that Dalit children also play varied games within their environs/casteized spaces and enjoy their childhood. As already stated above, the kind of games they played and the toys they used reflect their sociocultural and economic–political status in the Indian society. Some of the games and toys which the authors list out are intriguing as they reflect their joys of childhood and living conditions. Kesharshivam (2010) reflects, ‘I had a very playful childhood. At that time, I did not feel anything was amiss. We used to play gilli danda or tip-cat, kabaddi, khokho and agarpat (somewhat like kabaddi; here the person is prevented from entering the opponent’s square)’ (p. 10) and, ‘Cowrie shells, games of dice, marbles and tops were our indoor games’ (p. 11). He also recalls, ‘In summers, we bathed in the small seasonal streams of very clear water which flowed from hillocks in the western part of the village… (p. 2). Pawar (2008) reminisces her childhood games and the amount of indulgence in playing: ‘In those days, I was so taken up with playing like this that I was completely impervious to other things. While playing games like thikraya, lagorya, sagargote, langdi, khokho with my friends, I forgot everything else…’ (p. 76). The anecdotes make it obvious that the games and play made the Dalit children ‘forget everything’ including the caste discrimination they had been subjected to since their birth. Although most of the games were played in the lap of nature, it is only Satyanarayana’s (2011) autobiography which tells that Dalit children have played football during their childhood. Satyanarayana (2011) writes, ‘It was a vast and sprawling field, and we used to play football there…’ (p. 103). The other autobiographies chosen for the study underscore the fact that Dalit children played various games, which were close to nature and rural in nature. But the change of games in Satyanarayana’s autobiography is due to their stay in the railway quarters as his father was a railway employee. Kesharshivam (2010) and Pawar (2008) reminisce that they were involved so much in the games that they never felt anything wrong because they were just children. In other words, as children, they had never questioned the ways of the world and were happy in their own world of playfulness.

Toys and games are inseparable as games are determined by the toys children use for play. The toys which are used by the Dalit children for playing are very intriguing in their appearance. It is interesting to observe from the select autobiographies that most of their toys are also provided by nature or obtained from nature, or nature itself was a toy of which they are part and parcel of. Kesharshivam (2010) points out,

Children love toys and their parents give them whatever they can afford…. In our case, there were only dust and earth around us, so we built earthen houses or collected different plants, stumps or seeds and used them as toys. In the bone mill factory, we played with cattle’s hooves, bones and horns. In the fields we played with ears of bajra, or if there is puddle of water, we splashed it. (p. 7)

In addition to these some of the toys he describes are: ‘stalks of bajra or jowar’, ‘pods of cotton’, ‘coal and ash’, ‘flowers of caltrops’ ‘red beetles’, ‘tadpoles’, ‘grasshoppers’, ‘little mice’, ‘puppies’ (pp. 10–11). He also recalls that: ‘Once a disaster took place in the bone mill. A wall collapsed on one side. Little Ganga was playing there with pieces of bones and she was buried under it’ (p. 12). The above instances hold a vivid mirror to the dual reality of Dalit children’s toys. On one hand the toys are cheap and give pleasure, while the places of procuring the toys are fatally dangerous to the children. The engagement of Dalit children with their natural/material surroundings through the toys and games can be seen as what Karen Barad (2007) terms ‘intra-activity’—a theory which refers to ‘the material-discursive relations in which what we think of as separate and pre-existing (such as humans or objects) are taking shape and acting’ (p. 33). Through the play activities of the Dalit children, the child, nature, matter and the discourses intra-act to form an embodied experience of relationality. By navigating the natural and the personal, the Dalit children form an identity that is distinctly different from the ‘mainstream’ notion of childhood, and yet an identity which simultaneously articulates ‘environmental imagination’. As Mukul Sharma (2019) rightly points out,

Dalit life narratives are also manifestation of ecological spaces with all their beauty, diversity, colour and complexity. There emerges a biosphere in various forms of liveability which has a daily affiliation with the individual and the community, and with the human non-human population of the planet. (p. 10)

Similarly, in the context of Dalit children, the material, the corporeal, the discursive together forge an embodied subjectivity of the Dalit child through games and play. Such an entanglement, eventually leads to a realization of ‘kinship relationship with non-humans’ (Haraway, 2016).

Games and the work/play binary

One interesting fact about Dalit childhood is that the boundary between work and play is often breached. As Kesharshivam (2010) rightly notes in his autobiography The Whole Truth Nothing but Truth that, ‘We had to find our toys around the place where our parents worked for their livelihood’ (p. 7). Play, therefore, remains indistinguishable from work and apprenticeship and as Deepa Srinivas (2011) notes, the toys and games of the Dalit children are ‘grounded in agricultural and occupational practices of the community’ (p. 323).

Aravind Malagatti (2007) says that he used to play with the intestines of the sheep his uncle slaughtered (p. 33). Malagatti’s anecdote sheds new light on the idea of Dalit childhood as it subverts the traditional mainstream notion of a romantic childhood, or to say cultured or disciplined childhood. So far as Dalit childhood is concerned, violence is an integral part of a ‘malignant natural order’. Unlike normative childhood, where playing with a sheep’s intestine would be seen as a violent and dirty act, a Dalit child is exposed to harsh aspects of nature as part of play and work. As discussed earlier, nature acts as a toy for the Dalit children, and nature also provides toys for their playing. The above excerpts also provide the readers a glimpse of sociocultural and economic–political conditions of the Dalit children. The toys which they use for enjoyment are inexpensive as most of these are made from discarded things. Based on the above instances of toys obtained from parents’ workplace, it can be argued through the insights of Gopal Guru (2003) that, ‘Social ecology makes dirt and filth an existential companion of Dalits who are at the receiving end of condescending descriptions of the former across time and space…. In the social construction of ecology Dalits become dirt and dirt is them’ (p. 41). These children also play games within their confined, Dalit dwellings, only with their own Dalit friends as they are not allowed to touch others and vice versa due to the purity-pollution theory. It is indicative from the narratives that Dalit children enjoyed their childhood by getting engrossed in games with whatever toys they had within their environs and spatial boundaries without any regrets.

Role-Playing/Mimesis/Games of Make-Believe

Games of the Dalit children also involve role-playing. Role-playing actually stimulates a lot of imagination because in role-playing children naturally try stepping into something or someone else’s space/domain other than their own. They also keenly observe and assess people and events which are going on around them. Based on the observations they imagine themselves into those roles and enact the characters. In this process their imagination and creativity get activated. While describing her toys, Pawar (2008) also narrates the paraphernalia related to her games. She says,

I would set up a stove, first with three stones, and then push the small twigs under it. Then I kept a coconut shell full of mud on the stove; that was rice being cooked. In another shell, I squeezed juice of green leaves in a lid and that was the vegetable. Food was ready! Now I needed people to eat this food… (p. 76)

Further, she recollects: ‘Sometimes we would play the game of “husband–wife”. Kunti was much older than us. She became our husband and made us do all kinds of things!’ (p. 76). Pawar (2008) also remembers another incident of her childhood, where she and her friends ‘would pretend to be dead drunk, like Govinda dada or other drunkards in the neighbourhood, and imitate their walk, talk and so on, with peals of laughter all around. This drama would have the drunkard and his cursing, nagging wife in the main roles…’ (p. 53) In a similar vein Keshashivam (2008) recalls the way he and his friends imitated a performance. He writes:

Inspired by the king’s sword in the bhavai (a folk-dance performance of Gujarat), I also made a sword of a stalk of drumstick. We would then put a cot upright and make a curtain by covering it with a torn dhoti of Pitaji’s or a torn sari of Ma’s. Then the children played the game of bhavai. We would dress up like kings, hanging a piece of cloth or a short dhoti around our shoulders. (p. 9)

These excerpts are a reflections of Dalit children’s keen and shrewd observational mind, which takes note of each and every person and thing around them. It is stunning to see the way these kids translate their imaginative and creative capacity into imitating the varied characters and designing varieties of things from the available materials that are needed for the imitation. By role-playing games, they not only enjoy their childhood, but also entertain and amuse people who watch them! Thus, by living in their own world of childishness and imagination, Dalit children also become good entertainers to the people around them. These children also imitate their elders’ workmanship at times and become skilful in the art. For instance, Badeyya in the short story by Shyamala (2008), ‘Brave Heart Badeyya’, imitates his father’s shoemaking trade or cobbling, traditionally considered a lowly job, and produces a beautiful pair of chappals for his mother. This act is indicative of his capacity to imitate and become an expert in the art. The above excerpts from the Dalit autobiographies throw light on how Dalit children’s imitation and imagination can actually function as either a destructive or constructive agent in their real lives. Their mimetic performativity of gender roles, as depicted above, would probably form a destructive mind-set, eventually leading them to learn the negative ways of the world. On the other hand, imitation of the traditional workmanship-skills would enhance constructive skills in them. Thus, the environment in which they grow up can have destructive and constructive behavioural impacts on the Dalit children.

Conclusion

In the material eco-critical perspective, not only biological organisms but also all material forms exhibit meaningful signs, making meaning ‘an ongoing performance of the world in its differential intelligibility’ (Barad, 2007, p. 335), and intelligibility emerges when ‘part of the world becomes differentially intelligible to another part of the world’ (p. 342). In the context of the Dalit childhood the world of nature not only provides them refuge from the oppressive regimes of caste discrimination but it is also intelligible to Dalit children and vice-versa. They understand nature’s language and nature understands them. Through games, toys and symbolic play the Dalit children and nature are interconnected, and the intra-action between children and matter (materiality of environmental things) offers fertile ground for environmental imagination. The nature–child relationship also reaffirms the need to attend to multi-species liveability, particularly at a time where humans have reached what critics (Emmett & Nye, 2017) refer to as ‘the critical zone’.