Subversion of Casteism in Sajitha Madathil’s Kali Natakam: A Dalit Feminist Study

Introduction

Kali Natakam, through Mudiyettu, a ritual in Kerala organized and arranged by people belonging to all castes, presents a synthesis of mythology and contemporary society. Gender discrimination surfaces in the play, but glimmers of caste discrimination are also visible. The play is written by the Twenty- first-century Malayalam playwright, Sajitha Madathil who realized the necessity for female playwrights to write plays that express their real experiences and hardships instead of just acting in the scenes written by men who portray female characters through a male gaze. On that account, there is a need to do an intersectional study of the play to understand the multiple discriminations experienced by Dalit women that comes forefront through the articulation of their real-life encounters.

Sajitha Madathil is an Indian film and theatre actress who has won the Kerala State film award for the best second actress for Shutter ¹ in 2012. She started her career in theatre through the street plays of Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP), ² and has been associated with Kerala theatre since 1987. She worked as deputy secretary at Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi till 2014, and has participated in more than 20 productions as an actress and directed two solo performances; and is famous for her plays, Matsyaganddhi, Kali Natakam, Chanki Chankaran Family Reality Show and Mother’s Day. She has played the roles of strong female characters who chose to resist injustice in her plays and other productions. She managed to establish her place as a playwright in the theatre, where the presence of women in the theatre remains marginal in Kerala. She is among the few women in theatre, including Sudhi C. V., Rajarajeswari, Sreeja K. V., Sailaja Ambu, Professor Sara Joseph, Samatha and Professor Ushakumari. History of Women in Malayalam Theatre, a survey of the presence of women in the history of theatre in Kerala, was written by Sajitha Madathil and published in 2010. Madathil felt that it is her responsibility as a writer to write plays that deals with the real-life experiences of women, and that led Madathil to Kali Natakam, a play that premiered at Pepper House, Kochi on 18 August 2016.

Kali Natakam opens with the preparations for Kali Natakam; people are running around doing last-minute preparations; there is a giant cut-out of the Goddess Kali and is illuminated with colourful bulbs; on the side, a group of people is making an image of the Goddess on the floor using coloured rice flour. The music group is also getting ready with their songs. The setting of the play is Valiyannur Kavu, a temple. In the play, the village organizes Kali Natakam as part of the various events in the temple once a year. This tradition was put on hold for the past 51 years as the actor who played the role of Kali killed the actor who was acting as Darika. Kali Natakam is based on the story of Darika Vadham, spanning from the birth of Darika to the final Kailashayatra. In Kali Natakam, only the confrontation between the demon Darika and Kali is presented on stage. This chosen scene brims with expressions of Roudram, Bheebatsam, Bhayanakam and Karunam. There are many stories associated with the birth of Kali, one of the stories says that Goddess Durga manifested herself to fight the demon Raktabija; another story says Kali was born out of the third eye of Siva to kill the demon, Darika, who cannot be killed by anyone else as he had the protection of many boons.

This play, Kali Natakam, is based on Mudiyettu, a ritual dance performed in Kali Temples across Kerala, particularly in Central Kerala, mainly in the districts, Ernakulam and Kottayam, celebrating the victory of Goddess Kali over the evil Darikan. The performing rights belong to Kuruppu ³ and Marar ⁴ communities of the State. The characters enact their roles with dense makeup, striking attire with conventional facial paintings, huge headgears and enormous ornaments, contributing to the supernatural mystique of the performance. The Mudiyettu performance is preceded by an elaborate ritual known as Kalamezhuthu, ⁵ where a large image of Bhadrakali is made on the ground according to specific rules. Indigenous colours like green, black, white, yellow and red are used. And all these colours are made naturally by using dried and powdered leaves, rice powder made from roasted and powdered paddy husk, and turmeric powder from powdered turmeric, and lime and rice powder. These colours are processed and brought by people of lower castes and are drawn by the upper caste community, Kuruppu, implying the unity of the village. Bhadrakali is drawn in green colour, the whole body, including the face with eight hands. The four hands on the right-side hold a Vall (sword), Chakram (wheel), Kaduthila (dagger) and Trishula (trident). And the left hands hold a Paricha (shield), Talakkoottam (Darikan’s head) and a Vattaka (bowl).

As Kali Natakam is about to start, the President of the temple committee starts introducing the lead characters. In Kerala, it is usually upper caste men who are elected as presidents and secretaries, and mostly they take decisions regarding the temple and temple rituals. With high enthusiasm and pride, the actor who will play the role of Darika is introduced. The actor is Rama Kurup, a member of the famous Valakom family; the secretary reminds him that he is the former President of the panchayat. And when it is time to introduce the actor who plays the most crucial role, the role of Mahakali is introduced passively as both the president and secretary do not correctly remember or choose not to remember the actor. They present the actor as the daughter of a Bhadrakali Pattu singer, whose name they vaguely remember as Chathan and the daughter’s name as Kali. They clearly say that this particular actor is playing this role as no descendants in the Kottiyam family are currently available. The secretary and the president of the Temple Trust behave condescendingly towards the lower-caste actress Kali as Rama Kurup is introduced with pride and even his family name is mentioned. Still, there is hardly any information provided about Kali and her family. And this could be because the president and the secretary do not even consider Kali’s details worth mentioning as she is from an unfamiliar lower caste family.

The role is supposed to be enacted by a man from a higher caste, specifically someone from the Kuruppu community. The secretary becomes a proprietor of gender equality, saying that since women are trying to match men in all fields, the female actor, Kali, will succeed in excelling in her role. The President supports this by saying the actor has been observing penance and ardently preparing for this play. It is as if they were forcefully led to choose her as no members of the higher caste family were available for the role, and they are trying to posit themselves as advocates of gender equality. The reason why the secretary brought ‘gender equality’ into the conversation could be that he is trying to prove that he is in support of the progressive moves initiated by the state, even though, internally he might not be in favour of it, as he feels that equality might lead to women managing temple duties which challenges his position. The intersection of gender and caste develops a type of experience that cannot be reduced to caste oppression or patriarchy alone. As the feminist Gayle Rubin argues discourses of sexual morality sometimes match with ideologies of racism more than with real ethics because they associate the idea of virtue with the dominant groups. Similarly, when Kali, a Dalit, is chosen for something that belongs to an upper caste, she faces discrimination.

The mythology of Kali and Darika is presented to audiences of a modern society which witnesses the suppression of women’s powers. Even though everyone, especially male figures like the secretary in the play, claims that women are empowered, the reality is different as they are subjugated. Arya and Rathore says that Dalit women encounter discrimination in the vertical on the basis of caste and in the horizontal due to the gender. Here, Kali experiences prejudices based on caste and gender. Therefore, as Uma Chakravarti argues, the issue of gender cannot be completely understood without acknowledging the caste question existing in the social structure of India.

As the play progresses, there are conversations between the police constables, and they start rushing the committee to begin the play as soon as they are eager to leave for home. Still, they are silenced for some time by providing them with some refreshments. Meanwhile, the secretary continues asking the devotees to pay money for blessings and sponsoring next year’s festivities. The secretary represents the kind of upper caste people who use the name of festivals and temples to loot money from them, especially the poor Dalit farmers. The idea of unity in caste changed and became materialistic, even demanding money for God’s blessing to commercialize Gods.

Darika enters dancing with arrogance and pride. He prides on his fate as someone who cannot be killed during the day or night, cannot die by stone or iron, will not die inside or outside, will not die by fire or water and even Gods or demons cannot kill him. He claims he deserves to boast about these as he has attained all of them by hard penance. Darika believes the ‘weak’ gender cannot kill him. Therefore, he does not implore the Gods for protection from death at the hands of a woman, although he asks for several other immunities. This indicates his outlook on women as weak and powerless beings. While Darika is bragging about his boons, Kali arrives in glory. Kooli, considered Kali’s assistant, starts singing, praising the Goddess. Kali seethes in fury and becomes more exasperated on hearing the boasting Darika. Kali declares that if she indeed is Kali, she will break Darika into pieces, feed her army and wear his bowels around her. She challenges Darika to come out, show himself and fight with her as she feels, ‘Did ever a dog scare a lion with its bark? Did ever jackals win over a tiger?’ (Madathil & Haridas, 2018, p. 109).

Darika takes up the challenge but underestimates Kali as she is a woman, and since women are weak, according to him, there is no need to kill her. Therefore, he says he will spare her life by just cutting off her nose and breasts. Darika feels whatever Kali is saying are empty words as she is just a woman who can never defeat a mighty person like him. Darika from the mythology epitomizes the men in the ‘modern society’ who continue to view themselves as the mighty creatures who have power and access over women and feels women can never defeat them in any aspect.

In the play, the injustices against women are on multiple levels. Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon argues that violence, particularly sexual violence, towards Dalit women is prevalent and public rather than domestic because most Dalit women are into physical labour for a living. Therefore, they become easy prey to upper caste men, and violence against Dalits, especially women, remains a permanent threat. This is practised to punish Dalits who dare to speak against the old traditions and practices based on the caste hierarchy. Most of the violence includes murder, gang rape and a naked parade that torments Dalits, primarily women. The upper caste men opt to silence the fighting Dalit women by exercising these acts of violence on them. But sometimes, when this violence increases, women start resisting and fighting.

Upon hearing Darika teasing her for being just a woman, she decides to show the power of a woman. That is when Rama Kurup, who plays the role of Darika, blurts out, ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Kali. This won’t last long. You are going to end up as blood and mass. You, low born creature…’ (Madathil & Haridas, 2018, p. 110). It says in the play that the music group are surprised to hear the lines said by Rama Kurup as they are not there in the original play. The original ritual, Mudiyettu, on which Kali Natakam is based, is a community ritual in which all the villagers participate, and people belonging to different caste groups are assigned various tasks. The Parayan ⁶ caste brings the leather hides for drums, the Thandan ⁷ caste brings the areca nuts required for the masks, painting the covers is done by the Ganakan ⁸ community, and the Veluthedan ⁹ caste washes the clothes used for making the deity’ as dress. And the roles are enacted by the people of the Kuruppu or Marar community. Therefore, this temple ritual brings the whole village together, building cooperation, a shared identity and understanding, eventually strengthening their bonds. It is explicit that the purpose or the meaning of the ritual is to bring the whole community together, keeping aside the differences of the caste. But in Kali Natakam, the scenario seems different. From the beginning, this change is visible, the passive introduction of Kali by the president and the secretary. Later, the addition of the dialogue by Darika seems to be coming from his depth due to his strong disgust and despise towards Kali and the people of her caste. This change in a traditional ritual shown the play could be representation of many religious rituals happening in Kerala whose real purpose or meaning is different from what is followed now. Most of the rituals like, Kali Natakam promoted the idea of brotherhood and unity, but these rituals have started becoming spaces of oppression as upper caste people started insisting that these are their birth rights.

Darika’s words infuriate Kali, who gets into a battle with him; in the middle of the fight, Darika disappears. Kooli, Kali’s subordinate, also played by a low caste, now enters into a conversation with her. As the play progresses, Kali kills the actor who plays Darika.

The police officer arrives and starts enquiring about the actor who plays Kali; the channel reporters start reporting the sensational news. The President tries to hush up the situation as he fears the wrath of the Goddess and suggests calling the priest to find the solution. When the police cannot enter the temple to bring Kali outside, they start questioning Kooli. Sharmila Rege writes ‘questions of the “virtue” of these women were raised [in public forums], and it had been argued that their character was questionable’ (Rege, 2020, p. 111). The police officer who comes to the crime scene on seeing and hearing Kooli’s name, assumes her lower caste, determines she is part of the crime, and mistreats her.

When Kali enters the scene, the police officer carefully approaches Kali and starts questioning her connection with Rama Kurup. She answers by referring to the Darika from mythology. Upon hearing her response, the inspector asks if she is associated with Neeli, daughter of Valli and Kanaran living along the railway track at Valiyannur, who was raped and murdered by Rama Kurup, who was later cleared of all charges. Kali again answers vaguely, giving references from mythology. The priest arrives and says the Goddess is at the peak of her power and anger, and she acts this way to wipe out evil entirely from the village.

The police are not satisfied with the answers Kali gives and the explanations provided by the astrologer; therefore, he questions her more regarding the real agenda behind her deed. She replies she did it for her entire womanhood. The inspector moves forward to arrest her; at that moment, he receives a call from his superior asking him not to perform the arrest. He leaves in anger; the priest enters and says that a shrine must be built in this exact place, and she must be installed there, and he marks an auspicious date and time for that event and says till then, Kali must be left alone to calm down her rage. There has always been a tendency to vilify Dalit women because of their gender and caste. The way the inspector interrogates Kooli and Kali indicates this attitude. If Kali was just an ordinary Dalit woman who was fighting for justice or had killed Kurup for revenge, the way she would have been treated would be different. Here, in the play, since she plays the role of the Goddess Kali, she is spared as people respect and fear Goddesses but does not show the same attitude towards every woman.

The way the inspector can find a connection between the murder and the death of the girl indicates his knowledge of the incident; he was able to find the link because he is aware that Rama Kurup raped and murdered Neeli, and Kali, along with some activists were protesting to get justice for the victim, but the murderer was not prisoned. Instead, he is participating in a play in the temple in front of all the villages. Then the question arises why the inspector who represents justice chose to close their eyes against the criminal acts of an upper caste man, and why is he eager to punish the woman who decided to take up the right to punish as the justice systems turned blind.

Kali starts speaking to the audience in Act VI, says Kali is believed to have sprung from Shiva’s third eye, born without a mother, but this Kali is not born without a mother. She is proud of her lower caste identity and introduces herself as the daughter of Chathan and Kunki. She says her anger is evoked, and any acts cannot bring that anger down since the women’s community is in danger, and she cannot sit idly witnessing the cruelty. The character Kali transforms into the Hindu Goddess Kali who is the ultimate expression of Nature, both destructive and benevolent. She protects the helpless people against evil by doing what others cannot to protect those she loves. Goddess Kali epitomizes the power of creation and destruction in one entity and transcends good and evil. She is the mother nature nurturing and always protecting her children from harm. Kali, in the play, represents the Dalit women who, through education, realized the injustices against them and decided to fight them.

Kooli returns from the police station and says everyone wants Kali to cool down her anger. For which Kali replies, people try to silence the ones who they cannot stand, especially women, ‘They want the calm one… to vent their anger on her, as she lay spread before them, bend or on her back, or face down…’ (Madathil & Haridas, 2018, p. 125). The common way of looking at women is epitomizing them as images of grace and elegance where their wild sides are repressed. During one of her interviews, Madathil said that often the society expects the women to not behave like Goddess Kali because the idea of a woman being aggressive cannot be accepted. The society perceives an ideal woman to be calm, but Madathil feels that it is time to change such notions and stand against oppression. The play asks questions like, even though women are propagated to be empowered, in reality, are not they subjugated in society?

Kooli says nobody knows that better than her; she remembers the steps to that house were coloured red. ‘I knew every single line and cracked in each of those steps. I used to keep my head down, always. I was afraid I might slip and fall down on those glassy steps. I was there on that chilly floor, unconscious, many times. My body could not take those many Dårikans. They led me up those steps again and again. Steps stained by blood and tears of many women’ (Madathil & Haridas, 2018, p. 125).

The character Kooli speaks for the Dalit women who face these kinds of gruesome violence almost every day and are left unnoticed and undiscussed. For years, women Dalit women remain objects of sexual abuse by upper-caste men by giving it the frame of ‘custom.’ When Dalit men are alleged of ‘eve-teasing’ upper-caste women, they face violent punishments, sometimes death. But when men of the upper caste do the same act, it is sanctioned as a right. Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana say, ‘A woman’s right over her body and control over her sexuality is conflated with her virtue. So powerfully does this characterization become that only the middle-class woman has a right to purity. In other words, only she is entitled to the name of woman in this society’ (Tharu & Niranjana, 2020, p. 47).

Shailaja Paik says that often elite and colonial discourses attempt to create an image where an upper caste woman is represented as a Goddess and a lower caste woman to a whore. And this grants the upper caste men with the access to sexuality of Dalit women. This idea seems to be proven valid by taking the incidents that happened to both Neeli and Kooli. The devadasis, muralis and jogtinis practice the ritual of offering girls to God and they are later ravished by the lust thirst priests and other upper-caste men. They feel that the Dalit women lack virtue, and they have access to their bodies.

Dalit women face injustice and discrimination at several levels. To study the plight of this community, it is vital to understand the notion of intersectionality introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Although the idea of intersectionality developed in Black feminist history and theory, it is applicable universally. ‘Intersection’ refers to a junctional point where two or more elements meet. In the context of the First World, race, gender and class constitute the intersection for Black feminism, whereas, in India, class, caste and gender become the critical intersection for Dalit feminism. The similarity in both the cases is that intersectionality functions as an instrument to witness and acknowledge the injustices of patriarchy faced by the world’s most vulnerable and marginalized women. In India, Dalit women are discriminated against based on their differences in caste, gender and race. They become objects in the hands of upper caste men, sometimes upper caste women, who act as the agents of patriarchy. Also, they are subjected to violence from the men of their caste. Therefore, as Mary E. John suggests, one should engage with the idea of intersectionality, and not dismiss it, rather than the way Nivedita Menon rejects it.

There is a tendency in mainstream feminism to study women’s problems linearly. Vinodini, a feminist Telugu poet, critic of the 1980s, finds that her involvement in the 1990s Dalit movement made her realize that mainstream feminism led her to ignore the consciousness of being a Dalit woman. She adds that feminism made her realize that the problem of caste is worst and more serious than patriarchy.

In such a situation where women are exposed to so many prejudices, and the mainstream feminist does not speak much about it, like Ambedkar emphasizes the importance to enhance the power of Dalit women in developing confidence and self-respect within the community and outside the community. Phule identifies knowledge as the trutiya ratna (third jewel), a weapon that can be used by non-Brahmin and Dalit women and men to discard gender, caste and educational oppression. Also, it will help women to resist the double patriarchy that is existing within their homes and outside.

Phule says that education helps in developing critical consciousness in woman and this can lead to social changes when the oppressed are able to analyse their plight under patriarchy and brahmanical hegemony. Both Phule and Ambedkar felt only education could instil self-esteem and self-confidence in Dalit women, which would help them resist oppression and cleanse the community by striking the roots of caste and gender discrimination.

Simone de Beauvoir argues women experience the world from their specific inhabited habitat of femininity—a situation in which they are often made aware of their gendered subjectivity, and a man does not experience the world from the particular location of masculine gender but rather believes that the singularity of his situation is universal. Hence, a man does not theorize his condition as being singular. And as Mahadevan says the call to experience becomes the primary element of feminist thought. Experience provides women with the agency to theorize the worlds around them and themselves.

Therefore, the basis of Dalit feminism is the testimonies given by Dalit women revealing how their day-to-day lives are different from those of non-Dalit women. First-person narratives lead in building the canvas of feminist thought in nexus with caste identity. And how homogenizing the whole gender by sideling the race and caste differences ends in shunning some of the significant concerns and problems of women of different communities, especially Dalit women. In the play, Kali belongs to the lower caste community, the same community Neeli and Kooli belong to; therefore, Kali is familiar with the injustices their community encounters daily. And is able to understand them as an insider and fight for them. When a Dalit woman comes out and speaks about the cruelties she faced, she is often left unheard or slut-shammed, but here in the play, Kali decides to take justice to her hands while playing the Goddess. She had tried conducting rallies to arrest the murderer of Neeli, but no one paid attention. Thus, she adopts the role of Goddess Kali to seek justice as she felt the society questions and abandons women, but they respect Goddesses. And that could be the reason why she was not arrested for her crime. Therefore, sometimes women have to go the way of patriarchy to deconstruct it. May be the reason behind the playwright’s choice of a Dalit woman to be the central figure of a ritualized brahmanical sacred geography is to show that only Dalit women can bring their struggles to the light and only they can deconstruct the established power structures.

In the final act, the stage is filled with people, the construction work of the shrine is progressing fast, the atmosphere is ritualistic, and the installation ceremony is on; that is when Kali delivers her final sentence, ‘It’s for them to decide a place to seat us. It’s for us to decide whether to sit there or not’ (Madathil & Haridas, 2018, p. 126). In the end, Kali grabs the hand of Kooli and exits through the audience. As the play ends, light is thrown at different groups of people and their perceptions. Devotees believed the whole act was the restoration of justice by Goddess Kali; the police found the incident as murder and decided to punish the criminal and conveniently forget that the victim himself was a murderer who was never punished for his acts. The media celebrate it as sensational news and decides to celebrate it. But everyone unknowingly or knowingly ignores the issue raised by Kali or the reason or the purpose behind the crime. The final dialogue delivered by Kali sums up the reality of the ‘progressive society,’ where Dalit women are subjugated based on caste, race and gender differences. It is the men of the upper caste who decide for them. Like Phule says, when these women attain the trutiya ratna, knowledge, they recognize the injustices and choose to resist the multiple discriminations; therefore, the final decision belongs to them.

Conclusion

Kali Natakam, a metadrama, presents the age-old art form Mudiyettu and there is an amalgam of myth and the concerns of modern society. There are many aspects in the play that are said indirectly. The play is known and famous as a feminist play, and even the playwright, Madathil herself, acknowledges this. But is this play just a feminist play that focuses on the notion of gender and the cruelties and injustice women encounter in everyday life? There are certain strong lines in the play indicating caste-based discrimination. Therefore, considering the gender and caste element, a Dalit feminist analysis becomes the most appropriate way to study the play instead of doing separate studies. This study helps to understand the triple discrimination a person faces based on caste, race, and gender differences. Recognizing the intersectionality in the play leads to comprehending the complexities of discrimination on multiple levels.