SKIN, BODY, BLOOD: EXPLORATIONS FOR DALIT HERMENEUTICS*
Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar
Our skin speaks! In a world of different races and cultures, the colour of our skin speaks much before we do. It communicates with a ‘language’ of its own. I recall a time when a white man presented a paper on ‘history of the Dalits in India’ at the United Theological College, Bangalore, when a Dalit student, who was visibly upset, got up and challenged him saying: “With the colour of your skin, you can afford to talk about Dalit theology with a different kind of passion, and never experience the suffering that Dalits undergo. Your skin protects and benefits you!” With that outburst, he walked out of the seminar hall without waiting for the resource person to respond!
What did the student mean by the skin colour protecting and benefiting a person? Is it not a darker skin that can actually provide a better protective cover for a body (from harmful ultraviolet rays, because of the natural extra melanin pigment present in the skin) than a white skin? In a world of colours, we cannot deny that there is an assumed foreknowledge and a prejudgment made about people regarding their character, value and human worth based on the colour of the skin. Within India, when we critically review the choice of people to present a product or a program on the electronic and print media, it is invariably a person with a lighter skin. The colourism becomes blatant when we critically view the choice of persons to serve as stewards on both private and government owned airlines in India, where almost all are fair skinned. Media thus serves as a source and confirmation of structural inequality of women in society by positing fair complexion as a desired ideal quality. A repeated transmission of message to the society everyday in and through the media constructs an ideal quality in the mind of women, more than men.
The Skin speaks! The raced, gendered, sexed, and classed skin ascribes differential values to the bodies. One can notice the subtle colourism active in the way the coloured skins are treated at the immigration counters across the world. It is not an accident that dark skinned people are quizzed more often, looked upon as potential sources of danger, evil, and a problem! The projection of the image of anti-social elements / villain in some of the Indian movies is often through dark skinned people! I remember an incident in school when a dark skinned girl was chosen to be an angel in the Christmas tableaux and many fellow students and teachers expressed surprise. One teacher responded thus: ‘why can’t there be a dark complexioned angel? Why should angels be imagined as only fair skinned and pretty?’
The functional aspect of the skin (regardless of the colour) is of extreme importance. As said earlier, a darker skin in fact is at an advantage and less vulnerable to diseases that could come with exposure to the sun. Otherwise, the life-oriented function of the skin is common to any colour and type, anywhere in the world. The skin is the organ that draws up a protective sheath over the body, preventing it from infections and vulnerabilities, dehydration and death. The skin is also a sensual organ. One can express the inner qualities of love and affection through the contact of skins! Skin is a beautiful gift from God to express any kind of relationship. In a world where relationships are often dictated by money, status and power, affirmation of the skin becomes a core necessity. The sensual function of the skin needs a special mention here, as it is most vulnerable to abuse in a patriarchal world. Women and children are the most vulnerable victims when it comes to the lustful exploitation of their sex and sexuality in demeaning ways.
The skin is also a cultural notice board! It is the site on which many labels, symbols and identities hang. These symbols are often loaded with meanings making the body, a ‘marked’ body in society. A Hindu married woman, for example, sports sindhoor on the parting of her hair to show that she is a sumangali. Many youth of today would make a bold statement of their non-conformist attitude by piercing their skin in ‘unorthodox’ places, by wearing torn jeans that probably would have meant poverty, once upon a time! Different stereotypical cultural values are communicated using the body/ the skin as the tool of communication. I was surprised to learn that some women in rural areas of Tamilnadu try to tarnish the beauty of their faces with tattoos and / or anoint themselves with neem oil that has a foul-odor in order to keep away the preying men!
The skin is also a boundary. By being the container of the body, it occupies the space in certain specific / socially constructed and expected ways. For example, a Dalit body would be banned to drink from a well that is marked as the property of the dominant caste. A female body is considered too dangerous a body that can pollute the God / Goddess with her menstrual blood! A female body is traditionally associated with the private space and the male body with the public space! The skin as well as the culture construct the boundary of the woman’s body. The skin becomes one of the most complex boundaries when ideologies of power and powerlessness are inscribed on the bodies of people, based on their caste, sex and colour. The fact that the star singer, Michael Jackson, bleached his face and tried to correct the shape of his nose shows that it was not just a matter of personal, neutral choice of colour and shape but get linked to the world of ideal colours, contours and class.
Turning the Skin inside out!
Let us imaginatively turn the skin inside out to see how the insides of the skin are differently valued, based on the blood that flows beneath the skin! When it comes to a dalit body, the skin is considered polluting no matter what the colour is because of the blood that is contained within. The Dalits become the target for violence because of this concept of a polluting body. It is said that in a period of just two years, between 1995 o 1997, a total of 90,925 crimes against Dalits were registered by police, of which 1617 were for murder, 12,591 for hurt, 2824 for rape, and 31,376 for offenses listed under the SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989. These numbers represent only registered crimes. Most of the cases go unreported due to the fear of intimidation, inaccessibility of police stations and loss of faith in the law enforcement agencies. Using two stories of the experience of the Dalits, I shall try to unpack the concepts and constructs of power and identity that are inscribed on the body by a casteist Indian society and lived by the broken bodies of the Dalits.
Story 1. Yerramma, a Dalit woman was paraded naked by members of a Scheduled Tribe because she was accused of supporting a love affair between a boy and girl of different caste / communities. Some men of the Valmiki community barged into the house of the victim, dragged her out and paraded her naked in the village. When the victim’s husband and daughter came to her rescue, they were beaten up mercilessly. The victim narrated to the Deccan Herald journalist: “I was wrongly accused. I have nothing to do with the elopement of the girl. When I was humiliated, none of the villagers came to my rescue. They were standing as mute spectators…”
Story 2: Irulan Subban, a dalit dared to contest the elections in a reserved constituency for the Dalits and filed his papers defying the diktat of the dominant caste thevars. It was a reserved constituency for the Dalits but no Dalit was allowed to contest for several years. A dominant caste leader set up his dalit servant Thanikodi to contest for the same and ensured his win. Irulan fled the village following a threat to his life and his name was removed from the electoral list in the village. Thanikodi, a fellow dalit elected to the post, quit the next day with this story: “I contested only at the instance of my master Chellakannu Thevar, but you know what happened the next day? Lightening struck my room on the terrace of Chellakannu Thevar’s bungalow) but I escaped because I had just come down, I knew at once that God was warning me from sinning by contesting the election. I must stay alive and take care of my wife and four kids. The village priest confirmed that God was indeed angry that Thanikodi had contested but how he could repent and give up the post.” When another Dalit Azhagar came forward to declare his candidature the following year for the same reserved constituency, he developed tuberculosis and was bedridden. This was also interpreted as punishment from God to a Dalit for daring to contest a power position that they were not born for. The Dalits tried to convince one another saying: “do not offend the thevars and bring the wrath of God on yourself” Untouchability is not an imagination in this village; Body language is very loud and clear. There is no possibility for a Dalit to sit beside a dominant caste person. There is a subhuman status accorded to the Dalits of this village. Naatar Mangalam, a dalit in this village accepts this situation as normal. He says: “We can earn our living working on the thevar fields, so why grudge them their superior social status? Why bother about panchayat positions when all we need is a meal. Besides, how can the thevars allow a Dalit to be their panchayat president? Unthinkable.”
Analysis of the experiences
There are common experiences of rejection, denial and alienation that the Dalit bodies face, in the stories narrated above. Yerramma, a Dalit woman is punished publicly by parading her naked. The alleged crime was that she supported a couple belonging to different castes, to elope and marry. What is the crime that the woman is accused of and how does it become a great crime that warrants a cruel punishment of parading naked? In the monitoring of atrocities against the Dalits, one can see that punishment for anyone who marries a person from the dominant caste is inevitable. Dalit women or men, who are in someway connected to supporting the inter-caste marriage are counted equally responsible and liable for punishment. Why is this so? If the dominant ideologies of purity and pollution determined that a Dalit skin, body and blood are sources of pollution, an inter-caste marriage between dominant and oppressed castes expose the truth that there is nothing polluting in their marriage, and that the children born to them are as normal as children born to any one else. A dangerous threat to caste ideology!
Demystifying the myth of purity and pollution would certainly be counted, as a great ‘crime’ because powers experienced by the dominant caste would stand exposed as abusive, unfair power. To construct the notion of pure and righteous “self” of a Brahmin, the body of a Dalit is used to construct a polluted, dirty, inferior, “other”. How can centuries of exercising absolute power by a dominant caste community suddenly come to a grinding halt if there was no caste system nor purity-pollution ideology? Yerramma therefore had to be punished, and punished publicly so that the Dalit communities anywhere in the world will not risk the same offence against a caste person in the future. Her husband and daughter also faced humiliation as they helplessly watched Yerramma stripped and paraded naked! As the identities and powers of the family crumble by this act of humiliation, their experience of being shamed becomes a collective Dalit experience. Every year there are scores of Dalit women and men who are punished for the crime of promoting inter-caste marriages. Parading a woman naked also seems to be a common way of punishment. A woman whose ideal identity as an ultimate woman is constructed on a chaste, pure, body, the punishment of sexually shaming the woman in public is the direct opposite of all that stands for the ideal and the ultimate for a woman. Yerramma’s experience of being shamed and humiliated by the passivity and silence of the crowd can also be understood as an effective method to perpetuate the ideology of purity and pollution. In essence, the Dalit bodies become potentially ‘dangerous’ bodies that can demystify caste ideologies and hierarchies. Violence against them will continue until such time the Dalits get motivated to turn around and call the demon (Brahmanism/ Casteism) by name and exorcise it. Would that be possible? Can this violence be looked upon not as a point of victimhood of Dalits but as the potential hermeneutical point of reconstruction of a new self as a whole being, even if the cost of reconstructing that new self means punishments in public? How do we reconstruct the ‘self’ of Dalit outside the framework of Caste myth? How can stories of violence such as that of Yerramma become a point of challenge and change in the caste system and ideology? How do we affirm the stories of resistance, survival and agency of the Dalits who dare to challenge the myths of caste purity and hierarchy?
Let us look at the second story: The Dalits are not allowed to exercise their leadership potential because this would disprove the notion that the Dalit bodies, skin and blood are by nature inferior, polluting and born to be ruled. Dalit power, voice and speech are extremely threatening for the survival of Caste ideology. The best way that the domineering caste can perpetuate the system of caste is to make the Dalits themselves as guardians of these hierarchical values. The Dalits then have to believe that they were created to be ruled, that it is divine intention that they always be ruled, that God would punish them if they aspired for more. When Scriptures and Traditions pressurize a Dalit to accept casteism as a value, as divinely ordained, as a norm, then the Dalits do abide by these caste expectations and believe that they truly lack the potential to be leaders.
Threat of sickness and death, their conviction that they may be targeted by God for punishment if they sin by aspiring for leadership, have only aided in concretizing caste structures. The ideology behind casteism and patriarchy seem to collude in that they use the victims to become guardians of the hierarchical, abusive values! Perhaps this can be traced as a common phenomena in every abusive hierarchical ideology of power. If the Dalits could be mobilized to disprove the myths and ideologies that enslave them, there is a possibility of reconstruction. The story of Murugesan, a Dalit who was elected as a leader was hacked to death by the dominant caste people, when he was on his way to take his chair as the president of the village council. Should the death of Murugesan be a lesson for the Dalit not to venture into politics or should that become the seed of liberation for the Dalits to throw in their lot and stand up to the domineering powers of Caste people? I believe that the latter will be possible only if there is a deliberate methodological shift in our understanding of violence against the Dalits.
Punishment, atrocities against the Dalits should become the starting point of our hermeneutics, not as suffering experiences but as the consequence of challenging boundaries. Violence seems inevitable when there are attempts to break the cycle of violence. One cannot blindly shy away from violence and say that the Dalits are always only victims. Dalit hermeneutics challenges us to rethink on the question of violence and separate the issues of violence as an arrogant and abusive tool with silencing power. Rather if we can think of moving ahead on the road to justice, violence may also become one of the means and methods of language. How do we reconcile with this fact theologically? Let me give an example:
In Nagpur, about 400 women of Kasturba nagar entered the court room and lynched Akku Yadav, on August 13, 2004, the one who terrorized them for ten years with rape, murder and sexual harassment. In the words of one of the women who participated in the lynching, ‘What we did was not murder it was the slaughter of a demon. Extortion was his main source of livelihood according to the residents of Kasturba Nagar and rape his instrument of terror.
The Police had refused to file a complaint against the influential Akku Yadav. Women came upon their own definition of justice after tolerating this violence they were subjected to by Akku Yadav. When the police arrested a few women, hundreds of women marched to the police station and demanded to be arrested. The incident only shows that there are different ways to respond to justice, in specific contexts. How can our experiences of resistance, agency of the body, affirmation and celebration of the Body be brought back to the centre of theologizing?
Martrydom is important an aspect in Christianity. The Greek word for witness is marturia which is used for both Witness and for a Martyr. A Dalit becomes a living witness and the ‘locale’ for being a symbol of God’s plan and purpose for the whole creation when he or she challenges the structures of oppression and paves way for a new liberation theology. The ultimate strategy of caste ideology is to make a Dalit believe in purity-pollution ideology, feel ashamed of one’s own body, skin and blood. It is an attempt to turn what is closest to a person, i.e. a body, to become one’s own enemy. Ideologies such as caste, race and patriarchy are capable of making the victims internalize the oppression and practice these ideologies in rituals and functions as their own sacred tradition. This is what Walter Fernandes refers to as function of a discourse that “marks off of a field of thought, language or behavior and the production of concepts which sustain the practices of the bounded field by repetition and transmission of message through sign systems.” I would like to summarise below some suggestions towards Dalit Hermeneutics.
1. Methodological shift in hermeneutics: One of the first important hermeneutical methodological challenges for us today is to de-link the historical experience of suffering of Dalits under the structures of caste system on the one hand and challenge the uncritical acceptance of caste stratification as normal/ universal and unbreakable. The moment we assign to these ideologies an eternal status, a structure that we cannot dislodge, we have already deified them. These hierarchical ideologies began in history and therefore can come to an end in history if only people refused to share in the notion of power that came along with being associated with the power axis. To believe that it is possible to break away from caste structures and define a human being as whole, gifted with the image of God, is a first affirmative step in Dalit hermeneutics.
2. Affirmation of the Body and the Blood of a Dalit: Very often, Dalit theology discourse begins with the story of suffering experience of the Dalits as those who do not belong to the body of Brahman. Dalit theology has to consciously shift from this position and redefine themselves as human beings without reference to the casteist God. Why do the Dalits need to belong to a God who does not need them? Who does not want to share in the life of a Dalit? We have a beautiful example in Jesus Christ who not only gave of himself to the world and said: When you share in this bread and wine, you are committing yourself for a huge task in this world. It is the readiness to be broken in this world as Christ was, for the sake of justice, for the sake of wholeness of all. We call it as Eucharist, as participation in the Lord’s Supper, as partaking in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. When this act of Eucharist is reduced to a traditional symbol, and becomes the point of departure for denominations to define their faith, it is the easiest way of straying away from the crux of the Gospel. Dalit Hermeneutics challenges the importance of being a “martyr” for Christ, in terms of witnessing to the love of God in Jesus Christ as well as to connect the purpose of living in the way of Jesus Christ, come what may, even the readiness to be crucified outside the gates for the sake of enabling another to realize that gift of the image of God in oneself.
I Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 are beautiful chapters in the Bible that emphasise the utter equal status of a human before God. As a creature, to confess in the common creator, is to acknowledge that we are all siblings before God. The Body metaphor breaks down all boundaries and barriers that are erected in the name of patriarchy, caste, class, race, sex, gender, creed, ethnicity or any other.
3. Dalits are forced to remove the carcasses and handle the dead bodies:
Theology of death is as powerful as Theology of Life when it comes to learning about the utter common humanness of human beings outside the reference to any hierarchical structure as the reference point. A rich, a poor, a dalit, a white, a black, a yellow, a brown – all become simply BODIES, after death. The process that goes on within a dead body is not dependent on colour, caste, creed, sex, gender or any other. A Body is a Body is a Body. Utter equality. Dalits challenge the notion of impurity and inequality. By this I am not saying that the Dalits should continue to be given this stereotype job of removing carcasses. Rather, what I am saying is that there need not and should not be a differential value, a degraded value ascribed to the task of removing the dead bodies. We need to challenge the roles and work that is ascribed to people based on caste and sex for there can be no stereotypes that aid in defining a person as weaker, impure, inferior and so on. The ideology of inferiority and pollution connected with death should be broken even as Dalits are not negated in terms of their human dignity and status. Dalits are often forced to engage in dirty, dangerous, and demeaning tasks to force a collective polluted identity on them. The powers that are “helpless” to change the situations should be targeted just as much as the system that constructs the notion of purity based on the impurity of the Dalits.
4. Exposing the inefficiency of the Government: It is important to be sensitive to the role of the Government in addressing issues in the society. The Women named the State as a major perpetrator of violence in the first gathering of women’s movements in India. The Government turns a blind eye to Dalit and women issues in our country The second story of Subban shows how the presence of laws, constitution, cannot correct a system that has denied leadership to Dalits consecutively for four years. The Government’s macho attitude became obvious when it discouraged the NGOs from airing the caste realities in public, outside India. ‘We shall correct it. We have systems and mechanisms to do that’. It is similar to a male convincing a female not to go and share her experiences of suffering with others because it would bring shame to her and the family. She should protect the honour of the community and family at all costs. Those NGOs who internationalized the issues are black-listed by the Government, using the same strategy of breaking the voices of solidarity.
Dalit hermeneutics always affirms in community and communitarian values. Body affirmation is at the centre of it all. Blood equality becomes real and practical when the poor dalit bodies are chosen often as potential donors for kidney patients, no matter what race, caste or colour one belongs to. Do human beings need health crisis situation to learn about the equality of human beings on earth?
This means that we do not repeat any longer that Jesus was a Dalit because he had mixed blood! Everyone’s blood gets mixed in birth. Mathew Genealogy has been quoted time and again as one of the biblical basis for Dalit Theology / Christology. The moment we fall into this trap, we are unconsciously saying that there is something real about caste, blood and birth. Neither can we say, we can never change our caste. This statement was heard yesterday too in our deliberations. The moment we accept that caste has to do with birth, with blood, we conform to the system. Challenge the same and shift it to the non-negotiable principle of utter equality of human beings created in the image of God, who has called us to be members of a body. We may face problems if the Body of Christ is defined as that which belongs only to the Christians or to the Church as it may be pointed out as christomonistic claim. While I believe that the Body is a helpful metaphor, an epistemological tool in Dalit hermeneutics, it can be made inclusive. I would like to see a similarity between the Church and different movements in society that work for the equality of all, that functions as a “Body of Christ” is called to function. A network of different bodies in society, peoples’ movements that work on the principle of justice and love for all, regardless would foster in the harmonious and healthy growth of a holistic society. When I use the ‘Body’ metaphor as the basis to challenge all structures and systems of hierarchy I underline the fact that it is the body that stands as the site of all oppression, discrimination, violence and suffering in history. Hatred of communities against one another is vented against the bodies of the negative other. The most violated of the earth are female of the species, all over the world. The Body stands also as the site of agency where the meanings that have been constructed can be negotiated, critiqued, and rejected. Dalit bodies play a crucial role in demystifying the notions of hierarchy. In fact, Dalit bodies are dangerous bodies because they threaten to bring down the powers of oppression. Theologies along this line should necessarily include a critique of caste, class, race and gender as one conglomerate methodological principle. Even a slight ignoring of one over the other, may reduce the intensity and depth of our commitment to Dalit Theology and hermeneutics.
