Bali Adugal and the Limits of Hermeneutics

From another perspective, the play also raises important questions about the limits of interpretation. The first problem one faces is that of recovering the voice of the Dalit who was 'sacrificed' according to the inscription. The act of inscription itself is a project of the dominant at the expense of annihilating, effacing the body of the Dalit, silencing the voice of the oppressed. To recover the voice of the Dalit from a 'document' of the dominant is a project of history, which is basically a hermeneutical project.

As often happens historical hermeneutics falls into a meta discourse/grand narrative of the nation, the citizen and as a final recourse that of history itself. This is an inevitable risk and pitfall.

It would be appropriate here to recall two attempts at resuscitating fragments. Ranajit Guha in his influential essay "Chandra's Death" reconstructs and reinterprets a fragment of the testimony of judicial discourse for the project of history. In his meticulous analysis of the piece of judicial document, he recovers the voice of the subjugated Dalit woman. It is a laudable attempt at recovering the suppressed voices of history from a document of the dominant but there remains the problem of falling into the labyrinth of history for its own sake.

The other attempt by Gyanendra Pandey (Pandey 1994) problematizes the whole project of history itself. Pandey captures the core of the problem, as the "'historians' history, at least the history of the last few centuries, has been predominantly a history of transition". One can translate this as a history of translation. How are we to translate the lived experience of violence, subjugation, of the oppressed, for us, the experience of Dalits? Criticizing the historians' history i.e., the academic writing of history on Partition as a "prose of otherness", he contrasts the representation of Partition in the fictional works of Sadat Hasan Manto. Implicitly, he suggests that historical hermeneutics as a project has serious limitations in bringing out the violence and pain that is lived and suffered by the oppressed people and probably art and literature can be the appropriate spheres in bringing out the lived experience of the oppressed, in giving voice in other words to the oppressed who are deprived of their own voices. To recover the voice of the effaced Dalit body and its voice is invariably and inevitably a political project of the Arts enmeshed in the present, not that of evoking the past for its own sake.

In Bali Adugal, this task has been successfully taken up by the artist/activist K. A. Gunasekaran as an artistic reinterpretation of the 'inscribed' event.

Bali Adugal and the Text as an Object of Desire/Love

The translator's relationship to the text he/she has taken up to translate is that of amorous love. The translator chooses a particular text basically out of desire. Needless to say, all relationships are enmeshed in a matrix of power. With love, this relationship can be put, in a nutshell, as possessive love: dominant or submissive because one wishes to possess the apple of one's eye.

The problem that arises here for the translator is: can he/she can transcend this matrix of the power relationship in the act of translating any particular text?

Could the translator make love to the text he/she has chosen to translate, in a way that is not possessive, i.e., interpretative: fidelity to the original, 'sticking' to the authors 'intentions' or else perfidious to the text, selective in his interpretative maneuver?

Fidelity in love and translation is feminine and perfidy, the subject location of the male. Could one locate a subject location that escapes this binary opposition in the act of translation? Could one in other words perform the act of translation in a way that is not possessive, interpretative or at the least that gets beyond the interpretative maneuver? Could one be flirtive? And could there be a subject location, a figure for the flirtive?

Unexpectedly the text Bali Adugal offers one such figure. Out of the blue, a eunuch emerges from nowhere and laments over the unfairness of the prejudice of sacrificing the Dalit woman, her subjection to the subjected Dalit male subject location.

The whole text becomes a limit - text or border - text at this juncture in the play. The Dalit female who bears the whole brunt of oppression, who is at the extreme receiving end of the oppressive caste system, subject even to the Dalit male, is given voice by an eunuch: a group of people, who are in close proximity to the oppressed, is oppressed by the system and at the same time out of the system. This is what makes the text a border-text that operates at the boundaries, defies classification and creates fissures (Broadhurst, 1999; Humm, 1991). By giving voice to the eunuch, by the eunuch speaking for the Dalit female, the text also decidedly refuses to essentialize the Dalit identity by moving into a liminal sphere of irreducible difference.

The translator's task is to make love to the text he/she has chosen, as a eunuch would flirt. The figure of the eunuch would be the art and an act of translation. This is not to deny 'seriousness' or 'responsibility' on the part of the translator and interpretation on the whole, but to move beyond interpretation, just as the figure of the eunuch is at the liminal point - both inside the system, oppressed by the system, in close proximity with the oppressed, yet defying classification and out of the system.

The figure of an eunuch and the act of flirting with the text chosen for translation, is to suggest returning to the particular text again and again, a form of rereading which has nothing to do with 'seriousness', not an exercise in search for meanings buried deep within the text but a perverse economy of dispersion, of waste, of frenzy (Barthes 1978). It is an exuberance of the child, which asks for the same story again and again for the sake of the pure pleasure of hearing it. Each recital of the story is a unique exercise in pleasure, in the flush of which the child generates its own images, meanings and hallucinations.

It happened that, this particular translator, in one of his encounters with the text he had chosen to translate, in his hallucinations, had this figure of the eunuch emerge from the text itself. And with the simple innocence and exuberance have that story shared here

Challenges

In the process of translating Dalit texts, the following are important challenges that Dalit literatures and their translators have to encounter:

Publishing

Publishing today is a highly competitive arena and the Dalits, already a marginalized group, find it difficult to find a space whereby they can get their works published. Several factors work against their interests and getting a foothold in the publishing industry is definitely a Sisyphean task for Dalit writers.

Demands of the Market

Meeting the demands of the market, that is dominated by several factors like the banner of the publishing house and the popularity of a translator, becomes an important problem to be grappled with by Dalit authors. There is a felt need for instituting a publishing industry, which is completely managed by Dalits. The Dalits need to make their strong presence in all the wings of the mass media - from the editorial to the marketing teams. For example, in Canada there is a Press for the First Nations' peoples and women. A similar move would be welcome with the Dalits in India. Dalit publishing networks along with Dalit news agency and Dalit media network must have links with the mainstream counterparts for generating counter-productive programmes.

Readership

Readers to a great extent decide the success or failure of a book. As far as Dalit literature is concerned, there is a minority of readers. It is a difficult task to make a dent in the mindset of the general readership but the content and quality of a Dalit work does have the innate capability to change the prevailing scene. Therein lies the hope and the challenge.

Intra-cultural Variations Within Dalits at Regional/National Level

Even within the Dalit communities there are several layers of differences ranging from their cultural practices to their linguistic preferences. Slang and other forms of language are different among Dalits themselves in the districts of Thanjavur, Ramanathapuram and Madurai of Tamilnadu. A Dalit from one of these districts has to face some difficulty to understand the slang of a Dalit from another district. The translator thus has to mediate between these extremes and find the appropriate mode of expression while translating literatures written by Dalits of different districts.

Translation / Power Relations

The practice of translation carries within itself the seeds of power relations. Earlier, the emphasis in the world of translation was on the quality of translation but now there is a perceptible shift from the author to the translator. Who translates a particular work makes all the difference. The best example is that of the English versions of Russian classics translated by Constance Garnett. There is a politics of the text, of the author, of the translator and of the publisher. Writers and Dalits wish to see their works published in the mainstream publishing houses and in foreign languages and they welcome them.

* I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr.Valarmathi, a free-lancing scholar, poet, journalist, documentary director, translator, playwright, performer, and a critic, for his critical acumen and insights which helped me complete this article

REFERENCES

Ambedkar, B.R. (1980) The Annihilation of Caste Delhi: Arnold. Publishers.

Barthes, Roland. (1978) A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. New York: Hill and Wang.

Bassnett, Susan. (1991) Translation Studies London: Routledge.

Broadhurst, Susan (1999) Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory. London: Cassell.

Coltelli, Laura (1990) Winged Words. Nebraska: U of Nebraska Press.

Frazer, Sir James. (1993-94) The Golden Bough: A Study in magic and religion.Hertfordshire: Wordsworth.

Guha, Ranajit. (1987) Chandra's Death in David Arnold and David Hardiman (Ed.)  Subaltern Studies Vol.V. New Delhi: OUP.

Gunasekaran, K.A. (1999) Dalit Kalai, Kalacharam, Chennai: Raagas.

Gunasekaran, K.A. (2003a) Bali Adugal. Chennai: Kavya

Gunasekaran, K.A. (2003b) Serippuraviyal Chennai: Thannane

Humm, Maggie (1991) Border Traffic: Strategies of Contemporary Women  Writers. Manchester: Manchester University Press

Pandey, Gyanendra (1994) The Prose of Otherness in David Arnold and David  Hardiman. (Ed.) Subaltern Studies Vol. VIII. New Delhi: OUP

Simon, Sherry (1996) Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Translation. London: Routledge

Venuti, Lawrence (2002) The Translation Studies Reader New York: Routledge

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