Onam for Adivasis: Celebration of exclusion, betrayal and exploitation?
.. It is highly inaccurate to call Onam as a festival exclusive to Kerala. It is observed as Vamana Jayanthi, or the victory of Vamana, across various places in India. The relative importance of Mahabali could be a recent phenomenon—primarily as a result of increasing lower-caste assertions in Kerala. Dalits and other dispossessed groups of Kerala have, over the years, continued to express their trenchant critiques against the savarna ethos of Onam. If on the one hand the festival celebrates the ostracisation of Bali, on the other, it is marked by savarna idioms like vegetarianism and other upper-caste cultural tropes. The myth of Bali strikes a chord with the marginalised of Kerala, who rereads Bali as a Dalit who is subjugated and dispossessed of his land like them. ...
Onam for Adivasis: Celebration of exclusion, betrayal and exploitation? Written by Narayanan M Sankaran Published on 26 August 2015http://roundtableindia.co.in/i
... There are several stories about Maveli (Mahabali) among the Adivasi communities in Kerala. The Adiyar community in Wayanad has one such story to narrate. What we can perceive from their story is the pain of King Maveli getting betrayed and killed by upper-caste landlords. Not only did they murder Maveli, they also grabbed the community's land and forced them into slavery. The land policies of the erstwhile government that declared Onam as a national festival and the attitude of the feudal lords are pretty much the same — both enslaved Adivasis in their own soil and usurped their land. The story of the Adiyars goes thus:
Long ago, we also had our time. The time of Maveli Manduva Theyyam. There were no castes or sub-castes and the times were peaceful. Once three lords came from the sky to meet Manduva Theyyam. Maveli received them as his guests. But when Maveli came back after resting, he could not find the mannu (soil/land) he had been saving safely until then. He enquired after his guests about this and an argument ensued. Finally, it was decided that a test would be conducted. Both parties will take a dip in a river — the lords in the lower banks and Maveli in the upper banks. If the lords had stolen the land, the water will get muddied and will flow up. If the mannu were with Maveli himself, the muddy water would flow to the lower banks. Maveli agreed to the conditions.
Both parties then took the dip and the muddy water flowed to the lower banks. The enraged lords hit Maveli with a vessel of slaked lime and murdered him. As the bereaved sat mourning their beloved king, the lords from the sky possessed their land and made them their slaves6. Are the secularists in Kerala then trying to say that a people who fell prey to this betrayal should forget all their losses and celebrate Onam? Non-Adivasis say that the Onam myth should not be taken at face value. But if Kerala society, which celebrates Onam based on just a myth, were to consider the story of Adiyars, it'd be forced to answer a lot of their questions: They ask, where is our land? Where is the land you stole from Maveli? Why did you murder Maveli and make his wards your slaves? The ruling dispensation will be hard put to answer these questions. ...
--------------------------
The celebration of Onam
"... Thus, the celebration of Onam marks a symbolic violence in the lives of the marginalised of India. The insistence to continue its celebration is an insistence to celebrate the defeat of the struggles of the untouchables and the lower-castes of our country."
The transcription is taken from Kafila.org, transcribed by Sajan Venniyoor
Interviewer: Onam is celebrated as the state festival of Kerala. What are your views on Onam?
MB Manoj: Where Kerala is concerned, ever since the 10th century (A.D), the dominant classes have established many myths as history. The first myth is that Kerala was created by Parasuraman. This is a great myth in itself, a legend, a blind legend, a fable. They turned this fairy tale into history, so that the origin of Kerala is itself narrated as a fable.
The origin of Kerala is one the foundational myths of India, most of which were established by the upper — Brahminical — castes. According to this myth, Kerala was even then a nation state, with its own great festivals of which Onam is one.
There are two ways in which Dalits see Onam. For one, it is the day on which one of their kings — Mahabali — was murdered. Both in Dalit and tribal folklore, the Dravidian king known as Mahabali was their king. He was a good king, who strove for equality and fraternity among his people. For an Indian king to establish equality fraternity and liberty, he could only have come from the Buddhist tradition. But as a consequence of Aryanization, in the struggle for Aryanization, many kings like Mahabali were slaughtered.
So you have this folk narrative among Dalits, among tribes — the folk-songs of the adivasis in Wayanad, for instance — that their king Mahabali was killed by Vamanan (a dwarf brahmin).
As far as Dalits and adivasis are concerned, Onam is a Black Day, the day their king was murdered, a day of mourning. But for the upper castes, it’s a happy day, a day to celebrate, the day their power was entrenched. With the murder of the most powerful king in the land, they had nothing left to fear.
Having killed the king, they brought the natives, the tribes, into the lowest level of their caste system. They intoduced slavery. Onam marks the age when slavery and the caste system were introduced into Kerala, an age which began with the killing of Maveli (Mahabali).
The historicity is very evident. Mahabali is an Asura, Vamana is Vishnu. Mahabali, the Asura, treated all his subjects as equals but Vamana, the avatar of Vishnu, came and stamped Mahabali into the earth.
So the Dalit’s question is, how can we celebrate as a ‘festival’ the day our king was murdered? How do we celebrate the death of our forefather? For us, it is a day of mourning, not for festivities. But the Brahmins, using their power and influence, especially over the media, have suppressed the real history of Onam and turned it into a festival for all Keralites.
Interviewer: What’s the response of Kerala’s Dalit movement to Onam? What’s their relationship with Onam?
MB Manoj: Take a look at the folk songs of Kerala. There’s one that goes, “Little one, little one, Onam has come, little one / The swing, the swing! There’s a swing for Thiru Onam”, and the song ends, “Fish curry, fish curry – there’s fish curry for Thiru Onam.” Here’s a song that says, among other things, “We want pappadam, we want payasam…” and then goes on to mock the caste-ridden nature of Onam by saying, “We want koori (fish) curry”. Fish curry is never permitted in the Onam feast, which consists only of vegetarian food like pappadam, payasam, bananas etc. The folk song is critical of vegetarian food itself.
Folk songs belong to a very old tradition, and Dalits, it is clear, fall outside the Onam tradition. Another example which shows that Onam is not part of the Dalit tradition is the Temple Entry Proclamation. There’s another song that mocks the Temple Entry Proclamation. It’s about Dalits going to the temple – “Let’s go to the temple. We can touch the Lord and pray to him. There’s the Lord of the Wheel. The Lord smeared with holy ash. See the flower growing from the Lord’s navel.” There are many songs that are critical of Hindu gods like Vishnu, which say that temple entry is not what we need, songs that are critical of Hinduism.
These are not just folk songs. These are the lived experiences of Dalits, their cultural life.
There are many such myths about Onam, but these myths are not celebratory. Rather, they are about how our native king was deceived and killed. In fact, the older members of the Dalit community don’t say that Mahabali was pressed into the ground (by Vamana); they say he was killed and thrown into a mud pit. The traditional image is of Vamana placing his foot on Mahabali’s head and pushing him into the earth. Our Dalit elders say that when he (Mahabali) was sitting in prayer in his palace, his enemies took away his weapons, killed him and got rid of his body, burying it in some unknown place. That is likely to be the actual event on which the myth is based. We come across many such anti-brahminical events and stories.
The Dalit movements from the 70s to the 90s, especially the Indian Dalit Federation and its founders like Kallara Sukumaran and Paul Chirakkarodu, observed Onam as a day of mourning, as the day on which one of our forefathers was murdered. We sit in fast (hunger strike) on this day in town, with posters and banners. This is a fairly common occurrence in Kerala. When I was a pre-degree student in my native Cheruthoni, I too sat on a day’s fast organized by the Indian Dalit Federation and other Dalit groups. This is a major form of resistance to the idea of Onam.
In fact, Dalits and backward communities eat non-vegetarian food on Onam. Even today, 99% of Dalits, backward classes and tribe will eat fish, beef etc. I think it’s the middle and upper classes – the Nairs, the Nambuthiris (Kerala brahmins) – who eat only vegetarian food during Onam. Everyone else eats non-vegetarian food. They don’t consider Onam a festival. At the same time, the government as well as political and cultural hegemons create many artificial festivals using tools like TV, films and magazines and, technically, they co-opt the others into it.
But for this, they (Dalits and backward classes) don’t give any importance to Onam. They don’t see Onam as their state festival, neither historically nor in practice.
---------------------------
Dalit Camera Denounces the Celebration of Onam
Onam is the only national festival of Kerala that has assumed a universal secular character. Other popular festivals like Christmas or Bakrid are closely identified with particular religions like Christianity and Islam. Although many Keralities participate in non-Hindu festivals, Onam assumes its certain universality in terms of its close identification with the ‘essence’ of Kerala. Onam celebrates the return of the mythical asura king Mahabali who was pushed down to the nether world by Vamana, an avatar of Lord Vishnu. Vamana, the diminutive Brahmin boy, asks for three paces of land to Bali and grows so huge that the king has to offer his own head for placing Vamana’s third feet. Mahabali, then, is pushed down to hell from where he is granted return only once a year. This gift of the land to Brahmin myth goes well with other gift of the land myths in Kerala like the Parasurama myth. In this myth Kerala is founded by sage Parasurama who then proceeds to gift this land to Brahmins.
It is highly inaccurate to call Onam as a festival exclusive to Kerala. It is observed as Vamana Jayanthi, or the victory of Vamana, across various places in India. The relative importance of Mahabali could be a recent phenomenon—primarily as a result of increasing lower-caste assertions in Kerala. Dalits and other dispossessed groups of Kerala have, over the years, continued to express their trenchant critiques against the savarna ethos of Onam. If on the one hand the festival celebrates the ostracisation of Bali, on the other, it is marked by savarna idioms like vegetarianism and other upper-caste cultural tropes. The myth of Bali strikes a chord with the marginalised of Kerala, who rereads Bali as a Dalit who is subjugated and dispossessed of his land like them. If Mahatma Jotiba Phule used the term Dalit to denote the suppressed and broken people of his land, he also reread Bali as the king of the indigenous people who were usurped of their land by the invading Aryans. Thus Vishnu, in the form of the Brahmin Vamana, came to represent the usurper of the land of the indigenous people. Similarly, Dalits use terms like Adi Dravida, Adi Andhra, Adi Karnataka etc., across South India, to mark their indigeneity.
The Indian Dalit Federation of Kerala, over the years, has conducted hunger strikes against the alleged cultural violence of Onam. This is also partly due to the resonances that the Onam myth has on their material lives. Thus the Syrian Christians, who claim Brahmin status in Kerala, keep the maximum per capita land holding of 126 cents in Kerala. Upper-caste Hindus, on the other hand, hold 105 cents, and Dalits a meager 27 cents. Dalits are also relegated to colonies numbering about 13,000 in Kerala. These colony formations were the result of the skewed implementation of the celebrated land reforms policies of Kerala. The land reform and the education bills proposed by the first communist government of Kerala faced massive resistances from the Catholic Church and Nair leadership of Kerala that the first government was dismissed by the central government and president’s rule was imposed on 31 July 1959. Known as the ‘liberation struggle’, the fall of the government ensured that the first systematic threat against upper-caste dominance was neutered and watered-down for a conceivable future. It is no accident, therefore, that Onam, until then a largely provincial festival, was elevated to the level of a national festival by the succeeding government led by Pattom A. Thanu Pillai in 1960. For Onam’s national status marked the victory of the upper-caste against the marginalized once again in the history of Kerala. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that a state known for its high levels of social development still harbors 13,687, mostly Tamil, families who depend on manual scavenging for their livelihood. These families represent everything that the state has relegated to its unconscious to construct the secular Malayali identity that Kerala is now famous for. Like Mahabali, Tamil Dalit scavengers visit Kerala households once a year to clean the shit in their septic tanks, only to be relegated back to a hellish life and forgotten for the rest of the year.
Thus, the celebration of Onam marks a symbolic violence in the lives of the marginalised of India. The insistence to continue its celebration is an insistence to celebrate the defeat of the struggles of the untouchables and the lower-castes of our country.
Written by James Miachel for Dalit Camera
-----------------------------
Dalit Movements and Onam: Interrogating Kerala model - 4
MB Manoj talks about Dalit cultural life in Kerala and its relation to onam. There are folk songs which criticise the upper-caste nature of onam and its vegetarianism. Similarly, there are songs which criticise the temple entry proclamation of Kerala. There is a realisation among Dalits that onam is a celebration of the murder of their king by the uppercastes. As part of this realisation, Dalit movements, and especially the Indian Dalit Federation, have observed hunger strikes during onam days. Manoj reminisces participating in one of these hunger strikes in Idukki town in Kerala during his college days. Manoj stresses that most Dalits, tribals and backward castes eat meat during onam and their culture fall outside the cultural milieu of onam. Manoj stresses that most Dalits, tribals and backward castes eat meat during onam and their cultural life fall outside the cultural milieu of onam. Therefore, for the lower-castes, onam is neither a cultural nor a national festival, but a festival of the upper-castes. Video Description: Jentle Varghese
Making of MB Manoj: His short biography
MB Manoj speaks about his short political history which also shaped him. Manoj began his activism when he was a student, with CRC CPI ML, from that time itself he has been engaged in writing and other cultural activities. In the 90's with the dissolution of CRC CPI ML he associated himself with IDF, BSP, Adhasthitha Navodhana Munnani and some other Dalit movements. Formed Dalit Students Movement. At the same time involved in the land struggle , and other activities. Established as a poet with the publication of a poem in the special issue on Dalit literature , in Bhashaposhini a leading literary magazine in Kerala
A Short History of Dalit Movements in Kerala - The Four Stages
MB Manoj poet-activist talks about the history of Dalit movements in Kerala. He divides the Dalit movement broadly into four stages - first stage, social reformist in nature, was led by Ayyankali, Poikayil Appachan and Pampady John Joseph, and lasted until the 1940s. Second stage was the Harijan welfare movements of the 1950s.The third stage led to the establishment of the influential Indian Dalit Federation (IDF) led by Kallara Sukumaran, Paul Chirakkarodu etc. Muthanga and Chengara land struggles comprise the fourth stage led by leaders like C.K Janu and M. Geethanandan. He observes that this stage noted for its iconic Muthanga and Chengara struggles and the formation of the DHRM, has been largely defeated by the state. Due to this defeat, ordinary Dalits haven't been able to successfully group under a strong Dalit movement, resulting in the decline of the Dalit movements of Kerala after 2008.
.. It is highly inaccurate to call Onam as a festival exclusive to Kerala. It is observed as Vamana Jayanthi, or the victory of Vamana, across various places in India. The relative importance of Mahabali could be a recent phenomenon—primarily as a result of increasing lower-caste assertions in Kerala. Dalits and other dispossessed groups of Kerala have, over the years, continued to express their trenchant critiques against the savarna ethos of Onam. If on the one hand the festival celebrates the ostracisation of Bali, on the other, it is marked by savarna idioms like vegetarianism and other upper-caste cultural tropes. The myth of Bali strikes a chord with the marginalised of Kerala, who rereads Bali as a Dalit who is subjugated and dispossessed of his land like them. ...
Onam for Adivasis: Celebration of exclusion, betrayal and exploitation? Written by Narayanan M Sankaran Published on 26 August 2015http://roundtableindia.co.in/i
... There are several stories about Maveli (Mahabali) among the Adivasi communities in Kerala. The Adiyar community in Wayanad has one such story to narrate. What we can perceive from their story is the pain of King Maveli getting betrayed and killed by upper-caste landlords. Not only did they murder Maveli, they also grabbed the community's land and forced them into slavery. The land policies of the erstwhile government that declared Onam as a national festival and the attitude of the feudal lords are pretty much the same — both enslaved Adivasis in their own soil and usurped their land. The story of the Adiyars goes thus:
Long ago, we also had our time. The time of Maveli Manduva Theyyam. There were no castes or sub-castes and the times were peaceful. Once three lords came from the sky to meet Manduva Theyyam. Maveli received them as his guests. But when Maveli came back after resting, he could not find the mannu (soil/land) he had been saving safely until then. He enquired after his guests about this and an argument ensued. Finally, it was decided that a test would be conducted. Both parties will take a dip in a river — the lords in the lower banks and Maveli in the upper banks. If the lords had stolen the land, the water will get muddied and will flow up. If the mannu were with Maveli himself, the muddy water would flow to the lower banks. Maveli agreed to the conditions.
Both parties then took the dip and the muddy water flowed to the lower banks. The enraged lords hit Maveli with a vessel of slaked lime and murdered him. As the bereaved sat mourning their beloved king, the lords from the sky possessed their land and made them their slaves6. Are the secularists in Kerala then trying to say that a people who fell prey to this betrayal should forget all their losses and celebrate Onam? Non-Adivasis say that the Onam myth should not be taken at face value. But if Kerala society, which celebrates Onam based on just a myth, were to consider the story of Adiyars, it'd be forced to answer a lot of their questions: They ask, where is our land? Where is the land you stole from Maveli? Why did you murder Maveli and make his wards your slaves? The ruling dispensation will be hard put to answer these questions. ...
--------------------------
The celebration of Onam
"... Thus, the celebration of Onam marks a symbolic violence in the lives of the marginalised of India. The insistence to continue its celebration is an insistence to celebrate the defeat of the struggles of the untouchables and the lower-castes of our country."
The transcription is taken from Kafila.org, transcribed by Sajan Venniyoor
Interviewer: Onam is celebrated as the state festival of Kerala. What are your views on Onam?
MB Manoj: Where Kerala is concerned, ever since the 10th century (A.D), the dominant classes have established many myths as history. The first myth is that Kerala was created by Parasuraman. This is a great myth in itself, a legend, a blind legend, a fable. They turned this fairy tale into history, so that the origin of Kerala is itself narrated as a fable.
The origin of Kerala is one the foundational myths of India, most of which were established by the upper — Brahminical — castes. According to this myth, Kerala was even then a nation state, with its own great festivals of which Onam is one.
There are two ways in which Dalits see Onam. For one, it is the day on which one of their kings — Mahabali — was murdered. Both in Dalit and tribal folklore, the Dravidian king known as Mahabali was their king. He was a good king, who strove for equality and fraternity among his people. For an Indian king to establish equality fraternity and liberty, he could only have come from the Buddhist tradition. But as a consequence of Aryanization, in the struggle for Aryanization, many kings like Mahabali were slaughtered.
So you have this folk narrative among Dalits, among tribes — the folk-songs of the adivasis in Wayanad, for instance — that their king Mahabali was killed by Vamanan (a dwarf brahmin).
As far as Dalits and adivasis are concerned, Onam is a Black Day, the day their king was murdered, a day of mourning. But for the upper castes, it’s a happy day, a day to celebrate, the day their power was entrenched. With the murder of the most powerful king in the land, they had nothing left to fear.
Having killed the king, they brought the natives, the tribes, into the lowest level of their caste system. They intoduced slavery. Onam marks the age when slavery and the caste system were introduced into Kerala, an age which began with the killing of Maveli (Mahabali).
The historicity is very evident. Mahabali is an Asura, Vamana is Vishnu. Mahabali, the Asura, treated all his subjects as equals but Vamana, the avatar of Vishnu, came and stamped Mahabali into the earth.
So the Dalit’s question is, how can we celebrate as a ‘festival’ the day our king was murdered? How do we celebrate the death of our forefather? For us, it is a day of mourning, not for festivities. But the Brahmins, using their power and influence, especially over the media, have suppressed the real history of Onam and turned it into a festival for all Keralites.
Interviewer: What’s the response of Kerala’s Dalit movement to Onam? What’s their relationship with Onam?
MB Manoj: Take a look at the folk songs of Kerala. There’s one that goes, “Little one, little one, Onam has come, little one / The swing, the swing! There’s a swing for Thiru Onam”, and the song ends, “Fish curry, fish curry – there’s fish curry for Thiru Onam.” Here’s a song that says, among other things, “We want pappadam, we want payasam…” and then goes on to mock the caste-ridden nature of Onam by saying, “We want koori (fish) curry”. Fish curry is never permitted in the Onam feast, which consists only of vegetarian food like pappadam, payasam, bananas etc. The folk song is critical of vegetarian food itself.
Folk songs belong to a very old tradition, and Dalits, it is clear, fall outside the Onam tradition. Another example which shows that Onam is not part of the Dalit tradition is the Temple Entry Proclamation. There’s another song that mocks the Temple Entry Proclamation. It’s about Dalits going to the temple – “Let’s go to the temple. We can touch the Lord and pray to him. There’s the Lord of the Wheel. The Lord smeared with holy ash. See the flower growing from the Lord’s navel.” There are many songs that are critical of Hindu gods like Vishnu, which say that temple entry is not what we need, songs that are critical of Hinduism.
These are not just folk songs. These are the lived experiences of Dalits, their cultural life.
There are many such myths about Onam, but these myths are not celebratory. Rather, they are about how our native king was deceived and killed. In fact, the older members of the Dalit community don’t say that Mahabali was pressed into the ground (by Vamana); they say he was killed and thrown into a mud pit. The traditional image is of Vamana placing his foot on Mahabali’s head and pushing him into the earth. Our Dalit elders say that when he (Mahabali) was sitting in prayer in his palace, his enemies took away his weapons, killed him and got rid of his body, burying it in some unknown place. That is likely to be the actual event on which the myth is based. We come across many such anti-brahminical events and stories.
The Dalit movements from the 70s to the 90s, especially the Indian Dalit Federation and its founders like Kallara Sukumaran and Paul Chirakkarodu, observed Onam as a day of mourning, as the day on which one of our forefathers was murdered. We sit in fast (hunger strike) on this day in town, with posters and banners. This is a fairly common occurrence in Kerala. When I was a pre-degree student in my native Cheruthoni, I too sat on a day’s fast organized by the Indian Dalit Federation and other Dalit groups. This is a major form of resistance to the idea of Onam.
In fact, Dalits and backward communities eat non-vegetarian food on Onam. Even today, 99% of Dalits, backward classes and tribe will eat fish, beef etc. I think it’s the middle and upper classes – the Nairs, the Nambuthiris (Kerala brahmins) – who eat only vegetarian food during Onam. Everyone else eats non-vegetarian food. They don’t consider Onam a festival. At the same time, the government as well as political and cultural hegemons create many artificial festivals using tools like TV, films and magazines and, technically, they co-opt the others into it.
But for this, they (Dalits and backward classes) don’t give any importance to Onam. They don’t see Onam as their state festival, neither historically nor in practice.
---------------------------
Dalit Camera Denounces the Celebration of Onam
Onam is the only national festival of Kerala that has assumed a universal secular character. Other popular festivals like Christmas or Bakrid are closely identified with particular religions like Christianity and Islam. Although many Keralities participate in non-Hindu festivals, Onam assumes its certain universality in terms of its close identification with the ‘essence’ of Kerala. Onam celebrates the return of the mythical asura king Mahabali who was pushed down to the nether world by Vamana, an avatar of Lord Vishnu. Vamana, the diminutive Brahmin boy, asks for three paces of land to Bali and grows so huge that the king has to offer his own head for placing Vamana’s third feet. Mahabali, then, is pushed down to hell from where he is granted return only once a year. This gift of the land to Brahmin myth goes well with other gift of the land myths in Kerala like the Parasurama myth. In this myth Kerala is founded by sage Parasurama who then proceeds to gift this land to Brahmins.
It is highly inaccurate to call Onam as a festival exclusive to Kerala. It is observed as Vamana Jayanthi, or the victory of Vamana, across various places in India. The relative importance of Mahabali could be a recent phenomenon—primarily as a result of increasing lower-caste assertions in Kerala. Dalits and other dispossessed groups of Kerala have, over the years, continued to express their trenchant critiques against the savarna ethos of Onam. If on the one hand the festival celebrates the ostracisation of Bali, on the other, it is marked by savarna idioms like vegetarianism and other upper-caste cultural tropes. The myth of Bali strikes a chord with the marginalised of Kerala, who rereads Bali as a Dalit who is subjugated and dispossessed of his land like them. If Mahatma Jotiba Phule used the term Dalit to denote the suppressed and broken people of his land, he also reread Bali as the king of the indigenous people who were usurped of their land by the invading Aryans. Thus Vishnu, in the form of the Brahmin Vamana, came to represent the usurper of the land of the indigenous people. Similarly, Dalits use terms like Adi Dravida, Adi Andhra, Adi Karnataka etc., across South India, to mark their indigeneity.
The Indian Dalit Federation of Kerala, over the years, has conducted hunger strikes against the alleged cultural violence of Onam. This is also partly due to the resonances that the Onam myth has on their material lives. Thus the Syrian Christians, who claim Brahmin status in Kerala, keep the maximum per capita land holding of 126 cents in Kerala. Upper-caste Hindus, on the other hand, hold 105 cents, and Dalits a meager 27 cents. Dalits are also relegated to colonies numbering about 13,000 in Kerala. These colony formations were the result of the skewed implementation of the celebrated land reforms policies of Kerala. The land reform and the education bills proposed by the first communist government of Kerala faced massive resistances from the Catholic Church and Nair leadership of Kerala that the first government was dismissed by the central government and president’s rule was imposed on 31 July 1959. Known as the ‘liberation struggle’, the fall of the government ensured that the first systematic threat against upper-caste dominance was neutered and watered-down for a conceivable future. It is no accident, therefore, that Onam, until then a largely provincial festival, was elevated to the level of a national festival by the succeeding government led by Pattom A. Thanu Pillai in 1960. For Onam’s national status marked the victory of the upper-caste against the marginalized once again in the history of Kerala. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that a state known for its high levels of social development still harbors 13,687, mostly Tamil, families who depend on manual scavenging for their livelihood. These families represent everything that the state has relegated to its unconscious to construct the secular Malayali identity that Kerala is now famous for. Like Mahabali, Tamil Dalit scavengers visit Kerala households once a year to clean the shit in their septic tanks, only to be relegated back to a hellish life and forgotten for the rest of the year.
Thus, the celebration of Onam marks a symbolic violence in the lives of the marginalised of India. The insistence to continue its celebration is an insistence to celebrate the defeat of the struggles of the untouchables and the lower-castes of our country.
Written by James Miachel for Dalit Camera
-----------------------------
Dalit Movements and Onam: Interrogating Kerala model - 4
MB Manoj talks about Dalit cultural life in Kerala and its relation to onam. There are folk songs which criticise the upper-caste nature of onam and its vegetarianism. Similarly, there are songs which criticise the temple entry proclamation of Kerala. There is a realisation among Dalits that onam is a celebration of the murder of their king by the uppercastes. As part of this realisation, Dalit movements, and especially the Indian Dalit Federation, have observed hunger strikes during onam days. Manoj reminisces participating in one of these hunger strikes in Idukki town in Kerala during his college days. Manoj stresses that most Dalits, tribals and backward castes eat meat during onam and their culture fall outside the cultural milieu of onam. Manoj stresses that most Dalits, tribals and backward castes eat meat during onam and their cultural life fall outside the cultural milieu of onam. Therefore, for the lower-castes, onam is neither a cultural nor a national festival, but a festival of the upper-castes. Video Description: Jentle Varghese
Making of MB Manoj: His short biography
MB Manoj speaks about his short political history which also shaped him. Manoj began his activism when he was a student, with CRC CPI ML, from that time itself he has been engaged in writing and other cultural activities. In the 90's with the dissolution of CRC CPI ML he associated himself with IDF, BSP, Adhasthitha Navodhana Munnani and some other Dalit movements. Formed Dalit Students Movement. At the same time involved in the land struggle , and other activities. Established as a poet with the publication of a poem in the special issue on Dalit literature , in Bhashaposhini a leading literary magazine in Kerala
A Short History of Dalit Movements in Kerala - The Four Stages
MB Manoj poet-activist talks about the history of Dalit movements in Kerala. He divides the Dalit movement broadly into four stages - first stage, social reformist in nature, was led by Ayyankali, Poikayil Appachan and Pampady John Joseph, and lasted until the 1940s. Second stage was the Harijan welfare movements of the 1950s.The third stage led to the establishment of the influential Indian Dalit Federation (IDF) led by Kallara Sukumaran, Paul Chirakkarodu etc. Muthanga and Chengara land struggles comprise the fourth stage led by leaders like C.K Janu and M. Geethanandan. He observes that this stage noted for its iconic Muthanga and Chengara struggles and the formation of the DHRM, has been largely defeated by the state. Due to this defeat, ordinary Dalits haven't been able to successfully group under a strong Dalit movement, resulting in the decline of the Dalit movements of Kerala after 2008.
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