We were travelling back from campaigning during the 2017 Karnataka assembly election. Unhappy about a certain candidate from our party, and not satisfied with explanations that I had heard, I turned to him: “Devanoora saar (thus spoken, ‘sir’ becomes a kannada word), what’s the matter? You don’t need to be diplomatic. You can now afford to be truthful.” From his front seat in the car, he turned around and faced me: “I am always truthful.” I don’t recall the rest of what he said, but this has stayed with me. This was not a retort, nor a boast, nor a reprimand. Just a plain statement: I am truthful. Just as someone would say: I am an early riser.
That is Devanoora Mahadeva for you. An iconic Kannada literary figure, a towering public intellectual and a revered political activist in Karnataka. Shy and self-effacing to a point that you begin to wonder why he is in public life. He has a knack of disappearing from any public attention. As you suddenly notice his absence from the dais, someone helpfully explains: he may have stepped out for a smoke. Invariably and annoyingly late, even by my standards, Mahadeva is always a little out of sorts, a bit disheveled. His is not a carefully designed carelessness of a bohemian poet. It is just that his life has a different rhythm and radically different set of priorities than you would imagine a famous man to have.
Oh, I forgot to say, he is Dalit. But now don’t rush to call him a Dalit writer or a Dalit activist. That would be a serious misrecognition, a category mistake. We don’t describe Shekhar Gupta as a bania intellectual, notwithstanding his touching, unadulterated faith in the markets. I am not described (hopefully) as an OBC intellectual, despite my strident position on reservations or caste census. Similarly, calling Devanoora Mahadeva a Dalit intellectual won’t tell us much about him, except his social origins, the social milieu that he writes about, and the cultural resources he draws upon. Unlike many Dalit activists, he refuses to play the angry Dalit and limit his horizons to one section of humanity. He aims at nothing less than truth in its entirety.
In doing so, he refuses to accept the age-old division of intellectual labour that has continued seamlessly in our times. The outcastes, modern Dalits and OBCs can at best aspire to be their own advocates, in-charge of a slice of truth. Brahmins are meant to be non-partisan arbiters of truth, transcending their accident of birth, extending their empathy to everyone, including the Shudras. Mahadeva defies these roles and extends interpretative charity to everyone, including the upper caste characters in his fiction. His politics embraces entire humanity and beyond, including nature.
Mahadeva’s ‘truthful’ critique of RSS
These days Devanoora Mahadeva is in the news. In the Kannada literary circles he needed no introduction — you don’t need one if your fan club includes A.K. Ramanujan, U.R. Ananthamurthy, D.R. Nagaraj, and Sheldon Pollock. But this time his fame has finally hit the Delhi-based ‘national’ media, including the Hindi newspapers. His small book, a 64-page tract for our times, is creating waves.
Within the first month of its publication, RSS: Aaala Mattu Agala [RSS: Its Depth and Breadth] has sold over 1 lakh copies. Its English, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and, hopefully, Hindi translations are on. [Full disclosure: I am involved in the publication of its Hindi version.] True to his faith in decentralisation, he opted for open source publication. Several publishers in Karnataka were allowed to bring out the book simultaneously. Groups of students and homemakers have pooled money to print their own copies. The author asks for no royalties.
What accounts for the instant success of this book? I turned to my friend Professor Chandan Gowda, a sociologist deeply invested in the cultural history of Karnataka, especially the socialist tradition that Mahadeva comes from. The timing matters, he said, what with the intensely charged communal atmosphere in the state. So does the subject: very few writers, even the progressive critics of the BJP, are willing to take the RSS head on. There is a spiral of silence. That is why this forthright critique of the RSS has grabbed attention.
Above all, Gowda reminds me, the book works because of its author. Everyone who knows Kannada knows that Devanoora Mahadeva is truthful. Everyone knows that he had turned down the coveted Nrupatunga Award in 2010 and refused the nomination to Rajya Sabha in the 1990s. He has also returned his Padma Sri, and Sahitya Akademi award in 2015. He is not a prolific writer. All his literary output is just about 200 pages. His essays are short, his speeches even shorter, usually written, that he just reads out without any effect. But Kannadigas hang on to every word he says. His words are not for sale. You cannot bend him. You cannot sweet-talk him. Even his critics do not point fingers at him.
Yet his truth is not that of an evidence-driven historian or a data cruncher. His critique of the RSS is not a replay of the secular ideological polemics. Professor Rajendra Chenni, a student of English and Kannada literature and his old associate, reminded me that Devanoora Mahadeva weaves his truth through fables and folklores, through myths and metaphors, breaking open the prison of ‘realism’ that had trapped much of Dalit literature.
New language for Indian secularism
This is precisely what he does in this book. Although much of the book is about exposing the truth of the politics of hatred — the myth of Aryan origins, the hidden agenda of caste dominance, the attack on constitutional freedoms, institutions and federalism, and the economic policy that works for crony capitalists — he weaves his message through stories. He draws upon the “Naale Baa” [Come Tomorrow] ritual, where people inscribe these words to ward off the witch that might knock your door imitating the voice of a kin. [The closest I can think of in Hindi is the adage “Aaj nagad, kal udhaar” inscribed on shop counters to ward off credit seekers]. Shouting demons are around, out to destroy our civilisation, and they have hidden their prana in a bird seven seas away (similar to the story about a king whose life resided in a parrot), the book warns us. We must inscribe “nalle baa” on the front door of our homes, just as our ancestors did.
Devanoora Mahadeva provides a new language, rich in its depth and breadth, to the culturally anaemic politics of Indian secularism. His book breaks down the divide between creative and political writing, just as his novella Kusumabale had breached the divide between prose and verse. Unlike much of politically committed literature, he does not use his creative genius for political rhetoric, to embellish truth through floral exaggeration. He takes to creative-political writing as a path to discovery of truth. He does not use the language of political theory or high constitutionalism to combat the politics of hate. He speaks to people in their language, their metaphors and through their cultural memories. This is what secular politics needs to do today.
I first heard about Devanoora Mahadeva from my friend, the late D.R. Nagaraj, some three decades ago. Comparing Dalit literature in Kannada with that in Marathi and Hindi at that time, he said rather mischievously: “Theirs is more Dalit than literature, ours is first literature and then Dalit.” Over the years I have come to understand the layers of meaning embedded in that remark, thanks to my friendship and political fellowship with Devanoora Mahadeva. I have come to realise that “Dalit” or “literature” or its conjunction does not capture the political, ethical and indeed spiritual quest that Mahadeva’s words embody. India needs to read this message of Devanoora Mahadeva today more than ever before: “Divisiveness is a demon and unity is God.”
[Yogendra Yadav is among the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. He tweets @_YogendraYadav. Views are personal.]
(Edited by Prashant)
