Re posting Sanjeev Sreedharans note (2012)on Ayyankali : The journey from my grandpa’s to our home was exciting. Although it was summer, the walk through the hillside, green with robust tapioca plants, and the cool sea breeze was cheerful. A while later the Venganoor paddy field came into view. While we were turning into the field path, I saw a black, burly man in the front yard of a house and I grabbed my mother’s legs. He asked with a smile, “hey little Nadar, afraid of me?” and then said “he is only a kid”. My father chatted with that man for some time and then we resumed walking. Only years later did I realize that the man was the Harijan reformer Ayyankali. - from the autobiography of R. Krishnan Venganoor, (1988, translated from Malayalam) This is circa 1937. In about eight years, at the heart of European modernity – France - a black man from Martinique would freeze before a white child screaming to its mother, “Look, a negro, Mum, look at the negro. I’m frightened! frightened! frightened! The man, Frantz Fanon, would famously theorize this devastating experience later in his seminal work, Black Skin, White Masks. The differences are readily apparent. The empathy and playfulness with which Ayyankaali, the ‘black, burly man’ responds to the Nadar kid’s fear could say a lot about the subaltern bonding in that brutal caste society, South Travancore of early twentieth century. It’s definitely worth asking: What would have been the tale had Ayyankaali narrated it? What would have been ‘caste’ and ‘blackness’ had Ayyankaali theorized them? What would have been ‘Keralam’ had Ayyankaali historicized it?
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 17:51:31 +0000
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