VOL.

1 ISSUE 3 AUGUST 2014 ISSN 2349-5650

LITERARY QUEST
An International, Peer-Reviewed, Open Access, Monthly, Online Journal of English Language and Literature

Text as Resistance: Kalyana Rao’s Untouchable Spring as an

Alternative History

Mr. Yunush Ahamed Mohamed Sherif

Researcher, Department of Cultural Studies, The English and Foreign

Languages University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Abstract
“Awareness of the changing power relations seems to have dawned first
upon the lower rungs of the hierarchy” – while talking about the rise of political
consciousness among the people during the colonial period, G. Aloysius points
out that the lower caste people were the first who tried to change the power
structure of the society utilising the colonial opportunity. From this point of
view, the present paper will look at G. Kalyana Rao’s Untouchable Spring as a
record of the lower caste uprising, as an alternative history of generations of
oppressed people. The uniqueness of the Untouchable Spring – the difficulty in
categorizing it into a particular genre, will be utilised in order to substantiate the
point on how a text as such can be transformed as a resistance. Apart from the
text, the characters within the text and the events described in the text are all
examples of everyday forms of resistance by Dalits. The present paper will try to
analyse the various forms of resistance portrayed in the text.
Keywords
Dalit Literature, Alternative History, Untouchable Spring, G. Kalyana Rao.
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Alternate history or alternative reality is a genre of fiction consisting of

stories that are set in worlds in which one or more historical events unfolds
differently from how it did in the reality. It is also called allohistory (literally ‘other
history’). Alternate history ‘concerns itself with history's turning out differently
than what we know to be true’. Alternate histories can act as a form of counter-
memory through which the minorities or the suppressed people bring out their
version of the history which is hidden from the mainstream. This genre of
literature was used by many radical writers around the world. Dalit writers have
used this extensively during the contemporary period and Kalyana Rao also has
used the same technique in his work Untouchable Spring.
History is a process of recording the events and important activities of a
particular community for the future descendants of that community. Though
this practice of maintaining historical records is a fairly recent phenomenon in
Indian context, when this activity came to practice, a few privileged people
utilized it and recorded their own history and their version of history of other
people too. The upper caste people of India, when they recorded the history, they
recorded it from their perspective and they did not even recognize Dalits and
their lives worthy enough to be recorded. So, until recently, there was no record
of the lives and other events of the Dalit community except their statistical
records. At the dawn of the 20th century, people from the Dalit community
started writing and they told their own version of history. This history was
different from that of the mainstream history and was shocking to many people
and many people refused to believe it. But the Dalits claims it as the
authenticated history of them. The work that I have chosen, Untouchable Spring
is one of the finest examples of the alternative history put forth by the Dalit
community. Thus, in this paper I have tried to point out the many uniqueness
of Untouchable Spring from a theoretical perspective and its contribution to the
corpus of Dalit literature which is gaining popularity in the contemporary world.
In his seminal work Nationalism without a Nation in India, G. Aloysius
traces the emergence of the nation and nationalism in the Indian context. In
this text he argues that the lower caste people were the first who tried to change
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the power structure of the society utilising the colonial opportunity. Because of
their continuous oppression by the upper caste people in the form of caste
hierarchy, when they saw a way to escape from their present state they tried to
utilise the opportunity. Aloysius points out that “awareness of the changing
power relations seems to have dawned first upon the lower rungs of the
hierarchy” (54). He categorises the political consciousness among the lower
caste groups into three types, 1) Against the ideology of ascriptive hierarchy, 2)
Fleeing the stranglehold of caste slaver and 3) Against caste-feudal land
relations. With this theoretical background, the present paper will look into the
novel Untouchable Spring in order to locate the various political consciousness
that the author is depicting. This paper will also focus on the technique through
which the author is making the text itself as a resistance.
Untouchable Spring is the life history of a family which is integrated with
the socio-cultural history of the Telugu Dalit Community. Through the mode of
oral storytelling, the author narrates the saga of generations of Dalit lives and
the art forms that plays a major role in their lives. The story begins in a small
village called ‘Yennala Dinni’ and the narrator is Ruth who is recollecting her
husband Ruben’s tales of his forefathers and their struggle for equality and
dignity. Five generations of Dalits form the context of this novel, starting from
Yellanna, his grandfather and followed by his father Sivaiah, his son Immanuel,
and his grandson Jessie. Being born as a Dalit all of them without exception
face severe oppression. Time and context might have changed many things but
the plight of Dalit community remains the same, and still they have to fight for
the self-identity and self-respect in the highly oppressive social system. The fight
was taken to the rest of the people of Dalit community by means of traditional
dance forms, songs and plays, which are imbibed with the reality of their
everyday experiences to which the mainstream arts keep a blind eye. Kalyan
Rao’s Untouchable Spring is the story of those arts which tries to bring out the
pain in the hearts of Dalits, who are deprived of human rights and dignity in the
society.

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This work is an outstanding record of the life of Dalits. By combining

many generations of Dalit lives, Kalyana Rao have weaved an epic for the Dalits.
Throughout the work he criticizes Gods, who are supposed to be the creators of
human beings with caste difference; Manu, who wrote the Manusmriti which is
used by the Brahmins to suppress the lower caste people; the upper caste people,
who oppress Dalits. He asks many questions like, “what is literature?” Whether
the imaginary writings of the upper caste people which has no life in it or the
writings of the lower caste people which is very much alive and related to their
day to day lives and sufferings. Though many other Dalit writers have criticized
the upper caste people and their atrocities, no one has severely criticised the
canonical writings, which is again determined by the upper caste people, as
Kalyana Rao does in his work.
Untouchable Spring can be called a novel or an autobiography or a
historical novel or a social biography or an epic. It is a novel, because this work
narrates the story of at least five generations of people. It is an autobiography,
because of its connection with the author’s personal life and his ancestors. It is
a historical novel, because of the parallel between the incidents in the novel and
real history. It is a social biography, because it necessarily talks about the Dalit
community and their social and personal life. It is an epic, because of the grand
style which the author employs to narrate that make his characters great heroes.
The narrative technique which the author uses in this work is interesting:
Reuban has narrated the story to Ruth and after his death, she recollects that
story and she narrates it to the readers.
As an autobiography, this work has a close resemblance with K.A.
Gunasekaran’s The Scar, in which Gunasekaran talks about the arts and artists
of Dalits. Gunasekaran who was very much interested in folk arts was not
encouraged or not given permission to perform in temples because he was a
Dalit. Similarly, in Untouchable Spring, the malas and madigas were not allowed
anywhere nearby the performance stage and Yellanna was beaten up and was
forced to run away because he came very near to the stage. Later when Yellanna
and Naganna were performing those plays among Dalits, the upper caste people
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did not like it and the reason given by Atchireddy and Karanam was that they
should not call the pedda mala and pedda madiga to the stage, was just a silly
reason to stop them from performing the play. One more incident which is
equally silly is the origin story of the malas and madigas where the gods curse
them to be lower caste till eternity just because Jambavanta and Chennaiah
didn’t divide the meat of the Kamadhenu into two and putting a defiled piece of
meat into the cooking. If this is such a big crime to punish them for eternity,
then what is the punishment for the gods who first of all got the idea of eating
the meat of Kamadhenu? Kalyana Rao also criticizes Manu for writing the
Manusmriti which is equally horrible. Kalyana Rao calls him ‘half human, half
animal’, ‘the terrible distorted Manu’, who created the rules of the caste system.
In this novel one can note that the earliest political consciousness of the
Malas and Madigas against the caste-feudal land relations. The earliest heroes
that the author is talking about in this work is Narigadu and Mataiah. Narigadu
and Mathaiah were slaughtered because they dared to raise their voice against
their landlords. The next step of political consciousness among the characters
in the novel is their effort to flee the stranglehold of caste slavery. Even after
many generations of Dalits sacrificing their lives for the betterment of their
future, they felt it very difficult to escape the stranglehold of caste slavery. So
the only solution was to leave Hinduism behind which was founded on caste
hierarchy and to convert to Christianity which they felt was egalitarian in nature.
But very soon they realised that even within Christianity caste hierarchy is
prevalent. Therefore the author finally points out that an all-out fight against
the ideology of ascriptive hierarchy is the only way to do away with the problems
of Dalits and he also points out that armed struggle might be the way ahead.
Another interesting thing about this novel is the way women characters
are treated. The author does not stop at making the men as great heroes, but
he ventures to make Dalit women also their equivalent. The characters like
Boodevi, Subhadra, and other silent characters such as Mary Suvarta are as
brave as the men, and without their support their men would not have achieved
greatness. As mentioned by the translators, though the author gives importance
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to the female characters, it cannot be considered as a story told by women for

women. But this work is to some extent different from a canonical male writing
in the sense that in this work the women characters are portrayed as
independent and self-willed. Even if their husbands are not there with them
they can manage their own life and they can look after their family too. This is
evident in characters like Subhadra and Mary Suvarta. We can find similarity
between this work and Bama’s Sangati in which the author talks about the
difference between the upper caste women and Dalit women. She says that the
lower caste women have more freedom than the upper caste women and this is
evident in Untouchable Spring also.
The author does so many things in this novel and one such notable thing
is its criticism of the literary canon and the upper class art forms. Throughout
the novel the author asks why the Dalits are not allowed to speak out, why their
art and literature are not being considered worthy enough to be included in the
literary canon. The ‘mala bairagi’ dies of hunger, but would the same thing have
happened if he were from the upper caste? The irony is that, leave alone
appreciating their art form, the Dalits are not even allowed to perform their art
form among themselves. Their art forms and their literatures are not being
recorded because the Dalits were not allowed to get education and the educated
people didn’t consider them as worthy enough to record. He also adds that this
literature is a kind of revolt against the upper caste people and because of this
reason the upper caste people either ignored it or did not accept it as literature
at all. The author continuously criticizes this mentality and forces the literary
historians to reconsider their history and literature.
The author can be called as the most radical of the Dalit writers because
throughout his work he talks about the struggle of the Dalits to make their life
better but their attempts fail because of the atrocities of the upper caste people
and their narrow minded nature. Throughout the work, he repeats the sentence
“a lot to be dug, a lot to be filled” many times in order to insist upon the need for
change. So, at the end the author suggests the Dalits to join the armed struggle
in order overcome their problems. He has created characters who had become
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naxalite and he himself propagates that he is a naxalite. Though other Dalit

writers have struggled hard for their betterment, none of them have turned
towards the armed struggle or they had not mentioned it openly. This work tries
to give a solution to the problems of Dalits by suggesting armed struggle. The
author criticizes Gandhi and his use of the term ‘harijan’, which he says is
nothing better than the mala and madiga.
Untouchable Spring shows that the Dalit community has moved a step
forward in their struggle for emancipation. As caste-Hindus did not treat Dalits
as their equals, they converted to Christianity. Even in Christianity Dalits were
oppressed. A parallel can be seen in Bama’s Karukku.
The problem of translation is one that is being discussed again and again
in the context of Dalit literature. The idea, that none other than a Dalit can write
Dalit literature, can also be applied to translations. One more thing that is to be
considered in the field of Dalit translation is that, when a Dalit writes in her/his
own mother tongue, they use the colloquial language which they use in their
day-to-day speech. Instead of using the standard written language they use their
colloquial day-to-day language because they want to overthrow the upper caste
domination in the field of literature also. The Dalits use their dialect as a tool of
resistance. But in translation this tool of resistance is lost and one of the major
purposes of Dalit literature is itself compromised.
In this work, the author also talks about English and English people. He
says that the Brahmins, who were saying that everything was there in the Vedas,
suddenly changed and saw everything under the feet of the white men. He
criticizes that the upper caste people simply imitated the white men and started
learning their language too.
As an alternative history, Untouchable Spring is unique and contains many
historical records that is not found in the popular histories today. The great
famine occurred during the year 1977-78 which destroyed many lives of the
Madras presidency. The Buckingham canal work was extended in order to help
the people. This is the recorded history, but there is another side to this history
which is not recorded officially. Even in the canal work, Dalits were not allowed
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because all the workers and even the officials were from upper caste and they
did not want Dalits working along with them. This detail is recorded in the
church records and Kalyana Rao brings them to the light. This is one of the
millions of incidents which were left out or manipulated in the official historical
records of India. That is the reason I call Untouchable Spring as an alternative
history which tries to foreground the history which many people don’t know
except a few who were directly involved in them. The term ‘alternative history’
may give a derogatory sense as it connotes that there is already a history which
is partly true and authentic and the alternative history will add the missing piece
to that history and in that process will create a new history, instead. The term
alternative history in the present paper means the part of history that is left out
and which needs to be recorded and authenticated.

Works Cited
Aloysius, G. Nationalism without a Nation in India. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2011. Print.
Bama. Sangati. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.
Gunasekaran, K. A. The Scar. Chennai: Orient Blackswan, 2009. Print.
Rao, G. Kalyana. Untouchable Spring. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2010.
Print.

MLA (7th Edition) Citation:

Sherif, Yunush Ahamed Mohamed. “Text as Resistance: Kalyana Rao’s

Untouchable Spring as an Alternative History.” Literary Quest 1.3 (2014):
62-69. Web. DoA.

DoA – Date of Access

Eg. 23 Aug. 2015. ; 05 April 2017.

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