The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Dalit girl child's future `bleak'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 07, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Dalit girl child's future `bleak'

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JAN. 6. Dalit women are a long way off from entering the mainstream, oppressed as they are by the `upper castes' and by their own men, M. Anandakrishnan, chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Madras Institute of Developmental Studies.

Receiving the first copy of a translation of `Sangati: Events,' a novel that traces the life of a Tamil Dalit woman, Dr. Anandakrishnan said the Dalit community should stop discriminating among their own sub sects. Dalit women had a tougher fight to wage than other women and must struggle harder to break away from the system if they are to gain entry into the `knowledge society'. "Our society's structure and organisation" made it more difficult for Dalit women, he said.

Despite the `Education for all' motto, the future of Dalit girl children was not promising as they possessed fewer skills. This also affected the children's ability to be assertive.

Commending Bama, the author of `Sangati,' Dr. Anandakrishnan said that those who did science and technology should also read literature. "Bama protests against the political and social injustice in society."

Nirmala Lakshman, Joint Editor of The Hindu, who released the book said that though newspapers did not have much time for lasting literature, they tried to set aside space for "other voices than those we hear in a rush." She said `Sangati' was a touching reflection of a Dalit woman, particularly in the feudal set up. On the translation of literary works and the space given to them in the Literary Review section of the newspaper, she said, "it helped us understand that the core of Indian life was in translation."

Ms. Bama read a chapter from the Tamil version of the book and Lakshmi Holmstrom, the English translator, read out the translated version at a programme organised by the Oxford University Press India.

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