TAMIL
Novel on class struggle
P. SUNDARESAN
SURANGAM: Ku. Chinappa Bharathi. Bharathi Puthakalayam, 7, Elango Street, Teynampet, Chennai-600018. Rs. 90.
CHINNAPPA BHARATHI is known for the depth of his novels in Tamil based on the class struggle. Translations in English, French and other native tongues have put him in the limelight. Impressed with the author's concern for the underdog, the late Prakash Chaudhury, MP from Asansol in West Bengal apprised Chinnappa Bharathi of the appalling conditions of the coal mines in his area .
The end result was this Asansol-centred blood-curdling novel on the life-and-death struggle carried on at the coalface. Effective interaction with the labour force was rendered possible with noted linguists like Kolkata S.Krishnamurthy joining the fray. All this is conveyed in the preface.
A mine of information on the oppressive regime in coalmines, both under public and private sectors, till the proclamation of Emergency in 1975 is available in the 25-chapter novel. No probe by any watchdog committee could have done a better job.
Just a few of the oppressive features tellingly brought out in this fiction, with numerous characters, anecdotes, incidents and striking metaphors: occupational hazard; inhuman treatment and drastic cut in salaries on flimsy grounds; child labour; exploitation of the helpless by usurers and merchants; grabbing of land from the poor; suicidal tendencies; the bane of untouchability and the plight of the Dalits, and a tragedy of epic proportions.
Above all, the indomitable courage of a Dalit in forging a labour union, taking the dissident group also along — he believed in the safety of numbers — and preferring to remain a bachelor to cut the Gordian knot in coal mines has raised him to the level of a dynamic Karma Yogi. What else can be said of one who had undergone untold sufferings in the hands of the management and yet remained steadfast in his mission?
His profile will tear up one's heart. Maybe he believed in the dictum, `Hope is the parent of faith' - to quote from C.A.Bartol's Radical Problems.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Book Review
