I. Introduction
For Lacan, the Real is what any ‘reality’ must suppress; indeed, reality constitutes itself through just this suppression. The Real is an unrepresentable X, a traumatic void that can only be glimpsed in the fractures and inconsistencies in the field of apparent reality.
Mark Fisher
I had decided to begin this essay on censorship by asking the question: “What can we understand about literary pieces, by individuals from underrepresented groups, that appear in English textbooks through what they lack from the ‘original’?” However, two things came to mind while researching this question. One, there is the uncommunicated assumption in the question itself that anything which appears different from its ‘original’ publication is censored. And two, what is the ‘original’?
Here is a quote from the report of Academic Freedom in India after National Education Policy 2020 was announced: “Insofar as academic freedom involves expanding the scope of viewpoints that may be brought into the academy (whether of women, minorities or exploited groups like scheduled castes and tribes), one could invoke Articles 14, 15, and 16 which provide for equality, [and] prohibit discrimination…” (Status Report, 2020). It suggests that texts can be altered and censored by the government by them claiming it is an effort to bring about political and social change. It then becomes important to understand what is the threshold at which it crosses from being a positive provision to silencing groups that might offend hierarchically higher placed groups by their voices.
Karukku is an autobiography written by a Christian Dalit woman, Bama, who is a contemporary writer, and a former nun. An excerpt (or rather, a version) of Karukku appears in the grade twelve English textbook ‘Vistas’. Thus, from here on, when referring to Bama’s version of her autobiography, I will mention it as Karukku; and when referring to the altered version of Karukku in the textbook, I will mention it as ‘We Too are Human Beings’, which is the heading of the excerpt. This is the text/s I have chosen to study for this essay. Karukku has been altered in two ways: sentences and paragraphs have been removed, and few lines and phrases have been revised. I will get into the details of these alterations as we progress through the essay.
I will be arguing that while parading ‘We Too are Human Beings’ as a chapter that educates students about untouchability and its evils, what it actually does is reinforce caste. I.e., it is casteism clothed as anti-casteist education.
II. Censorship and Bama’s Text: Context
To begin with, let us look at the definition of censorship provided by another one of grade twelve textbooks:
We, therefore, need to analyze the [media] by asking the following questions: what is the information I am learning from this report? What information is not being provided? From whose point of view is the article being written? Whose point of view is being left out and why?
(Social and Political Life 78)
This provides us with a useful set of questions to begin our inquiry to not just define censorship for the purposes of this essay, but also understand Bama’s text more through this process.
The first task is to question what the reader is learning from the piece of media. The excerpt is taken from chapter two of Karukku, which is one of the more significant chapters in the book because this is where Bama first mentions untouchability in relation to herself. ‘We Too are Human Beings’ shows us a younger Bama first becoming aware of and learning about untouchability. The chapter starts off by introducing Bama’s inquisitive nature as she walks through the village and gets amused by almost everything, peculiar or not, that is happening around her. This is when she notices that an elder from her caste is awkwardly holding a packet of fried food to give to the landowner. Her elder brother then tells her that the elder man from their community was holding the packet awkwardly so as to keep the food pure, away from his impure touch. The excerpt ends with how getting educated is a way to gain respect for people from Bama’s caste.
Second, what information is not being provided? Bama’s Karukku is a story of betrayal. Every time she gets a glimpse of hope, it is eventually dashed. The tensions are knotted with the inescapability of caste. The first lines of both the chapter and the excerpt are “When I was studying in the third class, I hadn’t yet heard people speak openly of untouchability. But I had already seen, felt, experienced and been humiliated by what it is” (Bama 13). In my introduction, I have mentioned that Bama’s text has been altered in two ways: things have been removed and revised. What these alterations hide have in common, though, is that they either mentioned caste explicitly, or that they showed the severities of caste injustice. For example, Bama’s caste name is Paraya, which in Hindi translates to ‘alienated’. There are lines where Bama exclaims and questions the name ‘paraya’/‘paraichi’: “What did it mean when they called us ‘Paraya’? Had the name become that obscene? But we too are human beings” (Bama 16). This is the (rather significant) line where the excerpt borrows its title from as well. However, the English textbook’s version does not mention the two questions related to the name in the quote.
‘We Too are Human Beings’ ends with Annan, Bama’s elder brother, teaching her the importance of education. He says, “Because we’re born into this community [paraya jati], we are never given any honour or dignity or respect; we are stripped of all that. But if we study and make progress, we can throw away these indignities” (Vistas 99). And then Bama writes: “As Annan had urged, I stood first in my class. And because of that, many people became my friends” (Vistas 100). But here’s what they cut out: “And because of that, many people became my friends, even though I am a Paraichi. It was the same story at school, though. They always spoke in a bad way about people of our caste” (Bama 18). Bama’s effort to show the inescapability is erased. What the readers of the textbook are not taught is that education is not always the way out of caste.
III. Fractures
Before we move onto the next two questions that the quote provides us with, that is: whose point of view is being written, and whose point of view is being left out, we must ask: how is the narrative changing due to the alterations made to the ‘original’ text? To rephrase the question, what can we learn about Karukku from what ‘We Too are Human Beings’ lacks? This might imply that the textbook excerpt is something apart from ‘original’ piece — a duplicate, imitation, or a counterfeit reproduction. But for that, wouldn’t it need to be recognized as something different from the ‘original’? Is it different from the ‘original’?
In the introduction to the chapter in which ‘We Too are Human Beings’ appears, among other things, it states that “The following excerpt has been taken from ‘Karukku’” (Vistas 93). Excerpt is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a short piece taken from a book, film, piece of music, etc.” None of the definitions of the word mention that excerpts may be subject to alterations and editing. What this does mean is that they can be produced out of context, but they cannot be reproduced. When the textbook introduces the chapter by saying that it is only an excerpt, without mentioning anything about the edits, the readers are not aware that it is anything but the unaltered version.
What, then, is the unaltered version if not the original? This is where we must question the legitimacy and reliability of use of the word ‘original’ in this context. ‘We Too are Human Beings’ is not a rewriting of Bama’s second chapter of Karukku. Rather, the former is made out of the latter. The revisions and removals do not amount to creating an unoriginal as much as it amounts to producing of another from its authentic form. Borrowing the terms from Jean Baudrillard, ‘We Too are Human Beings’ is a good attempt at being a faithful production rather than a reproduction. And this is what creates the Lacanian fracture that allows us to study Karukku through ‘We Too are Human Beings’. What the excerpt wants to suppress is indeed what constitutes the potential to politicize the authentic Karukku further.
IV. Distraction
IV.A.
“It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function” (Benjamin). For Walter Benjamin, the value of the ‘authentic’ lies in this aura, which he also says cannot be replicated. When he speaks of the distraction that can be created framing only a particular side of the story, our guiltless ignorance makes a fantasy that does not contain anything that might lead the spectator to the aura. This distraction is unnoticeable. However, what is the threat if for the unsuspecting reader the ‘produced’ and the ‘authentic’ overlap?
The aura, I believe, can only be traced through a series of metonymic revelations. If the produced (‘We Too are Human Beings’) replaces the authentic (Karukku), the discourse on the stakes of this piece of art is corrupted. Let me illustrate how.
The moral of the story of ‘We Too are Human Beings’ is: education is emancipatory; that the underprivileged will have to earn their way to equality through education, since it is a not-so-free ticket to being more acceptable and respected. The ending of the excerpt is altered in a way that focuses much more on the potential acceptance, how one’s own efforts matter, and they leave out the rage that engulfs landowning castes when Annan fearlessly answers that he’s from the Paraya community, and is an M.A. graduate. It also leaves out how for Bama, even after getting good grades and studying hard, the acceptance was conditional. Bama could not escape caste no matter how high she got on the ladder of achievement, independence, or fearlessness. In the same chapter Bama exclaims “Wherever you look, how however much you study, whatever you take up, caste discrimination stalks us in every corner and drives us into frenzy” (Bama 26).
‘We Too are Human Beings’ and Karukku, the produced and the authentic, have rather contradictory things to take away. The latter hints at the possible escapable nature of caste only if one tries, while the other yells out the inescapability. What is also interesting to notice is that the first line of the excerpt is one of the stronger lines about caste and untouchability that is left untouched, and the excerpt fairly shows the struggles of the paraya community against the landowning Naickers (names they have censored out). Thus, successfully painting Bama as a victim, the textbook earns enough woke-brownie-points to parade it as a story against casteism. And while hundreds of Rohith Vemulas write their last letters and take their last breaths, while thousands of students have to face the brunt of being the ‘reservation seat kids’, and while millions of families cannot even dream of stepping inside a classroom, the textbook chapter also manages to say ‘if education is one of your priorities, respect will follow,’ indicating falsely that it is in fact one of the choices that the under-represented communities have. And this all is being communicated through an autobiography of a Dalit woman.
‘We Too are Human Beings’ is not daring to disturb the minds of grade twelve students, it is not aiming to instigate anger for how vile the caste system is, rather what it is doing is palliating caste’s most atrocious carnivorous severities.
IV.B.
‘We Too are Human Beings’ prioritizes a ‘moral of the story’ (here, education and effort is a way for one to earn respect in the society), above making students more aware and conscious citizens of the country. However, the modes of distraction do not stop at the alterations made to Bama’s autobiography.
In English textbooks, there are ‘End of Chapter Questions’ for further discussions on the themes in the respective chapter, designed for encouraging more engagement. In ‘Vistas’ this section of the chapter is called ‘Reading with Insight’. These are quite important for students because a lot of the examinations ask a variant of the end-of-chapter questions. Here are two questions that were asked of Bama’s ‘We Too are Human Beings’: one, do you agree that injustice in any form cannot escape being noticed even by children? and two, Bama’s experience is that of a victim of the caste system; what is her response to her situation? (Vistas 100).
Let me bring back Bama’s first words in the chapter again: she writes even though she hadn’t seen anyone talk of caste injustices, she had “felt, experienced, and been humiliated” (Vistas 96) by it. The distinction between mere ‘noticing’ and living it is an important one to make here, because Bama had no choice but to notice it. Her ‘notice’ of it came with a personal experience. Bama shows that it is unpreventable. The first question refuses to address the important distinction between noticing and experiencing.
The second question objectively states that Bama is a victim. This distracts the readers from the fact that others, then, are in the position of being the perpetrators of the violence, humiliation, and struggles that Bama experiences. And the second half that asks the question ‘what is her response to her situation’ (Vistas 100) also distracts from the fact that it should not be people in Bama’s position who should be responsible for coming out of their misery. It should be the spectators who must go through a process of awareness, consciousness, and guilt. As Sundar Sarukkai observes: “Recognizing this move of supplementation is first of all an act of political recognition and enables specific political action” (EPW 48). Bama is quite conscious of the fact that no matter how hard individuals from her community try to gain in terms of dignity, money, and occupation, just the single label of their caste is a barrier enough for them to always carry shame, and for there to always exist a potential of injustice (Bama 27). The source of these indignities suffered by Bama’s community is the upper-castes, and not the bodies of the untouchables.
V. Criticism: Villain and the Savior
Interpreting is a process that can only happen when one is suspicious of the words on the paper. And trying to interpret, i.e., critique in an attempt to birth an insight, an autobiography can in itself be oppressive. Borrowing from Rita Felski, the lack of ‘critical reading’ does not have to mean that the only other alternative is an uncritical reading.
I questioned for a while, as I read J. M. Coetzee’s ‘Taking Offence’: “if it turned out that some of the forms assumed by the free speech were unfortunate, that was part of the price of freedom,” if censorship involved an act of criticism ((Coetzee 8). Or at least, involves criticism. The evaluation of what the potential power of Bama’s unaltered excerpt from Karukku could expose the students to had to be neutralized, by marking the destabilization and stabilizing it. The step before this is to realize that this piece of literature contains something consequential. Thus, censorship can also be an act of suspicion. It leaves Bama’s chapter as a piece to study to locate injustice, rather than to read it while studying ourselves, to even begin to realize that the source of injustice may not be in Bama.
Bama may be the author of ‘We Too are Human Beings’, but she is not the storyteller. Borrowing from Maurice Blanchot, in the act of taking away her story from her while still leaving the authorship, the censor/the critique becomes one with the object of its critique. It becomes the image of what it fears.
For a moment, let us review the question I asked in the first paragraph of this essay: “What can we understand about literary pieces, by individuals from underrepresented groups, that appear in English textbooks through what they lack from the ‘original’?” The limitations I’d faced was to try and understand the act of censorship as something apart from revisions & removals; and to understand originality. The limitations have now been inquired into. It is now time to realize what can be understood of Karukku through ‘We Too are Human Beings’.
This section of this essay comes close to revealing what the answer to that question might be: the censored version shows exactly what makes Bama’s text powerful. However, I’ve come upon another limitation. ‘We Too are Human Beings’ appears in grade twelve textbooks, as I’ve mentioned several times throughout this piece. But it is pertinent to remember this because as I’d mentioned in the third section, Fractures, that the chapter in ‘Vistas’ does not give away the fact that ‘We Too are Human Beings’ has been altered in any way. It would not be enough for the reader and the educator to know about Karukku, they’d have to be aware of Bama’s story as she tells it to realize the revisions that the chapter has gone through. The ‘we’ in the question I began my essay with is, in fact, very limited.
I could only arrive at claiming all the things I have throughout the essay through severe criticism of ‘We Too are Human Beings’. In doing so, I realized I sympathize with Peter D. McDonald when he claims, “I suspect criticism, as Blanchot understands it, is going to have to become a subject for ‘night classes’, given off campus, and published in dissident blogs…” (Literary Activism 103). The ‘night classes’ he’s referring to, in my opinion, is the act of going beyond a classroom’s four walls, and in doing so, going beyond a prescribed text’s four walls to not accept and be suspicious of the presented reality.
VI. Conclusion
In closing, let us now try to answer the remaining question that the quote about censorship asks us, from the grade twelve textbook: “Whose point of view is being left out and why?” In ‘We Too are Human Beings’, neither is Bama’s point of view being left out in delivery, and nor is the censor’s. Nonetheless, the student suffers all the losses: the censoring isolates the reader from the enquiry, either into the text or themself. It presents the story in a neatly packed wrap with ‘end of chapter questions’ attached to it, along with some classroom discussions, which gives the reader the fantasy of satisfactory criticism. There is no Lacanian fracture in sight for the reader to realise the distance between the Real and the reality in the information presented to them. Alienated from both the power and the powerless (either could be Bama or the censor body), in the end, the lack is deposited onto the reader.
…information is simply the paradoxical confusion of the event and the medium, and the political uncertainty which ensues.
— The Perfect Crime, Jean Baudrillard
Glossary
- Lack
a condition of not having any or enough of something, esp. something necessary or wanted - Censor
to prevent part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons - Original
existing since the beginning, or being the earliest form of something - Authentic
if something is authentic, it is real, true, or what people say it is - Produced
to make something or bring something into existence - Alter
to change something, usually slightly, or to cause the characteristics of something to change - Distraction
something that prevents someone from giving their attention to something else - Criticism
the act of giving your opinion or judgment about the good or bad qualities of something or someone, especially books, films, etc.
Citations and References
Bama. Karukku: Second Edition. Translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Baudrillard, Jean, 1929–2007. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Walter Benjamin, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.html.
Chaudhuri, Amit, editor. Literary Activism. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Coetzee, J. M. Giving Offence: Essays on Censorship. The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Fazili, Gowhar, and Nandini Sundar. “Academic Freedom In India: A Status Report, 2020.” The India Forum, https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/academic-freedom-india.
Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2009.
“Memories of Childhood.” Vistas: Supplementary Reader in English for Class XII (Core Course), National Council of Educational Research and Training, New Delhi, 2018, pp. 96–100.
SARUKKAI, SUNDAR. “Phenomenology of Untouchability.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 44, no. 37, 2009, pp. 39–48, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25663542.
