Section: 8th Day Date:Sep 11,2006

Soft Cover: Beyond Caste

The Grip of Change

P Sivakami
Orient Longman
pp.207, Rs 190

The Grip of Change is an English translation of Pazhaiyana Kazhithalum, considered to be the first
full-length novel by a Dalit woman writer. The author, P Sivakami, is with the Indian Administrative
Service and has so far written four novels and four collections of short stories in Tamil. Pazhaiyana
Kazhithalum, published in 1989, was her first novel.
The novel starts off with Thangam, a ‘low’-caste Parayar woman, who has been cheated out of her
inheritance after her husband’s death by his brothers. Her circumstances force her to acquiesce to
the overtures of Paranjothi Udayar, the ‘high’-caste landowner. Her affair with Paranjothi results in
her getting beaten up by men from his caste. She goes to Kathamuthu’s house in desperation and
cries for justice. Kathamuthu, a domineering man who used to be panchayat president, feels
sympathetic towards her and mobilizes his friends to get justice for Thangam. In the process, the
narrative moves through a series of plots and counter-plots that show how the upper castes try to
bribe the police, boycott the services of the Parayas in order to break their movement and even burn
down their settlement. Finally Thangam is compensated for her humiliation.
The novel throws up a picture of a caste-riven society where the ‘lower’ castes are regularly
discriminated against and humiliated. Yet this is not a novel about caste discrimination only - it goes
out of its way to demonstrate that caste is only one axis along which power is exercised. Kathamuthu
himself later ends up exploiting Thangam sexually. The Grip of Change is critical of Dalit patriarchy
and portrays the change sweeping across society through the characters of Gowri, Kathamuthu’s
daughter, and Chandran.
This volume also carries an English translation of Asiriyar Kuripp, a sequel to Pazhaiyana
Kazhithalum. The sequel sees Gowri, who assumes the persona of the writer of the first book, return
to her village to re-examine the circumstances textualised. She thus serves as Sivakami’s
mouthpiece for defending her stance; the sequel takes up for analysis various charges that could be
leveled against the first book. While it analyses and rubbishes several such charges, it also
acknowledges certain gaps in the original narrative and tries to compensate by problematising
several things that seemed apparent in the first book. The sequel, as CS Lakshmi writes in her essay
included in this volume, takes on the task of deconstructing the novel and is at the same time, an act
of self-flagellation as well as one of creation.
– Sayantan Dasgupta

(The reviewer is Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University)

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=30&id=157616&usrsess=1