Government Brahmana

Book excerpt: Government Brahmana is the English translation of the Kannada autobiography of Aravind Malagatti. The autobiographical narrative is in the form of a series of episodes from the author s childhood and youth. These episodes function as what G.N. Devy calls epiphanic moments in a caste society. The author reflects on specific instances from his childhood and student days that illustrate the normative cruelty practiced by caste Hindu society on dalits. We encounter all the tropes of (male) dalit life: is isolation in school where even drinking water is an ordeal; life in the village where dalits perform the filthiest tasks but are denied access to common wells, lakes, where they cannot step into shops and therefore have their purchases thrown at them, where they have to cut their own hair because no barber would touch it; consuming dead-animal meat and innards; doomed love affairs with `upper caste women. A painful, disturbing, thought-provoking memoir, this text is conversely full of vitality, even tenderness. In its structure and purpose as a series of notes towards a dalit autobiography Government Brahmana appears to be anticipated by Ambedkar s own autobiographical sketches.