How Fares the Well? A Study of the Interstices of the Welfare State: Bharati Sarabhai’s The Well of the People (1943),Mahasweta Devi’s Jal/ Water (1976),and Vinodini’s Daaham/ Thirst (2005)

Abstract

The essay examines India’s journey from “colonialism” to “post-colonial awareness.” It also explores the ideals of the Republic and their fulfillment as seen in India as a nation founded on the principles of a welfare state. Discussion of three selected texts explores the connections between water management and social welfare to instantiate the obstacles in India’s aspirations as a functioning welfare state as well as narrativizing resistance built in the interstices of society against caste hegemony and power politics. One instance is access to or denial of the life-sustaining element, water. Interestingly, Rabindranath Tagore’s 1922 play Muktadhara/Free Current conveyed a percipient warning about politics of control over water. The chosen texts, Sarabhai’s The Well of the People, Mahasweta Devi’s Jal/Water, and Vinodini’s Daaham/Thirst, besides highlighting the politics of “hydro power,” also portray the deep and mystical relationship between water, ecology, and gender. I argue that India as a welfare state would obviously benefit from gender sensitization of its developmental policies, especially regarding water management if women’s views are taken into serious consideration.

India completed 67 years as a Republic on January 26, 2017. This is not a long period in temporal terms. However, the journey appears decidedly longer if one takes into consideration the history of the struggle against imperialism when the nation was “imagined,” the seeds of nationhood were sown, and the concept of the republic took shape. The Indian Freedom Struggle raged from 19th century. The vision of a free India was articulated by Sri Aurobindo (1997) thus,

A nation is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process . . . One of oldest races and greatest civilizations on this earth . . . is seeking to lift itself for good into an organized national unity . . . Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity—this is spirit of Nationalism we profess and follow. (pp. 22, 27)

To be free of foreign shackles and demand self-governance, Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s fiery words “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it!” exhorted people against the country’s political and economic plight under colonialism. He wanted favorable conditions for Indians to learn to govern themselves as a nation-state. Swaraj, for M. K. Gandhi, was not an expedient political term, but meant control from within, disciplining of the self. He believed Swaraj leads to Sarvodaya or comprehensive progress and holistic upliftment. Gandhi highlighted the ethical aspect of political and public life that guided the formulation of the Fundamental Rights charter in the Indian Constitution. Gandhi’s significant contribution was also the deployment of “dissent” as political awareness “primarily intended to promote social change” (see Gandhi, 1938/1984; Chatterjee, 1986; Bleiker, 2000).

The term republic is generally applied to a nation-state where the government’s political power depends on the consent, however nominal, of the people governed. As a political concept, res publica makes citizens stake-holders in the governing process at one level or another, ensuring that they are not indifferent or unaffected by the decisions taken by those in charge. From this political condition, an inference is often drawn that only those people who need not struggle for daily subsistence so have sufficient time to spare, become politically active. In other words, the wealthy are often seen as the class establishing a republican form of government.

Apprehension of such class-dominated polity was apparent in ideologues like E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker or “Periyar” (1879-1973) who sought to defend the Rights of Dravidians against Aryans, especially Brahmins, and organized the “Self-Respect Movement” for Dravidian Upliftment; Jyotirao Phule (1826-1890) who proclaimed the dawn of a new age for the downtrodden and wanted to reconstruct the social order on the basis of social equality and justice for shudras and ati-shudras (lowest in caste hierarchy); and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) who fought against the caste system and declared that “it is wrong to say that the problem of the untouchables is a social problem . . . [this] is fundamentally a political problem of minority versus majority groups” (1946, p. 190) and launched a revolutionary movement for the liberation and advancement of Dalits. The Periyar–Phule–Ambedkar thrust represents an effort to ensure a more inclusive representation in the political body of the “imagined” republic. Perhaps the reluctance of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to join the Congress can be interpreted as minority community’s fear of majoritarian domination in the formulation of a nation-state. Thus, one becomes aware of the differences, complexities, and debates during the Swadeshi Movement and the Freedom Struggle which governed the conceptualization of the relationship between nation, culture, and identity. Sensitive to the political nuances of the time, Rabindranath Tagore cautioned against ideas built around singular identities because, as he explained in his monograph Nationalism (1917), the social and the national must not be regarded as discrete. He emphasized that social composition determines a nation’s republican character. Therefore, the task before the formulators of the Constitution of India would be to create a liberatory document to strengthen and validate the country’s heterogeneity by engaging with the issues of social-cultural inequalities and exclusions, addressing them, and thereafter making adequate provisions for their resolution in the text of the new Republic.

Sensitivity and experience deriving from the Independence Movement framed the Directive Principles of State Policy, enshrined in Part IV of the Indian Constitution, defining rights, duties, entitlements, and social justice that a welfare state would be committed to providing food, clothing, housing, education, and medical relief for citizens in need. In 2009, Supreme Court’s directive to guarantee education to all and a midday meal to all schoolchildren led to the Right to Education Act being passed. The welfare state could hence be expected to monitor satisfactory outcomes in social policies to positively and directly affect overall human development.

Yet, anyone who knows India would immediately interject that despite social welfare schemes launched by successive governments, any social indicator would easily prove that the welfare state model has had a disappointing record in terms of implementation of the schemes for the disprivileged and marginalized sectors. Problematic management, corruption, and/or mismanagement of funds are very often the reasons for failure. Indeed, as Upamanyu Chatterjee’s (2000) protagonist Agastya Sen, an administrative officer in the satirical novel Mammaries of the Welfare State discovers, the Welfare State is “a mystery within and without and getting things done is pretty much last on the list of everyone’s priorities,” reminding one that “Self-interest is the only commandment . . . the rest is waffle” (p. 147).

Admittedly, the transformation of latent thought into manifest content is a complex process, but what could possibly cause such mismatch between the vision of a well-meaning republic and the reality of the life of its citizens? This essay attempts to read three texts which span the colonial and the “postcolonial” divide to emphasize that the passage is not an unproblematic one. The colonial times have passed but neo-colonial practices of subjugation and denial remain. The texts appear distant from each other—one written in English and published in 1943, another written in Bengali and published in 1986, the third in Telugu appeared in 2005. Yet, they seem to reflect each other’s words/worlds and together instantiate sociohistorical continuities and coherence. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1986) words,

The text lives only when it comes into contact with another text (with context). Only at this point of contact between texts does a light flash . . . joining a given text in a dialogue. We emphasize that this is a dialogic contact between texts. . . (p. 162)

These texts are explored through the lens of gender and caste with the hope of finding some answers about the militating issues in the colliding zones of their dialogic contact. The comparative perspective suggested here is founded upon the conception of social life as discursively constituted, produced, and reproduced in situated acts of speaking and other signifying practices or utterances.

The first text, Bharati Sarabhai’s (1943) The Well of the People, a verse drama published in 1943, is accorded a special place in the literary history of India as the first play written in English by a woman. She explains the play was inspired by her experience of the Haridwar kumbh mela in the spring of 1938 with its “phenomenal gathering of people” (1) and a true incident reported in the journal Harijan about an old village woman. Sarabhai is a Gandhian and like eminent novelists Bhabani Bhattacharya and Mulk Raj Anand allows her faith in the Gandhian principles of self-truth, self-reliance, and service to permeate her writing. The text bears the mark of the colonial yoke very clearly. The second text, Mahasweta Devi’s (1997 rpt) play Jal or Water, published in Bengali in 1976 and in translation in 1986, explores the complicated relationship of the mainstream and the marginalized “untouchable dome” community and its many deprivations through the machinations of the “empowered” when their caste is threatened by the “untouchable” Maghai Dome known as a water-diviner. He is summoned by the upper caste to trace water, but once the subterranean stream is located and a well is dug, his caste is not allowed to draw water from it for fear of pollution as they eat “fowl and pigs.” The third text, Vinodini’s (2005) Daaham meaning Thirst, a Telugu play published in translation in 2005, is accorded a special place in Indian literary history being among the first plays written by a Dalit woman. Vinodini is a social activist and her activism lends power to the language of daily usage deployed in the play to depict the deprivations and oppression of the downtrodden Dalit. The text interrogates India’s claim of being a “postcolonial” state when internal colonization and “neo-colonial” mind-set prevails.

Notably, the three texts share another significant feature: the role of life-generating element “water” manipulated and controlled as an instrument of oppression, hinting at future machinations of the politics of hydropower (see Baruah, 2012). The texts suggest a deep, almost metaphysical, relationship of water with women and this bonding acquires a gendered subalternity. Although subalternity is associated with the lowest socioeconomic classes and castes, the texts depict the social role of women under patriarchy that relegates all classes of women to subalternity. Theorists of subaltern studies like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Ranajit Guha note that the treatment of gender often transcend class/caste, especially regarding common concerns such as water, food, shelter, security, and experience of violence. The trans-class/caste awareness makes gender evident in various ways. Most significantly for this essay, the selected texts emphasize the connections between gender and water as complex, multifaceted, and heterogeneous reflected in the struggles of those living in the interstices of the welfare state. Invariably in India as elsewhere, activism for environmental and water conservation has been led by women, for instance, the Chipko Movement, Silent Valley and Save the Forest Movements, Navadanya and Aranyani Movements in India—all for what Vandana Shiva (1988) calls “reclaiming Terra Mater” (p. 218) toward well-being of all. On March 26, 1986, activist Medha Patkar who motivated Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save River Narmada Movement) was arrested for protesting against Narmada Control Authority’s decision to raise the height of Sardar Sarovar dam without rehabilitating the displaced villagers. The two dams—Sardar Sarover and Narmada Sagar—would displace 300,000 people, mostly poor peasants and tribals, and could cause immense ecological damage through the inundation of forests, including prime habitats of rare species. There were also doubts, drawn from the experience of dams elsewhere in the country like the Koyna-Morvi disaster, protests against Kabini dam in Karnataka, Tehri dam in Garhwal, Koel-Karo dam in Jharkhand, whether the dams would fulfill their projected benefits of hydropower, irrigation, and drinking water. It was widely feared that this project could also become a human and ecological “development disaster.” ¹ India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is often cited for describing dams as “temples of modern India” necessary for the country’s economic growth. Yet, it is Nehru who in 1958 rescinded his view and referred to such projects as “disease of giganticism.”^2,3

This essay does not intend a judgmental stance on the Narmada agitation nor the success of the project but aims to highlight the discourse generated on the notion of “development” (as a Western paradigm and value) that could become “destructive” for pushing reckless “progress” as has been discussed for instance by Michael Jacobs (1999) in his essay on “Sustainable Development as Contested Concept” (pp. 21-45). A grassroots-level activity to harmoniously integrate local communities and habitat could be far more beneficial and effective. The issue drew nationwide attention to the role of res publica premised on an egalitarian society ensuring welfare of all sections of the people without prejudice or bias. In Medha Patkar’s words,

If the vast majority of our population is to be fed and clothed, then a balanced vision with our own priorities in place of the Western models is a must. There is no other way but to redefine “modernity” and the goals of development, to widen it to a sustainable, just society based on harmonious, non-exploitative relationships between human beings and between people and nature. (http://www.rightlivelihoodaward.org/speech/acceptance-speech-medha-patkar-and-baba-amte-narmada-bachao-andolan)

Echoing such sentiments, Vandana Shiva emphasizes the role women can and should play in water management. She writes in her discussion of “Women and the Vanishing Waters” (Shiva, 1988, pp. 171-217),

Water management has been transformed from the management of an integrated water cycle by those who participate in it, particularly women, into the exploitation of water with dams, reservoirs and canals by experts and technocrats in remote places, with masculinist minds . . . the masculinist mind, by wanting to tame and control every river in ignorance of nature’s ways, is in fact sowing the seeds of large scale desertification and famine. (Shiva, 1988, pp. 176, 184)

Although the knowledge gained through research and praxis is yet to enter and enrich public discourse in a noteworthy way, critiques of the conventional water management methods, particularly with regard to environmental/ecological values, are becoming louder. Indeed, while women as “water experts” (p. 197) often have primary and informal responsibility of managing water in many societies, men tend to wield greater control over water use, and are often overrepresented in formal decision-making bodies associated with farming, fishing, and other agricultural activities. In areas where women’s roles or the impact upon them are more tangible, such as river basins and catchment management, or climate change or sudden environmental changes, gender issues associated with water resources have received relatively more attention.

As has been argued by Ruth Menzein-Dick and Margreet Zwarteveen (1998) in their essay on “Gender Participation and Water Management,” “it is problematic to assume the existence of a ‘natural’ (or essentialist) relation between women and nature . . . and requires thinking across and beyond stereotype bipolar hierarchies” (p. 176). However, they also acknowledge that examined empirically “the links between gender and community have direct consequences for the efficiency and sustainability of natural resources as well as for the livelihoods of people who depend on those resources” (p. 176) and can be achieved at substantial levels by female participation. Several streams of thought tracking future trajectories of feminist explorations as, for example, the loosely defined term hydrofeminism have nuanced thinking about the closeness of gender and water, while eschewing the essentializing tendency of biological or reproductive morphology (for theorization of “hydrofeminism,” see Neimanis, 2012). Required is a gradual and increasing need for participation in people-friendly sustainable and gender-just projects. The obvious benefit is sensitization to the earlier gender-blindness of water development discourses and practices, as the matter of women’s participation in policies regarding water management. At the level of policy formulation, the Dublin Statement on Water and the Environment adopted the following:

Principle No. 3—Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water . . . Acceptance and implementation of this principle require positive policies to address women’s specific needs and to equip and empower women to participate at all levels in water resources programs, including decision-making and implementation, in ways defined by them. (ICWE 1992:4 cited by Menzein-Dick and Zwarteveen, 1998, p. 178)

Indeed, making “gender” a central concern in water management in the so-called “developing nations” is a critical need. The useful roles women can play in managing the economic infrastructure both within and outside the homestead, dealing with water-related matters, are being acknowledged as a welcome contrast to the way gender distinctions undervalued women’s work, contributions, and knowledge. In India, drawing and saving water and performing water-related chores pose daily challenges for women who act as informal but primary water managers, carriers, end-users, and family health educators. Women also play significant role in water management outside the household as in agriculture (household gardens and laboring), irrigation, fishing, and other forms of water-based economic activities, and the conservation of water in general. Water is used in highly gender-specific ways in rural and urban societies, at home and in farms, for food processing and local cottage industries. Women often develop considerable understanding about water; its availability, quality, and reliability; its restrictions; and acceptable storage methods through the roles they perform in daily activities. Such knowledge can be utilized or prioritized while making plans for water utilization. In her illuminating essay titled “Gendered Water, Poisoned Wells,” Farhana Sultana (2006) highlights the deeply inflected “socio-ecological relationships” (pp. 363-364) of women especially with rivers and other sources and bodies of water which would be enriched by their views on policy matters on water management and related impacts. She bemoans that “gender and water literature does not adequately deal with the role of the state and other powerful agents of development” (p. 366). Indeed, such a discourse is yet to acquire the seriousness it deserves.

The three texts taken up for discussion probe the relationship between individuals and society, more specifically, examine welfare measures for catering to basic human needs through the lens of gender and caste. Interestingly, all three texts highlight women’s grasp of the social agency of “water” as a practical welfare indicator. The masculinist nature of knowledge and understanding of “water” is problematized as is the nature of gender-neutral scholarship on the subject. Sarabhai imagines India in terms of its multitudes and presents the panorama of Haridwar and Varanasi river-front against the backdrop of the Himalayas. River Ganga that came down as an answer to Bhagirath’s prayers in mythic times and continues to succor people of the cities and towns that crowd her banks and millions of pilgrims who worship her daily is presented as symbolizing “the confluence of time” (16)

the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats . . . a symbol of India’s age-long culture and civilization, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. (51)

Echoing Nehru, Sarabhai (1943) writes,

I see India with the accumulations of different and heavily developed civilizations . . . Full cycles of cultural entities turn and dip, fall and rise again in time which is continuous like the Ganga . . . the many steps of synthesis and the burden, accepted by her naturally, without bitterness and without opposition, as the season of old age approaching the stages of life is assimilated by women of this country. (Preface, 4)

From this central symbol of hoary multilayered civilization emerge both the structure and the theme of the play (2). With the movement of the river and the stasis of the Himalaya framing it, a choric mood is aroused as the play opens at Haridwar teeming with pilgrims, and returns to it coda-like at the end. In the interim, action shifts to a village where a conflict—the “struggle between the traditional devotee and the practical unconscious mystic” (9)—is acted out.

The opening scene shows the river glimmering in the twilight. A temple adorned with golden pitchers is visible on its bank and the Himalayas tower in the background. This is the picturesque Rishikesh where Ganga reaches the plains to begin her long journey through the northern expanse. Midstage holds a cyclorama of shadowy figures of old women—ancient, huddling forward, seated at a loom. These shadowy figures form the Chorus (9) filling the narrative gaps in the drama. Three young persons, Chetan, Sanatan, and Vichitra, stand in the foreground gazing at the river and the cyclorama. The metaphorical naming of the characters as Chetan (consciousness), Sanatan (hoary), and Vichitra (variety) emphasize the coexisting aspects of Indian culture. They are enthusiastic “national worker volunteers” (23) and serve as catalysts for the essential argument embodied in the play. Cued by Vichitra, the Chorus begins the graphic and evocative recital of the different kinds of people from across the country crowding the banks of Ganga, importuning her grace, immersing themselves, worshipping the life-nurturing waters so “the sacred river become(s) a bed for all, enough a bundle and a pitcher” (11). Foreshadowing the dramatic development, an old woman appears:

Fixed in aloofness she is—an aged woman

Holding her own in day’s trumpeting crowd,

Herself an island truncated on edge . . . a pebble forgotten

Safe on the side. (13)

The figure of the old woman influences the ethos of the play from the very beginning, with the opening cyclorama. Who is this woman, they wonder; is this “she for whom we work and live?” (15) (a suggestion of “Bharat Mata” in pre-Independence India)? They learn she is left behind in the village because she did not have enough money and later was too old to accompany the villagers on pilgrimage. They also wonder what these pilgrims hope to attain by looking into the “maya kunda” (the pool of illusion) (51) that they readily sell their belongings to reach the banks of Sur Ganga? (17). Echoing the wisdom of ages, a sonorous Voice appeals to the “sleeping souls”:

Why do you go to Haridwar, to Kashi Varanasi,

O my soul, when I am within?

Pilgrim, pilgrim why, what is it you seek outside? . . .

There is nothing but water at your holy bathing places . . .

The golden antelope runs on seeking; the priceless

musk laughs, laughs within.

The bee in a cave of the petal’s vermilion;

fragrance donning her anklet flies . . .

Says Kabir, the weaver of Benares . . .

dear sadhu, I laugh when I hear that the fish in water is thirsty. (17-18)

Twilight changes to daylight, indicating the passage of time. Pilgrims return home and the scene shifts to their villages. Nothing is changed; life goes on as before, showing grim circumstances of living and the struggle for survival. The villagers remain a collective—unnamed and amorphous. But in their song is encapsulated the history of the people who were born in a land of plenty but were slowly pulverized “like blades of flower before a mower” (25) into poverty and powerlessness first by oppressors among themselves and then by the exploitative colonizer the British, “the new usurer, trader, collector, administrator” (26). Bearing the message of change came Gandhi into their midst. He appealed to them to be self-sufficient and to look at themselves through his eyes:

He gave his eyes to them that day. Their eyes

Blinded with pain saw the Hindu outcaste

Harijan, banned of man, like lonely chatak

(The rain-thirsty eternally thirsty bird),

Crying for water of equal men. (43)

The young and the old were enthused by Gandhi’s call for freedom and equality and like Sanatan, Chetan and Vichitra join his programs for village upliftment. The old woman inspired by Gandhi’s message, embraced the outcaste children. She sat at her loom, wove cloth, and saved money for a pilgrimage to Benares. Her story is narrated by the Workers (33-37):

It is now time we speak for her whose life

Was dumb. She is you, you and all of us . . . (33)

She is Rani and has worked with them for 20 years, “Come late at end of each long day and stand/Upon twilight that winds her cowdust through/The scattering basket of sunset harvest” (33). She came from Madhubani in Bihar, a beautiful girl of the Maithili Brahmins who marry their daughters young. It was said that it was not unusual to see whole village of widows—the result of child brides married to much older men. Rani too was a child widow who lost her relatives and was left to fend for herself. In her blood was the art of weaving and she sat at her spinning wheel, “her body waning miniature like shadow cast/by candle light” (36) (noteworthy is charkha or the spinning wheel as the Gandhian symbol of self-reliance). And thus, “She went on living. She lived to set apart/Crystal from rock, gold from dross . . .” (36). She saved money—shining silver coins, imagined herself “a pilgrim star upon the western end of life,” each coin a step “On the path to golden walled God-appareled temple of Benares/Lotus seat of Tathagata at Sarnath . . . ” (36), as through her pilgrimage, her husband, and ancestors will attain salvation (37). But when she saved enough, she had a broken leg. No pilgrim group would take her along, “Not even for life’s money? She wept, she begged, she promised. All her love/Was it enough?—No, it was not enough” (37). As Chetan, Vichitra, and Sanatan listen to her story, the old woman enters, mutters as though alone: “I could not go”—(39) . . . then declares: “I want to build a temple well!” Adds,

I may not see Benares. God does not

Push a sick vessel like this body to

Each port of earthly pilgrimage, always

To stop and fill, still stop and fill to full . . .

But my soul, my free swan, can bring inland

On a small well, with water pure as

Mother Ganga, the merit lost. . . .

Before I die, people who pray may drink

At my well . . . (41)

Rani acquires agency. No longer a seeker of illusory benefits from a pilgrimage to Ganga, she is instrumental in bringing Ganga to her village, thus changing the condition of life of the villagers. Through self-realization, instead of seeking personal salvation she arranges “salvation” for her people and her enterprise becomes the meaningful legacy for posterity. Her words resonate through the final lines of the play to uphold the idea of Ganga as prakriti/nature and shakti/power—the two facets of femaleness now synonymous with the old woman who, in trying to build a well, would actually enable the subterranean stream (Ganga) to rise to the surface for people’s welfare. W. T. S Thakara (1994) comments on how rivers are regarded in India:

. . . They (the rivers) evoke an image of spiritual-intellectual energies cascading through the manifold planes of cosmic and individual life, linking us intimately with our spiritual source, nourishing and sustaining us, and flowing forth to connect us with all things . . . For sacred rivers are not only mythic reminders of forgotten truth, they represent the ever-present stream of who and what we essentially are: not a static being, but a dynamic ever-becoming flow of godlike radiance . . . (http://www.nw.org/theosnw/world/general/my-wtst1.htm)

The closing lines of the play seem to echo such sentiments: “O how/Great India’s torrent has been turned outward from/Lonely river and mountain!” (48), when, reflective of the message of truth that rivers carry, the individual wish (the old woman’s lifelong wish to go on a Ganga pilgrimage) is subsumed by her realization of the need of the many—a well for the village.

Sarabhai’s play also makes apparent a dialectical representation of the nature–human relationship. Although autonomous nature exists outside human endeavor, human agency tries to control nature ostensibly for “larger good” often exacerbating disaster. It is worth noting that politics over control of water is gaining ground with the grim awareness that future wars may be fought for water. In this context, a fascinating intertextual reference is Rabindranath Tagore’s remarkable play Muktadhara [Free Current] which also highlights a conflict, the struggle between tyrannical power and collective welfare, a text Sarabhai may have read. Tagore’s 1922 play anticipates with uncanny perspicuity how water management could become a key to power relations and social and political dispute, as has become increasingly evident in contemporary times. The concern with water is not new. Hindu sacred texts, the Vedas, describe Indra defeating Vritra, a demon, who held back the river waters behind stone dams. Water, beyond its practical use as commodity, also suggests a complicated set of cultural values which makes it a multivocal symbol (Turner, 1974) and can absorb within it many references and unites them into a single cognitive and affective field which can propel social action. A multilayered and a deeply symbolical text, Muktadhara’s plot revolves around the harnessing of a river at higher altitude of Uttarakut by its king planning to dominate the people of Shivtarai by controlling the flow of the water into their valley. He intends to use the water for other purposes. In a stark contrast to the Nehruvian idealized metaphor of river dam as a “temple of progress,” Tagore presents it as a menacing machine that is antinature and antifreedom, of controlling nature and dominating the landscape, and susceptible to the ideas of oppression and despotism. Reflecting an understanding of a typically colonial enterprise, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt (2006) writes in her essay on “Nadi O Nari: Representing the River and Women”:

. . . Instead of treating the rivers as avenues of prosperity, the colonial notion was to control them, treating the rise and fall of their waters as aberrant and uncivil. By the end of nineteenth century, the idea of transforming rivers into natural engines to drive the machines of the industrial world had transplanted itself on the muddy and sticky soils of the delta . . . The colonial vision of rivers did indicate an understanding of the rivers’ power, but also demonstrated that they were being utilized to no conceivable end, and were unprofitable to them. (388)

Tagore’s play opens with the impending imprisonment of the prince for being sympathetic toward the oppressed people of the valley. Shivtarai people are restive but lack the initiative for open revolt. Into the crisis enters the enigmatic Dhananjay Bairagi, a mendicant and minstrel, a free spirit who bows to no bondage. He comes with a song on his lips:

I shall sail the seas of injury

through the terrible storms

in my fear-dispelling little boat . . . [translation: mine]

Bairagi’s inspiring leadership and clarion call for freedom combined with Prince Abhijit’s spirit of sacrifice propel the popular uprising against oppression. Bairagi’s advice that “waves do not subside when one hits them; one must hold the stern of the boat with firm hands to steer it through the tempest” is obviously a call to fight all forms of hegemony and establish social-political conditions to ensure the well-being of the larger populace.

That colonialism did not—and has not—disappeared with the departure of the British from India is demonstrated by the two texts: Mahasweta devi’s Jal and Vinodini’s Daaham. The plots of the plays are similar and derive from contextualized indigenous domains. Both recount stories of discrimination and denial of basic human necessities as food and water suffered by the so-called casteless/untouchable people. The poor and untouchable Dalits are used as labor to dig wells for the rich upper castes but are refused access to the same. The plays portray the interstices of social life and the failures of the welfare programs of a republic. Devi’s play Jal is set in village Charsa named for the river flowing by it. The river overflows every monsoon, yet the untouchables—Domes, Chamars, and Chandals—experience severe shortage during dry seasons every year as there is neither water storage nor other water bodies they can access. Many die as the relief material sent by the government is stolen by the village headman Santosh. Additional worry is police sorties pursuing escaped Naxalites. The police camps in the area despite Santosh’s assurance that there is no trouble except the untouchables clamoring for water. Exhausted with their daily struggle for water and food supplies, villagers demand to be allowed to draw water from the Panchayat well or dig another well. They are refused both. The women declare:

Phulmani: Daughters, mothers, sisters! Let’s go and beg from our co-wife, the river.

First woman: Is the river Charsa your co-wife?

Phulmani (in a dry wail): My co-wife! . . . The river’s a woman, she feels for us, that’s why she yields water . . . Come sisters let’s pray for water. . . .

Women: [singing] Give us water!

Water, water, water!

The sky drips with molten fire.

The land gasps for water

Where oh where is water? . . . (105-6)

Rivers in India (as in other ancient cultures) are configured as feminine, are given feminine identities, and are treated as potent symbols of power and fecundity, at once hope-giving and nourishing or terrifying and destructive. The river-bed is like a womb that can generate and revive life. Rivers in flood sweep away villages, and are worshipped and feared. Bengali literature begotten of riverine imaginary is replete with such gendered metaphors of the river (e.g., Manik Bandyopadhyay’s Padma Nadir Majhi; Adwaita Mallabarman’s Titash ekti Nadir Naam; Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s Hansuli Banker Upakatha; Samaresh Basu’s Ganga etc.). An intriguing image provided by Tarashankar is of the river as unruly and wild like a low-caste girl:

. . . From the beginning of the monsoons, the motherless young girl grows up. Her body fills up with youthfulness. Then suddenly one day she turns into a witch. Like one of the low caste, a Kahar girl, suddenly turning savage, shouts at her parents, family and neighbours and leaves home, her hair flaring around her face, her clothes disheveled, roaming the village streets, spreading fire with her eyes, running amok . . . Again, two or four days later, she calms down within her banks, just as the Kahar girl comes back home, singing a tune. (cited in Lahiri-Dutt, 2006, p. 403)

As Lahiri-Dutt explains, the wild behavior of the river reflecting the free living style of the lower class adds to the gendering of the river and the nuances of caste, class, and behavioral codes. Similarly, the image of River Charsa invoked in Jal is of such a free woman, often described as a seductive and flirtatious whore. Maghai Dome, the water-diviner, possessing intuitive power to locate the subterranean stream prides himself as the descendant of “Bhagirath of the nether-Ganga” (the mythical sage who summoned Ganga upon Earth with his penances) and recounts the story of Earth hiding a portion of Ganga in her womb that can be coaxed to the surface only in response to the summons of the mythical Bhagirath’s descendants:

Maghai: The water lies captive deep down till it gushes out at Mother’s bidding

O water, to whom do you belong?

I belong to him who knows how to call me.

Now who calls you?

It’s Maghai who calls me.

And who’s Maghai?

He’s slave to the one who keeps me slave.

Whose bidding is it?

It’s the bidding of the Mother, the nether Ganga. . . . (116)

Maghai nurtures lifelong love for River Charsa as the manifestation of nether Ganga. When the rains come and Charsa is in spate, Maghai stands entranced upon her bank:

Maghai: . . . how gloriously beautiful you appear my Charsa! Yes my girl, go dancing all the way, dance, dance, ah, my darling life blood!

. . . Such a beautiful wench, in the monsoons of June and July she breaks across the banks, she laughs with bursts of flood, Charsa the youthful river . . . Dhura’s mother is right. You’re a whore, a fallen woman. In the summer months when I scrape at your breasts how you flirt with me. You sing to me: The water won’t be easy to get, I’ve kept the water hidden deep under. You’ve to scratch at my breasts before I let it loose not to you but your wife and daughters. . . . (125)

The village schoolteacher Jiten finds Maghai talking to the river. Jiten suggests they dam the excess flood water for use through the year. The villagers, convinced of the good sense, build the dam to store excess flood water soon find to their delight a fine tank of water for their use. Maghai announces that Jiten’s empathy and concern made him one of them:

Maghai: . . . You became a Dome when you found us threatened. You became a Dome when you took up the issue of our school. You became a Dome when you gave us the dam . . . The dam is the proof that you are the true Bhagirath of the holy mother, the nether Ganga. I’ve divined water but I’ve not been able to give a drop to my mothers, sons, fathers, brothers. The dam that you’ve given us will quench the thirst of all my people. (135)

Acknowledging Jiten as the “true Bhagirath,” Maghai caricatures his own posturing and vanity as the water-diviner. He expresses deep regret for not appreciating the river’s bounty despite his love for her. He finally understands the river had always been available to them as a perennial water source. He is ashamed for betraying her love by calling her a whore whose love is short-lived or seasonal. Maghai and his people also realize the importance of self-help instead of depending on charity of the so-called relief dispensers of the State.

The crisis of the play grows out of upper caste fear of the Domes becoming self-reliant, the threat that by managing natural resources they can challenge the game of power. So, they collude with the police and attack the village, ostensibly staging a Naxalite “encounter.” Their anger is directed at Jiten for supporting the Domes. Jiten is hit in the head by the butt of a gun during the fight and Maghai trying to save him is fatally shot. The waters of Charsa roar in flood and the dam breaks. People watch in awe as the river sweeps Maghai away.

Like Jal, Vinodini’s Daaham/Thirst is a poignant representation of the daily struggles of the untouchable/Dalit for survival without food and water. A Dalit Mala community resides at the village periphery and ekes out life in dire poverty, oppression, and exploitation, discriminated against by the prosperous upper caste. The play opens as Souramma returns home beaten by upper caste women when unable to bear thirst any longer she “dared” to go to the village well to draw water. Souramma reports:

. . . I went in the morning with the pitcher and stood near the well. Not even a single bitch gave me water. It was getting late. My legs ached. How long could I wait? I asked every woman who came to the well . . . amma, pour one pitcher of water into my vessel . . . I pleaded with them . . . not even a single bitch listened to my pleas. The sun was scorching. I couldn’t stop myself. I went up to the well and tied the rope, that’s all. Then all of them came running, broke my pitcher, pulled me down from the well and beat me up. (493)

Although Dalit labor is used to dig wells, the “polluted” Dalits are not allowed to even touch the pulley to draw water. Souramma’s act becomes a serious breach of social norm. To maintain the oppressive exploitative hierarchy and prevent the recurrence of such incidents which might give the Dalits ideas about “equality” and “rights,” it is imperative that such action is immediately and harshly suppressed. Dasu is shocked to learn that killing Dalits perceived as rebellious nonconformists is not uncommon and has been resorted to before. Dasu’s uncle who was a fearless social rebel had been thus dispensed with. The issue escalates. There is lot of discussion as to what course of action should be taken in response to the summons of Pedda Reddy, the upper caste village headman and leader of Panchayat. A division becomes apparent among the Malapalli Dalits. While the group of elders is cautious and fearful, subservient and obsequious in attitude, the group comprising younger generation Dalits some of whom are educated is unwilling to tolerate any form of unfair dominance. Present in the latter group are women whose daily struggles have pushed them to the limit of forbearance. The second group resolves not to succumb to any abuse or threat and assumes an aggressive stance to demand equal rights to natural resources.

When the Dalits come to the village center for the meeting, Souramma’s son Dasu identifies himself as the new spokesperson of the Malas instead of the Elder Pedda Mala as was the earlier custom. The upper caste village headman Pedda Reddy demands that Dalits pay a fine of 10,000 rupees because Mala Souri broke the norm and touched the pulley of the well. Her act is a grievous one because as a consequence, Ganga has been polluted and might recede and cause the well to dry up. Mala youth are not intimidated by threats nor accept such reasons. They refuse to pay the fine and answer every abuse and threat with collective aggression. They argue that Ganga answered their call and rose to the surface when they dug the well, why should she disappear now? Amid heated exchange, a maid from the landlord’s house comes to urgently summon Gangi who has been breastfeeding Younger Reddy’s newborn son as the mother’s breasts had not yielded any milk. Despite much pleading, Gangi refuses to go until their problem is resolved. Dalits react strongly to Younger Reddy charges:

Venkata Reddy: (To Gangi’s husband) You fellows, are you human beings or what? See, you don’t allow Gangi to go though the child is suffering. And you talk of morals, morals!

Prasad: Your child, one child, born day before yesterday . . . makes you feel so bad when he cries for milk. Were you bothered ever when so many of us along with our children thirsted for a little drinking water? Not one day but for years altogether? Did you think of us or our babies even once?

Pushpamma: We served food for our children and waited for hours near the well for one pitcher of water and that nobody from your caste had the time to pour. And nobody gave water, we went home with empty pitchers. How many times we were beaten up by our husbands for not getting water to drink? Did you feel for us when our throats were dry? . . . When you didn’t give water we walked ten miles and brought dirty water from puddles—the bathing water for dogs, pigs and cattle—and drank that. (496)

The Domes of Charsa built a dam to solve their water problems, the Malas of Malapalli demand their right to use the village well which they had dug. Replicating the practices of a capitalist state instead of a social welfare state that India’s republican ideals vouchsafe, Dalits, subalterns, and the poor are exploited as labor and/or commodities—for hard labor or for breastfeeding the babies of the rich (a memorable text exemplifying this is Mahasweta devi’s “Stanadayini”/The Breastgiver) yet are denied the fruit of their labor, are discriminated against and forced to accept unequal and arbitrary caste/class rules. Hence, when basic amenities are appropriated by a section of the people to deny others, it is time for the distressed to acquire agency and recall the Gandhian mantra of collective dissent and noncooperation to be able to shape and protect their future. Thus, to quench the “thirst” of the Reddy baby, the rich and the powerful of the village are forced to acquiesce the Dalit demand for the use of the well water to quench the “thirst” of their community.

It is significant that the dominating image that all the texts carry is that of “water” in relation to human life: as the agent of purification and life-sustaining element. The texts also emphasize the close yet practical relationship of women with water. While the old woman wants a well for the people, Dalit women want to access the wells their men have dug. Also made apparent in the three plays, as in the play by Tagore, is the perception and use of water as socially constructed with cultural implications, which in turn determine the way water politics can operate in different contexts, revealing the relationship between those who use it and those who supply/control it. Emphasizing this point, Lahiri-Dutt (2006) writes that water is “subjectively constructed, or ‘produced’ like any other element of nature; a part of the cultural landscape, rooted in history, both the producer and product of the material culture through which human agency is enacted” (p. xvii). Evidently, as reflected in the texts, the closest relationship water has (itself “gendered”) is with women, the archetypal water carriers, and validated as such through symbols and icons. This is especially true of the Third World societies where the burden of household chores and the responsibility of fetching and carrying water often from distances rest upon women. Using water and performing water-related chores constitute a daily challenge for women who thus become “informal but primary water managers, water carriers, end-users and family health educators” (Lahiri-Dutt, 2006, p. xx). Thereby, women gain considerable knowledge and insights about availability, quality, and storage of water. As argued above, policy planning for water resource development and management would greatly benefit with the participation of women.

Together, the texts record the complexity of human life implicated in “developmental” history. Such “histories” have rendered the project of nation-state governance particularly open to counter representations and resistance. Yet, regrettably, such discourses do not appear to occupy the mainstream politics of the Welfare State as much as they should and are generally relegated to the in-between spaces of social interaction. As illustrated by the texts, lives in the in-between spaces, in the interstices of the society, enact resistance to hegemony and power play in the society. Such articulation of difference from the perspective of the disprivileged is a complex and continuous negotiation that take shape during moments of historical transition or transformation and that political empowerment and the enlargement of the cultural space come from posing questions about community and identity from such interstitial perspectives.

India remains a republic struggling with manifold layers of social exclusion and must confront processes of internal colonization and address the systematic or de facto processes of denial of entitlements, based on class, caste, clan, gender, tribe, language, and religion—factors that are often bundled with location. Resources of the country must be equitably shared. Exclusion is experienced at all levels of society, at the regional, community, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels that hinder the consolidation of an egalitarian civil society. The essay tries to show a text’s genesis in a sociohistorical situation from which nontextual social “truths” are interpreted. The three texts perform several tasks. They comprise a political and social discourse from interstitial perspectives as reminders of the founding principles of a Republic. They serve as mediators between the governmentality of the state apparatus and the lives of a vast number of people that remain untouched by the so-called “developmental” policies. The texts also emphasize the need to “listen” to these voices with ethical sensitivity to move toward a truly decolonialized condition to be able to fulfill the vision of a Republic.