NAMDEO DHASAL

Namdeo Dhasal is arguably one of the most significant Indian poets of the late 20th century. His work not only captures what freedom, democracy and modernity meant for the average Indian in the decades after Independence—experiences, no doubt, fraught with contradictions—but it also displays brilliant poetic innovation. This essay attempts to situate Dhasal in the tradition of Marathi poetry and assess his artistic vision and extraordinary contribution.

The evolution of Marathi poetry

In order to understand of the evolution of Marathi poetry, it is critical to move beyond the restrictive understanding of literature as a written or printed object, which is integral to the colonial idea of literature. Poetry in India has always implied performance, music, retelling and improvisation as well as transmissions through oral traditions. It is constituted by intensive inter-medial, cross-lingual and cross-cultural intercourse, in short, by translational activity.

Most often, translation is seen as a process operating between languages. However, as Juri Lotman (1990) has pointed out, translation can also take place across diverse sign systems in a ‘semiosphere’ or the totality of sign systems. Thus, translation takes place from one sign system into another relatively incompatible one, across boundaries and asymmetries, and operates due to the tension between these sign systems. It is the mechanism that underlies creative innovation. 

Lotman’s theoretical framework has the potential of cutting through 

The restrictive idea of literature as a static printed object and bringing within its realm the visual, musical and performative expressions of culture. This makes it very valuable for the analysis of Indian cultural practices in general and Dhasal’s poems in particular.

What differentiates Dhasal from other Dalit writers is his radically innovative language and use of semiotic registers, something other Dalit poets have not been able to achieve. Such a complex use of what Chitre calls ‘bastard language’ makes Dhasal’s poetry ‘complex and barely accessible to either an average Dalit listener or a highly literate reader. The surrealistic imagery and flow of his poems and his sudden but deliberate evocation of extension or orchestration of different contexts of experience baffle both the uninitiated and the literate among his audience.’ (Chitre, 1982). Dhasal’s poems are obscure and opaque for many of his readers, and the implied reader is probably someone like Dhasal himself who is familiar not only with the local language but also Indian and global artistic and political movements.