Namdeo Dhasal’s ‘Poet of the Underworld’ is at least five short books in one. There are over one hundred sparsely printed pages with Dhasal’s poems, written in Marathi and translated by a fellow-poet, Dilip Chitre, who has also supplied a long and laudatory introduction— followed later by his essay on Mumbai as the poet has seen it and a short note on, “The translator’s Delight and Despair.”
The poet adds, autobiographically, his impressions on himself. About a dozen pages are devoted to an album which is contributed by a German professional photographer and admirer, Henning Stegmuller. To add to the reviewer’s discomfort is the fact that this poet is highly controversial as a poet and as a Dalit activist.
In the poems reviewed here, sheer, burning fury makes assessment difficult. In ‘Golpitha’, which is regarded as his best work, the poet is smarting under the injustice done to Dalits by an unfeeling, uncaring caste-bound society.
“This poet of the Underworld” scorns at the sordid surroundings in Mumbai and exhorts citizens to “explode,” to commit every form of violence and indulge in everything society frowns upon and its laws condemn: mess up with drugs and booze; no human relationships are sacrosanct, including neighbours and even mothers and sisters;
knives, daggers, axes, swords, rods et al come in handy; poison and kill one’s kin; banks and the rich are, of course, the natural targets; sexually degrading someone, anyone, follows like a prescription; I humiliate, I kill and, therefore, I exist, is the poet’s testament.
In such a torrent nothing is unnatural, wanton or too cruel to undertake. Roads, bridges, streetlights, police and railway stations stand only to be destroyed. What are hydrogen bombs for except “…to raze Literary societies, schools, colleges, hospitals, airports…” and then, One should open the manholes of sewers and throw into them
Plato, Einstein, Archimedes, Socrates, Marx, Ashoka, Hitler, Camus, Sartre, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, Hopkins, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Mayakovesky, Maxim Gorky, Edison, Madison, Kalidasa, Tukaram, Vyasa, Shakespeare, Jnaneshwar.
In this catalogue there is room too for Jesus, Paighambar, Buddha and Vishnu. Nothing and nobody is spared: ancient and modern, east and west, art and science, philosophy and religion must all rot forever. Chitre is content with the summation that this is scatological writing! But, is that all?
An untenable claim is made that Dhasal’s poetry, depicting modern urban life in the raw, is in the same tradition as that of the mid-nineteenth century French symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire and in particular his Les Fleurs du Mal (1857).
This is unconvincing. Baudelaire, however repulsive the slice of reality he depicted, exhibits a calm detachment and artistic restraint in poem after poem like “Correspondences,” “Midnight Confessional,” “Benediction,” “The Jewels,” “The Venal Muse,” “Man and the Sea” and many more.
In a recent comment Sudhanva Deshpande speaks about his response to Dhasal’s poetry: “One feels slapped and spat upon,” he says. Chitre is at pains to point out that the poet depicts the “loathsome and nauseating universe” of Mumbai’s red light district and its stench of death and disease, of one desperate group preying upon another.
But he leaves unanswered whether out of this sleazy setting the poet succeeds in creating poetry or the readers are to be content with merely the lava-like outpouring of raw emotion— without the poetical sublime, without order, without proportion.
Outrageous outbursts
Is mere gushing of volcanic lava the same as great architecture? By the way, as one French man of letters is quoted, why shouldn’t we refer to two more, Balzac and Zola? Engels has stated that Balzac delved into an irreparably decaying society, Dhasal has tried the same; none other than Ibsen has said that Zola descended into sewers, as has the poet of ‘Golpitha’.
But neither of those French masters ever recommended, “Launch a campaign for not growing food, kill people all and sundry by starving them to death/ Kill oneself too, let disease thrive…” One can find similar outrageous outbursts elsewhere in his poetry.
Chitre wants us to accept that Dhasal’s poetry and his political activism go hand-in-hand. There is such unintended irony in this observation, for, Dhasal’s career as a political ideologue and activist is even harder to understand and defend. One who began as the sworn enemy of the extreme Hindu right-wing politics and casteism went on to join hands with the Shiv Sena.
He has shared a platform with the RSS. These are the groups he had unflinchingly condemned, only ten years earlier, as murderers of the Mahatma. Chitre who has championed Dhasal’s poetry as well as politics, has not cared to explain such glaring discrepancies. Elsewhere he has let go by saying that Dhasal’s political stances are inconsistent and that yesterday’s rebel has now become part of the establishment. He is largely evasive on the basic issues.
Admirers and advocates of Dhasal have not been slow nor shy in showering high praise on this their iconic figure: he is an outstanding poet by any standard; he is the best among today’s Marathi poets; he is the best from all over India; there is a tragic, lyrical luminosity about his evocative brutal imagery; ‘Golpitha’ is likened to T S Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’; Blake’s “innocence” and “experience” are invoked; on occasions he is tender and vulnerable, it is said; “I have no doubt that he is one of the world’s best 20th century poets…
“He hurls his poems like stones” claims Chitre with a disarming finality; he deserves to be a Nobel Laureate, a few have echoed. And so on, there is an unending deluge of encomia. Is this supposed to be facetious? Does this seemingly genuine admiration conceal a degree of coyness, slyness? Is this a clever game across a divide— hether ideological, political or one of caste and class lines?
Is there a trace of making up for past cold-shouldering of achievements by the Dalits and other minority groups long ignored and shunned in this land?
Namdeo Dhasal’s passion and his sense of hurt are justified and sincere. They cannot be denied. Not only aspersions, but vile slander and stigmatisation, holding down an entire segment of society has been the rule in India for countless centuries, and it is a slap in our collective face.
Conscience is a convenient word, mostly forgotten. All this and much more has to be accepted. But one hopes that Dhasal, obviously a man of talent and literary resource, may yet become a worthy disciple of Baudelaire who is acknowledged as having influenced this Marathi voice of plight and protest.
