A Study of Society Through Women's Songs

A Dalit Folk Song of Kerala in Translation

What kind of untouchability is this?
The untouchability of the lords!

Go away, go away
The stumbling block, go away…
Go away, go away
Even Pakkanar§ has to go away!

If the salt is sown,
Would it sprout?
And creep onto the fence?

Then, what is this untouchability?
The untouchability of the lords!

If the salt is sown…

If the salt is sown,
Would it sprout?
And creep on to the fence?

Go away, go away
The stumbling block, go away…
Go away, go away
Even Pakkanar has to go away!

A recent book, a very much needed one, Unearthing Gender by Smith Tewari Jassal brings out the women's universe of songs that deserve a complex, multilayered and nuanced map of the social, political and economic terrain of their lives and those of the communities in which they live. There is much that makes this book worth reading, not least its crossing and confounding of disciplinary boundaries and its offering of a different, a more poetic archive.

Women's songs are of course familiar terrain in much of India. Whether at weddings, or at moments of birth and death, or during the harvest and while sowing, women sing. Tewari Jassal here maps not only the songs, presenting a valuable archive of oral culture, but also looks at them differently, seeking out those sung by low caste or Dalit women, sung for themselves and at their high caste masters, offering both wisdom and irony, sometimes a bitter humour at the way relationships of power are played out, and sometimes an unrestrained expression of sexuality, and a realistic understanding of the forces that shape their lives-whether it is the loss of their claim to property via marriage, the prevalence of incest, the relationship with mothers-in-law, being duped in love and romance (of particular interest here are the songs of elopement).

Tewari Jassal divides this rich archive thematically, looking more closely at songs that describe the daily tasks women do, especially the grinding of grain (the jatsar or grinding song) and those that speak of family relationships, the power equations between natal and married families and their shifting equations in which it is the woman who often comes off the worst. Further chapters look at the songs women sing when performing a variety of agricultural tasks, songs of 'unfreedom', or those that describe departures and losses, marriage and migration, the cultural universe of village women, the pervasiveness of patriarchies and more, creating what the author calls a sparkling sense of women's community. She describes a rich repertoire of songs that offer an alternative telling of the Ramayana, focusing on Sita and her life.