EXPLOITATION IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF

EXPLOITATION IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF

richard W right and da Y a pa W a

Richard Wright’s autobiography in two parts, viz. ‘Black Boy’ and ‘American Hunger’, is a story of his exploitation during his childhood and early youth at the hands of his family, his community, the white society and the Communist Party.

Similarly, Daya Pawar’s autobiography, ‘Baluta’, is an account of the physical and mental exploitation of the writer in his family, his community, and the political and religious system of his time.

The home is a place where, it is taken for granted that, we get peace of mind, protection from the other members of the family, a kind of physical and mental security which is necessary for the smooth and positive development of the younger members of the family. But, unfortunately, Richard doesn’t get due attention from his family, particularly from his father who “... was a shiftless farmhand, a slave in mind if not in body, with no vestige of loyalty towards his wife or family.” (Weeks, 1945: 131).

Richard, like other children of his age expects love and care from his father but his father assumes the role of stern lawgiver and becomes a despised stranger, in whose presence Richard never dares to laugh. His childhood, it seems, is suppressed under the monstrous presence of his father. The fear of his father is such that Richard :

used to lurk timidly in the kitchen doorway and watch his huge body sitting slumped at the table.

I stared at him with awe as he gulped his beer... He was always a stranger to me, always somehow alien and remote.” (Wright, 1945:9).

There are several incidents in his autobiography in which he speaks about his exploitation by his father. When his father deserts the family and starts l-Wiv^with another woman, one day Ella Wilson Wright, Richard’s mother, takes Richard to his father to ask for some money to enable them to go to Arkansas, but his father refuses to help them. It can be understood that he does not want to live with Ella, but how is it that a ‘father’ is unwilling to feed his hungry children? The effect of this incident on the mind of young Richard is such that he :

“... had the feeling that 1 had had to do with something unclean. Many time in the years after that the image of my father and the strange woman, their faces lit by the dancing flames, would surge up in my imagination so vivid and strong that I felt I could reach out and touch it; I would stare at it, feeling that it possessed some vital meaning which always eluded me.” (30).

The oppressive presence of his father, though for a very short span of his life, makes Richard despise his father and when he visits his father after a quarter of century he realizes that, he can’t get united with him.

Whatever Richard achieves in his later life is mainly the result of his own efforts and to some extent, the care taken by his mother. When his father deserts the family, Ella bravely shoulders the responsibility and feeds her hungry children by working as a cook in the neighbourhood. When it becomes difficult for her to provide enough food to Richard and his younger brother, she unwillingly accepts the pangs of separation from her children and sends them to an orphanage, only with a hope that there they will get enough to eat. Afterwards when she manages to earn enough money, she sends her children to school, though for a short time.

She proves herself a loving mother by taking every care to make them fit to survive in a hostile society. But when she suffers a stroke of paralysis, she is left with no other choice but to leave herself and her children at the mercy of her relatives. During her long illness Richard is forced to look after her andrfier)

“suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness, ... a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me self conscious, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me.” (87).

It is a fact that Richard’s mother makes him fit for the world by forcing him fight with black boys in the street and at the same time keeping him away from any confrontation with the whites for

his own safety. She teaches him to read and write and also Ho revere the fanciful and imaginative’, which helped him later in his career as a writer. But it is also true that his mother is responsible for certain fears which bore in his mind and heart which Richard mentions in the early pages of his autobiography. One day, when Richard was four years old, "... all morning my mother had been scolding me, telling me to keep still, warning me that I must make no noise. And I was angry, fretful and impatient” (3), dreaming of running, playing, and shouting like other boys of his age.

Ultimately, his restlessness results, though accidentally, in putting his house on fire. Consequently he is beaten into unconsciousness by his mother. The fear of this beating is so deeply rooted in the mind of a four year old child that:

“Whenever I tried to sleep I would see huge wobbly white bags, like the full udders of cows, suspended from the ceiling above me. ...I was gripped by the fear that they were going to fail and drench me with some horrible liquid... Exhaustion would make me drift toward sleep and then I would scream until I was wide awake again; I was afraid to sleep.” (6).

Actually, Richard can’t realize that his act of putting fire to the long fluffy white curtains would burn down the house. His act is just a sudden response to the inner urge of the child to do something, but the grown-ups punish him severely thereby making his mind a permanent home of fear for his mother.

In another incident, a preacher is invited to his home for a dinner. At the dinner-table, Richard is not allowed to eat chicken until he eats his soup. Naturally, the child is irritated and bowled,

“That preacher’s going to eat all the chicken!” (23), for which he is made to sleep without having his dinner. Of course, his behaviour is worthy of punishment, but one has to take into consideration the circumstances in which he is being brought up. One cannot expect good manners and etiquettes from a half-starving child for whom the problem of food has become ‘an acute daily agony’.

At his early age, he is forced by the circumstances to take numerous jobs like carrying lunches for workers, selling papers, working in cafes and many more, to support himself and his family.

Generally, in any family, it is expected from the parents that they should look after their children; but in case of young Richard, the situation is quite opposite. His father has deserted the family and his mother is busy with earning food for the family, so, there is nobody to take care of the children who learn the language and manners of the street.

Richard’s childhood is further exploited by his maternal aunts and uncles. When his mother is struck by an attack of paralysis, it becomes necessary for the family to move to the house of Richard’s grandmother. During his stay with Granny, he comes in contact with Aunt Addie and soon realizes that it is difficult for him to deal with her. She works as a teacher in a religious school

and one day beats Richard severely. He tries to explain that he has not committed the mistake but she does not listen. Young Richard can’t understand why Aunt Addie is behaving like an enemy with him; yet the readers can understand that it is so, perhaps, either because she regards Richard to be an unwanted dependent in the family and there is nobody to defend him, or because she wants to impress the other students of the class. This enmity between them continues throughout his stay with Granny.

When it becomes difficult for Granny to support all the three members of Richard’s family, it is decided that Richard be sent to Greenwood at his Uncle’s house. During his stay with Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody, he soon realizes that the couple is difficult to deal with. Though he gets enough to eat and is also sent to school, he is assigned certain duties, like bringing in wood and coal and filling the water. It seems that Uncle Clark thinks that Richard is an orphan and he has to work if he wants to stay with him.

Richard accepts his fate quietly but when he comes to know about the dead boy of the landlord, he is frightened to sleep in his room.

He requests his Uncle to allow him to sleep on sofa in the front room; but his Uncle and Aunt compel him to sleep in the same room. It is all right that Uncle Clark has generously accepted the responsibility of Richard but it creates a bit of doubt in the minds of the readers when they come to know that Richard is being compelled to sleep in the same room in which a son of the landlord

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had died. We can’t understand what was the problem with Uncle Clark for not allowing Richard to sleep in the front room. It seems that the landlord’s announcement of the event of his son’s death in the presence of Richard may be a trick played by his Uncle to get rid of an unwanted responsibility; and his plan succeeds making Richard spend sleepless nights at home.

Richard tells us that one day he uses ‘bad language’ and Aunt Jody reports it to her husband who “lashed me with a strap. I gritted my teeth and did not cry.” (85). Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody expect from the boy, who had wandered the streets and had become a drunkard at the age of six, to speak and behave like a boy of a well-to-do family.

Richard is so unfortunate that none of his relatives support him physically or mentally without taking his undue advantage.

With his own efforts, when he succeeds in publishing his first short-story, ‘The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre’, he is criticised by his relatives on baseless grounds. All the above incidents support the observation of a critic, where he says :

“Wright never knew love-not even for or from his mother. He was never loved by anyone.

He never knew what it meant to love someone.’’(Burns, 1945: 11).

Similarly, in Daya Pawar’s ‘Baluta’, Dagadu is also exploited by the members of his family. In one incident, during Dagadu’s

* Daya Pawar’s first name is Dagadu, which he uses in his autobiography.

childhood, he is asked by Umajja to steal a neighbour’s hen. When Dagadu refuses, he is beaten by his father. Instead of scolding Umajja for teaching Dagadu how to steal, to our surprise, he is punished by his father (Pawar, 1978: 22). After his father’s death, Dagadu used to pay visits to his Uncle, Tatya, hoping to get some financial help. On one such visit, Tatya abuses him and his mother. Dagadu feels so insulted by this incident that until the death of his Uncle, he does not visit him.

After his marriage, Dagadu takes his wife to Kawakhana. As there was no other arrangement, the newly married couple is forced by the circumstances to sleep under the bed of Dagadu’s aunt. His aunt was widow and she tries to harass the couple by lingering outside until late at night. Dagadu writes :

(wg) site uror wara, i

TT^t. %dc5 3TWTT ^ <=*>OTd cK rdTTT THfe dldRdi df IT diT^dT 3TF5MT ^RTTdT TF? dl

WJ dUp did.” (147).

All the above-mentioned incidents illustrate that Dagadu falls victim to the ill-treatment of the members of his family.

Richard, the fatherless child, is exploited not only by his relatives but also by his community like Dagadu in ‘Baluta’. The fates of all the blacks and the dalits were almost the same in their respective countries. The whites in America and the upper-caste Hindus in India regarded themselves to be superior and exploited

the blacks and dalits socially, economically, and politically on the basis of their colour and caste, respectively. But the real tragedy of the black and the dalit people is that they themselves miss no opportunity of exploiting their own people.

Richard mentions many incidents in his autobiography in which his fellow blacks exploit him. For instance, in one incident Richard tells us that after writing his first short-story, he paid a visit to a black publisher with the intention to get it published in

‘Southern Register'. The conversation between the publisher and Richard shows how the blacks used to exploit their fellow blacks.

When Richard demanded the royalty for his story, the editor replies that he was giving Richard a chance to write, which was more valuable than the royalty. Though Richard was pleased by the editor’s answer, he “still thought he was taking advantage of me.”

(Wright, 1945: 145).

When Richard was a child of six years, having no parent around to control him, he used to roam the streets and peep into the saloons. One day a black man takes him into a saloon and makes him drink and utter obscenities, thereby spoiling the fatherless child. Richard tells us that:

“I was a drunkard in my sixth year, before I had begun school. With a gang of children, I roamed the streets, begging pennies from passers-by, haunting the doors of saloons, wandering further and further away from home each day. I saw more than I could understand and heard more than I could remember (19).

Richard narrates one more incident which further throws light on the selfishness of blacks and on how they used to exploit their fellows. After losing his job in post office, Richard works as an agent, selling insurance policies to ignorant Negroes. During the course of this job, he comes to know that these illiterate Negroes were being cheated by the burial and insurance societies.

These companies and their agents used to cheat the black folks by exchanging their policies for the new ones with stricter clauses.

Though these companies were sucking the blood of poor Negroes, their owners “were leaders in Negro communities and were respected by whites.” (Wright, 1977:36). These so-called leaders were also exploiting the blacks at the time of election by purchasing their votes for ‘three dollars’ or allowing them to continue their illegal trades.

In ‘Baluta’, Daya Pawar also gives many accounts of his exploitation at the hands of his community. For instance, at the time of his marriage, Dagadu invites the members of his community to participate in the auspicious event; but some of them try to destroy his happiness by concealing the food materials.

While narrating this incident, Dagadu writes :

jjfo ^rtr antd.

3TRbrr cTRT# TOFR WU 3#.

TO f TO cfFTOTTOT 3TMT. cTR

qfcPToSTOf TO* 5o5T# tq, fqSFTO

<immni rctprto. ten

TOflRT. 4'Rf^T 4RT ^JMI

^ oFT 3TI% f

W3

mw\

When Dagadu passes the fourth class, his mother decides to send him to Sangamner for further education. But the other members of Dagadu’s community advise his mother that it would be better for her not to send Dagadu to school; rather she should make him work and earn something to support the familial expenses. In ‘Baluta’, Daya Pawar writes about this incident in the following words :

“li?RcrrS3TT<ffe OTRIMI^tH 3TT#T flfT -

qt xm

aim Tufkmw suiter? faiv

m

The writer hints that it was not because Umajja was really concerned about the miserable condition of Dagadu’s house that he advises Dagadu’s mother not to send him to school but because he did not want Dagadu to get education and improve the miserable condition of his family.

Religion plays a very important role in the lives of human- beings. Most of the people believe that there exists an all powerful God and to redeem themselves, they have to obey His Commands.

Unfortunately, with the name of God and religion, one group of people exploits another group. In the autobiographies of Richard Wright and Daya Pawar, there are many incidents in which they are exploited in the name of God and religion.

In ‘Black Boy’, Richard tells the readers about the religious atmosphere of his house. Granny, with her Seventh Day Adventist Church, expects that all the members of the family should pray to the God every now and then. So, there were prayers at sunup and sundown, before lunch and dinner, followed by the singing of a Bible verse by each member of the family. “

Richard proves himself to be a misfit in the family, being unable to adjust with the religious fanaticism of Granny and Aunt Addie because44., a large factor in the family antagonism was his resistance to their attempts at religious conversion.” (Barton,

1993: 367).

Granny was so religious-minded that she was ready to face financial difficulties at home but would not allow Richard to work on Saturday.

Richard thinks that the community was trying to get him associated with it by forcing him to be the member of the church, for its own safety. His community, his friends, and his mother try to exploit him emotionally and succeed in their efforts by making him get baptised. Though baptised, his attitude towards religion does not change, because he believes that :

“This business of saving souls had no ethics; every human relationship was shamelessly exploited. In essence, the tribe was asking us whether we shared its feelings; if we refused to join the church, it was equivalent to saying no , to placing ourselves in the position of moral monsters.” (Wright, 1945: 135).

The matter of religion with dalits in India is farudifferent than that of Negroes. Though dalits are Hindus they are at the lowest level of the caste-hierarchy. So, until recently, they were not allowed to enter into the temples of Hindu Gods. The dalits had their own separate Gods and Goddesses and even these Gods were kept at the outskirts of the villages, like dalits. So, dalit writers make fun of Hindu rites and rituals in their works.

The blacks were regarded inferior on the basis of their colour in America and on the basis of their caste, dalits were trt4-k<4 inferior in India. Segregation was shamelessly practised at public places like parks, restaurants, playgrounds, libraries, and temples.

There were separate seats and compartments for blacks on buses and trains. Even in the hospitals the blacks had different treatment.

The whites regard the blacks :

“... scarcely more than chattel or animals, to be taunted, manipulated, humiliated at will, and kept in their place at the bottom of society. Crossing the colorline was an offence seldom tolerated and often severely punished...” (Leibowitz, 1993: 340).

Not only this but even the whites used to publish segregation material thereby keeping the issue of racial hatred burning in the hearts of the people.

Richard tells us that when the Civil War broke out, his Grandpa joined the Union Army and fought bravely, but when he

was being discharged from the Army, being illiterate, he took the help of a white officer in filling in the pension papers, who picked up the opportunity to misspell his name as ‘Richard Vinson’

instead of ‘Richard Wilson’. After retirement, Richard’s Grandpa tried to convince the officials that he had served in the Army but couldn’t succeed. As a result, he could not get the pension until his death. Richard believes that “Grandpa had been cheated out of his pension because of his opposition to white supremacy.”

(Wright, 1945: 123).

Though Richard could not understand the nature of relationship between the whites and the blacks,—

“His own life was a long battle to escape from the tyranny of white men who looked on a Negro as a natural inferior and who demanded not only that he

“keep his place” but that he pretend to enjoy keeping it; who enforced their rule by economic pressure, by blows, and by cold-blooded killing.”(L.A.S.,1945: 14).

During his childhood, when Richard heard that a “white”

man beat a “black” boy, he takes it for granted that the “white”

man must be the father of the “black” boy. But when he comes to know the reality, he gets puzzled and from that time^whenever he comes across white people, he tries to understand what they are really like.

Though Richard himself had not experienced white violence for quite a long time in his life, his heart had become a permanent

home of fear. He writes that the horror of the whites was such a threatening one that:

“Tension would set in at the mere mention of whites and a vast complex of emotions, involving the whole of my personality, would be aroused. It was as though I was continuously reacting to the threat of some natural force whose hostile behaviour could not be predicted.

I had never in my life been abused by whites, but I had already become as conditioned to their existence as though I had been the victim of a thousand lynchings.” (Wright, 1945: 65).

While working in Memphis, one day Richard decides to leave for North. But it is very difficult to tell his master about his plan in plain terms. So he lies to his white master that his Aunt was going to take his family to Chicago and it was only because he wanted to be with his mother that he was going North. He lies simply because he was afraid of the fact that the white boss would not like his leaving for North.

In the South, whites used to exploit the Negroes by making them work hard and paying meagre wages. When Richard takes a job in a white house, the boss lady tells him that he has to work

‘mornings, evenings, and all day Saturdays’ on the salary of two dollars a week!

The blacks were further exploited by not allowing them to practise the skilled trades. They were only appointed as porters, or messengers, or sweepers. Fortunately, Richard gets an opportunity

to work in an optical company and the Yankee boss assures him that he would get a chance to learn the trade. But the white co­

workers did not want a black boy to learn a skilled trade. One day they cornered Richard and forced him to quit the job by saying that he did not use the term “Mr.” while speaking about one of them.

At this incident Richard felt so much humiliated that he says, “I felt that I had been slapped out of the human race.” (167).

In another similar incident, Richard is hit with an empty whisky bottle because he did not use the word “sir”, while speaking with white young men.

The exploitation of the blacks in America had become so common that the blacks, it seems, had accepted that they were not human-beings at all. They were kept outside the American civilization, giving them no opportunity to nurture even the natural human feelings. While speaking about the cultural barrenness of the black life, Richard writes :

“I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled, and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another.” (33).

While working as a porter in a brickyard, the boss’s dog bites Richard. When Richard goes to report it to the boss, instead of showing sympathy for the boy, or helping him to go to the hospital,

the boss remarks that it cannot hurt a nigger thereby suggesting that the blacks were just like dogs.

In the South,as Richard was being treated like an animal in the human garb, he leaves the deep South and comes to Memphis with a ray of hope in his heart to succeed in life. Here also the situation was not different from that of the South. While commenting on the oppressive situation in North, a reviewer observes :

“Although there was less violence than is Mississippi, there was much the same opposition to his progress.

He could get books from the public library only by subterfuge. His opportunities for employment were limited. His race were still regarded by many whites as lower animals, and fights between Negroes were promoted for white entertainment, just as they were between cocks or dogs.” (L.A.S.,1945:14).

The value of a Negro life was no more than the lower animals for the whites. While working in an optical company in Memphis, Richard is told by the foreman of his company, one Mr.Olin, that Harrison, a black boy from the rival optical company, wants to kill him and the same story is told by Mr. Olin to Harrison. When Richard and Harrison meet each other, they realize that the foreman is playing a foul trick on them. But it was not possible for them to go and tell the ‘white’ man that he was a liar and they did not believe him. Finally the white folks succeed to arrange a boxing fight between Richard and Harrison. As the boys

had no alternative they accept the offer, knowing fully well that the whites want to entertain themselves at the risk of their lives.

The whites miss no opportunity to discourage the blacks in their efforts to improve their lot. While working in cafe, a boss lady, of course a white, doesn’t like that a black boy is reading

‘American Mercury’. When Richard decides to appear for the examination for the post of a postal clerk, he does not tell it to the boss, feeling afraid that he would not like it.

The more agonizing fact for the blacks in America was that they were deliberately kept outside the mainstream of American culture. If America had accepted them even as her step-children, the blacks would have accepted the inhuman conditions of their lives. Though they were living in America for more than three centuries, they were regarded as outsiders and so outcastes. In this connection, a critic says that the white society was always cautious..

“... to keep the Negro in his place; to restrict his freedom of movement, discourage his ambition, and banish him forever to the nether regions of subordination and inferiority.” (Bone, 1969: 14).

The whites tried to keep the blacks ignorant to safeguard their own interests. Perhaps they were afraid of the fact that if the blacks became ‘wise’, it would be impossible to exploit them.

While working in a medical research institute, Richard realizes that

the white doctors deliberately keep the blacks ignorant about whatever is going on in the hospital. When Richard reveals curiosity about the various experiments,a white doctor retorts, “If you know too much, boy, your brains might explode?

(Wright, 1977:48). Though the black workers were working in the hospital for quite a long time, they were as remote and ignorant about the various experiments as the animals themselves.

The condition of black woman was far worse than that of the black man. She was being exploited at all levels - mental, physical social, economical, and even sexual. When Richard was working as a porter in the clothing store, he witnesses an incident in which the boss and his son drag in a black woman and take her to a rear room of the store and beat her cruelly. When she comes out she is

“...bleeding, crying, holding her stomach, her clothing torn.”

(Wight, 1945:157). Then a white policeman accuses her of being drunk and takes her to the police station.

In another incident, Richard notices a white watchman slapping a black girl on her buttocks. The girl is unable to object to this act because she knows it well that if she objected to such acts then she would have to face severe consequences.

While summing up the effect of such oppression on the Negro mind, Raymond Kennedy writes :

“... of course, Negroes do adjust to their unhappy circumstances, but in doing so they become abnormal,

pathological. They must yield self-respect, dignity, and personal honour; and as Wright shows in his portraits of his fellow Negroes, this causes such a warping of personality that various forms of errotic behavior result. Some Negroes react to the constant succession of psychological shocks by subsiding into a kind of torpor, and live their lives in a spiritual and mental coma. Others seek escape in a fantastic dream world of grotesque religious beliefs and practices.

Still others, in frenzied frustration, vent their desperation on the only permissible objects of aggression, their fellow Negroes.” (1945:762-63).

Similarly, dalits were being oppressed for centuries on account of their caste, forcing them to live at the fringes of human society and making them do all those works which were regarded

“polluting” by the society.

Perhaps the most important factor responsible for the sufferings of dalits in India is the system of untouchability.

Though in post-independent India, the observance of untouchability is legally prohibited, it is still practised in some parts of the country, particularly in rural area. The system of slavery had denied the rights to American Negro to live like a human-being;

untouchability in India had the similar effect on dalits. Naturally, it has reflected in Indian literature. Daya Pawar, in his autobiography, has given several incidents of untouchability and its devastating effects on dalits. As untouchability was strictly practised, dalits were not allowed entries in public places. In the

hotels, they were compelled to sit outside and were given separate cups and dishes. In this connection, Daya Pawar writes:

mil 5r«nr twr ^ mfm dt

m#. m m

m$t *ter, I

mm

dl#; PI <RTcN teledTdd# dt dd^t df dtdT, ^ TO

^3^^” (1978:70).

Once Dagadu goes to Mumbai with Vithoba, an upper-caste Hindu. At that time, he is not allowed to enter into Vithoba’s house and is made to take his meal outside the house. While narrating this incident, Dagadu says :

“dt TOT TOfTd qk dTTd ^dd dT^t. dI1?TOTT dcJTdfd ift dfe ^dt.

mil

3d ddddl TOd 3TTO, fddd TOd dTTO tdd fTO did. ddTd fddR 4dt, 3TTdT fdstdl^t dTddtt ift dTTOctcd dR TO! fdfddld

dTTO dtd dT dTd! WW^l dT^d ift #dd 3Wdt.”(84).

As it was believed that the touch or even the shadow of dalits spoils the sanctity of the God, they were not allowed to enter into temples. If a dalit ventured to enter the temple, he was severely punished. In one incident, Dagadu tells us how he is beaten by the Savarnas when he enters into the temple. He writes :

“3TTW ^do5Td ifcdTtJoj

m

^daSIrfltf d^fd fTOTOt. dd ift dd# 3TTdPfd itdft d^dt.

ddft TOFdT d^d dtsFdTdf ddct^t 3Wdt. pFT TORTOT TOTT

wm M.

mz^

m

.

crm sierra steror fer to 3nfw t# toti #3#

wt

^?#

. ^5^1^;’ (8i).

Dalits were physically and economically exploited by making them work hard and paying meagre wages. Traditionally, they were assigned certain duties and they had no any other choice but to accept their lot if they wanted to be survived in the society. While speaking about how dalits were exploited by making them work beyond their capacities, Dagadu writes :

“wm-«n

w>wm m

....

wm

to

),

3#^rr

stents

#,

?tor totoi# xjKimui) to#,

TOTcf fTO TO TORU TO^TO Mt T#R#, TOTO TOTO #3#, TOT# TOT TOR#, TOT

#TO#, TOT WITT# stcft. TO^T ftcTO TOT? <R

^cf.” (40).

The savarna Hindus also used to exploit the dalits by purchasing their land at half-price and even sometimes by deceiving them, taking advantage of their illiteracy. Dagadu says in this connection :

TO>t TOf<TR|R

t

mrofte

# ?

, ?

CR W# TO#. 5RTT TOT %^5l! #R-

#T#RTO#TOT^ WRl#*##r TORR.” (122).

Dalits were at the lowest level in social hierarchy and dalit woman was the most downtrodden among the dalits; and she was exploited by not only the savarnas but also the members of her

own community. Though dalits were ‘untouchables’ in Hindu social structure, dalit woman was not regarded as such, while using her as a bed-partner, by the savarna Hindus. In her own community, she had no respectable position. She was treated cruelly by her male partners, making her situation more pathetic.

Without taking into consideration her likes and dislikes, at a very early age, she was forced into a marital bond with an elderly person. In her married life, she was compelled to satisfy all the whims of all the members of her family. In ‘Baluta’, Daya Pawar writes about many such incidents. For instance, we are told how a husband, suspicious about his wife’s character, sells her into a flesh-market. Daya Pawar writes :

wmm. ^c*^tr^ to & arpjr

qW tecff 3TT%, I TTCT (93).

Even Dagadu himself treats his wife, Sai, cruelly, when lie becomes suspicious about her character and deserts her alongwith his daughter. The exploitation of Dagadu’s mother, while working as a cook in the hostel, is a blot on the mankind itself. All the woman characters in ‘Baluta’, like Banu, Vithabai, Salma, Jamana, Dagadu’s mother and grandmother; represent a true picture of the exploitation of woman in Indian society.

While living - in the South, in his early childhood and thereafter in Chicago, Richard witnesses many incidents in which the blacks are exploited beyond imagination. While commenting on the situation of Negroes in America, Layle Lane says :

“To be both poor and black is a crime for which materialistic America exacts a heavy price (of) physical and spiritual hunger... frustration... meek submission or misdirected energy.” (Lane, 1945).

And as most of the Negroes were both poor and black, they were being exploited cruelly. To our astonishment, all these atrocities were rendered on them on the false assumption of racial superiority. That is why Richard is ready to opt for feudalism or dictatorship to that of democracy in America. To support his view, Richard says :

“I would have agreed to live under a system of feudal oppression, not because I preferred feudalism but because I felt that feudalism made use of a limited part of a man, defined him, his rank, his function in society.

I would have consented to live under the most rigid type of dictatorship, for I felt that dictatorships, too, defined the use of men, however degrading that use might be.” (Wright, 1977 : 6).

The more agonizing fact for the Negroes in America is that they were deliberately discouraged in developing a sense of right or wrong. Being aware of the threat of self-consciousness, the white Americans used to try to push the blacks into “invisibility”.

In India, dalits are not outsiders like Negroes in America*

Still on account of their castes, the savarna Hindus were not ready to accept them on equal terms. Though dalits have accepted their fates, it has reduced them to servile abject human-beings.

Commenting on the servility of dalit life, Daya Pawar writes : SRTCWTC tcR ^TcTT qfrrft

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During his stay at Chicago, Richard comes in contact with a score of people but he cannot develop close relationship with them.

Actually the environment in which he was brought up was so vicious that he was frightened to develop any emotional bond with it. In his own family, there was nobody to provide him emotional or intellectual companionship; and outside the family, the fellow blacks simply did not wish to understand what was going on in his mind and heart. On the part of Richard, he himself was not interested in developing just the shallow relations but he -

“... wanted a life in which there was a constant oneness of feeling with others, in which the basic emotions of life were shared, in which common memory formed a common past, in which collective hope reflected a national future.’’(Wright, 1977:20-21).

In Chicago, Richard comes to know that the Communist party is trying to organize the black people. Richard joins John Reed Club and two months later, is elected as an executive secretary of

the club. Soon he comes to know that the club is divided in several factions and it is run strictly according to the instructions received from the Communist Party. When the Party decides to cease the publication of a magazine ‘Left Front’, which was designed to publish the works of young Leftist writers, Richard becomes restless and raises his voice against the decision. But his opposition is voted down and the magazine is closed. The Communist Party had nothing to do with individual opinions and for Richard it:

“... becomes an abstract power opposed to his personality, transcending yet subsuming all of the preceding institutions from which he fled.” (Cappetti, 1995 : 86).

Richard, who was regarded as a misfit in family and the white South, had very hopefully devoted his time and energy to be

‘one’ with the Communist Party,but here also his hopes and efforts are shattered to pieces. He realizes that the Communists had not understood the hopes and aspirations of the black masses. The black Communist leaders were only interested in their own whims, trying to imitate the speech of Lenin, and thereby befooling themselves as well as the jobless, poor Negroes. Richard observes:

“Communism, instead of making them (the blacks) leap forward with fire in their hearts to become masters of ideas and life, had frozen them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they met communism.” (Wright, 1977 : 39).

The Communist Party does not allow its members to develop their own ideas and think independently. Instead, it seems, it was afraid of the man with ideas. When Richard decides to write a story based on the life of Ross, a Negro Communist, the Party officials suspect him to be a police informer and label him with degrading terms like ‘smuggler of reaction’ and ‘petty bourgeous degenerate’. In his family, Richard was criticized for writing his first short-story; and in the white society, his boss lady had ridiculed his ambition of becoming a writer; and here also the Communist Party discourages him of his project of writing a series of biographical sketches. Due to his efforts to write and prove his individual personality, the Comrades regarded him to be an

‘intellectual’ and so dangerous for the Party. All such types of oppression were carried on in the Party under the name of ‘Party discipline’ and all the hopes and aspirations of the black youths were shattered to pieces.

In ‘Baluta’, Daya Pawar also tells us about the political conditions of his time. He was influenced by many social and political activities going on under the leadership of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, and his Republican Party. After the death of Dr. Ambedkar, the leadership of the Party fell in the hands of second-grade leaders. Among these leaders, there was nobody to have a complete control either over the Republican Party or the dalit community. Naturally, the Party was divided in many factions.

These leaders were only interested in imitating the manners and style of Dr. Ambedkar and had nothing to do either with Ambedkar’s philosophy or with the welfare of the dalits. Day a Pawar writes about such leaders in his autobiography that -

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Instead of helping the young party workers to develop their qualities, these leaders were trying to kill their natural instincts.

While giving an account of the exploitation of the party-members, Daya Pawar tells us that Sadashiv, an active member of the Party, used to help the people of his community with great enthusiasm and sincerity. But at the time of election, the Chief of the District Unit of the Party, rejected his candidature, thereby destroying his career. While speaking about this incident of his life, Sadashiv throws a flood light on the political atmosphere of his time. He says :

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(96).

Some of the leaders of the Republican party of India were highly educated but they were not concerned with the education of the common people. They used to suppress the common people and their aspirations. Even some leaders used to feel ashamed of getting mixed up with their own people. Actually such leaders were devoid of any moral. While on a party-tour the behaviour of these leaders was abhoring. Daya Pawar narrates a story of one such leader.

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fRR.” (165).

The leaders of the other parties were also not concerned with the sufferings of the down-troddens. They simply couldn’t believe that there can be some special problems of the dalits. The National Congress party was all powerful in those days; but it also didn’t pay much attention towards the sorrows of the dalits. Though the government had passed some laws to protect the interests of the dalits, such laws were useless as they could not change the mentality of the people. While commenting on the attitude of the

political parties towards the issues of the dalits, Daya Pawar writes in his autobiography :

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Such exploitation of the dalits in India and the blacks in America is one of the most recurring themes in the autobiographies of the Black- American and the Dalit writers. Daya Pawar and Richard Wright are also no exceptions to this tradition. In their autobiographies, both of them show that the family, the community, the religion, the upper-class society and the political parties, join hands and exploit the protagonists. Yet these writers survived with the help of their own positive efforts and made their way towards the development of their personalities.