Art Cannot Own What Reason Disowns: Caste in Kannada1 Literature

Abstract

As deductivist as it is inductive, as theoretically
motivated as it is empirically oriented, the paper, a low-down on my view of (literary) art, argues that there has to be a natural adductive-abductive tension in art, which corresponds to how the world is and how you wished it was, or to put it in more picturesque terms, the prose of reality and the poetry of the soul, the outer eye of empiricism, real-worldism and the inner eye of deductivist mentalism and rationalism. There is at the least a three-way typology of indian literature as regards how they deal with caste, for instance, which happens to be one of the slimiest scams of human history. The three ways are: a. caste endorsed and legitimized as a matter of course or justified or assumed as a basic immutable irreducible iron-clad premise. This is the theoretically flawed kind. This subcategorises in two ways: those that assume caste as an ironclad immutably basic premise and then go on to build their worlds. e,g The Death-Rite(sanskaara) and those that legitimise this slimy construct called ‘caste’ after averring that tinkering, rather jibbingly, with this barbaric system would be infructuous. e.g. Crossing-Over (daaTU) b. caste/religion described as it exists and then transcended (Man needs to transcend the manifest to ignite change). e.g. The Inscrutable Mystery (Chidambara Rahasya), The Twilight Narrative (Mussanjeya Kataa Prasanga), The Unbrahmin (Abrahmana) being other possible examples. c. Caste depicted in passing without either endorsing/justifying/legitimising or critiquing it, it being used merely as an incidental and almost irrelevant
backdrop to a different thematic space. e.g. Carvalho,
Purushoottama, The Woods (KaaDu), ... The latter two
categories source, nourish, affirm and protect life and
civilization, seeking out fresh new life-narratives of remaking ourselves vis-a-vis caste.