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Year­1 | Issue­3 | August­September 2012
Langston Hughes and Meena Kandasamsy voices Demanding Equality
Meena Kandasamy's Touch is the voiceof the Aggression of Suppression. She is the angry voice of the
oppressed.
Kandasamy has written many essays on the drudgery of casteism and its consequences. Of all her
works, her poetry speaks the loudest and is filled with fire as it brings out the anger in the hearts of the
downtrodden communities.
Dalit literature is uniquely Indian as it is a byproduct of an evil caste system that existed for many years
in this country. Although the constitution of India has abolished the caste system, it still lingers in many
walk of life with its grasps as firm as ever on the minds of its people. It may be compared with the
slavery in America and apartheid in Africa. The literature that arises as an outburst against casteism is
Dalit literature. Meena Kandasamy's writing comes from these margins of the caste code dictated for
many centuries. She uses her voice not only to expose the atrocities faced by the dalits, but also to
represent the anger that boils within them as a reaction to these prejudices.
Talking about Langston Hughes, Afro American Poet, talking about human equality.
Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period
that "the negro was in vogue" which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue "The Negro
Speaks of Rivers", which became Hughes's signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I danced in the Nile when I was old
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it,
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln,
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (192)
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"
The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark­skinned selves without
fear or shame.
­­­­­­ If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,
it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.
The tom­tom cries, and the tom­tom laughs. If colored people
are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure
doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain
free within ourselves.
The above lines really quote the feelings towards the white through black.
Hughes is quoted as saying­­­ “He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and
expanded African America’s image of itself; a “people’s poet” who sought to reeducate both audience and
artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality. An expression of this is the poem "My
People":
The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
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So the eyes of my people
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working­class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as
full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African­American identity
and its diverse culture. "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America
and obliquely that of all human kind," Hughes is quoted as saying. He confronted racial stereotypes,
protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself; a “people’s poet” who sought
to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality.
The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes, 1934
Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self­hate. His thought united
people of African descent and Africa across the globe to encourage pride in their diverse black folk
culture and black aesthetic. Hughes was one of the few prominent black writers to champion racial
consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists.] His African­American race consciousness and
cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers
One of his poem namely­­­­­Let America be America Again
The poem speaks of the American dream that never existed for the lower class American. It also talks
about the freedom and equality that every immigrant hoped for but never achieved. In his poem, Hughes
represents not only African Americans, but other minority groups as well. Besides criticizing the unfair
life in America, the poem conveys a sense of hope that the American Dream is soon to come. The title of this poem was used by Democratic United States senator John Kerry as a campaign slogan in
his 2004 presidential campaign. In 2011 an exploratory committee for conservative Republican former
senator Rick Santorum used a variant of the phrase ("Fighting to make America America again") on its
website; told of the slogan's derivation from the Hughes poem, Santorum stated he had "nothing to do
with" its use by the committee. Additionally, the satirical website estoringTruthiness.org refutes the idea
Santorum appropriated Hughes's language, claiming that the phrase "make America America again" is
"not unique or very original.
During a time in American History were African Americans had no rights of freedom of speech or even a
right to vote. Growing up in many different cities and living with many relatives, Langston Hughes
experienced poverty. Langston Hughes used poetry to speak to the people. Langston Hughes is a pioneer
of African American literature and the Harlem renaissance error. Mr. Hughes dedicated his poems to the
struggles, pride, dreams, and racial injustices of African American people.
Langston Hughes's stories deal with and serve as a commentary of conditions befalling African Americans
during the Depression Era. As Ostrom explains, "To a great degree, his stories speak for those who are
disenfranchised, cheated, abused, or ignored because of race or class." Hughes's stories speak of the
downtrodden African­Americans neglected and overlooked by a prejudiced society.
The recurring theme of powerlessness leads to violence is exemplified by the actions of Sargeant in "On
the Road", old man Oyster in "Gumption", and the robber in "Why, You Reckon?" Hughes's "On the
Road" explores what happens when a powerless individual takes action on behalf of his conditions....
Meena Kandasamy’s full­blooded and highly experimental poems challenge the dominant mode in
contemporary Indian poetry in English: status­quoist, de­politicised, neatly sterilized. These caustic
poems with their black humour, sharp sarcasm, tart repartees, semantic puns and semiotic plays irritate
shock and sting the readers until they are provoked into rethinking the ‘time­honoured’ traditions and
entrenched hierarchies at work in contemporary society. The poet stands myths and legends on their
head to expose their regressive core. She uses words, images and metaphors as tools of subversion,
asserting, in the process, her caste, gender and regional identities while also transcending them through
the shared spaces of her socio­aesthetic practice. She de­romanticizes the world and de­mythifies
religious and literary traditions by re­appropriating the hegemonic language in a heretical gesture of
Promethean love for the dispossessed. The poet interrogates the tenets of a solipsistic modernism to
create a counter­poetic community speech brimming with emancipatory energy.”
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Ms Militancy
Meena Kandasamy
Call me names if it comforts you. I no longer care.
The scarlet letter is her monogram. I sew it on everything I wear, I tattoo it into permanence. I strive to
be a slut in a world where all sex is sinful. I strive to be a shrew in a society that believes in suffering in
silence. I strive to be a sphinx: part­woman, part­lioness, armed with all the lethal riddles.
Come, unriddle me. But be warned: I never falter in a fight. And, far worse, I seduce shamelessly.
Kandasamy regards her writing as a process of coming to terms with her identity: her “womanness, and
low/ outcasteness”, labels that she wears with pride. She knew, she says, that “my gender, language
and castelessness were not anything that I had to be ashamed of… I wrote poetry very well aware of
who I was. But I was also sure of how I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be taken on my own terms… I
wanted to be totally bare and intensely exposed to the world through my writings. I wanted it to be my
rebellion against the world.” It meant, she adds, consciously deciding that she wasn’t interested in
winning “acceptance, or admiration or awards”. “Meena's poetry has revived feminism in a hitherto
unsurpassed manner. Her literary activism has given fresh impetus to the Dalit movement. A favourite of
every literary event in India, she is acknowledged for her contribution towards the Dalit rights
movement.” She is a furious poet writing about the inequality still prevalent in our society. She has the
courage to talk about the oppressed and talk about how they are outcasted from the main streamline
and not a part of actual society.
The history of afroamericans and their abuse, inequality trauma and other oppressive gestures are not
hidden from world. They were not given the main jobs and meant for music and sports. Inequality
prevailed at a larger scale. It really becomes important to see that such grounds of inequality were firing
in our Indian society which reflects in the voices of Meena Kandasamy. Poets and authors like rose up to
this negativity and showed courage to write about the same. Their voices had the picture of unequal
grounds prevalent in the society and their voices opposed it and demanded equality through their lines.
The poets in India as well as outside talk about the lines and quotes demanding equality. Lets think over
it and add our voices to them.
Reference
Aldrich, Robert (2001). Who's Who in Gay & Lesbian History. Routledge. ISBN 0­415­22974­X
Bernard, Emily (2001). Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van
Vechten, 1925–1964. Knopf. ISBN 0­679­45113­7
Berry, Faith (1983.1992,). Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. In On the Cross of the
South, p. 150; & Zero Hour, p. 185–186. Citadel Press ISBN 0­517­14769­6
Hughes, Langston (2001). Fight for Freedom and Other Writings on Civil Rights (Collected Works of
Langston Hughes, Vol 10). In Christopher C. DeSantis (Ed). Introduction, p. 9. University of Missouri
Press ISBN 0­8262­1371­5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston­ Hughes#cite_note­o
http://navayana.org/?p=1214
http://www.languagesinindia.com/may2011/rajimeenakfinal.html
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SUMAN .A. PANDEY
PH.D, RESEARCH SCHOLAR, JJT UNI., RAJASTHAN
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