summary of 'can we change this'
autobiograhy of bama
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
It stresses that discrimination on the basis of caste, class, colour and community must change. The title 'Can we change this' means can we change the behaviour of people towards lower castes, can we change our society and can we stop people from misbehaving with lower caste people.
Answer:
It was in 1992 that Bama left the convent that she had been a member of for seven years. As she writes, “That book was written as a means of healing my inward wounds; I had no other motive.” We see Bama, standing at this moment in her life, trying to make sense of her many identities; as a Dalit, as a Christian, as a woman.
Karukku is an elegy to the community Bama grew up in. She writes of life there in all its vibrancy and colour, never making it seem like a place defined by a singular caste identity, yet a place that never forgets, and is never allowed to forget its caste identity. She writes simultaneously of humorous incidents she remembers from her childhood, the games she used to play with her friends, good meals with her family and the oppression of her community by the police, upper-castes, and the convent. In this manner, she presents the pervasiveness of caste oppression – how it not only punctuates everyday life, but is an integral part of it, even in the memory of a community.
As Ambedkar writes, “Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.” Bama’s work speaks to this statement as she describes the servitude with which her family members were bound to the upper-caste families they worked for, including the beseeching obedience they had to show to them.
Bama also speaks of the humiliation she experienced in high school, being Dalit and poorer than her classmates. What struck me, in particular, is the symbolic importance of clothing as a marker of social capital that she writes of.