A Tale Of Hope And Water

On March 20, 1927, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and 10,000 Dalits (untouchables) had descended on Chavdar Tale in Maharashtra바카라�s Raigad district, cupped the waters in their palms and drank all that they could. The iconic moment overthrew the sarvarna (upper caste Hindu) norm that forbade Dalits from accessing any public water tank notwithstanding the Bombay Legislative Council바카라�s resolution to permit the community concerned to use it. In 1950, Article 17 of the Indian Constitution drafted by Ambedkar abolished untouchability.

Yet, instances of sarvarna dominance run rife in contemporary history. On August 13, 2022, mere one week before Rajyashri Goody opened her show at Galleryske in New Delhi, Indra Kumar, a Class VII Dalit boy from Jalore in Rajasthan died. He had been hospitalized on July 20 after his teacher beat him mercilessly for drinking water from a matka (pot) in school reserved for sarvarnas only. In August alone, Rajasthan recorded three other cases of Dalit children thrashed brutally.

Dalit histories are made up of such casteist battles, till recently, widely underreported in the mainstream. People like Goody who belong to this sub alternity바카라�the Pune artist and ethnographer who hails from the same Scheduled Caste, Mahar, as Ambedkar바카라�have taken it upon themselves to chronicle Dalit struggles won and still being fought as inspiration for the road ahead. The Dalit food aesthetic and traditions with its recipes involving ingredients occasionally rotten, half-eaten, and considered deplorable, like rats, form the core of Goody바카라�s art practice, which she tries to immortalize using ceramic, photography, poetry, and installation mediums.

Like her 2017 exhibit titled, What is the Caste of Water?, first referenced the Mahad satyagraha. It showcased one hundred and eight Coupes, Martini, Highball, Collins, and other popular varieties of cocktail glassware containing remnants of the panchgavya, five by-products of the cow바카라�gobar (cow dung), gau mutra (cow urine), doodh (milk), dahi (curd) and ghee바카라�concocted as a purification brew. The glasses symbolised the 108 pots of panchgavya that agitated Brahmins had emptied into the Tale to purify it after the Dalits had 바카라�touched바카라� it during the satyagraha. 바카라�But technically the sarvanas polluted it바카라� you can die consuming panchgavya,바카라� says the Dalit artist, who holds an MA in Visual Anthropology and is at present completing an art residency at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

This time, her ongoing solo is titled Is the Water Chavdar?바카라�chavdar means tasty in Marathi. 바카라�But I am not interested in the water or its taste. Just why animals and sarvarnas can 바카라�touch바카라� the water, yet Dalits are still attacked and killed for doing the same. My touch is not any different from yours,바카라� says Goody. Her focus is on the 10,000 satyagrahis who remain nameless and faceless in public memory as there is no photographic evidence of the historic event in institutional archives simply because it had never been photographed! Quite contrary to the widespread media coverage Mahatma Gandhi garnered for his salt satyagraha, his symbolic breaking of the British Raj salt laws at Dandi in 1930.

To rectify the absence of visual documentation of this people바카라�s movement, Goody recreates the Chavdar Tale with 10,000 tiny ceramic mounds arranged in a square, covering almost the entire gallery floor. This water body is cool and inviting, the light dances off the smooth, glazed exteriors of its mounds, and the eye smoothly scans the tapestry of browns, beiges, greens, yellows, whites, and blues바카라� all soothing shades there are to water. Palm-sized and smaller, these 바카라�hemispherical domes바카라� appear like water scooped in cupped palms, then crystallized and upturned to sit on a flat base. Goody calls these domes Buddhist stupas, and there바카라�s one for each of the 10,000 unsung heroes in Ambedkar바카라�s satyagraha. Drop by drop, it became an ocean of people who fought for caste equity. Walking alongside 바카라�this lake바카라� is thus intended to feel circumambulatory, where instead of a reliquary stupa, one meditates on the collective bravado of people who reclaimed their right to access public space.

Peculiar to the work a white pillar rising from the ceramic lake, is symbolic of the Kranti Stambh (Revolutionary Tower) in Mahad at which Ambedkar burnt copies of the Manusmriti on 1927 Christmas Day. Onto this pillar, Goody has slathered paper pulp, produced from copies of the Manusmriti; an artistic tradition common to her oeuvre. On a side note, watching her over-three-hours-long performance with Goethe Institut바카라�available on YouTube바카라�of tearing each page of the ancient text into vertical strips, then square chits, building into a pile, meant to pulp and make into laddoos바카라�can prove a gratifying A.S.M.R. experience for some.
 

The Buddhist markers in Goody바카라�s lake and around Chavdar Tale take note of the religion Ambedkar and his followers converted into as a way out of sarvarna oppression.  The setup is similar to her 2019 installation titled Gravel, where rock fragments filled an L shape 바카라�road바카라�, implying certain sections remain stuck in casteist jobs such as daily wagers at stone quarries, and construction sites, who build modern infrastructure but personally never experience these benefits.

To reposit the historical landmark in contemporary history, the walls overlooking the ceramic lake are dotted with photographs downloaded from Google Maps of visitors to Chavdar Tale. The photographs now exist in two forms of documentation, digital archives, and physical copies. Further, the images, all monotypes, were subjected to experiments such as printing with wet ink and then transferred onto printmaking paper, to appear leaky, 바카라�stained바카라�, with ink running in places, 바카라�to retain the 바카라�wetness바카라� while talking about water,바카라� she notes. 바카라�We have existed as a community for over a thousand years, but our stories were not photo-documented until 50-60 years ago. But now, these photographic archives are constantly being built. We complain that there바카라�s not much data on minority issues, but there is a lot. It is about where you look. And also realizing that if such incidents had not happened, so many of us wouldn바카라�t be where we are,바카라� Goody observes.