Thiruvananthapuram: Social media has gone viral with loud voices asserting Onam as one for the oppressed, the Dalits, the Adviasis and other subaltern classes.
One such effort to assert the subaltern nature of the festival was made by Dubai-based engineer Francis Nazareth alias Simy, who came up with a series of black and white sketches which Ambedkarist website RoundtableIndia later reproduced.
A sketch by Francis Nazareth
One of the sketches depicts Mahabali of today kicking Vamana back to his heavens. The script of the sketch reads ‘Come on’dra Maveli’, modelled on the popular movie dialogue ‘Come on'dra Maheshey’ in the Malayalam movie Maheshinte Prathikaram.
In another sketch, Maveli is seen eating the Onam feast with fish curry. Mr Nazareth says in his accompanying piece in Rountable India, “Why not mix food from every culture into the celebration? There is no justification for keeping it strictly vegetarian. For example, I come from the Latin Catholic community which made of traditional fishermen. What is a feast without fish curry for us?”
Yet another sketch has Maveli asking an elderly Muslim woman for a buffalo-meat biriyani while visiting a Muslim household during Bakrid. There is also a sketch of Vamana running away with Maveli in an attire of Rajinikanth from the movie Kabali in the background. This has obvious reference to the politics of Ambedkar’s dress depicted in the movie.
This was not for the first time that the politics of Onam has become a topic of hot debate. In a similar note in the Ambedkarist website RoundtableIndia ‘Onam for Adivasis: Celebration of exclusion, betrayal and exploitation?’ last year, Narayanan M. Sankaran, an Adivasi researcher at the English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad, had pointed out that the nostalgic myth associated with Onam is a story of misappropriation and slavery for the adivasis.
“If it were indeed everyone's festival, why was it celebrated with all pomp and glory at a time when 30-odd Adivasis died of starvation in Palakkad and Wayanad during one Onam season,” he asked. “Does it not go to show that Adivasis are not a part of Kerala society.”
Activist and documentary writer K. P. Sasi in a note ‘Let's Have A 'Beef Onam’ in 2013 had said Mahabali should be freed from the appropriation of the upper castes and fed properly with a beef Onam.
“I request all my friends to celebrate Onam with good beef curry, beef chilly, beef fry, beef soup or any other dish which a Dalit king can enjoy,” he said. “Please publicise with photographs of your celebration in Facebook and all other platforms.”
In a Facebook post recently, Banglore-based software engineer Joshina Ramakrishnan said she would drop her plan not to celebrate this Onam and celebrate it indeed. “This is because was there is a political move to convert the festival into Vamana jayanthi,” Ms Ramakrishnan opined.
Dalit activist and documentary director Roopesh Kumar asserted that he would be celebrating Onam deviating from the traditional way. He would wear jeans, listen to Bob Marley and interact with Tamil friends to “celebrate Onam my way”.
“When I was in Singapore, I had celebrated Onam with the Tamil diaspora there, eating, of course, non-vegetarian food,” he told Deccan Chronicle.
Dalit activist A.S. Ajithkumar said that what is positive about the present day Onam celebration is that nobody could insist on retaining the ‘purity’ of Onam anymore. Watching films, buying cloths and travelling are the things normally associated with Onam now, he pointed out. “Usually, even when one is dressed in traditional attire for celebrations, everyone knew that is just dressing up for a celebration and it is unreal,” he said.
“They know very well that it is not their normal attire. It would not be impossible to recreate the old traditional stereotype of ‘pure Onam’ which was more of an upper-caste celebration anymore.”
