Mostly written between 1979 and 1981, the stories in Allam Rajaiah's Bhoomi adopt the Storytelling mode. They are located in the Karimnagar district of the Telangana religion. Through a conversation between the narrator and the old man, "Bhoomi" Validates 'groups' being formed to oppose landlord. "Fish" allegorically demonstrates how feudal powers divide people in the lowest rungs to prevent a possible revolt. Using the story within the story mode, "Jungle Man" provides hope to an illiterate father whose son has been taken away by the police for joining a revolutionary group. "The Change", authority and power, suggest the impending defeat of the feudal system. "The Lesson the Enemy Taught" questions the judicial system through the story of a shepherd who is forced to hoard and use arms out of sheer necessity.
Allam Rajaiah (b. 1952), a well-known Telugu novelist and short-story writer, puts to good use the Telengana dialect to bring out the life of the underprivileged. Written primarily from the perspective of the farming community, the adivasis and the labour class, his stories deal with the effects of cruel feudal landlordism. Among his most acclaimed works are Komuram Bheem (with Sahu), a novel written entirely in dialect for the first time, Kolimantukunnadi (The Furnace has Caught Fire) and Bhoomi, a short-story collection.
ALLAM RAJAlAH (c. 1952) uses in this book the Telangana dialect, more specifically Telugu language as spoken in the Karimnagar district about twenty-five years ago. Before Rajaiah, no one in his family had formal education. His parents are illiterate. He visited several villages as part of the revolutionary movements that rose in Karimnagar and Adilabad districts against cruel feudal landlordism. His involvement began with writing pamphlets that led on to writing reports for the newspapers, to writing stories, to campaign for the movement, to writing in several genres, to talk about the philosophical questions of the movement and to describing its evolution culminating in poems, several short stories, novels, plays, etc. He has written ten novels and around ninety short-stories. Given this context, he has used-several pseudonyms such as Bayyapu Devender Reddy, Kiran, Andugula Mondaiah, Godavari, Gopi, Gopal, Karmika, Aara, Muralidhar, Chandana, Puli Ananda Mohan, Chandrudu, etc. and his own name as well. In Rajaiah's own words: "My writings are not those that sprung from an individual's psyche. They relate to the practice of an entire community. My stories were read in many villages in groups. I have myself been a part of such gatherings of the reading of my stories from Bhoomi with the others in the group having had no clue that I was the writer."(Personal correspondence with us.) He has written about people involved in production - the farming community, the adivasis and the labouring class. To reach out to these people, he uses oral tradition and people's language.
Starting with the novella, Mugimpulu-Mundadugulu (Endings-Forerunnings) under the influence of Gandhian social reform, written between 1968 and 1970, Rajaiah's long literary career produced such well-known novels as Kolimantukunnadi (The Furnace Has Caught Fire) on the beginnings of the peasant struggle in Karimnagar and Adilabad districts that have played an active role in the movement, a novel written entirely in the dialect in Telugu for the first time, Komuram Bheen (with Sahu) based on a Gond leader by that name who had fought against the Nizam and who was killed by the Nizam's forces in 1940, Agnikanam (Coal of Fire) on the crucial part rural women play in revolutionary movements, Vasanthageetham (Song of the Spring), the first novel in Telugu to deal with guerrilla warfare and the strategies adopted by the guerrillas and the State, Guruvulu (Preceptors) that proclaims people as the real teachers, and Athadu (He), the life history of a labour leader. He wrote his first short story. "Edurutirigite" (If You Revolt) in 1970. Written against the backdrop of the days before organised revolts; the story describes rural exploitation and oppression, the complexities of peasant relations and the communities dependent on land and agriculture. It shows the divergence between the feudal class and the vast population of the exploited. Some of the other stories that earned a special place for Rajaiah are "Mahadevuni Kala," (Mahadeva's Dream) "Manishilopali Vidhvansam," (The Destruction Within Man) and "Madhyavartulu" (The Mediators).
The stories in Bhoomi (1982) have been written between 1979 and 1981. The title story of this collection is in the first person narrative. Interestingly, the narrator is critical of the developments in the villages, of the opposition to landlordism and of the revolutionary movement that was beginning to take roots. The narrator wonders why the landlord should not get those, like his brother-in-law, involved with the starting of the "group" arrested with the help of the police. The old man whom he meets on his way, on the other hand, justifies the movement and the inevitability of the assertion of the rights of the land by the tiller. The racy style adopted by the writer to suggest that nothing can stop the land being tilled indicates the momentum of the movement even in its early stages. "Chepalu" (Fish) is an allegorical story that uses the conversation between an older man and a young boy who are out fishing to talk about the feudal system. The complexity of the story lies in its inclusion of some characters even from the lowest rungs of the society and the exploited being used by the feudal powers to disrupt their unity and a possible revolt. There is a definite suggestion of the possible victory of the revolutionary movement even if it passes through initial failure. The young boy, though apprehensive in the beginning, is hopeful of better days ahead. 'Adivi Manishi" (Jungle Man) details the mental state of a poor, illiterate father whose land has been snatched away by the landlords and whose son has been taken away by the police for joining the revolutionary group. His efforts to find out his son and the reason for the landlord taking away his lands having failed, he is disheartened." The only solace he gets seems to be from the various recountings of his plight to different people. It is then that he meets the leader of the group who has come to get all those who have been arrested released on bail. He assures him that their efforts, as in the story of an old man who decides to dig a whole mountain to take possession of the land allotted to him on the other side, will not be futile. The story ends in the narrator wondering how to recount this story even better.
Through the retelling of the story of his son who has joined the movement, Gangaiah, the president of the Peasants and Labourers Union, emphasises the need for all the others to follow him, "Marpu," (The Change) describes in graphic detail the landlord's household in a typical feudal set-up including the stud bull, a symbol of his authority and power, and the changing times when both the landlord and the stud bull have perforce to -accept their defeat. "Shatruvu Nerpina Patham" (The Lesson the Enemy Taught) is a story, that has a court scene in which a shepherd explains how they have been forced to hoard and use bombs out of sheer necessity In their fight to reclaim the lands taken away by the landlord to retrieve their cattle and to protect themselves, they have no option but to use the very same tools their enemies have used against them. The landlords use police force against them when they protest against their livelihood being snatched away, foist false cases on them and drag them to court. For the first time in this collection, there is a direct reference in this story to such people being dubbed Naxalites and their being killed by the police in fake encounters .
Although all the stories do not use first person narratives, they invariably employ characters who tell other related stories. The story within a story is a strategy employed by the narrators to enthuse their listeners and by the writer to make his readers empathise with the movement. The writer succeeds in his own strategy of conveying "the message while keeping himself outside the frame. The frequent switchover from the narrator's voice to that of the stories within and the conversation of the characters within those stories have posed a major challenge in translating these stories. The English tense creates major hurdles in translating such a narrative mode. We hope we have been able to cross the hurdles and reach the reader. We have encountered a problem in translating the expletives used by Rajaiah's characters that are offensive to women, though we decided to retain them. Also, the stories use the Telugu language as it is spoken in the Karimnagar district where the stories are located. The stories use idioms native to this region that are quite unfamiliar to the speakers of the standard language. This has meant several drafts of the translation. We have had the opportunity to go over these stories with K. P. Ashok Kumar who is familiar with the use of Telugu in the Telangana region and Adepu Lakshmipati who comes from Karimnagar district. Thereafter, we have had the pleasure of working with the writer himself who spent several hours to read the English translations-more than once. His suggestions have been invaluable. We have been benefited by the valuable suggestions given by Suneetha on our translation.
We thank Nagarajan for meeting with patience all our deadlines and ensuring an error-free manuscript. We also thank CIIC, Mysore and Sahity Akademi for giving us the opportunity to bring Rajaiah to The English readers.
Arts are born out of people. They are being sustained by people. They exist only for people. The sense conveyed by "of the people, by the people and for the people" clearly suggests the relationship between arts and people. Even when it was said that arts were for other worldly use or when it was said that art was for art's sake, arts were always with the people. That is not to say that all forms of art that were born in these two stages belonged to the people. But it is to say that whenever we recognise the necessity to make the relationship between art and people intimate and comprehensive, art will inevitably carve itself to the shape of people's choice alone and will become one with the people.
As revolutionary writers kept piercing the people's heart in the form of a movement, they recognised the necessity of the song. There are many instances today to' prove that their recognition was indeed right. More than the phrase with immediate significance, "There's not an eye that becomes wet for me," the song, "They know at all a grain of rice in gruel, having emptied an entire stream and harvested a thousand putties of rice" is greater both in form and content. Similarly of Gaddar's Anna! Oh Ganganna!" is greater than any classical literature. How did these achieve greatness? It is because the content of people's lives is in the form of people's art.
There are intellectuals who are upset that Gaddar, who composes songs and sings them, and Allam Rajaiah, who writes stories, are earning too much fame. Setting aside such people who look down upon them, it is important to discuss the criticism of Rajaiah's use of dialect and technique.
When the content has grown from the stage where it was limited to middle class characters and middle class readers to the lives of the eighty per cent labour class, the parameters of older technique will not suffice. Not that technique is not necessary. But technique too changes. Just as the necessity to move on from prose poetry to song has been recognised, Allam Rajaiah or any other writer who has connections with democratic movements will grasp that he will have to write the kind of stories he does. That is, though he too understands, like writers in the past, the significance of the short-story form, he understands not so much the writing of a story but the telling of it. All of Rajaiah's stories use this technique.
The "Desi" (indigenous) tradition combines these three - song, story and music-in its form. Gurazada said, "Hurry; learn all arts together and fill them with Desi arts." Rajaiah has brought in such "Desi" traits to his stories.
We can grasp this easily and clearly from the story, "Change" in this collection. Gangaiah, in the middle of the story, tells the story of his village. And that too-how? "In the form of a song." It is possible to give instances from a few more of Rajaiah's stories that primarily have this characteristic. But there is no need. If we examine them keeping in mind whether this characteristic is there or not, it becomes clear to anyone. Stylisticians in fact oppose this very characteristic. They draw a circle of techniques between characters and themselves; they take care that the circle is not disturbed by not going to the other side and not letting the character come this side. But those who understand the unity between the character and the writer appreciate this style. What I want to say and what I ought to say is that just as the revolutionary writers turned their artistic forms to take them closer to the people, Rajaiah too has transformed his story. This is the reason for his critics to criticise him and for his admirers to praise him.
Rajaiah's regional dialect is born out of his "identifying" with his characters. What he is saying is about the lives of the people of his region. He cannot imagine those people speaking a language other than their own. This is not misplaced regionalism. It appears as if to change the language is to change people's identity and to indulge in forgery. It is not necessary to think that regional dialect imposes restrictions on writing. That which restricts or enlarges writing is the social life of the characters and the writer's perception (both are in fact the writer's perception) and not the regional dialect. Anyone who wants to know the lives of people through literature will welcome regional dialect, not oppose it. Those who wish to convert bourgeois art forms into people's art forms must think about another aspect. Folk literature and new art forms of the people are not by nature one and the same.
In the name of authenticity, profanities and obscenities that horribly demean women ought not to appear. Even if one is an enemy of the labour class, it is necessaty to be careful not to use words such as "You mother ... " As Rajaiah is not just a writer who recognises people's fight against the feudal lords but is also a member of that movement and is someone who wishes that it succeeds, the present reality he represents seems exaggerated here and there in his stories. Bur it is possible only for those within the movement to confirm this clearly.
Rajaiah's stories are not just those of a few readers but of crores of people.
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