‘Song that refuses silence’

It was evening when Durga and Narayanswamy’s performance of Gangamma neernaga jade henitavle ended. The Kannada play by Kotiganahalli Ramaiah is about constitutional rights over land and water. It is often performed across the state as a call to draw attention to untouchability.

As the last notes of their music died away, they placed a photo of Babasaheb Ambedkar on the street stage they had just occupied. Babasaheb Ambedkar was a scholar, social reformer and an advocate of equality, fighting for the rights of Dalits.

While people had sat through the play and listened intently, as soon as Ambedkar’s photo was brought out, the mood in the small village in Karnataka, changed instantly.

“When we place the photo, people guess our caste. They refuse us water. They ask us not to sit on their veranda. In some villages, organisers even cancel our performance,” says Narayanswamy.

Durga is questioned about her age, her marital status and more: “Do your parents and family allow you to perform like this?”

Even a routine visit to a toilet to change costumes quickly turns into a spectacle of humiliation. “People shout, ‘Costume change maduvaga, washroom ge hoguvaga tumba jana hey elliyak bartira hogi alle yelladru topugul kade hogi annoru.. tumba avamana anubhavistidvi [Hey, why are you coming here…go…go use the bushes’],” recalls Durga, the hurt and pain still visible on her face.

They turn these humiliations into songs:

On Therahalli Betta, silence is thick. No mobile towers hum here, no internet crosses the ridge. To make a call, one must walk down the slope until a bar of signal appears. Life here is absent — of infrastructure, of recognition, of state support. Yet from this silence have risen songs of resistance sung by these Ambedkarite folk singers.

Musicians Narayanswamy and Durga Buddideepa lead separate lives, and come together to sing a language of collective memory, perseverance, resistance and the solidarity that unites people remembering endurance and seeking hope.

Their individual journeys began in the courtyards of a small Dalit basti (settlement) – Therahalli Betta – in Kolar district of Karnataka. Here, songs are how people communicate their knowledge, memories, love, way of life, and sense of belonging.

This hamlet is in Paparajanahalli panchayat, and is known for a dargah visited by Hindus and Muslims. In the hamlet of roughly 1,000 people – mostly agricultural labourers and informal workers – a third are Dalits (Census 2011).

Kolar district holds deep anti-caste and Ambedkarite history. This is the legacy of the Dalita Sangharsha Samiti (DSS) – an umbrella body of Dalit organisations.

“Singing Ambedkar, Buddha and Basava, along with our cultural and emotional roots with the soil of Kolar, binds our musical journey,” Durga tells PARI.

She started singing and performing in her school days. It was her musical grandmother and mother, both Sobana Pada (traditional folk music) singers, who inspired her to become an artist. Sobana songs are rooted in traditional oral history, passed down from generations, and sung by women working in fields, during festivals and other celebrations.

For Dalit women, denied entry into written histories, these songs are validated memories and archives, carried forward in their voices when temples and schools barred entry and education.

In 2010, when Durga was in the Class 3, poet and activist Kotiganahalli Ramaiah visited her government school in Kolar to organise a theatre workshop. She was given the part of an ant, just one appearance in the entire play. But the cheers and applause she received motivated her to continue exploring how to act and perform.

Durga says her journey as an artist began at this moment.

“My career today would have been entirely different if Kotiganahalli Ramaiah had not arrived that day! I wouldn’t have known a word of art or theatre.” She sees herself today as an artist, actor, singer and Ambedkarite. “We read Ambedkar through our songs, and we perform Ambedkar in our art,” says Durga, who lives at the Buddideepa Centre and visits her parents who live close by.

Durga also began learning Kolata and playing the Dollu Kunita (a dance form in which a big drum is played by the dancers). “People often told me that I danced and played the Dollu like a boy,” she adds with a small smile. Kolata and Dollu Kunita are traditional folkdance forms from Karnataka, rooted in community life and oral history.

Narayanswamy’s father and late grandfather were also Kolata artists (a folk dance performed with sticks). But he could not continue the family tradition as he was visually disabled from birth. His interest shifted to singing – folk songs of resistance and Tatvapada, a philosophical folk verse or songs which were rooted in promoting religious harmony, social equality and cultural exchange.

Narayanswamy taught himself the tamburi. The string instrument may look simple but its history is radical. For generations, the tamburi has belonged to wandering Sharana poets who travelled from village to village, carrying verses of equality rooted in Basavanna’s vachanas (philosophical poems from the Bhakti movement that promoted egalitarianism, labour dignity and devotion to lord Shiva). Unlike instruments such as the veena or the mridangam, which were protected within Brahminical spaces, the tamburi has always remained a people’s instrument – portable, rebellious, and democratic.

In his thirties, Narayanswamy lives with his parents, wife, and child and commutes to the Buddideepa Cultural Centre for work from T Gollahalli, 30 km away.

He recalls a deep longing to simply touch the tamburi. It was a desire shaped by the fact that he could not afford to buy one. Years later, when he finally received a tamburi as an honorarium for a performance, it became one of the happiest and most unforgettable moments of his life.

Kotiganahalli Ramaiah is a well-known author and poet from the Dalit community. His contribution to addressing caste discrimination echoes strongly in his writings and poems. Ramaiah’s play, Kaage Kannu Iruve Bala is performed by many schools in Karnataka, and it encourages Dalit and marginalised children to understand the culture and history through their participation in the play.

It was Durga’s first play, and today both she and Narayanswamy continue to work with him as singers and artists.

In 1970 B. Basavalingappa (a Dalit politician and former minister in Karnataka’s Devraj Urs government), used the term boosa (cattle fodder) to criticise mainstream Kannada literature, accusing it of marginalising Dalit literature or writings or text. That led to the Boosa Movement in the state from which a number of resistance movements took root.

The Dalit Action Committee and Dalit Students Federation in Mysore and Kolar played a significant role in songs of resistance and the rise of Bandaya Sahitya in Kannada literature. As an activist, Ramaiah also played a major role in organising DSS (Dalit Sangharsha Samiti) in Kolar.

Kotiganahalli Ramaiah along with others founded the Aadima Cultural Centre in Shivagange, Kolar in 2005 to challenge Brahminical monopoly over Karnataka’s theatre schools like Rangayana and Ninasam which often trained upper caste actors to perform Dalit sufferings but rarely gave Dalits the stage. Rangayana had faced a massive protest from Dalit activists, writers and the theatre community for its casteist propaganda.

It was in Aadima that Durga and Narayanswamy formally entered the theatre space for the first time. “Aadima serkondmele namage namma haadina mahatva tilisikottu, jotege haaduva dhairya bantu] Aadima gave us courage. It told us our lives are not shameful. Our songs are not small,” says Durga.

Housed in an open-air campus, Aadima is built into the village landscape. In regular festivals like Ambedkar Natakotsava (Ambedkar Theatre Festival), Hunnime habba plays about caste, labour, and land rights, as well as workshops on budakattu janapada (tribal folk traditions), Brahmanism is challenged as marginalised artists come together to reimagine performance.

Durga recalls how rehearsals doubled as village meetings, performances ended with discussions, and theatre was treated as collective consciousness. For Durga and Narayanswamy, it was the first time where they were not folk sideshows.

This journey of resistance continued to rise when they joined the Buddideepa Cultural Centre founded in 2010. Ramaiah created this new space for cultural, political and intellectual awakening rooted in Ambedkarite thought. It has an Ambedkar Library – named Ambedkar Library Movement (ALM), pronounced as ‘aalam’. He says he is resisting the urge to place Dalit struggles inside museums.

Ramaiah has written plays for children which they enact during summer camps. “We move away from textbook-based teaching and instead engage children with language, social sciences and social awareness through art, performance and play,” he tells PARI.

“We are often called ‘folk singers’ or ‘Ambedkarite singers. It’s a tag that frames our art as exotic or marginal,” points out Durga. Brushing aside the aspersions, they sing Ramaiah’s compositions, radical and anti-caste songs.

Folk music is in a fragile space as opportunities are shrinking. Recognition is rare, but the duo say they sing to stay alive, to resist. Despite no access to big stages, their songs still reach people.

The artists are aware that musical tastes have moved towards DJs, Bollywood songs, electric beats and guitars. “But we sing our songs, songs of resistance even when the city refuses to hear them because we are clear with our vision and mission to carry Babasaheb with us in singing,” adds Durga.

Assertion, however, does not pay rent and bills. While Karnataka’s Department of Kannada and Culture allocates crores of rupees to classical art subsidies, Ambedkarite folk singers remain excluded. “When we sing with Ambedkar ideology, venues close,” Durga says. “Income is uncertain. But what else do we have? This is our life.”

In drought-prone Kolar district, marked by agrarian distress and migration, most Dalits are engaged in informal low wage work. For Dalit women, workforce participation is less than 20 per cent in Karnataka. “We live with drought in the field, and drought in our plates,” Durga remembers her grandmother's words: “Only songs keep us alive.”

Narayanswamy recalls working as a construction worker, agricultural labourer, woodcutter… “I barely earned enough to feed myself and support my parents. Soon, because of my disability, no one would give me work.”

Durga and Narayanswamy’s early earnings as artists were around Rs. 1,000 for a performance, gradually increasing to Rs. 5,000 after decades. They play as a troupe not out of choice, but more from economic constraint – they are unable to afford additional artists or instruments.

The highest payment they have received so far is Rs. 10,000, shared between them. Durga says, “This work is full of uncertainty. We do not have a regular source of income to take care of ourselves or even to support our families. Even after 15 years of work experience, we are still struggling to meet our basic needs.”

“When we go to the city, caste is still there, only in another form.”

“Whatever the situation and whatever the challenge, we will sing and perform till the end,” Durga says firmly, her voice asserting resistance against caste and patriarchy each time she performs.

She is now looking forward to the release of her film The 1979 Untold Story directed by Pushparaja who is an emerging young director. In this film Durga is playing one of the main supporting roles as a sister. She says “I am hoping to get some recognition and better opportunities to grow as an artist.”

(All compositions in this story are by Kotiganahalli Ramaiah.)

This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).