Marginalized Image and Emotional Charge of Meenakandasamy's Poems: Touch and Militancy

Abstract

A young Tamil poet from Chennai, Meena Kandasamy is a fiction writer, translator, and activist. Her two collections of poems Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010) present the real pictures of the marginalized in Indian society. As a conscious artist with commitment she is grieved to see the age old in human social practices like untouchability based on caste system prevailing in our society. She expresses her anger against caste based discrimination which has crippled the dalits/ marginalized to dehumanized state as they are subjected to humiliation and oppression. In “We Will Rebuild Worlds” Meena Kandasamy uses direct and passionate language by enhancing its emotional impact. She challenges the reader and elicits thought by using strong language and rhetorical questions such as “What is the caste of sperm in India?” and “What is the cost of life in India?” The language style in “Elegy to My First Keyboard” is informal, intimate, and emotionally charged.This paper attempts to explore and analyze the grievances of the marginalized communities raised in Touch by Meena Kandasamy. In her poem, Marriamma focus on poverty, oppression, injustice, caste annihilation, linguistic identity and pangs and predicaments of women. In one of the poems titled In her poem ‘Liquid Tragedy: Karamchedu 1985’, she lashes out at the act and attitude of the people of the higher caste by recapturing the massacre of Karamchedu, Andhra Pradesh in 1985, where many low caste men were killed and their women were raped by the upper caste people. In fact, Meena Kandasamy seeks equality, freedom and fraternity for the marginalized so that they can lead a life with pride and dignity in society