Answer: Autobiographical Elements in Sangati Sangati has autobiographical elements because it has incidents from the author’s life and surroundings. However, it is not an autobiography in the sense that Bama’s first book Karukku is. Sangati is more an autobiographical novella which means it has some fictional elements and follows a literary form. Laxmi Holmstrom says that one may argue that “Sangati is perhaps the autobiography of a community” because “Sangati moves from the story of individual struggle to perception of a community of paraiya women, a neighbourhood group of friends and relations and their joint struggle”.
What is an Autobiography? An autobiography provides a full account of one’s life written by the person her/himself. It is different from the memoir, in which the emphasis is not on the author’s developing self but on the people and events that the author has known or seen and from the private diary or journal, which is a day-to-day record of the events in one’s life, written for personal use and satisfaction, with little or no thought of publication. Autobiography is a type of a bildungsroman. Bama’s Sangati tells about the growing up of the author and the lives of other women in her community. Thus, it has both elements of autobiography and memoir. It narrates the real life stories of struggle and perseverance. It is significant in Dalit literature because it projects personal testimonies of violence and oppression meted out to the community and specifically to women within that community. Sangati is also considered as a novella (a short novel) – an imaginative recollection and representation of life. A Dalit Autobiographical Narrative Both Dalit autobiographical narrative and mainstream ones are personal narratives with an additional responsibility to express the concerns of the time. A Dalit account of self however prioritizes the concerns of the Dalit community rather than the society at large. Such texts voice the problems that are generally silenced by the powers of the time. Mainstream autobiographies are well-structured narratives of self-glorification, while Dalit autobiographies are the response of those who have been wronged for centuries. Dalit autobiographers express the anger of their sordid life. Thus, mainstream autobiographies focus on the heroic self of the protagonist, one that has done the nation proud and would become the object of study for later generations. However, Dalit autobiographers speak of oppression and violence meted out to an entire community not an individual alone. The ‘heroic’ aspect of Dalit autobiographical narratives constitutes the subject’s fight against oppression and the ability to liberate oneself from the stronghold of caste system. Dalit autobiographies uncover the dark side of the apparently harmonious society. Dalit autobiographies are unabashedly political and polemical. Caste is an important issue in Dalit autobiographical literature. In Sangati, Bama tells about the habitation of the Paraiyar (the untouchable) caste. People of this caste are not supposed to use the tube water that belongs to the upper caste. The low caste people occupy the ends of the town and are not supposed to mingle with those higher up. The narrator at the outset of Sangati makes clear the divide between the Dalits and the upper castes.
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