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Turning the Pot,
Tilling the Land: Anovel title, an extraordinary theme, an attractive getup and lots of pen drawings—no booklover can remain inattentive to this book. On the cover, folk figures in orange with large fish eyes engaged in manual labour, weaving, ploughing, working on potters’ wheel, cutting hair or pounding grain, drawn on a blue and olive background, catch your attention instantly. The creativity of the illustrator Durgabai Vyom spilling on every other page is a joy to behold. The author Kancha Ilaiah is a Professor of Political Science at Osmania University, Hyderabad. His earlier books—God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism and Why I am not a Hindu?—have been hotly debated. The book under review discusses dignity of labour and aims to reach the children. The author has picked up the idea from those grossly twisted demonstrations in which student-doctors polished shoes, swept road, washed clothes and did other manual jobs to show their resentment against reservations. The author has discussed professions of cattle-rearers, leather workers, farmers, potters, weavers, dhobis, barbers and adivasis, including religion and gender in the context of labour. It is obvious that any such discussion will naturally lead to caste issues and historical debates. There is nothing bad about it since our children need to be sensitised about these realities and trained to handle them judiciously in order to overcome age-old biases. However, the objective should be to develop the childability to comprehend the rational method and to think with clarity and maturity. Writing for children is one of the most challenging jobs since one has to be extremely cautious lest we curb their creativity, become authoritative, adopt a patronising tone or at the worst substitute one set of biased ideas with another set of similar fanatic and rigid prejudices. Just harping on a few emotional statements in a lecturing tone will never produce the desired result. Unfortunately, the author fails in his noble mission on all the above counts for his muddled presentation, his anxiety to bring up several, separate and complex issues together. In his hurry to build a case for the so-called low caste communities doing manual labour versus rest of the "villainous" society, he forgets to mention Kabir, Raidas, Valmiki and Vatsyana’s 64 fine arts, which list hair cutting and carpentry along with music and sculpture, giving each one equal importance without any hierarchy. The author forgets to mention our Constitution, which provides equal rights to each one of its citizens irrespective of caste or tribe. Many a time, the reader is at a loss to understand whether the author is speaking from a historical, scientific or emotional point of view since he seldom cites references or substantiates his arguments with proof. Naive statements such as, "these highly knowledgeable communities (performing manual labour) were neglected and labelled untouchables while other sections of Indian society learnt everything from them" and "religious texts, hymns`85 dealt with supernatural phenomenon`85were unproductive" mar the objective approach expected in such arguments. Coherence is lacking in the content. For example, while writing about cow-herders he suddenly shifts gear and gives us information on buffalo versus cow and how a buffalo is better than a cow. How it justifies dignity of labour is not clarified. There are several such examples. The author himself is not sure of his argument when he writes, "they (communities involving in manual labour professions) are capable of aspiring for the best in our present society, and they can become teachers, officers, scientists, doctors, priests. "The hidden implication that he wants Dalits to be in these professions because "these are the best" contradicts his whole stand. Despite the book being written in a child-friendly format, with small projects, discussion ideas, illustrations, etc., it is not able to deliver the message because of these serious defects. We sure need more writings, debates and discussions on such topics but to reach the child and to make her a just and balanced, bias-free person, the challenge is to find out some innovative fresh ways, stripped clean of our own biases, prejudices, hates and hidden agendas.
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