‘Caste-pital’ durational performance 9.30 hours, “Specters of Communism. A Festival on the Revolutionary Century" conceptualized by Okwuvi Enwezor, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2017
Curator: Raqs Media Collective
Photography: Marion Vogel, courtesy artist and Haus der Kunst
Video Documentation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uA90wQBLJU (part1)
“No, not a single letter is seen
On my race
So many histories are seen
On so many races
Scrutinize each one of them
The whole histories of the world
Not a single letter is seen
On my race”
”- Poykayil Appachan *1
As a Dalit Black body, coming from a place with a prolonged history of left-wing politics, growing up with books published in Malayalam from Moscow, but also being exposed to a long history of slavery and bonded labor- failures is more important than festival for me. “In Fact, almost without exception the Left movement in India philosophically and systematically neglected caste” *2. But Marx wrote in 1853 “We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances”*3. Left leader ship could understand nationalism within Marxist framework but not caste.Taking Songs of Poykayil Appachan, Poet, Dalit activist (Born as a Slave) as point of departure and poetry as an archive form, artist performed for a duration of 9 hours.
*1Unknown Subjects: Songs of Poykayil Appachan, edited by V.V Swamy and E.V Anil (Kottayam:
Institute of PRDS studies, 2008) translated by Dr Ajay S Sekher.
*2 Ambedkar towards an Enlightened India, Gail Omvedt, Penguin Books, page 90, 2004.
*3 The British Rule in India, Karl Marx in the New York Herald Tribune, June 10, 1853 Source: MECW
V12, p.125
*4 Poykayil Johannan (also called as Poikayil Kumara Guru Devan, Eraviperoor, 17 February 1878 –
1939), known as Poykayil Appachan alias Poykayil Kumara Guru Devan, was a Dalit activist, poet and the founder of the socio-religious movement Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha (“God’s Church of Visible Salvation”). Johannan was born to parents Kandan and Lechi of the Paraiyar (“Pariah”) community, at Eraviperoor, Pathanamthitta, India. He was named Komaran at his birth, born as a slave to a Syrian Christian family of the name Sankaramangalam. He was later renamed Kumaran.
