Beyond absentia: Analysing the politics of folk polyphony in exerting Dalit identity in S. Hareesh's Moustache

S. Hareesh’s Meesha (Moustache) is a Malayalam novel set in Kuttanad, Kerala, that unravels the tale of a Dalit Christian, Vavachan, popularly known as ’Moustache.’ During an era when growing a moustche was forbidden for a Pulaya, he became infamous for owning one. Moustche’s story majorly takes place between 1939 and 1947, when Kerala had a caste-based social stratification. Dalits are viewed as mere exchangeable goods and are otherwiseabsent in the tales produced by the upper caste. However, the folksongs and polyphony in Moustache consciously assert the existence of a multicultural society. The songs become strong political statements potent for social change.They foreground the Dalit community’s existence, mark their plight, and elevate their life by reclaiming their capacity. The article thus analyses the politics of employing folk polyphony, the concept of Mikhail Bakhtin, as a narrative device in exerting Dalit identity in the novel. The folksongs themselves have a polyphonic nature, along with the polyphonic structure of the novel. With the aid of folk polyphony, the Dalit characters, Vavachan, Seetha, Chella, and Pachuppilla, open up to diverse viewpoints, multiple possibilities, and contradicting positions. They compel the uncouth, savage, seductive Dalit representations to step aside while negotiating and renegotiating their existing Dalit identities. Amongst them, Vavachan transforms himself from a starving lower caste body to the larger-than-life immutable ’Moustache.’ Through those narratives, he becomes a man of multiple identities- a Dalit, a saviour of poor people, a lover, a villain, a rapist, a trickster, and many more. Moustache unravels a Dalit traversing an elite casteist patriarchal delta space, exerting his agency and multiple identities through the folk polyphonic narrative that tides against the subordination of voices. It extends him as an open-ended tale- a living myth.