THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Essay Questions How does Sahodaran Ayyappan’s poem “Curing Caste” criticize casteism? &                                    Sahodaran Ayyappan uses images and symbols borrowed from Ayurveda in the poem  “Curing Caste”. Discuss. Sahodaran Ayyappan is a social reformer, revolutionary, poet, rationalist, administrator, and legislator. His contributions in ushering progressive thought in the Kerala polity are significant. In his poem “Curing Caste”, Ayyappan uses a medicinal simile to articulate his anti-caste views. Caste is a form of discrimination that had its claws sunk deep into the society of Kerala until the mid-twentieth century. Sahodaran Ayyappan was involved in public discourses where he vociferously voiced the rights of the marginalized and questioned their subjugation by the elite upper class.  Ayyappan founded the  Sahodara Sangham  (Brotherhood Associati...

          A sleuth story gets a unique treatment in  The Secrets of the Palamu Fort . Razi creates his super-efficient detective mastermind, Detective Robin Horo. Robin, Neil, and Babulalji are one team. The narrative takes off as a typical detective story in which a difficult case was handed over by the police to Detective Horo. The case was about a ghost killing people in random. Horo discovers that the ghost does have a motive.             The story takes a twist when Horo discovers a historical connection with the haunting of the ghost. The narrative strategy employed by the author is simple and direct. The history of Palamu fort appears intertwined with the concurrent events narrated in line with the events that happen in the life of the renowned detective Horo.              The Secrets of the Palamu Fort  reads like classic detective fiction. It can be compared with ...

Curing Caste Sahodaran Ayyappan Paragraph questions: 1.       Explain Sahodaran Ayyappan’s coinage “Caste Disease”. “Curing Caste” is a poem written by Sahodaran Ayyappan, translated by Dr Ajay Sekher and published in the book  Sahodaran Ayyappan: Towards a Democratic Future . Sahodaran Ayyappan uses the phrase “Caste Disease” to denote the practice of discrimination based on caste that existed in Kerala society. He uses medical terms to symbolically phrase the harsh realities of the caste-based social order prevalent during his time. Sahodaran Ayyappan suggests two cures for the caste disease: one is applied from the outside and the other is from the inside. The cures that are only applied externally leave the real causes of the caste problem unsolved. External solutions are short-lived. Without being eradicated, the caste disease could cause further damage in the psyche of the individual as well as the in the function of the society similar...