Ethnographies of Dalit Life in the Songs of Gaddar - a talk by Prof Lisa Mitchell

Drawing on oral history interviews with iconic balladeer Gaddar (Gummadi Vittal Rao, 1949–2023) and the Telugu songs of the Jana Natya Mandali (People’s Theatre Troupe), this talk traces a shift in communicative relationships between city and village that became visible in the 1970s.

Illustrating a departure from the uni-directional urban to rural pedagogy of earlier decades evident, for example, in the burrakatha song-drama performances hosted by groups like the Central Adi-Hindu Social Service League based in Hyderabad, the talk examines Gaddar’s ethnographic attention to the minute details of the rural everyday lives of Dalits, bonded laborers, manual workers, and daily wage earners and argues that he sought to use these ethnographic songs not just to address society’s victims, but also to educate party leaders and urban audiences and raise awareness of the rural living conditions of oppressed groups. In doing so, the talk demonstrates how he came to see himself as a “link” between urban and rural populations, resisting standard characterizations of the Jana Natya Mandali as simply a cultural “front” that served as a mouthpiece for the CPI (ML) People’s War. 

The talk is part of a new book project on the rise in the 1970s of citizen documentation practices and efforts to hold authorities accountable that predate the Public Interest Litigations, social audits, and Right to Information Act of later decades.
 

Speaker

Lisa Mitchell is Professor of anthropology & history in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Hailing the State: Indian Democracy between Elections (2023) and Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (2009).
 

Image credit: Hannah Lazar via Unsplash