Every family has someone who will claim times were better under British before independence. They don’t have to be above 60 or 70 years of age. Even few youngsters mention it – they would have borrowed that opinion either from their elders or some ideological propaganda. Of course, now it is fashion to say bad things about Gandhi, and Nehru. Soon, Ambedkar will join the list of Gandhi and Nehru. I am digressing. Going back to those claims, all we need to show them is the famine data. The land of India had gone through many famines in earlier centuries even before British, and during British era. Just before 1947 there was the Bengal famine. The loss of lives in famine run in crores. We had famines post-independence too. There were starvation deaths too. Then, one may ask what changed? Big change is in government response. Ruling regime and the machinery gets questioned both at state and union level and are forced to respond. They are forced to solve the problem. During my college days in 1980s, most parts of India underwent severe drought. Monsoon failed for consecutive years. Chennai, where I lived, had severe water shortage. One fine day in 1986, news broke that people have died in a tribal village due to starvation in the state of Orissa. State government tried to cover up. Rajiv Gandhi, the then PM of India, visited the village. Resources were diverted and special programs were put in place. Now, that is the real change. There were few starvation deaths later years too. Every time government was forced to act. Deaths were nowhere near before independence. Now we have reached a place where people don’t die of starvation. There is malnutrition, yes, but that is also due to distribution problem and not due to lack of food. Like famine, malnutrition is also man-made in the current times.

Now what happened during famines during British era. Why people died in crores due to starvation? What was the response from British regime? How did the local rich Indians respond? Did the UK parliament know about the famines? If yes, did they fail to act or why they failed to act? Multiple articles and books have been written on this. I have read few of them. But so far, none of them made an impact on me like வெள்ளை யானை (White Elephant), book by Jeyamohan.

Jeyamohan writes the story around the famine in Madrasapattinam (present-day Chennai) and the earliest Dalit uprising in the country in an Ice House factory. Even though the strike was short lived, quashed in two days. it sowed the seeds for future resistance. The novel covers the cruel aspects of colonial era and gives a vivid description of how the people from top hierarchy of the caste system looked down upon Dalits and treated them as untouchables, the lowest stratum in the Indian Caste structure. The novel captures their apathy and indifference towards poor Dalits when they were dying on the roadsides due to starvation. Seen in that context, the strike gains greater significance. In history there are good and bad people on either side. It shows how the British regime rejected possible suggestions on how to solve the famine from officers like Aiden, to redirect the food to help the people rather than exporting them. The book makes us to face the unforgiving truth that the famine was a direct outcome of colonial rule and inhumanity of Indian caste system. As the author says in the preface, the novel records the first voice of assertion for rights and raise of fist by the slave against the history of oppression.

The book’s title is a reference to massive blocks of ice stored in Ice House that were imported to India from the frozen lakes of New England. They are broken into cubes by bare-bodied Dalit workers and shipped across India to add flavour to the drinks of British officials. Dalit workers are made to work in sub-human conditions. White Elephant is a metaphor. The mystery is why the massive elephant that can overpower us in the blink of an eye allows itself to be subjugated? But whether it refers to the Indian population who allowed themselves to be subjugated by the British or the British who turned a blind eye to famine deaths and focused on maintaining itself and accumulating wealth? It could be either or both. As the author says, ultimately it is the elephant that will decide when to unshackle.

The protagonist of Vellai Yanai is Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer under the British Crown. Aiden is a man of dreams inspired by words of Shelley. Aiden is driven by conscience. His morality gets jolted by the happenings in the Ice House and gets further shattered by the trip he takes from Chennai to Chengalpattu to get first-hand information on the deaths and suffering of people in famine-stricken land. Aiden sees bodies and bodies lie on both sides of the road. Due to starvation, four children are reduced to size of one child clinging to one another. Every voice is crying with what little life that is left in them. Bodies are surrounded by marauding dogs. Jeyamohan describes the whole journey so vividly over multiple chapters. They are the hardest to read. It breaks your heart, eyes well up, tears roll down uncontrollably. Like Father Brannen explains to Aiden in the story famine is like wildfire…if you stare at it, it will pull you and engulf you…famine is devil. To some extent we can understand why the British turn a blind eye to the plight. But how about other well-off Indians? Caste Hindus have no concern whatsoever. They are more indifferent to the Dalits and their plight. To them they are not people. It is an opportunity to make profit. Foods were sold for a premium while crores of people died. Aiden with a resolve to help the workers and solve the famine prepare a detailed report hoping to make the machinery move. The British were waging war all over the world, they needed food and reject suggestions put forward by Aiden. To buy his confirmity, Aiden gets rewarded with a promotion and get transferred to Tenkasi.

Another key character in the novel is Kathavarayan, a social activist and Dalit leader. I am guessing, I think this character is modelled after the first anti-caste leader C.Iyothee Thass. As per Wikipedia, C.Iyothee Thass was born Kathavarayan. In 1886, Thass issued a revolutionary declaration that Dalits were not Hindus and urged them to register themselves as Casteless Dravidians. In the novel, Kathavarayan enlightens Aiden about Indian caste dynamics, oppression, and why he puts his hopes on British than the Caste-Hindus. Another interesting character is Joseph who takes Aiden around famine areas. Joseph explains the reason behind poor people coming onto the roads and dying the roadsides – roads are symbols of British government, and they hope that being on the road will make the rulers to notice them. Britishers do notice but the deaths end up as numbers in statistics.

People go to extreme efforts, to the point of ludicrousness, to break and pull the ice from frozen lakes of New England and move them in ships to Chennai so that officials can enjoy their drinks. But their conscience does not get moved by the plights of starving people. People invent belief system to justify their behavior else they can’t justify their existence. We have come a long way, but we still see irrational behaviors like this around us, isn’t it?