Beyond Marginality: Caste Hierarchy and The Irular Tribe in Termite Fry

Abstract

The Irular, one of the major Adivasi tribes of India residing primarily in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala, is conventionally positioned at the margins of India’s caste-based social order. The food habits and work culture of the Irular create a distinct identity that both defines them and sets them apart from the dominant power structures of the society. Zai Whitaker, in her novel Termite Fry, brings the faultlines of caste-based hierarchies into critical examination while situating the relationship between the so-called upper and lower castes. The novel uncovers the inconsistencies in the boundaries that demarcate caste hierarchies by foregrounding the lived experiences of an indigenous community often rendered invisible in mainstream discourse. The novel provides a space for examining the paradigms of marginality and the given terms through which perceptions about it are constructed. Whitaker, in Termite Fry, represents the Irular not just as submissive sufferers but as having riches capable of creating their own place within and beyond the limits of caste hierarchy. Placing the identity of the Irular as a marginalised community merely struggling for basic rights is a reductionist lens that refuses to acknowledge the multidimensionality of their existence. Such a reductive framework fails to take the autonomy of their existence into account. Whitaker places the unchecked stereotypes about the marginalised people, like the Irular Adivasi, under scrutiny and embodies their distinct identity as crucial to the ethnic or cultural diversity of Indian societies. The narrative, moving beyond the binary understanding of marginality, frames a multifaceted representation of caste hierarchy in an Indian society as experienced by the Irular that complicates categorical readings of marginalisation. This paper offers a reading of Zai Whitaker’s Termite Fry, and attempts to critically examine the commonly accepted terms of marginality through which the Irular are defined within the caste hierarchy.