Crafting Words and Creating Dalit Histories

Abstract

Many communities are not privileged enough to possess histories which also reflects their precarious position in the sociocultural hierarchy. As Trouillot observed, ‘History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis become superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility, the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots’. (Trouillot, 1995, p. 19) Thus, the possession of history scripted or otherwise is a privilege seldom granted equally. For millennia, many groups and communities like African Americans, women, tribals, and the former untouchables in India did not exist in history. The semantics of cultural and ideological domination ensured that such people were invisibilized and silenced. Is it possible to recover or reconstruct the histories of the silenced people? This article argues that the genre of autobiography is a vital source to represent the peoples without histories.