Games, Mimesis and the Environmental-Imagination: Childhood in Select Dalit Autobiographies

Abstract

The theme of childhood remains an integral part of any life-writing narratives and, when it comes to Dalit autobiographies it is no exception. Strikingly, researchers on Dalit autobiographies have focused mostly on the ‘darker-side’ of the childhood by revealing only the socio-economic deprivations (food, clothes and shelter), plight, and the mental trauma and physical abuse, humiliation, and pain of the Dalit children, often overlooking the diversifying aspects of Dalit childhood. Though caste system pushes Dalit children to live in isolated ghettos, they still create their own imaginary world within the confines of their Dalit inhabitations by playing games with things available at hand, by role-playing some characters seen in their environs, by celebrating traditional festivals, and by listening to the elders’ stories! The article, therefore, attempts to examine how the playful activities of Dalit children, as represented in the autobiographies, embody an ecological imagination of interconnectedness. By inscribing their lived experience of subjugation in nature, Dalit children not only share a relationship of common oppression with the environment, but such an entanglement sheds new insights on the human–non-human relationship. I have chosen four Dalit autobiographies to exemplify the fact that through their games and play Dalit-children nurture an ‘intra-active’ communication between humans and the non-human environment which in turn makes ‘multispecies liveability possible’. The article draws insights from eco-criticism to reflect on the embodied experience of Dalit childhood.