When Broken Worlds Churn: The Anti‐Caste Fabulations of Du Saraswathi

Abstract

AbstractHow can literary fabulation prompt a reflection on caste, colonial, and capitalist lifeworlds? Engaging with two short stories by the Dalit feminist thinker Du Saraswathi, this article considers the role of fabulation in sparking anti‐caste praxis, decolonial thought, and a reflection on ecological interdependence. Bacchisu (“Tip”) and Honnahelu (“Shit and Gold”) are penned in the context of the sanitation workers’ movement in Karnataka, India and the ongoing struggles of waste workers to assert the dignity of their labour and their ancestral relations. Both stories capture the intimate worlds of solid waste and sewage workers, overwhelmingly from Dalit (ex‐untouchable) communities, as they navigate capitalist debris and the brokenness of caste society. They archive relations between caste overseers and contractual workers, the police and local bureaucracy, and peri‐urban ecologies. Saraswathi's writings explore such political concerns in ways that exceed the circumscribed realism of caste society—mingling Dalit culinary practices, embodied desires, rhythms of collective protest, rapturous encounters with spiritual beings, colonial legacies, and reproductive futures. In a context where Dalit testimonies are doubly silenced by the evidentiary procedures of postcolonial law and retributive violence, how can fabulation bear witness to an anti‐caste reality that integrates spiritual, ecological, and political struggles?