Dalit Consciousness Research Articles

Identity and Representation of Dalit Consciousness in Ahuti's Poetry

Identity and Representation of Dalit Consciousness in Ahuti's Poetry

Portrayal of Socio-Political Consciousness in Dalits in Reference to Sharad Poudel’s Tapan

The article attempts to explore the socio-political consciousness in Dalits for their rights, equality and liberation. Fundamentally, the article studies Sharad Poudel’s social novel “Tapan” (2073 BS) from the Marxist concept of class consciousness connecting with Dalit consciousness. For this purpose, the researcher collects and uses the various criticism and literature to explore how the Dalit literary texts portray the Dalit issues, problems, political and economic disparity, their protest and resolutions based on theoretical and critical analysis. The select novel’s plots, characters and the major themes also reflect the socio-political consciousness in Dalits. Moreover, the article explores that class consciousness develops within the characters and they stand together in the same mission and set goal for their liberation. And, the ideologies and political consciousness make them more responsible for their people and society. The novel as Dalit literature depicts multiple-layers of socio-economic, cultural and political problems of Dalits and their protests against it. The researcher employs the qualitative methods with descriptive and analytical approach.

Dalit Consciousness and Voice of Resistance in Pabitra Sunar’s Yugako Āwāj

The article explores how Nepali literature written on Dalit subjects and issues portrays the socio-cultural, political and economic disparity and injustice experienced by Dalits; and, how the literature expresses dissatisfaction, resistance and protest against it. The article basically aims to explore Dalit consciousness and voice of resistance expressed in poems. For this purpose, the researcher has studied Pabitra Sunar’s anthology of poems “Yugako Āwāj [Voice of the Era] from the concept of class consciousness connecting with Dalit consciousness. Her poems mainly express the agony, pain, suffering, inequality, injustice, discrimination, exploitation and oppression; and, also expresses hope, expectation and revolt for rights, equality, justice, freedom and dignity of Dalits. Fundamentally, the poems portray Nepalese society, socio-cultural, political and economic status of Dalits, and, present the right path for socio-cultural liberation of Dalits. The poems also plea the entire Dalits to revolt against caste system for overall transformation. Moreover, the binary appositions such as pessimism and optimism, dark and light, rejection and acceptance, fear and braveness, discrimination and equality faced by Dalits in society; and, Dalits’ wish for liberation and dignity are the tenets in Sunar’s poems. The researcher has adopted qualitative approach with explorative and analytical methods while studying the poems.

Depiction of Caste System and Dalit Consciousness in Ratna BK’s Banda Ākāsh Khulepachhi

The article deals with the caste system and consciousness in relation to class consciousness and Dalit consciousness based on literary text. As Dalit literature portrays the socio-cultural, economic and political issues of Dalits, their inequal relation with the people, caste discrimination, exploitation and suppression and protest and movements; and, it also presents the potential avenues of resolution. The article explores the brutality of caste system and Dalit consciousness for rights, equality, justice, dignity and liberation of Dalits. For this purpose, some short stories from Ratna BK’s Banda Ākāsh Khulepachhi have been chosen for the interpretation. The stories reveal the ground reality of multiple layers discrimination and issues of Dalits, their protest and resolution. Furthermore, the research explores the socio-cultural and political awareness and protests of Dalits, and state’s pragmatic position to address the issues and agenda. The researcher employs the qualitative approach with exploratory and analytical methods. The Marxist concept of class consciousness connecting to Dalit consciousness is parallel applied as theoretical perspectives in this article.

Construction of Self in Aravind Malagatti’s Government Brahmana

The issues based on caste, gender, and religion have been imprinted upon the medium of art. The canvas of literature has many a time laid focus on the discrimination based on caste. This theme has been etched in different hues. The subject of being dominated, discriminated, and the stigma attached to it has been justified by the individual ideologies of Dalit and Non-Dalit writers. But in this prominent autobiographical work titled Government Brahmana, by Arvind Malagatti there is a different perspective is presented. Dalit autobiographies speak about the rampant practices of intolerance towards Dalits and have significantly impacted society, In a step ahead, Arvind Malagatti Dalitatva is the literature that has the flow of Dalit consciousness throughout. This autobiography Government Brahmana speaks about various sagas the writer witnessed in different stages of life. In the beginning, he justifies the title Government Brahmana by considering the benefits given by the government to Dalits in comparison to the ideology of Brahmanism which was in practice from Sanatana Dharma. Later he draws the attention of readers by revealing how his name was misinterpreted in school and a variety of punishments imposed on him. He also writes about the ways in which the society marginalized the people belonging to his community in the name of untouchables. His writings not only interpret the chaos of marginalization but also reflect the consciousness of constructing his identity in tackling the hurdles. This apparently resulted in oppression and alienation after the country became sovereign. Apart from this, he has been able to contemplate his narrative style using his special dialect to withstand the interest of readers in the original text. It is good to know that the same has been achieved in the translational work by translators.

The Dalit Panthers: A Voice From the Below

This article investigates the process of the domestication of ideas by the Dalit intellectuals leading to its radical assertion of ‘Dalit Consciousness’. A chance encounter with an article about the US Black Panthers in the Time magazine proved to be a wake-up call for the subalterns in India. The present paper centres around the ideologies adopted by the Dalit Panthers, the syncretism of ideas of B. R. Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule and Karl Marx. Delving deeper into Ambedkar’s American academic background and his intellectual odyssey at Columbia University during the Harlem Renaissance, the article will look into the politics of emancipation, exchanges and similarities of both the intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois and B. R. Ambedkar as well as the influence of the Black Power movement on the Dalit movement and its literature. Tracing the trajectory of intersectional political and ideological diffusion between the two movements, this article, in addition to the above observations, will draw parallels by underlining the texts and themes of oppression present in both caste and race.

Synchronizing the Dalan, Chandal Aesthetics and Namashudrayan in ManoranjanByapari’s Autobiography Interrogating My Chandal Life

The study looks into the vexed issues of caste and marginality in the context of the Partition experience in South Asia. The discussion takes clues from Manoranjan Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life (English trans. Shipra Mukherjee, 2018). The paper situates itself between two significant strands - one the Partition and the second, the Dalit consciousness to critically examine the positionality of the Namashudra refugees during/post Partition resettlement in Bengal. The discussion treats Byapari’s text as an auto-ethnographic account that introduces “Chandal aesthetics,” Namashudrayan to foreground the contested issues of subalternity, religiosity, spatiality and socio-political identity in a post-partition South Asia. The Dalit voice, represented through the writings of Byapari, records the micro-narratives of the lower-caste/subalterns/marginalized people who have been denied spaces in nationalist/majoritarian histories and their archives. The paper attempts to locate the largely silent zones of Bengal’s partition histories and their intergenerational shared memories and re-representations that have occluded, evaded and circumvented the questions of caste and, specifically, the Dalit experience.

The Rippling of Dalit Consciousness in Contemporary Odiā Poetry

Dalit literature has been influential in the rising awareness for protest or creating literature of social consciousness. The broad domain of Dalit writings includes the depravation and trauma of certain category of people for some socio-cultural, traditional biases. Maybe one of the tenets of it could be the so-called social stratification or formation of social class. Thus, like writings in many languages in India, in Odia, lots of writing account for the evidences and experiences associated with Dalit consciousness. It also envisages feminine perspectives giving the account of the autobiographies and plights and traumatic evidences of Dalit authors underlining the issues of caste, class, and gender in the backdrop of social exclusion. Dalit Literature in Odia has a rich history that can be traced back to the fifteenth century. In Odia literary creations such as Bouddhagāna, and Dohā, Charyāgeetikā, the anecdotes of social discrimination and casteism are noticed. There is potentiality in contemporary Odia poetry in reflecting on various themes of Dalit consciousness. As it is evident, it starts with saint poet Bhimbhoi who is said to be the first Dalit poet of Odishā in the mid-19th century. Along with glorification of humanitarian attributes, he has outlined the plights of the depraved community. The motifs of Ekalavya, Sanatan, Kalia, Ghinua, Jara Shabara; musical instruments such as baja; the untouchables; Sriya Chandaluni in Laxmi Purana; fingertip print are common in reflecting Dalit issues variously. In this context, this paper focuses on the critical dimensions of Dalit poetry in Odia by including some of the well-known authors such as Gopinath Bag, P.K. Mishra, Nilamani Parida, Ashutosh Parida, Jayadrath Suna, Basudev Sunani, Pitambar Tarai, Akhil Nayak, and Hrushikesh Mallik. Such poets have applied the skills varieties of versification to focus comprehensively on the sensitivity of the traumatic issues of oppression; racial discrimination; socio-cultural taboos; loss of indigenous culture; evil effects of urbanization and politics; existential crisis; victimization of the poor and innocents; loss of ecological harmony; nostalgia and effects of displacement.

Dalit Consciousness Movements in Uttar Pradesh: A Literary Survey

Dalit Consciousness Movements in Uttar Pradesh: A Literary Survey

Locating Ingenuity in the Portrayal of Dalit Consciousness through the Marginal Life in Premchand's the Shroud

Locating Ingenuity in the Portrayal of Dalit Consciousness through the Marginal Life in Premchand's the Shroud

Dalit Consciousness and Imitative Cultural Symbolism in Coming Out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt

The social context of traumatic incidents defines, conditions, and propagates socio-cultural prescribed responses to certain types of experience often trying to regulate the strictures of forfeiture, memory, and grieving. Since traumatic events focus the fissures and gaps of the societal oppressive conditions, as well as the expansive limit of demonstrating experiences and incidents of fringes, they give birth to the politics of mourning, which is impelled by the societal prerequisite to surround, domesticate, and regulate any dynamism disturbing its recognized order. She elucidates several modern institutions that foster caste hierarchy in society. The article focuses on how Yashica Dutt's writing aims to create the concept of caste in the Indian socio-cultural aspect. Finally, the article makes the case that imitative cultural symbolism is a part of one’s identity and can be seen as a component of response towards inferiority and identity crisis. The article continues by pointing out how similar synergies are developed with racial discourses.

Boosa Movement: A Prologue to the Birth of New Kannada Intellectualism

The Boosa movement was one of the most controversial incidents in the history of Post-Independence literary as well as political discourse in Karnataka. B Basavalingappa, the cynosure of the movement, made a controversial statement on Kannada literature. He commented that most Kannada literature was filled with Boosa (cattle fodder). His statement created an uproar across Karnataka. In this context, this article aims to present how yellow journalism portrayed Basavalingappa and his comments, which eventually made him lose his political position. The hypothesis presents how Basavalingappa was a victim of caste-based politics coupled with yellow journalism. On the other hand, it also presents that despite the political assassination of Basavalingappa from power, how the Boosa incident gave rise to Dalit consciousness and acted as a prologue to the birth of new Kannada intellectuality.

Validating Dalit literature as a tool to awakening Dalit consciousness

This paper attempts to understand the role of Dalit Literature and unravels the idea of consciousness as an arena for social protest. At the same time, the present study caters to underpin that concept of Dalit consciousness is a socially and culturally constructed reality which expresses, initiates, and engages social protest as a form of empowerment and emancipation discourse. Such social protests become a norm of social assertion for empowerment of the marginalized communities. This is especially the case in a society which is highly stratified in social, economic, political and cultural realms and where this stratification has been maintained through social and cultural engineering of dominationand subordination for centuries. The Dalit community, which has been pushed to the bottom in social ladder in the name of caste and untouchability, has inherently realized its sense of human dignity in recent times and started recapturing its lost identity in and through such protest movements.

Representation of Dalit life in Imaiyam's Koveru Kazhuthaigal

Indian society and its collective consciousness are polluted with casteism. After thousands of years of suppression and exploitation, the margin came to the centre and the other side of the history was revealed. Dalit literature gave insights about the dalit life which otherwise is never written in a dalit’s view. “Writing about Dalits by Dalit writers with a Dalit Consciousness” says Sharan Kumar Limbale about Dalit literature in his book Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature. Having this as base, this paper proposes to study Imaiyam's Koveru Kazhuthaigal from dalit literary perspective and appreciate the life represented in it. The novel is set in an Indian village and the protagonists belong to the washerman community which is considered as the lowest of the lower in caste hierarchy practiced in Tamilnadu. The hypothesis is to question the collective consciousness regarding the inhuman casteist practices and demand change in the life of the oppressed and in the conscience of the oppressor. Famous Tamil Dalit writer Bama proposes eduation as a solution for casteism in her semi autobiographial text Karukku; Imaiyam shows change of place from rural to urban setup as a solution for better treatment. The real solution demands change from the oppressor too. Limitations of this research is the huge volume of the possible solution to the problem represented and the concrete presence of casteism in Indian psyche.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DALIT CONSCIOUSNESS IN VIBHAVARI SHIRURKAR’S NOVEL ‘THE VICTIM’ AND LAXMAN GAIKWAD’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ‘THE BRANDED’

Dalit literature is a literature by Dalit writer or any other writer with Dalit consciousness. Most of the Dalit writers and critics are of the opinion that Dalit consciousness is an exclusive experience of the person born into Dalit community. However, many writers belonging to Upper caste communities like Munshi Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand and Arundhati Roy etc. wrote on Dalit lives with Dalit consciousness throwing light on the plight of Dalits. When we read the novel The Victim by Vibhavari Shirurkar and Laxman Gaikwad’s autobiography The Branded the live picture of the branded communities appears before our eyes. The present paper aims at in-depth study and the analysis of Dalit consciousness found in these two works and the similarity of experiences portrayed by the writers.

A call for mutual change and progress: An interview with Aravind Malagatti and Dharani Devi Malagatti

This interview with Dr Aravind Malagatti and Dr Dharani Devi Malagatti, conducted in Mysore, India, in April 2019, was one of several interviews I conducted for my doctoral thesis that examines caste system and Dalit struggles in the context of India. Dr Aravind Malagatti has contributed more than sixty books to Kannada literature, out of which his autobiography, Government Brahmana published in 1994 is considered the first Dalit autobiography in Kannada ( Government Brahmana, 2007). It was translated and published in English in 2007, and Dr Dharani Devi Malagatti is one of the three translators who translated the work. In this interview, Government Brahmana is discussed as a springboard to understand the social, economic, religious, political and legal aspects of caste and its practices in modern India. Dr Aravind Malagatti provides anecdotes to explain the significance of Dalit consciousness, what it entails and who can possess it. His responses are powerful statements calling for mutual change and progress for Dalits and non-Dalits. Dr Dharani Devi Malagatti talks about the challenges of translating the radical aesthetics of Dalit personal narratives as well as the scope and possibilities offered through translation. The interview explores the undertones of patriotism in Dalit identity, and the synthesis of individual and collective consciousness.

Challenges and possibilities in the translation of Dalit literature: An interview with Susheela Punitha

ABSTRACT This interview with Indian translator Susheela Punitha was conducted by email over the course of eight months from October 2020 to May 2021. Punitha describes how she embarked on a career as a translator through an English version of U.R. Ananthamurthy’s novel Bharathipura and assesses her motivation for translating Dalit literature into English from regional Indian languages such as Kannada. She discusses her recent translation of Lakshman’s Samboli! (2018), which portrays the experiences of Madigas, who, in Punitha’s words, are considered “the lowest of the low castes in Karnataka”. Punitha reflects on the uses and difficulties of explanatory “interpolation” and the ways in which she engages with the language, content, aesthetics, and affect of the source text. She comments on her professional relationship with the authors, Lakshman and U.R. Ananthamurthy, and also suggests how the idea of “Dalit consciousness” may be perceived differently by men and women.

The politics of metaphor: traces of casteism and patriarchy in the work of Shah Abdul Latif

ABSTRACT This article examines the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif for its casteist and patriarchal drift. In particular, it focuses on the ‘Dalit question’ and the interpretation of Latif’s poetry by both progressive and conservative sections of Sindhi society. Latif’s poetry is highly lyrical, and several of his works inspire love for a transcendental being immanent in nature and in people. Yet much of Latiff’s poetry and his biography suggest that Latif was not as progressive and egalitarian as he is often represented to be. Metaphors of caste, gender and religion have materiality. They do not simply invoke esoteric mystical feelings but also furnish justifications in everyday life for persisting with entrenched casteist and patriarchal values. Observing the easy appropriation of Latif’s poetry by different sections of Sindhi society, I conclude that it provides a social and political idiom that depoliticizes casteism and lacks the capacity to inspire Dalit consciousness.

Datta Bhagat’s Routes and Escape Routes and Vijay Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan: Critiquing the Dalit

This article seeks to understand Indian theatre’s take on Dalit politics of our time through a critical reading of two post-independence plays—Datta Bhagat’s Routes and Escape Routes and Vijay Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan. Politically, ‘Dalit’ becomes important only after 1947 in post-independence and post-colonial India or more specifically from the 1970s. In the post-Ambedkar phase of Dalit re/configuration, they begin to self-assert through politics, art, and literature, most effectively and convincingly, only with the rise of Dalit Panthers and in the aftermath of the implementation of Mandal Commission’s recommendation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation. The article tries to examine the fresh critique of the Dalit vis-à-vis the upper caste-centric society, undertaken in this crucial context of reconfiguration and from beyond any traditional parameter of understanding, and map, through the plays, the plurality hidden within the perceived monolith of Dalit consciousness. Consequently, Dalit experiences against the backdrop of their struggle are laid bare, and unfamiliar realities come out to upset our comfortable knowledge about this large segment of Indian society.

Dalit Consciousness in Rural India: A Comparative Study of Regional Novels

Since ages, dalits have been considered inferior in Indian society. They are facing discrimination and being exploited everywhere on the basis of their caste. A number of Indian regional novelists have portrayed the situation of dalits in their novels. Ram Sarup Ankhi and Phanishwarnath Renu, both the regional novelists have presented a picture of the life of the people of Malwa and Eastern Bihar regions respectively in their novels. Both these regional novelists have depicted the life of the dalit people that how they are being exploited and discriminated. Along with the exploitation, Ankhi and Renu have shown the courage of dalit people who are eager to change their condition and raising their voice against discrimination. Dalit people are getting education and it is helping them to know about their rights.