Dalit Life Research Articles

Delineating Dalit trauma: (re)contextualizing cultural trauma, survivor’s guilt and partial privilege in post millennial Dalit women’s memoirs

ABSTRACT Shilpa Raj’s memoir The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter (2017) and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir (2019) map a specific kind of individual trauma, along with the cultural trauma that is found in other Dalit life writings. Both the narratives begin with the death of another Dalit individual whom the memoirists consider as a sibling/comrade who lacked the partial ‘privilege’ they enjoyed and the narratives can be read as negotiating this survivor’s guilt. Hence, these life writings are part elegies and part literature of protest. They are also part of biographies, for while the writer’s life story is one centre, these writings also have another centre – the real/imagined life of the dead person. As the writers compare and contrast their different destinies, we argue that these narratives (1) lay bare the complexities and limits of Dalit emancipation in modern India where the caste question has been seemingly resolved (2) call for an extension of the intersectional framework to analyse the concept of ‘partial privilege’ in Dalit life-writing.

Everyday Caste and Everyday Resistance: An Ethnographic Account From Western Uttar Pradesh

In the last three decades or so, there have been considerable political changes in Uttar Pradesh (UP), particularly where caste is concerned. This is linked to the anti-caste movements in the state and the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party, which is seen to address issues of Jatavs and other Scheduled Castes that had been politically marginalised. In the years since it first came to power, dalits in the city of Meerut have not witnessed the kind of brutal state aggression they did in Shergarhi after an Ambedkar statue was installed in a local park in 1994. And yet casteism and the fear of it continue to shape the everyday lives of dalits in the city. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in three neighbourhoods in Meerut city in western UP. It explores the ways Jatavs experience casteism as well as the modes of resistance and the multiple strategies employed by them to gain dignity and self-respect.

Ethical Consequences of Economic Disparity in Aravind Adiga’s ‘The White Tiger’

In the Indian Constitution, it is enshrined that every person is equal irrespective of caste and religion. In spite of that, inequality has been reigning in rural areas especially in respect of Dalits. For this, the Government has been making every effort to bring awareness to the people about the concept of equality. Still, disparity has been predominant in the postcolonial knowledgeable society towards Dalits. As a result, to get away from it the downtrodden have been resorting to illegal ways to vindicate their existence. The present paper is an attempt to project the brutal injustices on Dalits that are still prevailing in India and the ethical consequences of Economic parity through Aravid Adiga’s novel The White Tiger. Balram Halwai, the protagonist, belongs to Dalit community with a poor background, struggles for survival to eke out his livelihood. His village Laxmangarh, in North India is in the hands of the four landlords of high caste. They have the upper hand in the village and treat the downtrodden with much discrimination. Anyhow, to make his living, Balram starts his career as a car driver to Ashok the son of one of the landlords in New Delhi. There he gets vexed with the agonizing barriers, the dominance of the rich and their attitude towards Dalits and impoverished. Notwithstanding the tyranny of his owner, he kills him, grabs his property, escapes to Bangalore and resumes his new life as an entrepreneur. Through the character of Balram, the writer expresses the physical and social exploitation and the different problems that affect the day-to-day lives of Dalits and the suppressed in India. As well, he drives home the point how the exploitation of the rich succumb to the victimized to involve in unlawful means for their survival.

A Life Uprooted: A Dalit Refugee Remembers. A Tale of Loss and Rehabilitation

Translation not only connects writers to new readers but also shapes and alters the course of literary history across caste, class and gender boundaries. Translating Dalit writing entails personal and political ramifications. It comes with a set of conflicts - dealing with one’s limitations and restrictions that is the result of a particular kind of upbringing, of one’s caste-based subjectivities and of a carefully constructed cosmopolitan identity that translators translating into English are usually embedded in. The translators are expected to display a deep understanding of their position as translators and the responsibilities they own up to by making an unmistakably political choice. First and foremost a reader, they engage at a visceral level with the narrative of pain and oppression. According to Rita Kothari, translation is one of the many consolidations that show a Dalit subject as an active participant in Indian democracy. The concerns about the authenticity of English as the target language should best be sidestepped as “its ideological potential to "translate" the Dalit life from fatalism to an identity of rights outweighs considerations of its distance from

The Resilience of Caste through Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019)

India, the largest democracy in the world, has experienced important social advances since its independence in 1947, such as the abolition of untouchability, one of the oldest forms of social segregation and discrimination whose major victims have been the Dalits. The situation of Dalits has undergone a series of changes in the second half of the 20th century due to various phenomena, including the industrialisation of India, the influential social work of Dalit activists and thinkers such as B. R. Ambedkar, and the passing of legal provisions for Dalits’ social inclusion, political emancipation and protection of rights. All these factors, along with a relative democratisation of education, have prompted this historically oppressed group to build a voice.
 
 Since then, Dalit literature has progressively become a platform through which past and present injustices committed against this community are exposed. Lately, the impact that democracy has had on the lives of Dalits has been a questioned topic and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019) is an interesting gateway to it. The author’s gender and geographical position and her particular experience with ‘Dalithood’ result in an unusual but necessary insight into Dalits’ state of affairs in contemporary India. Thus, using Dutt’s memoir as a lens, this paper aims to examine the conditions that led to the perpetuation of a learned helplessness among Dalits, the shortcomings of Sanskritisation as an escape strategy from casteist stigma and the implications of the reservation system set for India’s Depressed Castes.

Book review: Jayaseelan Raj, Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit Life in the Indian Tea Belt

Jayaseelan Raj, Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit Life in the Indian Tea Belt. UCL Press, 2022, 212 pp., ₹2,268, ISBN 9781800082281 (Paperback).

Environmental Burden in Everyday Lives of Dalits: A Case Study of Sanand, Gujarat

Under Buddhist philosophy, followed by Dalits and other marginalised groups, an organic relationship exists between environment, knowledge and society where natural resources are conceived as equal partners and their identity is enmeshed with these. However, this organic balance between environment, knowledge and society gets disrupted by certain kind of materialistic thinking which not only creates ecological imbalance but also social conflict, exposes people to a whole range of risks like dislocation, loss of livelihood, work burden for women, health issues, loss of culture to destruction of civil rights. Against this backdrop, this paper reflects on sustainable development and analyses environmental degradation caused by the proliferation of chemical and pharmaceutical industry by encapsulating how neoliberalism smartly appropriate caste system and its attendant inequality, resulting in pain and suffering of subaltern masses. Foregrounding the study in the four villages of Sanand Block, Ahmedabad district of Gujarat, this article discusses the politics of environmentalism, spells out ‘environmentalism of the poor’ and narrates the way subaltern communities manage to live with environmental burden.

Caste Issue in Literature and Regional Literature

The key objective of this piece of writing is to examine the manner in which caste is portrayed as a subject for two popular schools of writing in India, that is, Indian Literature in English & Indian Literature in other languages. The collaboration of David Davidar & Omprakash Valmiki is chosen for the post. Among their plays, The House of Blue Mangoes (2002) & Joothan: A Dalit's Life (2003) are selected because they deal with caste problems. Both plays are critical portrayals of the lives of low-caste citizens & their efforts to come to grips with the truth of their shackled life. This is not a question of classifying the two schools of writing, but of examining their disparities in the way they explain the caste concept as portrayed in mainstream writing and regional writing. In order to understand the developments in writing & regional writing, it is important to have an overview of Indian literature in English & Indian literature in English translation.

Life of a Dalit magistrate: Ideologies and politics in Dalit life in North India, 1920–1954

AbstractThis article discusses Chaudhari Mulkiram (April 1910–August 1954) and the contesting ideologies, memories, histories, and socio-political conditions surrounding his career from the 1920s to the mid-1950s. Mulkiram belonged to the Dhangar, a sub-caste of the Khatik caste in Meerut. He was the first Dalit of the United Provinces (UP) who qualified for the Public Service Commission in 1939. This article shows his socio-religious and socio-political relations and responses to the Arya Samaj, Congress, and Scheduled Caste Federation. It reveals how the representatives of these agencies portrayed his life and work. This article also discusses how his relations and responses helped and influenced his caste members in the western UP. It argues that the Arya Samaj, Harijan Sevak Sangh, and Congress used the first generation of Dalit civil servants like Mulkiram to cultivate local leaders and to mobilize local Dalits, peasants, labourers, and villagers to act in their political interests against Ambedkar’s movement. Hence, in the 1940s and early 1950s, Mulkiram presented himself as a Gandhi bhakt, Jan Neta (public leader), and Sanyasi (household monk and socio-religious reformer).

Ground Down and Locked in a Paperweight: Toward a Critical Psychology of Caste-Based Humiliation

AbstractPsychology limits the scope of raising questions important in the caste context. While psychology focuses on why and how people feel humiliated, the question in the caste context is why and how people do not feel humiliated despite incessant and gratuitous attacks on their dignity and self-worth. This article argues that psychology needs to adopt a critical orientation to address the experience of caste-based humiliation. The anticaste perspective of B. R. Ambedkar provides a critical orientation and psychological insights to build a meaningful psychology of caste-based humiliation. Ambedkar rejected individualist, essentialized notions of human self and emphasized the dimension of intergroup emotions to understand caste relations. I develop this argument by analyzing the experience, impact, and resistance to caste-based humiliation among Dalits. I describe caste-based humiliation in extreme (caste atrocities) and less extreme (caste microaggressions) forms and show that the experience of caste-based humiliation is pervasive, direct, but also vicarious. I then examine the psychological impact of caste-based humiliation on the health, social vitality, and appraisal process among Dalits. I show that a caste-ridden context makes it difficult to interpret humiliation and affects Dalit life narratives through retrospective feelings of humiliation. Finally, I consider the issue of resistance to humiliation and show that mere appraisal of humiliation could also be a form of resistance. The article concludes with an emphasis on exploring the scope of psychological resistance to caste-based humiliation through individual and collective acts of meaning that interpret and transform a humiliating existence.

Mark Tully's upcountry tales: A journey into the lives of Dalits in India

Mark Tully's upcountry tales: A journey into the lives of Dalits in India

WATER CRISIS IN DALIT LITERAURE : FICTION AND REALITY

Caste is a stigma in Indian society and has hampered its growth. Because of this, a section of society has perpetually dictated the lower castes. The upper caste has tormented Dalits economically and socially for primary needs such as water, an essential need for both humans and animals. The upper castes have forbidden the right to water to a lower caste. The upper classes felt that a touch of Dalit would contaminate the water. If a Dalit happened to trod into a pond, the Indian priest had to sanctify the defiled water with a yajna. This situation led to many heart-rending casualties. This paper will investigate how the denial of even the fundamental right to water has rendered trouble in the lives of Dalits in India. Though the Dalit leaders had launched Satyagraha for Dalits to use a public tank in Maharashtra, the upper caste Hindus banned, the lower caste Hindus' access to water bodies. The present study will shed light on water issues, specifically in Dalit literature by non-Dalit writers. Do upper caste Hindus still keep separate water bodies for themselves? To what degree have progressive writers displayed it in their writings?

Subaltern? Illustrated: A Study of Ambedkar Cartoons

Just like any other narrative form, cartoons too, by virtue of their storytelling ability, have problematized Dalit life history and delineated the trauma, tragedy and unflinching representational terms. Charting sociopolitical topics, cartoons are an example of popular culture influencing public opinion. With caricature, prose, topical content and a dash of humour, cartoons form a special category of news and a critical form of political journalism. When Elizabeth Edwards discusses the raw history and potential of photographs, she emphasizes their visual sovereignty, which is not only vital for the production of photography but also for the interpretation of images, and through them, the insertion of the human voice. Similarly, cartoons succeed in combining their visual sovereignty with their ethnographic potential because of their interpretive ingenuousness. As such, cartoons articulate lines of instability indiscernible under the garb of mythical solidarity of a myriad of political ideologies. Cartoonists construct publics and counter publics by problematizing the impact of sociopolitics on human beings through the construction of interpretative communities bound by visual perceptions. In other words, cartoons, particularly political cartoons, represent highly complex modern attempts to formulate visual identities under specific historical and political conditions that resonate with the readership. The present research article seeks to problematize Dalit representation in cartoons by non-Dalit illustrators against the work of a Dalit cartoonist to critically study the politics of representation, the discourse of powers and the dialectics of caste. The article seeks to study if and how Dalit agency is, respectively, illustrated or elided, how symbols and caricatures demonstrate the truth of Dalit life and the aesthetics of the Dalit experience. For the purpose of the study, the article especially focusses on the figure of Ambedkar, the iconic Dalit voice and the benevolent patriarch of Dalit ideology, and studies his representation in a series of political cartoons published between 1932 and 1956.

The Life of the Dalit People Reflected in Pudhumaipithan's "Thunpakkeni"

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the farmers of Tamil Nadu, affected by the wrong agricultural policies of the British, migrated to different places for their livelihood. The tea plantations of Sri Lanka, the rubber plantations of Burma, and the sugarcane plantations of Fiji, created by the British, lured them in like the gates of heaven. Various pieces of literature have recorded the sufferings and hardships of the people who went to live in these areas. Among the records, the work that received the most attention was the writer's "Thunpakkeni." In this short story, the writer documents the painful life faced by economically and caste-oppressed people who travel to the tea plantations of upland Sri Lanka. This article seeks to learn about the lives of Dalits at the time through a story written by the innovator and published in Manikodi magazine from March 1935 to April 1935.

The Spiritual Quest and Marginalization Based on Slum Novel

In abroad, blacks and whites are racially diverse. Although no one explicitly supports this, it is in the form of intrinsic fire. As far as India is concerned, although the distinctions of race, caste, class, language and religion are not admirable, it is a fiery fire and sometimes apparently shown. Today, Dalit literature in Tamil has established itself in the identity of a significant development. Since the outlook of Dalit literature written by Dalits has been broadened today, it is necessary to mention here the status of Dalit life in Telugu literature in terms of translated novels beyond the Tamil region. Thus, the Telugu novel 'Cheri' (Slum) written by Unnava Lakshminarayana has been translated into Tamil by MK Jagannath Raja. The article highlights the way Dalits are oppressed for being Dalits, even though they are spiritually and economically affluent in this novel.

Hunger as a Political Critique: Memories as Resistance in M. Kunhaman’s Ethiru

The article looks at how memories and experiences of hunger in Dalit life writings form a strong political critique against the claims of modern welfare society. The instances of hunger recorded in Ethiru by Kunhaman are analysed in order to see how hunger itself constitutes a humiliating experience when it is combined with experiences of caste discriminations. Despite developing juridical as well as social sensibilities to irradicate hunger and poverty, caste-ridden contexts give rise to situations of death by hunger not due to any shortage of food but due to ostracization and alienation of the marginalized communities. These moments also expose the colonial and feudal views and prejudices about the poor, their attitude to hard work, and value of labour and charity which still lie deep in the social psyche of many developed countries. The article attempts to locate Kunhaman’s work within the context of emerging critiques from the marginalized communities against tall claims of the progressivism and development indices of Kerala society.

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.

Socio-Economic Realities of Muslim Dalits Women in India During Covid-19

Contemporary India is a primitive, patriarchal society of various feudal tribes. When we refer to caste in the political and economic structures of many cultures, we understand the apparent dichotomy between faith and the role of "one woman". Any theoretical understanding of gender equality and gender inequality must be deeply anchored in the field of social control. Dalit women, especially Muslims in India, are seen to be present at a crucial moment when they must overcome three barriers at once: class, race, and masculinity. These are the three hierarchical poles of the social constitution that are necessary to recognise the gender relations and inequality of Dalit women. In Indian society, Muslim dalit women face unintentional discrimination based on caste, class, and gender. The "untouchables" must live only in shackles, have no domestic property, cook only in porcelain houses, wear only cast-iron clothing, and own no land. This has a long-lasting effect on the experience of the completely weak living conditions of the Dalits, especially women who cannot drink water from popular sources in the villages, become starving workers, engage in trafficking, or commit suicide. Dalit women significantly. Muslim Dalit women have been victims of sexual assault in rural India. The disadvantages of Muslim Dalit women are among the most notable exceptions; their disadvantages are never part of the battle for women in India. However, bourgeois feminism did not advance all the real issues of Dalit women by setting the feminist agenda. The additional bias against Muslim Dalit women due to their gender and caste is evident in the numerous successes achieved by the human development metrics of this group. In all aspects of human growth, literacy, and survival, Muslim dalit women are far worse off than Dalit men and non-Dalit women. This study aims to comprehend the larger connotations that connect Muslim Dalit women's social spaces to COVID-19. Another significant change in the lives of Dalits and their commercial feasibility is the consequence of the transition from a socialist to a democratic state that does not resolve the problems of social security. As a result, the capitalist class of modern liberation engages in sexual relations with Dalit families. The lives of Muslim Dalit female labourers are wrapped up in the obstacles posed by the Brahmanic economy, which is governed by the community. Muslim dalit women's domestic and foreign labour is deeply ingrained in many segments of the community. In conjunction with these social and political trends, the mistreatment of Muslim Dalit women is on the rise, as is subtle or extreme discrimination within Dalit households. As a result, this paper aims to elicit queries from Muslim Dalit women during the COVID-19 period.

WE are Dalit History

Life writings had time and again been used as source material for historical research both in the West and the various literary cultures of South Asia. Considering the absence and a deliberate, socially conditioned erasure of Dalit history from the mainstream narratives of Indian historiography, some scholars have introduced the notion of viewing Dalit life writings as exercises in history writing. This article explores several Dalit autobiographies as instances of engagement with the process of constructing history of Dalit communities in India. Starting from this premise, it undertakes a preliminary analysis of various narrative strategies employed in Hindi autobiographies by Dalit authors in the hope of revealing the nature of their engagements with India’s past and present. The study presented in this paper is based on four relevant examples of prose in Hindi—by Kausalya Baisantri, Sushila Takbhaure, Omprakash Valmiki, and Sheoraj Singh Bechain.

Transformation From Aesthetics to Activism: An Analysis of Select Dalit Women Personal Narratives

Dalit resistance gained prominence in postcolonial India through Dalit literature, with Dalit life writing emerging as a significant way to address ongoing problems and issues faced by Dalit communities. Dalit personal narratives are not mere reflections into the past but lived experiences with a timely and current sociological base. Dalit narratives have become a platform for social and political activism against various hegemonic discourses that otherwise exclude the experiences of the Dalit population. Moreover, Dalit women suffer many layers of oppression and violence, and there is a necessity to understand the intersectionality of Dalit women’s realities. Hence this article analyses select personal narratives of two Dalit women writers: P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change ([1989] 2006) and ₹Author’s Notes: Gowri’ ([1999] 2006); and Bama’s Karukku ([1992] 2005). The ₹Author’s Notes: Gowri’ is a reflection on The Grip of Change and the two narratives are collectively referred to as The Grip of Change. This article attempts to understand the extent to which Dalit personal narratives transform from aesthetics to activism. This article analyses the narrative technique and form used in the narratives and explores how the narratives expose embodied issues to foster activism in and through the content.