Dalit Literature

This essay discusses the politics and relevance of myth and myth making in relation to the subordination of Untouchables in South Asia. Through the case study of one particular group e the Muchi-Rishi of Bengal/ Bangladesh, traditionally skinners, leather-workers and musicians e it is argued that ex-Untouchables do not share the ideology of caste which places them on the lowest echelon of society. This is in contrast with the case of ‘Untouchable myths of origin’ offered by anthropological research (Michael Moffatt, Robert Deliège) in South India, Tamil Nadu. However, another set of counter-myths recounted by the Rishi, centred around the figure of Ruidas, offers an alternative which allows them to gain a self-ascribed identity.
Far from engaging in a ‘theological’ struggle, the idiom of religion and myth becomes for these ‘ex-Untouchables’ and subaltern groups a ‘place of resistance’ from which they can hope to better themselves also in the economic, social and political spheres, as part of their overall endeavour to achieve full human dignity. For some Rishi, this process has taken the form of a long journey from being defined an ‘Untouchable’ to becoming a Dalit.

Studying the spatial exclusion of Dalits is distinct from looking at caste as an axis of spatial organization in the city. The “urban” is not just a location for mapping the social geography, but a mode that engenders spatial inequality. This article probes the spatial strategies of urban planning, between the 1920s and 1970s, which produced exclusionary spaces and masked the dynamics of caste within its techno-managerial rationality. It refocuses the lens of scholarship on Bombay from the urban periphery moving beyond the three popular sites of Bombay’s historiography: the factory, the neighborhoods of mill district, and the Island City. Exploring the politics of urban expansion, it illustrates how the planning regime reproduced hegemonic caste-class relations, which relegated Dalit migrants to the city’s fringes, on low-quality lands, and in segregated neighborhoods. Based on life histories, this article shows how Dalits created spaces for living, linked inextricably to their labor, and contests the abstract notions of space like “slum” that identify and mark people and their spaces. It also explores the affective relations nurtured and solidarities forged in the Dalit neighborhood on the terrain of urban politics, which recognizes Dalit actors and their struggles for redistribution and dignity.

This paper studies Hindu untouchable sweepers of Bangladesh, using a case study of two sweeper communities in Dhaka city. Due to their untouchability, Hindu sweepers in Bangladesh have historically been subjected to discrimination and marginalisation, and are deprived of choices such as free selection of occupation, access to housing, education and other benefits. Contending with the conventional notion that Hinduism maintains social order by caste hierarchies and divisions of labour, this shows how the sweepers of Dhaka city respond to the notion of untouchability and show resistance to caste discrimination. This paper also argues that it is not only a Hindu religious ideology but also historical, colonial, economic, political and social aspects of caste-based discrimination that can explain construction of the notion of Dalit and the marginalisation and resistance of Bangladeshi sweepers.

Sociological research on inequality has increasingly moved beyond the examination of inequalities as they presumably exist to explore the generic narrative processes that perpetuate that inequality. Unfortunately, however, this research remains concentrated on either individual or ideological grand narratives and ignores the fact that the work narratives do, including the production and structuring of inequality, occurs at multiple levels: cultural, structural, organizational, and personal, and never exclusively at just one of these. In this study, we use Somali origin narratives to describe conceptually the ways in which narratives produced at different personal and societal levels—cultural, institutional, organizational—dialectically structure the generic processes that produce and perpetuate social inequality.

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.

This article attempts to offer a critique of cultural critic D. R. Nagaraj's theoretical approach to the analysis of contemporary Dalit literature. According to Nagaraj, contemporary Dalit literature is a literature of decultured Dalits which articulates rights and entitlements in liberal polity. Rejecting claims of a separate aesthetics for Dalit literature, he locates Dalit literary contributions in the broad sphere of Indian culture and argues for a new aesthetics for Indian culture. His aim is to recover from the Indian tradition the civilizational contribution of Dalit writers, such as folk and oral cultural forms. This framework undermines the theoretical innovation and aesthetic significance of contemporary Dalit literature. Proposing Dalit literature as a form of contemporary politics in the sphere of modern Indian literary culture, Marathi Dalit critic and writer Baburao Bagul presents Dalit literature as a modern, written, and Ambedkarite tradition that reconfigured modernity, invented new modes of writing, and imagined Dalit as a generic identity, lived experience, and perspective in modern Indian literary history. Dalit literature is human and democratic, Bagul argues, as it draws on the humanist legacy of Buddha, Christ, Phule, Ambedkar, and also the Western Enlightenment. A reading of some Dalit texts, following the discussion of Bagul, illustrates the limitations of Nagaraj's approach.

India has been a democracy for over six decades, and it has progressed by leaps and bounds in different spheres, from roads to the moon; it has proved its charisma and calibre in contexts of discoveries and new theories. But do its social credentials stand up to scrutiny? No, in spite of progressing this much, inequality soared to the highest levels in some areas, and it has not translated into greater welfare for the majority of the Indian population. Dalit community is one of those unfortunate people who are lacking in social honour because of their class and caste. As of now, their literature is the most circulated means to know about their situation, and we will see that most of the literature available is in the form of their biographies and autobiographies. Here, I am looking for the cultural dynamics and power relations responsible for the crippled existence of 'a Dalit female' and how they get a Dalit female standpoint to speculate over the situations and strive for betterment by analyzing a Dalit female narrative The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble.

In 2015, many states in India banned the production and consumption of beef, with several states implementing stricter enforcement of already existing beef bans. The rhetoric of the bans evokes the protection of Hindu sensibilities, which consider the cow sacred. It has been observed that the political ascendency of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideology of Hindu Nationalism give impetus to the bans lending force to political and cultural organisations involved in cow vigilantism. This article explores
the Hindu sense of disgust associated with professions related to the skinning and tanning of rawhide as well as the consumption of beef and carrion, which renders the untouchable body polluted, denying it personhood. Taking the Dalit protests following an assault on four Dalit youth in Mota Samadhiyala village of Gujarat on 11 July 2016, this article focuses on the Dalit response, both by activists and poets, to the proscription against beef. While Dalit activists have protested against assaults on those disposing of dead cattle, it is in poetry that the Dalit response to the disgust associated with the consumption of beef and carrion finds expression. Dalit poets bring the polluting body to the centre; claiming personhood and forging a new aesthetic.

The objective of this book is to analyse the discourses, representations, ritual practices and institutions of this community.  Two aspects of the conversion are to be distinguished: one, the attempt of the Mahar community to achieve social ascension and emancipation; and the other, a project of reform which addresses the indian society in its totality.

DALIT FEMINISM: One of the aims of writing dalit literature in India has been to reveal to the readers the injustice, oppression , helplessness and struggles of many of the disadvantaged populations under the social machine of stratification in India. Caste politics in India is unique and culture specific. Dalit feminism is unique in Indian context. The stratified Indian society beguiles the dalit women to the whirlpool of social oppression and exploitation. It is against any sort of class distinction. Conceiving the ideology of Dr B. R. Ambedkar: 'Educate, agitate, organize' dalit women write back.

This study intends to identify the current employment status of educated Dalit youths and the employment
perception of employed Dalit youths in Nepal. A descriptive and exploratory design, with both
qualitative as well as quantitative approach, was framed for the study. A random sample of 400 educated
Dalit youths was taken for a quantitative study from Dalit Employability Enhancement Database
(DEED) project of the NGO named Professional Research and Development Centre in Kathmandu.
In addition, focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted with 50 educated Dalit youths. The employment
scenario of the Dalit youths is not too encouraging. Female Dalits stay more unemployed in comparison
to males, despite having similar educational qualifications and competencies. It may be indicative of nonengagement
or empowerment of Dalit women towards employment in the country. Majority of the
Dalit youths were found to be satisfied with their current jobs. Those who were dissatisfied with their
jobs were so mainly due to their salaries, lack of job security, lack of opportunities to career progression
and mismatching in working areas.

This paper seeks to examine the formation of the category of Telugu Dalit literature in the 1990s. I suggest that it is through the establishment of a new set of Dalit social and cultural organizations, forums, and small journals that Dalit writers have shaped the new category of Dalit literature. Mapping the consolidation of the Dalit community as a distinct social group in the context of the Dalit movement in Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s and 1990s, I further argue that the category of Dalit literature was conceptualized
as an oppositional category to the dominant modern form, revolutionary literature.

Pub in Bill Ashcroft, Ranjini Mendis, Arun Mukherjee, and Julie McGonega (eds). Literature for Our Times:  Postcolonial Studies in the Twenty-First Century, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012.

In today's world where technology permeates in every nook and corner, it is indispensable for the language teachers to forgo the use of mass media in the classroom. Effective usage of mass media can foster learner's learning experience. Moreover, it also enhances the collaborative learning among learners. Researches have proved that the use of mass media either an auditory form or visual form acts as a stimulus in enhancing the four basic skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing in a much more exciting and effective manner. Therefore, the present paper attempts to study the efficacy of mass media in teaching English to undergraduate Engineering students in the university. Moreover, the study discusses the possibilities and limitations in exploiting the mass media in the English classroom. INTRODUCTION In this digital world the use of technology is ubiquitous and students' engagement with mass media is tremendous. Besides, technology has entered into our classroom, thereby pushing learning beyond the four walls of the classroom and the textbooks. Hence, it is indispensable for the language teachers to forgo the use of mass media in the classroom. Effective usage of mass media can foster learner's learning experience. Mass media plays a significant role in all walks of life and its intrusion in the English classroom can create wonders in the performance of the students. The use of the mass media resources can facilitate deeper learning such as problem solving skills and creative skills needless to mention cooperative learning. Furthermore, the amalgamation of sounds and visuals makes the learners understand the concept faster and their retention becomes stronger. Teaching with technology can deepen student's learning by supporting instructional objectives [1].Therefore, the present paper attempts to study the efficacy of mass media in teaching English to undergraduate Engineering students in the university. Moreover, the study discusses the possibilities and limitations in exploiting the mass media in the English classroom.

The well-known short story writers Woman Hoval and Nadine Gordimer represent their writing of Caste - Race based society in India and Africa. It needs to apply the cultural theoretical framework to know the marginal identity of Dalit and "coloured‟ people. This paper is more concern with three major points are - (i) Marginal and cultural identity of "Dalit‟ and "Coloured‟, (ii) the struggle and discrimination of third world countries, and (iii) the dominancy and weak constitutional law of marginal people. These points need to understand as produces in historical and institutional sites within discursive formations by enunciatively strategies. Culture come to be a terrain of marginalize struggle became heavily politicized. In the short story of Hoval the protagonist Bayaji struggle to build the storeyed house yet no charge against the upper-class man Patil for the burning Bayaji‟s house where as Gordimer‟s story Baby dies because of Paul. Despite the identities, it has similar experiences of being marginalized, so there is an urgent need to bring social revolution for equal rights. Therefore, everyone should educate about the social consciousness against the conventional rules in the society. To sum up with whatever is the evil of distinction was existing, it same still exists in twenty-first century also. The marginal are much better than the past, there is no doubt, but still they are “depress” and “abuse” by other. This due to the existence of cultural politics, which is alive issue in the present world also. The weak Indian constitutional and African apartheid laws fail to give equal rights to them.
KEYWORDS: Caste; race; marginality; culture; identity; politics

Hughes' perceptions of puritanical Christianity's hypocritical repression of the instincts, its attempt at going against Nature have led to a hiatus between the faith professed and the natural instinctual urges. Hughes exploits the contradiction that this variety of Christianity gives rise to: it professes a doctrine of love, compassion, benevolence, humanity and hope, but ends up producing hatred, depravity, pride, arrogance, and frustration. As a way out, he seeks to explore the pagan roots of Christianity itself, particularly of the cults of the Mother Goddess that helped archaic man to come to terms with his instinctual energies. His poetry thus gradually embarks on a quest for the Great Mother which alone is in harmony with the processes of Nature. The present paper is concerned with how Hughes' imaginative engagement with Nature in Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970,1972) critiques, interrogates and undermines Post-Renaissance scientific materialism and rationalism which gets in the way of acknowledging the demonic devil within us and thereby of seeking a harmonious balance between the creative/benign and the destructive/malign forces/aspects of Nature.

Other Books, una casa editrice di Calicut in Kerala, si dedica a tutte quelle
pubblicazioni che solitamente non vengono promosse dalle principali case
editrici ed i maggiori distributori. Fondata nel 2003 da un gruppo di studenti
universitari, academici ed attivisti, Other Books ha come scopo quello di
estendere i discorsi contemporanei sugli studi dedicati alla casta, al genere, al
misticismo, all'Islam ed alle arti in India ed altrove attraverso la pubblicazione
e la distribuzione di testi nel campo degli studi umanistici in continua e
rapida evoluzione. Come editore, Other Books ha cercato di pubblicare una
serie di testi autorevoli dedicati alla storia dell'India meridionale, in modo
particolare dei Mappala, e di altre zone che solitamente ricevono una minore
attenzione. I temi maggiormente trattati dalle pubblicazioni di Other Books
sono la casta, il genere, l'Islam e la storia politica dell'Asia occidentale.
L'annientamento della casta rappresenta una sintesi lucida e completa
del pensiero di Ambedkar sul fondamento, la ragione ed il ruolo delle
caste all' interno della società indù. Le ragioni della loro abolizione non si
collocano solo ed esclusivamente nella sistematica negazione dei diritti cui
sono stati oggetto i membri delle classi più svantaggiate, come quella degli
intoccabili di cui lo stesso Ambedkar faceva parte, ma anche sull'influenza
negativa e fortemente destabilizzante per l'unità delb nazione.

Dalit life-writings have often been identified as reified spaces of protest against the Brahmanic oppression continuing since centuries in the Indian society. Banished to a space of invisibility, both metaphorical as well as physical margins of the Social Imaginary, Dalits continue to push back boundaries by transforming the 'marginal' space into a space of 'subaltern resistance'. My aim in this paper is to interrogate the methods of collective resistance in the life-writings of Dalit women authors and show how the peripheral spatial geography becomes the central site of resistance. Both Baby Kamble's The Prisons we Broke (2008), and Bama's Karukku (1992) belong to entirely different historical periods, and therefore, inevitably differ in their plot-narratives and manner of expression. However, they converge in their emphasis on how the Dalit segregated spaces in their village assume an important role in awakening their collective consciousness first-as members of a community, and second-as women. Both Karukku and The Prisons We Broke refuse to adhere to the Augustinian definitions of the autobiography as a genre and instead become works which elude generic conventions of the autobiography, anticipating a separate literary genre for themselves. In fact, the closest literary referent of these texts is the Latin American genre of the testimonio-social and political narratives of witnessing significant events as a collective-that emerged in the 1960s. Reading these Dalit life-writings as testimonios of collective resistance is evocative of the ongoing struggle of the Dalits to claim a separate space, both social and literary, while lending a voice to their lived-experiences in a paternalistic society that is essentially casteist. Baby Kamble and Bama raise pertinent questions against the dominant religious ideology and contribute to a social change in the conditions of women. Thus, my second intention in the paper is to closely look at the resistance offered against religious bias by the two authors. Since the Indian caste system derives its justifications from the Hindu law of divinity that are apparently inalterable according "Depressed Sufferings": Reading Dalit Life-Writings… LITERATURE to Hindu purists, challenging the 'savarna' customs and rituals has been a persistent preoccupation within Dalit activism. Foregrounding textual instances of such challenges and resistance shall help us in understanding how a society practices coercion against a community when it comes to something as benign and as personal as man's spiritual connection with the divine force.

Matthew Arnold defines culture as, "a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our own stock notions and habits" (Wikipedia). Unfortunately, this dynamic picture of culture has never been possessed in true sense; because the history of culture, since the formation of organized societies anywhere in the world, has been the history of cultural domination and suppression. The proponents of cultural values find their own culture better than those of others. They spread and impose these values in the name of truth with the help of ideological and repressive state apparatus. India has been maintaining its patriarchal culture since centuries; and women have been made the worst victims of it. Women, because of the dominance of these men-centric societal rules and norms, are pushed to periphery and forced to live the life of a second-class citizen. Some women have raised their voices against these atrocities and defied to obey the illogical patriarchal rules. Kamla Das, a vocal Indian poetess who herself has been a victim of such binary cultural norms, has expressed her egalitarian thoughts in many of her poems. She writes freely about the needs and desires of women and finds patriarchal society responsible behind the maldevelopment of its society in general and women in particular.

Girls have always been targeted in the name of good conduct, normal human behavior, social and religious norms since centuries. These norms have created good women and bad women i.e. those who abide by the various rules of the society are supposed to be normally good whereas those who resist and want to create their own rules of life are dubbed as abnormal antisocial bad girls. Working girls in metro cities have been the soft target for these feudal minded people. They guess that such girls are easily available because they are coming out of their houses for enjoyment and not for work. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's movie, Pink, depicts this illegal, unethical physical and psychological exploitation of three working girls-Meenal Arora (Taapsee Pannu), Falak Ali (Kriti Kulhari) and Andrea (Andrea Tariang). It is the story of these three girls who opt to live in a rented house in order to earn their livelihood and be self-independent in a posh colony of South Delhi. They suffer a lot not because of their own reasons but because of the various social structures. These social structures prove to be the chief reasons behind their exploitation. Johan Gultung, a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of the Peace and Conflict Studies, points out towards various social and religious structures which curtail the freedom of those people who deviate from such structures. Thus, these structures inflict violence on people without any clear actor behind it. This movie has shown various such social norms which become violent for the working girls.

Women have been victim of domestic violence from time immemorial. Their rights have been suppressed in the name of caste, class, society, religion, gender, economic condition and their liberty is curtailed from time to time by patriarchal rules. The Hour Past Midnight (2009) is a translation of Tamil novel Irandaam Jaamathin Kadhai (2004) which Salma alias Rokkaiya has written. It depicts the exploitation of women due to double standard of various social institutions. The whole story is told from the first person point of view of Rabia, a 13 years girl child. Amina, Zohara, Rahima, Firdous, Mumtaz, Nafiza, Farida, Wahida, Maimoon are other women characters of three generations who bear the burden of patriarchal norms in somewhat similar style. They are forced to live a life of 'inferior other'.

Mahasweta Devi is a prolific writer who has used her pen for the causes of the most deprived sections of the society. She has written about the pangs and plights of tribals, women, dalits and other marginalized sections of society. Her novel, Mother of 1084, is the depiction of the miserable condition of a mother who tries to search for the causes of her son's commitment towards Naxalite movement during 1970s after his brutal killing. She comes across many layers of hidden things which a mother from upper class may not bother to know in normal situations. She explores that her son was like her who cared for others, wanted equality in the society and therefore he had sacrificed his life. She finds her life akin to the thoughts of her son as she herself is excluded in her own family. She has to bear the oppression of exclusion in her own house. These things have made her stronger and able to understand those causes for which her son has sacrificed his life. Unsympathetic behavior of the husband and some of the children, double standard of morality and civil laws, the gap between the proletariats and the bourgeois, Naxalite movement and its aftermath, indiscriminate brutal killings of Naxalites, lust for materialistic life and hollow prestige among the upper class society are well documented by Mahasweta Devi in her most popular work, Mother of 1084.

Ancient Greece gave rise to many prominent philosophical figures. Of these, a notable academic was Epicurus (341-270 BC), a Samoan who was influential in the development of the Stoic school of thought. While Epicurus's scholarship includes several subject areas, he is most notable for his work in ethics and egoism. As a subset of this philosophical field, Epicurus investigates the role of a selfless, virtuous friendship in the cultivation of a moral life, as well as the need for a selfish and rational egoism. Thus, as scholars have pointed out, the notions of selfless friendship and self-interest egoism, while maintained parallelly by Epicurus, seem to be in tension with each other. This paper examines the relationship between an ideal Epicurean friendship and Epicurus's concept of egoism, and attempts to resolve both notions under a reading of rule egoism.

In the liquid borderlands between South and Southeast Asia, where refugees from East Bengal were resettled after the massive Partition-induced displacement, the god Ram is narrated as a great model of filial piety but also as the murderer of a low-caste ascetic. The Vaishnava saint Chaitanya is a divine character but also a reproachable renunciate who abandoned his mother and forced her to beg from door to door. The crocodile is an ideal devotee who caught fish to bring as offering for the religious congregation, justifying the introduction of an otherwise forbidden substance on the altar. Drawing on both ethnographic and literary sources, I use recurrent “bundles of stories” such as these, transmitted and performed by the Matua community on the Andaman Islands, to discuss narratives as a way of knowing and to describe “bricolage thinking” in borderland selves. I interpret the aesthetics and the literary devices used in these narratives as strategies to shape borderland community values. These rely upon past memories and provide for present articulations of resistance. This article suggests that Matua narratives contest political borders by traveling between and connecting fragmented sections of the displaced community through the voices of itinerant preachers, performers, and pilgrims. At the same time, they trespass onto other kinds of borderlands, such as those created by unequal positions of socioeconomic power and those marking the center and periphery of religious hegemony.

Religion is a force under which we understand the framework of social exclusion or integration across the world. The growing impact of religion on peoples" lives globally has seen a massive resurgence of newly imposed guidelines, rules, and regulations in societies. It has been a great impact on social conditioning, both demographically and psychographically. For an increasing majority of the global population, religion has powerfully anchored forms of identity, meaning, community, and purpose. And the same religion, through cultural roots, has created newer forms of marginalization across the societies and nations. All over the world nowadays people are discussing the problems of marginalized groups-their social, ethnic, economic, and cultural problems. Marginality with all aspects is indeed a major problem to be reckoned with in the world. By and large, most of the marginalized groups constitute minorities religious, ethnic, linguistic, or otherwise-in different countries. There are sub-cultures in mainstream cultures or religions. Invariably they are impoverished people constituting o minority groups. They suffer from economic, social or political impoverishment and find themselves estranged from this mainstream. Their marginality may vary in degree, extent or intensity. Most countries and cultures have empowered groups at one pole and impoverished groups at the other and between the two, there are graded levels of power and poverty. This paper discusses the correlation between religion, culture, and the process of marginalization.

The book “Perspectives on Indian Dalit Literature: Critical Responses” is a volume of twenty six scholarly articles focusing on the theme of Dalit’s freedom and emancipation from traditional caste-stigmatised society which sacrifices the interest of Dalits on the altar of tradition. The book endeavours to articulate voices among this marginalized class of people to come in action from their passivity and stillness. The book also tries to cover almost all eminent Dalit writers of past and present century like Omprakash Valmiki, Baby Kamble, Bama Faustina Soosairaj, Meena Kandasamy, Namdeo Dhasal, Sharankumar Limbale, Bhimrao Shirwale, Hira Bansode etc. along with some non-Dalit wrters like Munshi Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand, Arvind Adiga etc. who have sought plea for this marginalized class of people with same ardour and passion as other Dalit writers through their write ups. Hopefully this anthology would serve for better humanity.

The project “Non-Dalit sensitivity for the Dalit literature amongst
The students of literature in colleges of Mumbai University” is an
the effort to find out the general attitude of the students of literature, across Mumbai colleges, towards Marginal Literature in general, and the Dalit literature in particular. Dalits were always marginalized ‘other’ side of the Indian society. So when they started speaking after the centuries of silence, about themselves, we have got the writings depicting assertion of human rights, self-pride, revolt against social injustice, chronicles of personal and collective suffering, and hopes and aspirations for a new society devoid of discrimination.
For many years in Indian literature studies across the departments of language and literature, the syllabus, the curriculum, and the pedagogy were strongly rooted in the Western writings, aesthetics, ideologies, and sensitivities. Especially the English departments across the universities in India have prided themselves to be‘perfect’ role models in copying the exact writers, the same books, the similar novels and poetry and the similar critical theories of evaluation as their Western counterparts. For them, the literature started in England and ended also over there for all these centuries and whatever is not written in the English language had never been considered worthy of any serious consideration in a literature classroom.

irelAnd indiA institute, duBlin City university, irelAnd Charu Gupta has made her contribution in the field of historical research at the intersection of gender and caste in India widely acclaimed. She continues where she had left off her previous work on the Hindi popular print media and in this latest work focuses on the intersection of caste and gender in colonial North India through visual print culture and archival material. The success of this work lies in the tedious archival research which brings forth Dalit popular print culture as part of the print discourse in colonial North India. The sources of these print materials were colonizers, reformers and nationalists, but most importantly, Dalits themselves (p. 27). She establishes the Dalit figure not as a subject but as a vibrant participator in the contemporary print culture, despite casteist restrictions to access to education and the resultant low literacy rates among Dalits. Dalits were not only being written about, but were also writing. Her sources range from didactic manuals, reformist magazines and women's periodicals to missionary propaganda, police reports, cartoons, and popular Dalit pamphlets.

Kapilkrishna Thakur is long standing Bangla Dalit activist and writer working for more than
three decades. His signal books include: Ujantaleer Upokatha (historical novel), Cholechi
Chaitrer Utsabee, Shoro Pathor, Kisundar Ondho (poetry), Madhumoti Onek Dur, Onno Ihudi
(Stories). He has also written a seminal book on the Motua Movement in Bengal which marks
his scholarship in the subject. Matua Andolan o Banglar Anunnoto Samaj is resourceful work on
Matua religion and literary productions. Kapilkrishna Thakur is also attached to some important
journals and magazines from West Bengal: Dalit Manan, Nikhil Bharat, Bngo Bhumi, Gana
Sanskriti, Jamini Katha and Manisha. His literary corpus makes a fervent plea for a complete
overhaul of society by questioning all stereotyped notions of caste and class in Bengal.
This interview is the fruit of a couple of long sessions in August 2017 in a coffee parlour in South Kolkata, Prince Anwar Shah Road.

SOURCE....
Writers in Conversation Vol. 5 no. 1, February 2018.

This paper is an attempt to establish epistemological validity of Dalitbahujan perspective (DBP) in academia and argue for its use as an analytical perspective specifically in the context of South Asia, or wherever in the world similar caste-based or descent-based intersected hierarchies exist.  I discuss the counter-hegemonic claims of Dalitbahujan scholar with Pakistan as a region in the foreground and forethought. Dalitbahujan critique is mounted against Brahmanism or ‘upper caste-class’ order and Western articulations of South Asian societies. It is contended that the Western hegemonic epistemes construct academic field in South Asia and determine which sociological and ideological concepts are of universal value applicable or translatable globally. Dalitbahujan scholars argue that universalization understood as premised on Western approaches as a necessary criterion to qualify or appreciate Dalit oppression does not exhaust the empirical reality of South Asia. Since my empirical theme of doctoral research was caste politics and Dalit assertions (in Pakistan), I have specifically elaborated upon the concepts of caste based identity politics and ‘Dalit assertions’. I discuss intellectual and political Dalit assertions’ limitations as well as generative capacity to mount the critique of neoliberal democracy, nationalism, secularism, communalism and the internal colonization, and in process, furnish necessary tools to analyze the problem of caste, Dalit oppression and assertions.
Key words: Dalitbahujan Perspective, Dalit assertions

In the context of the powerful and the powerless in the social formation of India, caste system has been a matter of immense debate and discussion. Continuing for the centuries, (presumably from the time of the arrival of Aryans) caste system has been a parasitical condition prevailing, thriving and continually reforming, throughout India. Being an Indian one cannot but face its grips from the birth. Moreover, due to the recent phenomenon of reservation on the basis of caste, debates have been more frequent than before. In this paper, I intend to focus on dalit women, who are often considered as 'dalits among dalits', as represented in the literature written by them. For my present purpose I have chosen Bama's Sangati and Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke, two seminal novels written by dalit women writers, in order to discuss whether and how the dalit women are affected by the power dynamics functioning not only through the upper caste people (both men and women) but also lower caste men. And we will discover in the course of the study that state, gender, caste, class, religion, and community, each of them form an intersection in order to continue this disbalance of power. And this power here is not just electoral power but a state-generated, religion-fed hierarchy which continues to uphold gender and caste discrimination. And this becomes apparent when we see how the image of dalit women as represented by male writers stand in stark contrast to that of the female writers. A story of helplessness and limitation then becomes a courageous struggle for survival and self-identity.

This is an interview of Manohar Mouli Biswas, Bangla Dalit activist and writer, where he expresses his views about the identity of Dalit people and the historiography of caste in India. He further speaks about the uniqueness of Bangla Dalit literature, its similarities with Dalit writings in other Indian regional languages and the position of Dalit women writers. He is candid enough to speak about certain autobiographical elements that provided him with the impetus to be a Dalit writer. He further speaks about Dalit drama and its performances which is a marker of its acceptance amongst the viewers. He emphasises on the role of translation of Dalit literature to generate awareness among the larger reading public towards Dalit literature.

This paper attempts to study the formation of a dalit community and identity in Kerala. Recent years have seen a spurt of dalit writings in Malayalam literature. Our interest in these writings arose with the publication of several writings in Malayalam periodicals. These writings advocated the existence of a dalit identity and community in Kerala. Here we approach this debate through a study of identity politics and community formation and in the emerging " dalit literature " of Kerala. We discuss the relationship of dalit identity formation, politicization in their representation in literature and my focus is on dalit and adivasi debates in Kerala. The debate on the dalit of Kerala has an important relationship with discussion on the Maharashtra dalit literature. We outline the debates on dalits and dalit writings in Kerala. Issues like identity formation, community formation and other issues have been taken for study. In his pioneering work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign". 1 An imagined community is different from an actual community, because it is not (and cannot be) based on ordinary face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of their likeness. A nation is an imagined community, Anderson says, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may succeed in each, the nation is always imagined as a deep, parallel comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings 2. In this chapter I see how the neo-dalit writers read the story on their own past to create a common identity which hides the differences within lower caste and class communities. We show that through a reinterpretation of history, these writers create an imagined dalit community in Kerala.

Role of women and their contribution to the development in and out of home are valued nowadays mostly all around the world though to some extent women are still underestimated now and then. The paper aims to show the patriarchal dominance over the females in J. M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, as it finds that Bartley, being a male, always intends to control his mother and sisters. Even when he is determined to go to the Mainland for selling the ponies, he instructs his sisters what they should do if he is missing because of roughweather. Based on the critical analysis on Riders to the Sea, the paper advances to develop its aim.

Existing academic scholarship on Dalit writings and
politics seems to be heavily marked by a common
perception that such politics almost always focuses on
claiming the state corridors of power. This article
contests that view and seeks to trace the genealogy of
such common academic perceptions by invoking the
Subaltern Studies discourse on caste and subalternity. It
argues that the relationship of Dalits vis-à-vis the state
and statist ideology is heavily ambivalent, and any
attempt to construct a Dalit historiography cannot
proceed without recognising that ambivalence, even
while it must accept and use some of the
methodological insights developed by the Subaltern
Studies scholars

The proposed paper will review specific examples as case studies to show that the field of History has been used and abused as a battlefield by the untouchables as well as the high castes. Both sides have used history to gain legitimacy for their own brand of the historical narrative. This has resulted in numerous battles of identity politics. However, it has also led to an alternative narrative of history that has a therapeutic use for the former untouchables. Inspired by this history, an entire alternative culture in fact, has emerged, which has economic, political and cultural implications for the millions of Untouchables of India.

The paper explores Punjabi Dalit poets’  engagement with understanding and knowledge about wider reality. This literary tradition begins with Bhai Jaita (1657c-1704), a close disciple of Guru Gobind Singh who composed a devotional epic 'Sri Gur Katha' at the close of the seventeenth century. After a long gap we find Sant-poet Sant Wazir Singh (1790c-1859) prolifically composing spiritual, social and philosophical poetry in the first half of the nineteenth century. Thereafter, Giani Ditt Singh (1852-1901) emerged as a poet, polemicist, journalist, teacher, intellectual, orator and an ardent Sikh missionary who left behind more than 50 books to his credit. The last intellectual poet covered in this paper, Daya Singh Arif (1894-1946), composed his first book of poetry in 1914 when he was 20 years and all his four works of poetry by 1921 had turned him as the most popular poet of modern Punjab. The fact that the work of last two of the four Dalit poets occurred during the age of print in Punjab and was widely published but failed to find any space in standard histories of Punjabi literature speaks volumes of prevailing caste prejudices. The paper hence also addresses the question of Dalits’ exclusion from historiographical praxis.

Concerns of Dalit Literature in the 21st Century are about establishing it as the Literature of Emancipation which should help in creating an atmosphere of greater social harmony and peace that in turn could ensure development of all the people in India.

This introductory chapter sets out the rationale for the ensuing chapters and their division into different parts. It also provides an overall and comprehensive prologue to the Gramsci–Ambedkar encounter. Indeed, ‘parallels are strong and very striking for two thinkers who are otherwise so different – in political experience, philosophical background, and ideas of effective strategy’ (Jon Soske, personal communication). However, the moral fabric of their human and political commitment to Dalits/subalterns brings them very close, particularly when upholding and inspiring Gramsci’s ‘intellectual and moral reform’ and Ambedkar’s ‘social and moral consciousness of society’.

Gramsci and Ambedkar were contemporaries – both born in 1891 – and although operating in very different environments, the similarities of their strategies and political philosophy to empower subalterns/Dalits are indeed striking. Their activity as leaders, always combined with solid theoretical reflection, springs out of their own and others’ lived experience of subalternity. Both found inspiration in Marxism, both were critical of religion, but considered religion culturally and politically relevant; both assessed the presence of subalterns through social, cultural and historical critical analysis, and sought to negotiate a rightful place within the state, society and history/historiography for these ‘excluded’ individuals. For both of them, the solution would come from the effort of the subalterns themselves, as active protagonists of their own destiny, to achieve ‘consciousness’, and ‘collective will’ aided by the role of leaders/intellectuals. Their ‘holistic’ approach – which is a global critique to culture and to the structures of subalternity – enlightens the present-day ‘Dalit Question’ as a challenge posited not simply to Dalits and concerned scholars, but to societies/states and to the international community. Gramscian studies are currently flourishing in Italy and elsewhere. Although ‘Ambedkar has never really been taken seriously as a thinker in India’, (Omvedt 2006: 438), recent studies invite us to reflect on his fundamental intuition of the Untouchable subject becoming a Dalit (A. Rao 2009; Guru ed. 2009; Omvedt 2003; Zelliot 2004).

In this chapter, following a summary of Gramsci’s reception in South Asia, I briefly discuss both Gramsci’s demise and Ambedkar’s silencing, to then reaffirm the relevance of their being discussed in conjunction with each other. In conclusion, I offer a reflection proposing an introductory presentation of the articles offered in this volume.