Dalit Autobiography

My Father Baliah is a novel written by Dr. Y B Satyanarayana, which is a powerful novel describing about the struggles of a Dalit family for three generations. The novel not only touches on the issues of the system of caste, but has a focus on other avenues of life, culture, tradition, religion, history, and psychology.

Sangati (Events) is a novel by Tamil Dalit Author Bama, published in 1994. This has been translated to English by Lakshmi Holmstrom. The book consists of stories and anecdotes of the author's childhood narrated in a straight-forward manner through first-person narrative technique. It collates various pictures concerning the struggles of "Paraiah" women.

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.

“Awareness of the changing power relations seems to have dawned first
upon the lower rungs of the hierarchy” – while talking about the rise of political
consciousness among the people during the colonial period, G. Aloysius points
out that the lower caste people were the first who tried to change the power
structure of the society utilising the colonial opportunity. From this point of
view, the present paper will look at G. Kalyana Rao’s Untouchable Spring as a
record of the lower caste uprising, as an alternative history of generations of
oppressed people. The uniqueness of the Untouchable Spring – the difficulty in
categorizing it into a particular genre, will be utilised in order to substantiate the
point on how a text as such can be transformed as a resistance. Apart from the
text, the characters within the text and the events described in the text are all
examples of everyday forms of resistance by Dalits. The present paper will try to
analyse the various forms of resistance portrayed in the text.

Dalits were treated as untouchables and polluters to the High Caste Hindus because they were born in the low caste ‘Mahar’. They were intentionally kept ignorant and denied to take education and asked to live out of town in separate colonies by high caste Hindus to safeguard  their control over Dalits. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar gave the message to take Education, Unite and demand for the rights to the Dalit Community. Dalit communities admitted their children to school and started to take education. Slowly they were becoming conscious about their rights and demanding for liberty and equality. Autobiography came handy to them to demonstrate their age old suffering, exploitation and maltreatment. Writers like Daya Pawar, Shankarrao Kharat, Bandu Tupe, P. E. Sonkamble, Shrankumar Limbale, Laxman Mane, Laxman Gaikwad and Kishor Kale came foreward and penned their experiences in the from of autobiographies. Like male autobiographers, female autobiographers like Baby Kamble, Urmila Pawar, Kumud Pawade, Janabai Girhe demonstrated their life stories and experiences of trivial exploitation on the basis of caste, class and gender. Baby Kamble is the first women from Mahar Community to pen her life story as ‘Jina Amuche’ translated by Maya Pandit in English as ‘The Prisons We Broke’. Through this autobiography Baby Kamble has depicted the pathetic condition of women and also how Dalit society is divided as Traditional and Modern. Traditional Dalit community members had denied the way shown by Dr. Ambedkar and accepted the age old  customs and tradtions and living life ignorantly. On the other hand Ambedkar’s followers admitted their children to school which created a miraculous change in the society. Baby Kamble belongs to this second category. Her father was a civil contractor and influenced by Dr. Ambedkar  he admitted all his children to school and forced others to follow the same.

Anna Bhau Sathe very fondly called as ‘Lokshahir’. He has transformed Tamasha into Loknatya – a public play which achieved great fame by the society. He has contributed thirty novels and twenty – two collections of short stories to the literature. His novel ‘Fakira’ has received the first prize for the excellent literary merit in 1961 by the government of Maharashtra. Including Fakira his seven novels are adopted into films. The rural life he depicted into his literature is based on his own, firsthand experience of it. The characters in his writings are victims of ignorance, inequality, pride, bad habits and superstitions.
Anna was one of the most cinematically adapted literary person from Maharashtra. His literary works provided the classical plots, socio-cultural, socio-political issues and progressive ideas. It helped creative directors to raise questions on the orthodoxies, beliefs and socio-politioc issues.
Anna was appreciated not only in India but also in many parts of world. As a result of this, a number of his works were translated not only in all the fourteen Indian languages but also Czech, Polish, German and Russian. But I am unable to get English translation of his literary output. Hence I have considered translating his works into English probably his travelogue ‘Maza Russiacha Pravas’ as it is the first Dalit Travelogue in Marathi Literature. It has its own importance of historical, social, economical and political document of the society.
Throughout his life Anna dremt of an ideal society where equality , justice and humanity flourish like a full moon. Russia was the country where Anna could see and experience the same. Hence he was very eager to see Russia. Like a researcher and a keen observer he went to Russia and after 40 days stay returned to India. During the stay he visited several places, disussed with Russian people, shared experiences and understood the gimic of success and prosperous life of Russia.Unfortunaelt Anna unable to complete formal education but fortunately he wasvery humble, generous and a simple man and the same can be observed throughout his prodigious literary output especially in his travelogue .
Anna’s travelogue is very remarkable and has its own importance on numerous grounds as it is the factual and true picture of 70’s Russia, there is a comparison between India and Russia but in a very simple and satiric tone. Imminent personalities like late Hon.first Chief Minister of Maharashtra Yashwantrao Chavan, film directors like Satyajeet Ray, Raj Kapoor, Dr. Jabbar Patel, Govind Nihlani, Balraj Sahani and many others appreciated this travelogue in glowing terms.

Dalit writers not only projected socio-economical, cultural and political conditions, their stories of exploitation, harassment and deprivation by their high class masters but also women’s pathetic conditions in their own caste and the high class society as well. Laxman Mane, Laxman Gaikwad and Kishore Kale through their autobiographies exposed the women’s predicament, their mutely suffering and sorrows of tribal communities like Kaikadi, Pardhi and Kolhati. Women autobiographers like Mukta Sarvagond, Baby Kamble, Shanta Kamble, Kumud Pawade also broached the sufferings and sorrows of women from Dalit communities. Present paper focuses on the autobiography of Kishore Kale – ‘Kolhatyache Por’ translated as ‘Against All Odds’ by Sandhya Pande.  Kishore Kale a boy from a Kolhati community – a tribal community from Rajasthan settled themselves at the borders of Western Maharashtra facing oppression, exploitation and suppression became doctor. Kale also describes the suffering and sorrows of Kolhati women in the hands of their family members and society in general. Working in tamasha, Women from these communities earned livelihood whereas men enjoyed their daughters and sisters earning lavishly and look after the children at home. Men from the Kolhati community force their daughters and sisters in tamasha. Hence women from this community are harassed by both the communities that are Kolhati community for birth as a woman and high class society for a birth in a low caste community and also as a woman.

How often does an oppressed subject get to see, view and claim his/herself on the screen? The appropriation of the subjectivity by the material usurper — the Other — the oppressor re-shifts the locus upon him/herself to grant the agency and power to the oppressed subject on the oppressors’ terms. In this power play the oppressed is forced further downwards to the most vulnerable position giving little or no escape from the thralldom.

Dalits have been striving to get rid of their stigmatized identity for quite a long time. In this course they tried to form various movements mainly through their own literature. Through their short stories, poetry, autobiographies they have been trying to expose the cruelty which the society had implemented upon them. Among these writings, autobiography claims to have a significant place as it weaves the true stories of a writer’s life. But there is a sheer difference between a male and female Dalit writer’s autobiography. When a male Dalit writer envisions only the tyranny of the upper caste people on them, a female Dalit writer not only mirrors the oppression due to caste discrimination but also due to their gender.  This article attempts to differentiate the ways in which Dalit male and female autobiographers dealt with the theme of oppression.

Writing autobiographies were present in Western culture some centuries ago, but in India it stepped in recent centuries. In the Indian context, celebrating oneself was not for the ordinary people it was only meant for the Kings or noble leaders. Life writing is virtuously established by the custom of repudiation. The self here by the marginalized writer is written only to seek the humble moral qualities but not to flourish its achievements. In India, self is defined by its ethical capacity to desist from demanding recognition for attainments. Autobiography is linked to self-reliance that enunciates itself in the circumstances of novelty. Therefore, in India Writing autobiography is a modern occurrence.  

Dalit memoir writing as a potent genre of self-expression can be broadly affixed to certain leitmotifs. Yashica Dutt's memoir, however, adds a somewhat different note to the polyphony of Dalit life-writings. Nonetheless, the 'monster of caste' that Dr B R Ambedkar presciently warned about is never far away from the narrative frame of the memoir.

Manohar Mouli Biswas (born 3 October 1943) is a long-time Dalit activist and writer from West Bengal, president of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha, and vice-president of West Bengal Dalit Sahitya Academy. In this conversation with Mahitosh Mandal, conducted over email and face to face, Mr. Biswas talks in-depth about his views on Dalit identity, casteism and the current state and future of anticaste politics in West Bengal, drawing on his lived experiences of casteism and anticaste activism, as well as his literary practice and membership of two important Dalit literary establishments. He also comments on religious conversion among Dalits in the current wave of saffronisation of India. The interview is supplemented by a select bibliography of Manohar Mouli Biswas.

Baluta is the first Dalit autobiography written by Daya
Pawar, published in 1978. Originally written in Marathi and
took a long time of about two scores to be translated into
English in 2015 by Jerry Pinto. The depiction of the writer’s
personal life, feeling, and encounters with upper-class people
is bitter and heart-wrenching. The self-revelation of the
author has stupefied and made dumb stricken those who have
gone through his autobiography. The book is an account of
the clinical reality of people living in squalor, poverty, and sordid
dirtiness of the unhygienic ambience of brothel, gambling
and pub-houses. There are many sorts of characters ensuring
the variety and giving a glimpse of Chaucer’s The
Canterbury Tales.

Hope this research will generate the so called “good controversy” and help the Dalit writers get some place in publication industry of India.

There are the English versions of Jhoothan and can be downloaded easily from the web. But not even a single copy of the original Hindi version of Om Prakash Valmiki’s Jhoothan is made available free of cost on the entire so called virtual globe---internet.

The clipping of this interview is made available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGw1NWtYZQ&feature=youtu.be

हिन्दी साहित्य जगत के प्रसिद्ध साहित्यकार डाॅ. रामविलास शर्मा अपनी प्रगतिशीलता और माक्र्सवाद के प्रति अपनी निष्ठा के लिए जाने जाते हैं। इन्होंने कमजोर तबकों के प्रति अपनी प्रतिबद्धता दिखाने की भरपूर कोशिश भी की है, किन्तु इनकी लेखनी पर गौर करने पर हमें शर्मा जी की असलियत पता चलती है। माक्र्सवाद का चोला ओढ़कर बडे़ शातिर तरीके से दक्षिणपंथी विचारों को इन्होंने आगे बढ़ाया है। आर.एस.एस. के इतिहास पुनर्लेखन का खाखा भी डाॅ. शर्मा ने ही तैयार किया था और अपनी इस कोशिश में इन्होंने भारत की प्रथम सभ्यता ‘सिन्धु घाटी’ का नामकरण ‘सरस्वती सभ्यता’ करने की कुत्सित चेष्टा की । फिर भला उनके विचार डाॅ. अम्बेडकर और दलित आन्दोलन के प्रति कैसे सही हो सकते थे।"

This paper aims to trace the dishonesty in the representation of assertive voices which are part of school syllabi in India. Some decades ago, the school syllabi were completely negligent towards the radical voices that contributed enormously to the cause of the equality and human rights of marginalized sections of India. No society or academic arena can remain unaffected by the vociferous voices for a long period and India is no exception. Consequently, these voices not only were revisited by the government and educationists but also included in the school syllabi to make students acquainted with these iconoclasts and their ideologies. In this attempt, what these revolutionaries did for society became an integral part of syllabi but the evils they fought against were totally neglected or misappropriated. As Krishan Kumar argues that schools and syllabi in fact propagate the dominant structures and continue social hierarchies, the school syllabi do not mention the social evil/structures these revolutionaries fought against. Based on some of the school syllabi and some autobiographical narratives, this study attempts to prove that either there is no representation oronly misrepresentation of marginalized revolutionaries.This has been practised dishonestly to cover the social evils, mainstream people were prejudiced of, which were inhuman and exploitative in nature; to undermine the ideas and actions ofthe marginalized revolutionaries, and conceal that inhuman theory and praxis, the mainstream people of India were proud of.  All these attempts of misrepresentation prove the intellectual/academic dishonesty of Indian educationists and the system.

Unity of mind, body, soul, spirit is necessary for our thriving, for actualising our potentials, for being an exemplar, for living a truly human life.
We all bear the potential 'megalopsychia', to be an exemplar. As part of our being humans we can equally flourish physically, mentally, and spiritually. In order to actualise our true selves, those of us engaged with the life of mind need to explore the life of body and vice versa. Because we cannot excel in one field if we ignore another dimension of our existence.

It is only a book review here, am yet to develop my full paper.

Domestic violence against women is a universal problem. It could broadly be defined as any act of gender-based violence that results in or is likely to result in physical, psychological or sexual harm or suffering to women including threats of such acts. It was recognised as a criminal violence in India in 1983 but most violence inside the homes goes unreported. Primarily because family and community structures render it difficult, if not impossible for women to report abusive husbands or in-laws, the verry people upon whom they are most dependent (Agnes, 1992). Though domestic violence against women is fairly common across all socio-economic and cultural/ caste configurations across India and is documented fairly extensively in the context of dowry related violence in the middle-class context, the specificity of violence faced by Dalit women in domestic space largely remains neglected in the activism and discourse around domestic violence due to several reasons. Despite clear indic...

“I am proud to be one of the voices raised on behalf of millions of exploited Dalits.”
  Arjun Dangle1, Introduction to ‘The Poisoned Bread’.

In this paper, I examine the poetry of Namdeo Dhasal, also a Dalit Panther, as an exercise of mapping the “self” inextricably intertwined with the process of mapping dalithood. I begin by briefly touching upon the background of Dalit Writing – its origin, concrete articulation and contemporary situation as shaped by various influences and phases in Dalit Literature, before moving on to an in-depth study of the life and poetic oeuvre of Namdeo Dhasal.

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar was inspired from Mahatma Phule. He raised women’s issues as Member of Legislative Council during a debate in the Bombay Legislative Assembly. In his address on November 10, 1938,
he strongly advocated family planning measures and said that besides many other problems, giving birth to too many children negatively  ffects a mother’s health....The movement of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule was, thus, very well carried forward and enacted by Dr Ambedkar.

Letting the Genie out of Bottle: Gender and Domestic Violence in Dalit women’s Life Narratives in Marathi
Abstract
Domestic violence against women in India is generally discussed in terms of dowry-related violence in the middle-class context. Despite clear indications from various surveys and sociological studies that prevalence of women facing domestic violence at physical and psychological level is much higher among Dalit women in comparison to other dominant caste women, it is often (wrongly) treated as insignificant issue in comparison to threat of  or actual violence experienced by them in the public spaces. Dalit women’s life narratives from Maharashtra courageously point out how untouchability and patriarchy are the two socio-cultural pressures that together crush a woman’s life.  The specificity of violence faced by Dalit women in domestic space largely remains neglected in the activism and discourse around domestic violence due to several reasons. Though the life narratives have received critical attention, scholars haven’t really focussed on intra-Dalit gender relationship. My paper hopes to explore the reasons for critical neglect, the challenges for an academic perusal of domestic violence against Dalit women. With reference to three life narratives, I hope to explicate how widespread patriarchal attitudes shape Dalit women’s experiences of violence in the domestic sphere of the family, multiplying the gendered harm perpetrated against them and establish the central role played by violence in reproduction of patriarchy among Dalit communities and put forward the need for a more discursive engagement with the issues raised in these life narratives.