What is the importance of a Dalit Consciousness' in Dalit writings? Explain with examples
(In commemoration of the Dalit History Month, we will be
revisiting our archives with articles on the question of Dalit identity,
politics and history throughout April. In this piece from September 2006,
Shivam Vij the Indian middle-class anger against reservations for Other
Backward Classes.
Hindi Dalit literature’s moment has arrived. After years of
obscurity and unflattering comparisons to the maturity and expressiveness of
Dalit literature in languages such as Marathi and Tamil, creative Dalit writing
in Hindi is finally reaching a more visible level of popular recognition.
Hindi Dalit novels, autobiographies, short-story and poetry
anthologies, as well as volumes of literary criticism, are today being
regularly published by Delhi’s top Hindilanguage publishing houses, Rajkamal
and Radhakrishna Prakashan.
Dalit writers infuse the pages of Delhi’s top Hindi literary
magazines, such as Hans and Katha Desh, with their poetry, prose and political
perspectives. And in January, for the first time, a Dalit writer working in
Hindi, the Delhi-based author Ajay Navaria, will participate in the
international Jaipur Literature Festival.
With the growing shift of Hindi Dalit literary voices from
marginalised spheres of ‘alternative’ social discourse to more mainstream
platforms, Hindi Dalit literature is quickly becoming deeply embedded in the
changing cultural politics of modern India.
But it is wrong to think of Dalit literature as speaking in a
single voice in the Hindi literary and political landscapes.
In what might be best categorised as the Hindi Dalit literary
sphere, there exists a plurality of people, life experiences, literary voices
and perspectives that often find themselves at odds with one another when
trying to fulfil the demands of a mainstream audience for a recognisable,
‘authentic’ and even ‘digestible’ Dalit literary voice.
There are fissures within the Dalit literary sphere, situated
along the fault-lines of gender, geography (urban and rural) and class, which
create a vibrant and vital field of debate over the strategies of ‘writing
resistance’.
The idea of a ‘Dalit consciousness’ is a central concept in
both the creation and evaluation of Dalit literature. This is the Dalit chetna,
an experiential and political perspective made up of the firsthand knowledge of
caste-based oppression and atrocity, along with the political goal of a
liberating awakening that results from the exposure of this atrocity as central
to the maintenance of caste hierarchies.
Yet the realities of
overlapping identities of class, gender and geography among the writers of the
Hindi Dalit literary sphere necessarily complicate any simplistic or conclusive
framework for an ‘authentic’ Dalit literary perspective. What results is a process
of marginalising within the margins themselves – rendering, for example,
women’s and urban-dwelling, middle-class Dalit narratives somehow less
authentically ‘Dalit’, at least for those writers and readers who privilege
male-centred and rural Dalit stories as most expressive of Dalit chetna.
As a consequence, there are a number of writers in those very
margins pushing back against this singular centre, creating a vibrant space of
debate that rethinks critical aspects of Dalit identity, literature and socio-political
resistance.
The heightened exposure of Hindi Dalit literature has been
the result of a gradual buildup over just the past few years. In August 2004,
the Hindi literary monthly Hans dedicated its annual special issue to Dalit
literature, titled “Satta-Vimarsh aur Dalit” (Dalits and the Discourse of
Power). The issue provided a high-profile platform for bringing together
numerous and varied voices of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere; and, in a sense,
presenting both the writers and critics of this literary universe – and the
issues that matter to them – to a more broadly mainstream audience.
The issue, guest edited by Navaria and the Delhi-based Hindi
Dalit writer and critic Sheoraj Singh Bechain, featured interviews, essays,
short stories and poetry by many of the most prominent and prolific authors of
the sphere, including the Delhi-based Chandrabhan Prasad, Mohandas Naimishray,
Jaiprakash Kardam, Mata Prasad and Rajat Rani Meenu, as well as Dehradun’s
Omprakash Valmiki.
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