From Inclusiviyy to Exclusivity: A Study of Daya Pawar’s Baluta and Narendra Jadhav’s Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Escape from India’s Caste System

SANGAMITHIRAI.C

II M.A. ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE,

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH,

PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY,

PONDICHERRY.

Abstract : This paper aims at exploring the various strategies employed by the Dalit writers to designate themselves a dignified position in the literary realm thereby fostering their identity in all spheres: social, economic and political which have hitherto been obliterated and effaced from the so called ‘marginalised’ sections of the society.  The writers adopted various aspects of writing in order to carve out a niche of their identity in the literary realm.  Critical treatises and essays were contributed profusely by Subaltern Historiographers in addition to the literary contribution made by the Dalit and other Subaltern writers.  The ultimate purpose of their writings was to establish a society where equality is promised in terms of opportunities as well as contribution to the society.  They demanded “inclusiveness” in the society renouncing their marginal status.  But with the progress of time and simultaneously many movements and phases, the dalit discourse in the contemporary context articulates an “exclusiveness” thereby conspicuously identifying the ‘subaltern’ in terms of their own uniqueness and aesthetics.  Dalit writers have registered the experiences of their survival in autobiographies, poems, short stories and other forms of writing. This paper will be focusing on two autobiographies Baluta and Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Escape From India’s Caste System by Daya Pawar and Narendra Jadhav.    

Daya Pawar in his autobiography which also happened to be the first Dalit autobiography published in 1978 describes the practice of untouchability, the violence fostered in the name of caste and the courage with which the Dalits fought back.  Narendra Jadhav is another writer who grows from rags to riches in a society ridden by the caste restraints encouraged by his father’s unimaginable spirit of optimism and courage in order to create a living out of self will and not by the unjustifiable norms created by the society.  In his book Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Escape From India’s Caste System he describes the journey of his family from indignity and injustice to dignity and peace sought by perseverance, determination and will power thereby representing the earnest efforts of the Dalits to surpass the dominance of the upper castes and to create an identity of their own.  

FROM INCLUSIVIYY TO EXCLUSIVITY: A STUDY OF DAYA PAWAR’S BALUTA AND NARENDRA JADHAV’S UNTOUCHABLES: MY FAMILY’S TRIUMPHANT ESCAPE FROM INDIA’S CASTE SYSTEM

Subaltern which means ‘of inferior rank’, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to those groups in society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes.  Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other groups denied access to ‘hegemonic’ power.  The notion ‘subaltern’ has been further prompted by many historiographers: Ranajit Guha, Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman, Gyan Panday and Gayatri Spivak.  Dalit literature is an especial aspect of subaltern writings which initially began as a movement and struggle against the rigorously practised system of caste in order to build a modern democratic and secular Indian identity. Mainstream Indian literature and culture until very recently, was limited by the marked absence of any significant representation of the Dalit experience.  Although not completely absent from the literary and cultural discourse of India, the Dalits found textual space chiefly through the writings of the upper caste litterateurs and sociologists.  However, the upper caste writers, although sympathetic, could not transcend their own caste position to draw an ‘authentic’ picture of the Dalit life in India.  Their ‘reformist-liberalism’ almost always portrayed the ‘untouchable’ as abject, submissive and pitiful, resigned to the malice of caste and destiny.  The lacuna in the Indian literary philosophy and culture caused by the caste specific bias in the delineation of the Dalits has been sought to be rectified by the writings of the Dalits themselves, literature and it is primarily to this end that the efforts of the Dalit writers are directed.  They have challenged the hegemonic conventions and value systems that inscribe the former ‘untouchables’ within the circle of the upper caste discourse, and in the process have created a body of literature that is essentially identified by a parlance of productive protest for the purpose of provoking a critical re-examination of the authoritarian and unequal caste hierarchies in the society.  Dalit literature poses a major challenge to the dominant episteme by its insistence on not only a presentation but also a re-presentation of its own-and by extension, of others’- socio-cultural and political reality.  It also seeks to revise traditional Indian aesthetics and literary theories by introducing into the mainstream literary culture the creativity and the inventiveness of a hitherto marginalized subculture and literature.  

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