Autobiography
‘Dalit’ literally means poor or downtrodden; but also attached is the specific connotation of
traditionally disadvantaged low caste Indian minorities, including the indigenous tribal. This
specificity of ‘casteist’ implications of the term ‘Dalit’ is due to its use by B. R. Ambedkar in 1928 in
his Bahshkrut Bharat (or ‘India of the Ex-communicated’).The term ‘Dalit’ runs the danger of being
inundated with oversimplification that does not address the issues of diverse and pertinent
historical, linguistic and religious conditions influencing it. In his The Weapon of the Other:
Dalitbahujan Writings and the Remaking of Indian Nationalist Thought 2010, Kancha Ilaiah underlines
the denial of and indifference towards the caste question by the Brahmanical nationalist discourse.
Dalit Sahitya’ emerged as a deliberate rhetoric of radical challenge to the established perceptions
almost concurrently with the rise of the ‘Dalit Panthers’ in the 1960s. Dalit writings have surfaced
from life based on inequalities and discriminations. It prefers the idiom of protest and resistance
against the social system which oppresses them on the basis of caste constructs. Dalit literature is a
quest for cultural identity based on the confrontation and rejection of social hierarchies.
In his Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature (2004), Sharankumar Limbale emphasizes the social
character of Dalit literature (31), underscoring the ideas of revolt and rejection inherent in it. Dalit
literature represents most intensely the suffering of Dalit existence, and, the representation is
authentic since it is exclusive/subjective to the Dalits. The agony that is manifest in Dalit literature is
not imagined, but a ‘lived’ experience, and the expression of this experienced pain becomes a quest
for construction of Dalit ‘selfhood’ or identity. However, to merely restrict Dalit literature to
‘narrative of suffering’ would be a restrictive perception of the issue. The bitterness that is
consequent upon a continued, inexorable cycle of discrimination determines the Dalit experience to
be conveyed in the idiom/language of revolt and resistance, which is directed against the Manuistic,
Brahmanical social order of subjugation and abuse. Dalit literature also entails a process of
‘negation’, by which it debunks/rejects the Brahmanical, hegemonic ideological frame work that
colonizes/enslaves their consciousness. Writings by women refer to distinctive cultural positions and
attitudes, which debunk the patriarchal perception of seeing women in the singular. The repressive
experiences of women are usually conceived to be common to all women. However, the subalternity
of Dalitis symptomatic of greater discrimination, violence and torture not only at the hands of
patriarchy but often times in complicity with women of upper caste.
The testimonio becomes a crucial agent of bearing witness to and inscribing into history those lived
realities that could otherwise be erased. It emphasizes popular oral discourse in which the narrator
portrays his or her own experience as a representative of a collective memory and identity, and in
the process rectifies and redeems his/her own history as against official history.
Faustina Bama, whose Karukku (in Tamil, 1992) was first translated in French before it was translated
into English, asserts that caste, class and gender are important markers for social exclusion. In a
colloquium organized by Women’s Word India, a free speech network of feminist writers addressing
issues of gender-based censorship, Bama vehemently voiced her opinion which, perhaps, sums up
best the ethos of all literatures of suffering and resistance:
I am a Dalit woman writer. The challenge for a writer is to remain rooted; to have experienced pain,
hunger – and contempt. My story is my people’s story . . . Through my writing, I allow the militancy of
the victimized persons to emerge. I believe the life experiences of people can be conveyed only in
their own language. My writing has been called bawdy and immoral. It has broken a lot of taboos. I
did not write for publication; my first book, I write for my own healing . . . I feel satisfaction when a
ripple of consciousness surfaces in my community due to my writing. Writing has helped me break
down a thousand barriers.
