What Is Dalit Literature

What is Dalit Literature?
- Sharatchandra Muktibodh
Gigy Johnson
II MA English
260
Sharatchandra Muktibodh
 Marathi literary critic and poet
from Maharashtra.
Novels
 His works were also influential in • Sarahadda
determining the modernist trend in Marathi
poetry • Jan He Wolatu Jethe
 received in 1979 a Sahitya Akademi Award
for his critical work Srushti, Saundarya Ani
• Kshipra
Sahityamoolya . Collections of poems
 His trilogy of novels began with Kshipra in
1954 and followed with Haddapar and Jan • Nawi Malawat
He Voltu Jethe. The characters in the trilogy
are involved in the Quit India movement in • Satyachi Jat
1942. The intellectual journey of the main
character, Bishu, in search of an organized
• Yatrik
framework to understand social • Muktibodhanchi
contradictions, enables Muktibodh to
provide bold interpretation of social changes Niwadak Kavita
while reflecting on the interaction of
individual and society.
• The word Dalit—literally translating to “oppressed” or “broken”—is
generally used to refer to people who were once known as
“untouchables”, those belonging to castes outside the fourfold Hindu
Varna system.
• Waman Nimbalker writes in his book Dalit literature Nature and
Role: “Dalit is a sole heir of darkness. One, who is harassed,
oppressed and afflicted”.
• Dalit literature is literature written by the Dalits, that is those who
are oppressed by the Indian caste system
• emerged in the 1960s, starting with the Marathi language, and soon
appeared in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bangla and Tamil languages,
through narratives such as poems, short stories, and, most,
autobiographies, which stood out due to their stark portrayal of
reality and the Dalit political scene.
What is Dalit Literature?
• is the literature produced by the Dalit
consciousness.
• nature: in a rebellion against the suppression and
humiliation suffered by the Dalits- in the past and
even at the present- in the framework of varna
system.
• Nature of Dalit consciousness not subjective since
sufferings are common and attributable to common
reasons- hence their content is essentially social.
Dalit point of view & insight into Dalit life
• Dalit life presented from a Dalit point of view produces an
outstanding work of Dalit literature.
• Dalit point of view would not necessarily lead to an insight
into Dalit life.
• This view could be held by an orator, an essayist or a social
worker- presented logically and consistent in thought.
• Thus for a Dalit writer to produce a work of art his view
should be transformed into the artist’s vision.(it is essential
for him to experience a Dalit insight of his own)
• Point of view life
intellectual cartograph of
an aspect of life.
• Looking at the map of a city and actually living in that

city.
• Life is not lived within the rigid confines of a point of
view- but lived totally, at all levels and in the totality
of experience.
• View of life+writer gives him a ‘vision’ of his
own point of view.
(in its multiform,
distinct totality)
• A writer gets Dalit insight when he experiences a Dalit
viewpoint in the form of various distinctive lives of
individuals which are full of pleasure and pain.
• Formalists have spread the view that when a writer writes
from a particular viewpoint, it limits his art.
• Haribhau Apte’s Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto?(Who Cares to
Heed?).
• Presented a distinctive point of view as he lenssened the
particularity of life and confined the portrayal of the minds of
his characters to a certain set of circumstances.
• This simplification of life, though it helps in asserting and
proving the point proposed by the writer, it results in the
misapprehension of life.(this gives reason to the formalists to
contend that the artist’s point of view limits the artistic merit
of creation- though they are not free of this predicament)
Conclusion
• An original and important Dalit work of literature
would emerge only when a Dalit point of view would
visualise itself through concrete experience. It will
also prove to be a deep and powerful picture of
human life thirsty for freedom in the real sense.

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What is Dalit Literature?

• Looking at the map of a city and actually living in that

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