Dalit Literatures in India

Dalit mobilisation constitutes one of the major literary, social and political movements in the second half of the 20th- and 21st-century South Asia. This book breaks new ground in the study of Dalit literature, canvasing a host of literary genres including Dalit poetry, autobiographies, novels, pamphlets, short stories, testimonies, as well as Dalit art and graphic novels.

By focusing on fiction as well as nonfiction, the volume showcases the diversity of the Dalit literary genres produced across India in several languages. It breaks new ground in the study of Dalit Literature, including in its corpus, a range of genres such as novels, autobiographies, pamphlets, poetry, short stories as well as graphic novels. It critically examines Dalit literary theory while presenting Dalit writing to a wider public for critical consideration and appreciation. It highlights the challenges in bringing this literature to the academic discourse, without losing sight of the innovative and transgressive features of the writings. In providing a range of academic perspectives, the volume encourages the reader to examine the myriad ways the narratives offer mediated representations of Dalit experience of and response to social and political injustice.

The volume engages with writers such as Namdeo Dhasal, Baby Halder, Sharankumar Limbale, Bama, Kallen Pokkudan, Manohar Mouli Biswas, Praveeen Gadhvi and others. Bringing together incisive essays by renowned and emerging scholars in the field, it initiates a dialogue between Dalit writing and Western literary theory and compares Dalit writings with other forms of subaltern writings from across the world, as also explores the literatures of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians.

Lucid, accessible and rigorous, this book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of Dalit studies, social exclusion studies, Indian writing, literature and literary theory, politics, sociology, social anthropology, and cultural studies.