This special issue on Dalit literature is the first of its kind in a major English language journal. The editorial team of Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak, Professor K. Satyanarayana, and Dr Nicole Thiara are therefore proud to be able to introduce this area of literary studies to a wider audience. We are also aware that this collection of essays on Dalit literature can only highlight a limited number of concerns and critical approaches that constitute the fast-growing field of Dalit literary studies. Nevertheless, we consider this selection of essays both representative of key concerns and methodologies in this vibrant field, as well as indicative of new developments in the analysis of Dalit writing. We are also very pleased to have been able to include two interviews, one conducted with the film director Jayan K. Cherian on his provocative and cutting-edge film about Dalit land struggles, Papilio Buddha, and the second a dialogue between the Dalit poet Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy and his translator Rowena Hill, which will address the specific challenges involved in the translation of Dalit literature. Since the preparation of this special issue and the end of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project from which it emerges, the collection of Chinnaswamy's poems Before It Rains Again (2016), translated by Rowena Hill, was published by erbacce press. Dalit literature is a body of texts produced by writers whose caste background used to be referred to as "Untouchable" or "scheduled caste", and whose writing engages with caste, caste discrimination, and Indian life from a Dalit point of view. The term "Dalit" means "crushed" or "ground down" in Marathi, and constitutes the nom de guerre that Dalit writers have adopted for themselves. The history and roots of Dalit literature is still in the process of being written and negotiated; in this special issue, Malarvizhi Jayanth exemplifies how this history is expanded in current research. The significant development of Dalit literature in its modern form is associated with the protest movement of the Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra in the 1970s, a movement spearheaded by writer-activists such as Namdeo Dhasal and Arjun Dangle (Dangle, 2009). In the first essay of this special issue, written by a member of the editorial team, K. Satyanarayana, the key role in defining the political and aesthetic significance of Dalit literature is granted to the writer 726108J CL0010.
This essay analyses the experimental features of three contemporary novels produced by Dalits in relation to the novels' approach to caste and national and international audiences. Bama's Sangati (1994), Sharankumar Limbale's Hindu (2003), and G. Kalyana Rao's Untouchable Spring (2000) create fragmented, innovative, and complex narrative structures that are experimental both in their attempts to reflect oral narrative structures that validate the unique communal legacy of Dalit culture and their production of radically new narrative strategies that evoke a world free from caste discrimination. The essay also explores the novels' complex positioning of multiple readers and the distinctive features of their English translations. The three translations re-code the texts for international consumption but simultaneously try to keep the novels somewhat "strange"; the translations, which attempt to replicate the novels' innovative features, are also emphatically experimental.
This article analyses how Rushdie represents the relationship between cultural hybridity and the spaces that enable such hybridity to flourish. One of its central arguments is that elements of Mughal architecture and Mughal aesthetics, in particular those exemplified by the palace complex at Fatehpur Sikri, are mirrored in the narrative style and structure of the novel The Enchantress of Florence. It contextualizes Rushdie’s representations of the Mughal ruler Akbar and his reign in nationalist historiography in order to show how these spatial models provide Rushdie with a means of exploring a form of hybridity which is distinct from the unruly hybridity he has championed in earlier novels. Its final section explores the gendered aspects of spatial design in The Enchantress of Florence, in particular the creation of an enabling space by the female protagonist Qara Köz.
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