Colonialism, missionaries, and Dalits in Kalyan Rao’s Untouchable Spring

Abstract

Dalit conversion to Christianity has a long history, predating Dr Ambedkar’s call for conversion in 1935. The contexts of conversion are many; however, the strong urge among Dalits to escape the oppressive, dehumanizing socio-spiritual condition remains the chief motive. The colonial administration, and even before that, the missionaries, were the first to make interventions in the lives of the Dalits, providing access to education, employment, healthcare, and mobility. Consequently many Dalits converted to Christianity en masse. However, post conversion, they became “doubly marginalized” (Omvedt, 2009) both in terms of caste and religion. Several attacks on Dalit Christians in colonial as well as post-independence India illustrate these two bases of victimization. A few writers, such as Bama, Imayam, and Raj Gouthaman, have attempted to explore the lived experience of Dalit Christians with a focus on caste within the Catholic Church. Kalyan Rao’s Telugu novel Antarani vasantham ( Untouchable Spring) is the first novel that seriously engages with the complex of Dalit conversions and in an epic fashion explores the lived experience and struggle of Telugu Dalits and Dalit Christians in history from the colonial times to the present. The primary focus of this article is to explore Kalyan Rao’s representation of Dalit experience using the optics of mission history and liberation and Dalit theologies, which I argue, enable us to contextualize the novel’s representation of Dalit habitus.