Editorial: Why should we read Dalit literature?

Abstract

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.

Diary of some good in a bad year: Postcolonial studies now

“…Staying with the field of Muslim writing, a longstanding strength of JCL , and this time bringing issues of gender and class explicitly to the fore, Elizabeth Jackson takes a comparative approach to Indian Muslim women writers Attia Hosain and Shama Futehally. Finally, we regularly receive fascinating work in the growing field of Dalit writing and are looking forward to a forthcoming special issue on the subject, edited by Nicole Thiara, K. Satyanarayana, and Judith Misrahi-Barak (see Thiara and Misrahi-Barak, 2017). In the present issue, long-term friend to JCL , the eminent Dalit literature critic K. W. Christopher, takes a long view of Dalit conversion to Christianity and its representation in one text in particular, Kalyan Rao’s Untouchable Spring .…”

Justice, subalternism, and literary justice: Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

“…Recent millennial Anglophone novels in India giving voice to the non-Anglophone subaltern include Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop (2004), Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007), and Aman Sethi’s A Free Man (2011), with both Sinha and Sethi using the trope of journalism to enhance the realism of their novels. As Nicole Thiara and Judith Misrahi-Barak argue in a recent issue of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature dedicated to Dalit literature, a focus on Dalit reconfigurations of modernity (foregrounding the interests of the oppressed and marginalized) has the potential to “push the boundaries of current postcolonial literary criticism […] to accommodate the fact that the oppression in India was coming from within and not only from without” (2019: 3).…”