Author: Omprakash Valmiki
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231503377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. R. Ambedkar. A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.
Joothan
Author: Omprakash Valmiki
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231503377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. R. Ambedkar. A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231503377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. R. Ambedkar. A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.
"Joothan: A Dalit's Life" by Omprakash Valmiki. A Book Review
Author: Pratyusha Guha
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668275440
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 12
Book Description
Literature Review from the year 2016 in the subject History - Asia, grade: 8, Presidency College, Kolkata, language: English, abstract: The malicious practice of the Caste system has formed an essence of Indian society, without any parallel of the same significance. The Caste system has consolidated a hierarchical division of society in which people are subjected to various privileges or discrimination, owing to their birth in a family belonging to a particular caste. Whether the caste system was a colonial construction or an ancient curse requires a separate debate. In this paper, an autobiography by Omprakash Valmiki, who was said to be a "Dalit" (an outcaste, belonging to the lowest echelon of society), has been reviewed. In it he has described daily struggles in the life of a low-born. While the world had cheered the process of decolonization and applauded the new notions of humanitarian values and worth of every human life, India, which was soon to be the largest democracy, could hardly break away from the shackles of the loathsome caste system. Valmiki has given us insights into the functioning of Dalit lives in the post independence era, that brought about changes in official documents and legal procedures but without much resonance of them in practical application.
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668275440
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 12
Book Description
Literature Review from the year 2016 in the subject History - Asia, grade: 8, Presidency College, Kolkata, language: English, abstract: The malicious practice of the Caste system has formed an essence of Indian society, without any parallel of the same significance. The Caste system has consolidated a hierarchical division of society in which people are subjected to various privileges or discrimination, owing to their birth in a family belonging to a particular caste. Whether the caste system was a colonial construction or an ancient curse requires a separate debate. In this paper, an autobiography by Omprakash Valmiki, who was said to be a "Dalit" (an outcaste, belonging to the lowest echelon of society), has been reviewed. In it he has described daily struggles in the life of a low-born. While the world had cheered the process of decolonization and applauded the new notions of humanitarian values and worth of every human life, India, which was soon to be the largest democracy, could hardly break away from the shackles of the loathsome caste system. Valmiki has given us insights into the functioning of Dalit lives in the post independence era, that brought about changes in official documents and legal procedures but without much resonance of them in practical application.
Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation
Author: Sarah Beth Hunt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317559525
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
This study explores how Dalits in north India have used literature as a means of protest against caste oppression. Including fresh ethnographic research and interviews, it traces the trajectory of modern Dalit writing in Hindi and its pivotal role in the creation, rise and reinforcement of a distinctive Dalit identity. The book challenges the existing impression of Hindi Dalit literature as stemming from the Dalit political assertion of the 1980s and as being chiefly imitative of the Marathi Dalit literature model. Arguing that Hindi Dalit literature has a much longer history in north India, it examines two differing strands that have taken root in Dalit expression — the early ‘popular’ production of smaller literary pamphlets and journals at the beginning of the 20th century and more contemporary modes such as autobiographies, short stories and literary criticism. The author highlights the ways in which such various forms of literary works have supported the proliferation of an all-encompassing identity for the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes. She also underscores how these have contributed to their evolving political consciousness and consolidation of newer heterogeneous identities, making a departure from their long-perceived image. The work will be important for those in Dalit studies, subaltern history, Hindi literature, postcolonial studies, political science and sociology as well as the informed general reader.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317559525
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
This study explores how Dalits in north India have used literature as a means of protest against caste oppression. Including fresh ethnographic research and interviews, it traces the trajectory of modern Dalit writing in Hindi and its pivotal role in the creation, rise and reinforcement of a distinctive Dalit identity. The book challenges the existing impression of Hindi Dalit literature as stemming from the Dalit political assertion of the 1980s and as being chiefly imitative of the Marathi Dalit literature model. Arguing that Hindi Dalit literature has a much longer history in north India, it examines two differing strands that have taken root in Dalit expression — the early ‘popular’ production of smaller literary pamphlets and journals at the beginning of the 20th century and more contemporary modes such as autobiographies, short stories and literary criticism. The author highlights the ways in which such various forms of literary works have supported the proliferation of an all-encompassing identity for the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes. She also underscores how these have contributed to their evolving political consciousness and consolidation of newer heterogeneous identities, making a departure from their long-perceived image. The work will be important for those in Dalit studies, subaltern history, Hindi literature, postcolonial studies, political science and sociology as well as the informed general reader.
Karukku
Author: Pāmā
Publisher: Oxford India Paperbacks/Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199450411
Category : Caste-based discrimination
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
In 1992 when a Dalit woman left the convent and wrote her autobiography, the Tamil publishing industry found her language unacceptable. So Bama Faustina published her milestone work Karukku privately in 1992-a passionate and important mix of history, sociology, and the strength to remember.Karukku broke barriers of tradition in more ways than one. The first autobiography by a Dalit woman writer and a classic of subaltern writing, it is a bold and poignant tale of life outside mainstream Indian thought and function. Revolving around the main theme of caste oppression within theCatholic Church, it portrays the tension between the self and the community, and presents Bama's life as a process of self-reflection and recovery from social and institutional betrayal.The English translation, first published in 2000 and recognized as a new alphabet of experience, pushed Dalit writing into high relief. This second edition includes a Postscript in which Bama relives the dramatic movement of her leave-taking from her chosen vocation and a special note "Ten YearsLater".
Publisher: Oxford India Paperbacks/Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199450411
Category : Caste-based discrimination
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
In 1992 when a Dalit woman left the convent and wrote her autobiography, the Tamil publishing industry found her language unacceptable. So Bama Faustina published her milestone work Karukku privately in 1992-a passionate and important mix of history, sociology, and the strength to remember.Karukku broke barriers of tradition in more ways than one. The first autobiography by a Dalit woman writer and a classic of subaltern writing, it is a bold and poignant tale of life outside mainstream Indian thought and function. Revolving around the main theme of caste oppression within theCatholic Church, it portrays the tension between the self and the community, and presents Bama's life as a process of self-reflection and recovery from social and institutional betrayal.The English translation, first published in 2000 and recognized as a new alphabet of experience, pushed Dalit writing into high relief. This second edition includes a Postscript in which Bama relives the dramatic movement of her leave-taking from her chosen vocation and a special note "Ten YearsLater".
My Father Balliah
Author: Y.B. Satyanarayana
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9350294370
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
The extraordinary story of a Dalit family in southern India Poised to inherit a huge tract of land gifted by the Nizam to his father, twenty-one-year-old Narsiah loses it to a feudal lord. This triggers his migration from Vangapally, his ancestral village in the Karimnagar District of Telangana - the single most important event that would free his family and future generations from caste oppression. Years later, it saves his son Baliah from the fate reserved for most Dalits: a life of humiliation and bonded labour. A book written with the desire to make known the inhumanity of untouchability and the acquiescence and internalization of this condition by the Dalits themselves, Y.B. Satyanarayana chronicles the relentless struggle of three generations of his family in this biography of his father. A narrative that derives its strength from the simplicitywith which it is told, My Father Baliah is a story of great hardship and greater resilience.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9350294370
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
The extraordinary story of a Dalit family in southern India Poised to inherit a huge tract of land gifted by the Nizam to his father, twenty-one-year-old Narsiah loses it to a feudal lord. This triggers his migration from Vangapally, his ancestral village in the Karimnagar District of Telangana - the single most important event that would free his family and future generations from caste oppression. Years later, it saves his son Baliah from the fate reserved for most Dalits: a life of humiliation and bonded labour. A book written with the desire to make known the inhumanity of untouchability and the acquiescence and internalization of this condition by the Dalits themselves, Y.B. Satyanarayana chronicles the relentless struggle of three generations of his family in this biography of his father. A narrative that derives its strength from the simplicitywith which it is told, My Father Baliah is a story of great hardship and greater resilience.
The Weave of My Life
Author: Urmila Pawar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231520573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
"My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us." Activist and award-winning writer Urmila Pawar recounts three generations of Dalit women who struggled to overcome the burden of their caste. Dalits, or untouchables, make up India's poorest class. Forbidden from performing anything but the most undesirable and unsanitary duties, for years Dalits were believed to be racially inferior and polluted by nature and were therefore forced to live in isolated communities. Pawar grew up on the rugged Konkan coast, near Mumbai, where the Mahar Dalits were housed in the center of the village so the upper castes could summon them at any time. As Pawar writes, "the community grew up with a sense of perpetual insecurity, fearing that they could be attacked from all four sides in times of conflict. That is why there has always been a tendency in our people to shrink within ourselves like a tortoise and proceed at a snail's pace." Pawar eventually left Konkan for Mumbai, where she fought for Dalit rights and became a major figure in the Dalit literary movement. Though she writes in Marathi, she has found fame in all of India. In this frank and intimate memoir, Pawar not only shares her tireless effort to surmount hideous personal tragedy but also conveys the excitement of an awakening consciousness during a time of profound political and social change.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231520573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
"My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us." Activist and award-winning writer Urmila Pawar recounts three generations of Dalit women who struggled to overcome the burden of their caste. Dalits, or untouchables, make up India's poorest class. Forbidden from performing anything but the most undesirable and unsanitary duties, for years Dalits were believed to be racially inferior and polluted by nature and were therefore forced to live in isolated communities. Pawar grew up on the rugged Konkan coast, near Mumbai, where the Mahar Dalits were housed in the center of the village so the upper castes could summon them at any time. As Pawar writes, "the community grew up with a sense of perpetual insecurity, fearing that they could be attacked from all four sides in times of conflict. That is why there has always been a tendency in our people to shrink within ourselves like a tortoise and proceed at a snail's pace." Pawar eventually left Konkan for Mumbai, where she fought for Dalit rights and became a major figure in the Dalit literary movement. Though she writes in Marathi, she has found fame in all of India. In this frank and intimate memoir, Pawar not only shares her tireless effort to surmount hideous personal tragedy but also conveys the excitement of an awakening consciousness during a time of profound political and social change.
Interrogating My Chandal Life
Author: Manoranjan Byapari
Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited
ISBN: 9789381345139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Winner of The Hindu Prize 2018 (Non-fiction) Shortlisted for the 3rd JIO MAMI Word to Screen Award 2018 If you insist that you do not know me, let me explain myself … you will feel, why, yes, I do know this person. I’ve seen this man. With these words, Manoranjan Byapari points to the inescapable roles all of us play in an unequal society. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit is the translation of his remarkable memoir Itibritte Chandal Jivan. It talks about his traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, facing persistent want—an experience that would dominate his life. The book charts his futile flight from home to escape hunger, in search of work as a teenager around the country, only to face further exploitation. In Kolkata in the 1970s, as a young man, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement and took part in gang warfare. His world changed dramatically when he was taught the alphabet in prison at the age of 24—it drew him into a new, enticing world of books. After prison, he worked as a rickshaw-wallah and one day the writer Mahasweta Devi happened to be his passenger. It was she who led him to his first publication. Today, as Sipra Mukherjee points out, ‘issues of poverty, hunger and violence have exploded the cautiously sewn boundaries of the more affluent world’, rendering archaic the comfortable distances between them. Despite ‘Chandal’ explicitly referring to a Dalit caste, this narrative weaves in and out of the margins.
Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited
ISBN: 9789381345139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Winner of The Hindu Prize 2018 (Non-fiction) Shortlisted for the 3rd JIO MAMI Word to Screen Award 2018 If you insist that you do not know me, let me explain myself … you will feel, why, yes, I do know this person. I’ve seen this man. With these words, Manoranjan Byapari points to the inescapable roles all of us play in an unequal society. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit is the translation of his remarkable memoir Itibritte Chandal Jivan. It talks about his traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, facing persistent want—an experience that would dominate his life. The book charts his futile flight from home to escape hunger, in search of work as a teenager around the country, only to face further exploitation. In Kolkata in the 1970s, as a young man, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement and took part in gang warfare. His world changed dramatically when he was taught the alphabet in prison at the age of 24—it drew him into a new, enticing world of books. After prison, he worked as a rickshaw-wallah and one day the writer Mahasweta Devi happened to be his passenger. It was she who led him to his first publication. Today, as Sipra Mukherjee points out, ‘issues of poverty, hunger and violence have exploded the cautiously sewn boundaries of the more affluent world’, rendering archaic the comfortable distances between them. Despite ‘Chandal’ explicitly referring to a Dalit caste, this narrative weaves in and out of the margins.
Baluta
Author: Dayā Pavāra
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
ISBN: 9789385288210
Category : Authors, Marathi
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The first Dalit autobiography to be published, Baluta caused a sensation when it first appeared, in Marathi, in 1978. It quickly acquired the status of a classic of modern Indian literature and was also a bestseller in Hindi and other major languages. This is the first time that it has been translated into English. Set in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra of the 1940s and '50s, it describes in shocking detail the practice of untouchability and caste violence. But it also speaks of the pride and courage of the Dalit community that often fought back for dignity. Most unusually, Baluta is also a frank account of the author's own failings and contradictions-his passions, prejudices and betrayals-as also those of some leading lights of the Dalit movement. In addition, it is a rare record of life in Maharashtra's villages and in the slums, chawls and gambling dens of Mumbai.
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
ISBN: 9789385288210
Category : Authors, Marathi
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The first Dalit autobiography to be published, Baluta caused a sensation when it first appeared, in Marathi, in 1978. It quickly acquired the status of a classic of modern Indian literature and was also a bestseller in Hindi and other major languages. This is the first time that it has been translated into English. Set in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra of the 1940s and '50s, it describes in shocking detail the practice of untouchability and caste violence. But it also speaks of the pride and courage of the Dalit community that often fought back for dignity. Most unusually, Baluta is also a frank account of the author's own failings and contradictions-his passions, prejudices and betrayals-as also those of some leading lights of the Dalit movement. In addition, it is a rare record of life in Maharashtra's villages and in the slums, chawls and gambling dens of Mumbai.
Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature
Author: Śaraṇakumāra Limbāḷe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
"This book, the first critical work by an eminent Dalit writer to appear in English, is a provocative and thoughtful account of the debates among Dalit writers on how Dalit literature should be read. This book includes an extensive interview with the author, an exhaustive bibliography, and a critical commentary by the translator. Originally published in Marathi, this is the first English translation of the book."--Provided by publisher.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
"This book, the first critical work by an eminent Dalit writer to appear in English, is a provocative and thoughtful account of the debates among Dalit writers on how Dalit literature should be read. This book includes an extensive interview with the author, an exhaustive bibliography, and a critical commentary by the translator. Originally published in Marathi, this is the first English translation of the book."--Provided by publisher.
Caste and Life Narratives
Author: Charu Gupta
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789352908769
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
This collection of twelve essays foregrounds the conjunction of the social phenomenon called 'caste' with the genre of representation called 'life narratives'. Life narratives have long been a constitutive archive and a performative mode for testifying to the breadth and ferocity of caste oppression and for articulating a language of caste dissent. Caste and Life Narratives covers a variety of modes of representing 'actual lives', in whole or in fragments--from autobiographies, and interviews to Facebook posts, biopics, visual representations, and most tragically, a suicide note. It uses the notion of 'Critical Caste Studies', which is vitally animated by Dalit Studies, but is not coterminous with it. While acknowledging the unique status of Dalit and Dalibahujan perspectives, it argues that caste is not the lived reality of Dalits alone and, accordingly, a critical study of caste cannot be solely their burden. . Drawing from postcolonial, Dalit and Critical Caste Studies, this syncretic collection of essays offers a unique theoretical and methodological perspectives, provoking new ways of entering into the burgeoning study of caste.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789352908769
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
This collection of twelve essays foregrounds the conjunction of the social phenomenon called 'caste' with the genre of representation called 'life narratives'. Life narratives have long been a constitutive archive and a performative mode for testifying to the breadth and ferocity of caste oppression and for articulating a language of caste dissent. Caste and Life Narratives covers a variety of modes of representing 'actual lives', in whole or in fragments--from autobiographies, and interviews to Facebook posts, biopics, visual representations, and most tragically, a suicide note. It uses the notion of 'Critical Caste Studies', which is vitally animated by Dalit Studies, but is not coterminous with it. While acknowledging the unique status of Dalit and Dalibahujan perspectives, it argues that caste is not the lived reality of Dalits alone and, accordingly, a critical study of caste cannot be solely their burden. . Drawing from postcolonial, Dalit and Critical Caste Studies, this syncretic collection of essays offers a unique theoretical and methodological perspectives, provoking new ways of entering into the burgeoning study of caste.