The cultural significance of literature emerges from, among other things, its virtue of being a free platform for any and every member of the society to express themselves. However, when oppression hegemonizes expression to the depth that our caste system did, it comes as no surprise that the term “Dalit Literature” was first officially used in the year 1958, at the first meeting of the Maharashtra Dalit Sahitya Sangh. This is not to say that the representation of Dalit characters was completely absent from the literary forum until then. Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Geetanjali’ and ‘Sadgati’ by Premchand are two most remarkable examples, from the plethora of others available, of how Dalit lives did somehow managed to imbue the artists of the time. Yet the experiences and observations penned down by these upper-caste authors can be vastly distinguished from those originating from the authors belonging to the Dalit caste. The debate on whether there is any distinction between Dalit representations when authored by a Dalit person versus when originating from a non-Dalit writer is an age-old one.
Neha Arora and Arjun Dhangle are among the many that support the claim that one need not necessarily be a Dalit to write literature based on their life and experiences. Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth are some of the many who hail from non-Dalit castes and have written award-worthy Dalit literature thereby proving the aforementioned stance. However, the real divide occurs on the question of whether realities and characters portrayed in these stories rightly reflect the ground realities. It is worth noting that the source from which non-Dalit writers obtain their storylines and character inspirations are very different from how Dalit writers come across theirs. The question simply boils down to a debate on whether character and lifestyle representation of the Dalits which emerges from the roots of sympathy or empathy could ever have more authenticity than accounts written by Dalits themselves.
“Only ash knows the experience of burning”, is a famously cited quote by Ramnika Gupta which helps us understand that though being sensitized to the issue of caste-based discrimination might enable an individual to write extensively about it, it takes one to be placed in the said situation to be able to delineate to perfection what the experience is like. This is fundamentally where the Dalit literature written by a Dalit and a non-Dalit writer parts ways. Non-Dalit writers have a penchant for painting a bleak and hopeless picture of the Dalit lifestyle and manifesting how Dalits are victims of their circumstances. For example, In Premchand’s ‘Godan’, the central character dies at the end because he is unable to fight with upper-caste money lenders. These skewed portrayals are mostly stereotypes and therefore fail to give the impression of being bona fide to the readers. Thus the Dalit writers’ claim that non-Dalit writers often portray them in a negative or sympathetic light does hold true even though we now partly understand why.
Dalit writers, in contrast, have portrayed Dalit characters as rebels while painting a hopeful image for the future. By surviving in those heart-wrenching circumstances themselves, Dalits realise that the literature which does not envision an optimistic future for its community members does little to cultivate willingness in them to fight back when they face oppression. Dalit writers have frequently been found to contend that ‘Dalit Chetna’, the consciousness that arises from being a Dalit, is essential to writing about the Dalit hardships, the frame of mind, lifestyle, so on and so forth. Therefore they maintain that the gravity of passion which can be depicted when represented by a Dalit writer is not only more credible but also genuine. Alok Mukherjee’s 2004 translation of Sharankumar Limbale’s ‘Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature’ defines Dalit Chetna as ‘the revolutionary mentality connected with struggle’. This also to an extent explains why Dalit writers endeavour to characterize Dalits with assertive and rebellious attributes as opposed to showing them as sufferers.
Newer and more exhaustive arguments can be provided to both sides of this debate but the fact remains that a non-Dalit writer would invariably be blind to some of the covert ways in which Dalits face humiliation in their daily lives since the naked eye can only observe so much. None of this goes on to say that Dalit literature must only be restricted to Dalits or anything of the sort. What we do need to acknowledge though is the validation that a Dalit writer attaches to a work of Dalit literature is something that a non-Dalit writer can only strive to do while only rarely succeeding.
Writer: Shriya Tandon
