Delineating Dalit trauma: (re)contextualizing cultural trauma, survivor’s guilt and partial privilege in post millennial Dalit women’s memoirs

ABSTRACT

Shilpa Raj’s memoir The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter (2017) and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir (2019) map a specific kind of individual trauma, along with the cultural trauma that is found in other Dalit life writings. Both the narratives begin with the death of another Dalit individual whom the memoirists consider as a sibling/comrade who lacked the partial ‘privilege’ they enjoyed and the narratives can be read as negotiating this survivor’s guilt. Hence, these life writings are part elegies and part literature of protest. They are also part of biographies, for while the writer’s life story is one centre, these writings also have another centre – the real/imagined life of the dead person. As the writers compare and contrast their different destinies, we argue that these narratives (1) lay bare the complexities and limits of Dalit emancipation in modern India where the caste question has been seemingly resolved (2) call for an extension of the intersectional framework to analyse the concept of ‘partial privilege’ in Dalit life-writing.

KEYWORDS:

• Dalit life writing
• cultural trauma
• survivor’s guilt
• partial privilege
• passing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Within the psychoanalytical framework, Sigmund Freud elaborated on the concept of trauma whereby victims of trauma retrospectively interpret sexual and painful experiences, gaining a delayed awareness of their meaning. It is derived from the German term Nachtraglechkeit which means deferred action.

2 Elegy is a very dynamic genre that differs in tonalities. For example, Milton’s Lycidas (1638) and Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850) typically contain elements of Pastoral Elegy that mourn and celebrate a dead person while Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) adopts a very different tone. The poet here introspects on the idea of the inevitability of death irrespective of one’s socio-economic status.

3 Anil Meena, a tribal student (Scheduled Tribe) from Rajasthan, committed suicide in the first year of MBBS at AIIMS, for being discriminated against for his rural family background and schooling in vernacular medium (Kumar 2012).

4 Delta Meghwal, a Dalit student from Bikaner, Rajasthan, was raped and subsequently murdered by her Savarna teacher. Later, all the three accused, that is the Principal, the Physical Training Instructor, and the Hostel Warden were convicted under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code, the major ones being, the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and under the POCSO Act (“Was Dalit Girl Delta Meghwal’s Alleged Rape-Murder Institutional?” 2016).

5 Jisha, a twenty-nine-year-old Law student, of the Government Law College at Ernakulam, Kerala, was found brutally murdered in her home on April 28, 2016. Later Ameerul Islam, a migrant worker from Assam was held guilty for the same and sentenced to death (“Jisha Rape and Murder Case: Kerala Migrant Worker Found Guilty” 2017). However, the recent development suggests that the Kerala High Court has decided to rethink the decision of the death penalty, ethically considering the marginalized socio-economic background of the convict as well (“Kerala HC Calls for Mitigation Investigation in Jisha, Attingal Murder Cases” 2023).

6 Dutt (2019, 147) cites a social media response highlighting the disparity in public attention given to two victims of violent crime. The commentary, originating from the ‘@DalitLivesMatter’account, suggests a potential link between the victims’ caste identities and the level of national outrage. Both individuals endured horrific gang rapes resulting in death. However, one received extensive media coverage and national sympathy, while the other’s case garnered significantly less public recognition.

7 When we use the term ‘post-Mandal India’, we refer to the larger aim of the Mandal Commission, though it was specifically directed towards the Other Backward Classes (OBC).

8 Daughters of Destiny is a four-episode Netflix documentary released in 2017 by Vanessa Roth that covers the Shanti Bhavan Project, the philanthropic initiative by George Abraham, and revolves mainly around five students. Shilpa Raj is one of the protagonists whose story is immensely covered.

9 Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) is one of the earliest novels set in New York, that dealt with the practice of racial passing as a coping strategy to gain acceptance in a racist American society.

10 Rohith Vemula asserted his identification as a Dalit in all of its political ramifications, rejecting the administrative definition of caste since he identified with his mother's experiences, which contradicted the circumstances described by the Court. The judiciary upheld the patrilocal framework and assigned Vemula’s identity to his father who was from the Vadera caste(Other Backward Classes-OBC). Vemula’s mother belonged to the Mala community (a Dalit sub-caste), and had separated from her husband and raised her children alone in a Dalit colony. Vemula’s lived experiences induced Dalit consciousness within him (Bhaskar 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bhattacharya Alankrita

Bhattacharya Alankrita is a Ph.D. scholar of English iterature in the Department of English at the School of Social Sciences and Languages at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Her thesis attempts to delineate trauma in post-millennial Dalit Women’s Life Narratives.

B Meenu

B Meenu is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Her Ph.D. from the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, was in the area of Monster Studies. Her Ph.D. thesis titled ‘The Woman who Walks the Night: Yakshi as Myth and Metaphor in Kerala’s Cultural Imaginary’ explored the (under)world of Kerala’s culture through its popular monster, the Yakshi. Her areas of interest, apart from Monster Studies, include Early Indian Fiction, Social Reformist Novels, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. She has published in the areas of horror studies and social reformist fiction.