The word and the world: Dalit aesthetics as a critique of everyday life

Abstract

The early phase of Dalit sahitya (literature) drew quite centrally on descriptive and critical practices associated with both anti-caste thought and Marxism to produce an urban literature which foregrounded the Dalit subaltern as an agent of social transformation. This article gives a prehistory of the 1950s and 1960s Dalit sahitya and argues that Dalit writing is a form of immanent critique that addresses the changing relationship of caste, capital and Bombay’s distinctive urbanity. Rather than focus on the “literariness” of Dalit sahitya, the article argues that one should bracket the question of the literariness of Dalit literature, and focus instead on those forms of linguistic concreteness, or practices of naming and description that politicized key aspects of subaltern life. Herein lies the prehistory of a recognizable Dalit poetics, one that relates writing to urbanity, and Dalit Bombay to Bombay modern.

Keywords:

• Dalit Marxism
• colonial capital
• radical empiricism
• the slum
• Jotirao Phule
• R.B. Moré

Notes

1. Namdeo Dhasal’s political autobiography, Ambedkari Chalval Ani Socialist, Communist (Ambedkar Movement and Socialists, Communists; Dhasal 1981) presents an account of his engagement with the two parties, and their ideologies. He is quoted as saying: “These are my people – these lumpen; I am one of them. My poetry is about life here” (Dhasal and Chitre 2007, 162).

2. Details of Dhasal’s life are taken from his account, “Dalit Pantherchi Ganagaulan” (Dhasal 1974), and Dilip Chitre, “Namdeo’s Mumbai”, in Namdeo Dhasal: Poet of the Underworld (Dhasal and Chitre 2007, 149–180).

3. Literally, “thrown into the cow shed”.

4. Dinbandhu, which began publication in 1877, was associated with Phule’s Satyashodak Samaj. Dinbandhu’s focus shifted to the social experience of urbanity and the problems of industrial labor when Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, founder of the Bombay Millhands Association, took over the newspaper’s publication in 1880.

5. I have argued elsewhere (Rao 2009, chap. 1) that the verandah was a colonial technology of segregation that responded to new juridical demands for equal access, even as these were redefined to accommodate caste prejudice.

6. The production of this autobiography is both complex and interesting. R.B. Moré stands at the head of a “red family” that stretches across three generations; each generation has had a hand in shaping his life narrative. Moré’s son, Satyendra, completed the narrative of the father’s life. The recognizable genre of communist hagiography intervenes, albeit with a twist. Satyendra underscores Moré’s personal sacrifices and selfless dedication, and works within a recognizable narrative tradition that conflates activists’ lives and party history. Yet Satyendra Moré cannot help but emphasize R.B. Moré’s decision to maintain extensive contact with the Ambedkarite movement even after he joined the Communist Party and Moré’s criticism of the communists’ evasion of the caste question. Satyendra Moré’s act of memorialization is thus a severe indictment of the political exclusions that structure the divide between heterodox histories of political emancipation on the one hand, and its subsequent “flattening,” and homogenization on the other. Meanwhile, Moré’s grandson, Subodh, a tireless researcher in his own right, combined the Marathi autobiography, S. Moré’s biography and primary material (comprising photographs and journal covers) in order to locate R.B. Moré in his many worlds: as a link figure between broader worlds of Dalit protest and activism that predated him, and as a key actor in shaping Dalit Bombay.

7. Dhale and Dhasal were initially associated with communists and socialists respectively; their first formulations of the Dalit was in materialist terms. Many scholars and activists associated with the Left believed that the Panthers had radicalized Dalit politics with their “total critique” and that “[i]f there had been an autonomous, grass-roots Dalit leadership, then the seeds of revolution would have sprouted amongst the Panthers” (Omvedt 1979, 58).

8. Blitz carried news of the Panther split on July 20, 1974, then Maratha on July 23, 1974.

9. Prabuddha Bharat, “Dalitano Vidrohi Vangmaya Liha (Dalits Should Write Revolutionary Literature)”. Wankhede’s exhortations to Dalit writers to emulate this radical literary tradition also provoked a split between Wankhede and Gangadhar Pantawane on the editorial board of Asmita.