Perspectives

Is There Dalit Writing happened in an unusual manner. It was

at the launch of my Bangla translation
of Alka Saraogi’s Hindi novel Shesh

in Bangla? Kadambari in 2004. The place was Oxford

Book Store in Park Street, Kolkata. Sunil
Gangopadhyay launched the book and as
the Bangla translator, I was asked to speak
Dalit writing in Bangla does not appear as well known as similar a few words. After the formalities were
writing in Marathi, where dalit literature served as a vehicle over there was tea – and while I was
and repository of underprivileged angst. However, as this article biting into a delicious cheese tart a shy
articulated by an upcoming dalit writer in Bangla argues, dalit young man of slight build came and dived
literature in Bangla took root in the 1930s and 1940s and had at my feet in the usual Bengali way of
doing ‘pranaam’. I was taken aback – more
early precursors in movements such as the Matua Sahitya. Dalit so when he told me his name. Manoranjan
creative writing did encounter disruption following Partition, but Byapari happens to be the name of a
the decades since then have seen an outpouring of literature that fictional character in the novel I had just
focuses on the underprivileged and those on the margins, even as it translated. Alka Saraogi uses this character
shows awareness of movements for social justice elsewhere. in her novel in an intriguing manner. He
appears in all kinds of unlikely places in
Manoranjan Byapari Off and on during my infrequent visits different roles: sometimes as a ‘chaat-
(Introduced and translated by to Kolkata I have raised this issue with wallah’, sometimes as a gas cylinder
Meenakshi Mukherjee) friends who are knowledgeable about delivery man or as a rickshaw-puller and
Bangla literature. The general consensus plays a crucial part in the story. “But how
I has been that such writing has not emerged can you be Manoranjan Byapari? He is a
Introduction in a big way because there is very little character in a novel”, I exclaimed. He
By Meenakshi Mukherjee caste oppression in Bengal, and hence smiled, “Alka didi put me in her novel.

I
have occasionally been asked the
question “Is there dalit writing in
Bangla?” in literary gatherings in
Hyderabad (where I live) or Bangalore
or Pune (places I sometimes visit) where
I often happen to be the only one with some
acquaintance with Bangla literature. It is
natural curiosity in regions where dalit
writing is a vibrant segment of contem-
porary writing. The movement began in
Marathi nearly four decades ago but today
Telugu and Kannada (also some other
languages of India) have substantial amount
of writing that falls in this category. For
a while I was not sure of the answer
because living away from the publishing
centre of Bangla, my knowledge is limited
to journals to which I subscribe. And
certainly these journals – not only main-
stream journals like Desh but also several
little magazines that I read regularly –
never made me aware that any such cate-
gory existed in Bangla. This could either
mean nothing is published in Bangla that
can be separately labelled “dalit literature”
or that there is a collective reluctance in
mainstream discourse to recognise as
literature any writing that is done outside
the upper caste literary establishment.
the absence of the urge to raise voices
of resistance. If one accepts the truth of
this claim, it will be necessary to probe
the historical circumstances that resulted
in this relative indifference to caste
identity among Bengalis. Or one could
challenge the statement as a comforting
platitude perpetrated by the upper castes
who dominate the literary world of
Bangla.
To follow up either of the two alternatives
one needed to do some research. Before
I could embark on that I had a fortuitous
meeting with Manoranjan Byapari who
answered some of my questions even
before I could ask him. The essay that
follows is written by him as a response
to my request. I have merely translated
his Bangla account into English with some
editing and abridgement done with his
consent. My only regret is that I was
unable to translate the lines Manoranjan
had quoted from dalit poetry to illustrate
his points. Bereft of the rhyme, sound
effects and word play of the original lines,
my incompetent rendering in English
seemed rather flat. So I decided to leave
them out.
I am tempted to add a few details about
my meeting with Manoranjan because it
I am going to put her in one of my novels.”
“You write novels?”, my surprise continued.
Bashfully he handed over to me two thick
journals, the titles of which were un­familiar
to me – both of which, he said were
annual numbers and, contained one
novel each by him along with writing by
others. “Please read them, didi, and tell
me what you think”.
That was the beginning of my acquain-
tance with Manoranjan Byapari which
has continued since then through cor­
respondence. I realise now that when I
met him he had already published quite
a bit – but in journals that were not avail-
able to me. Since then several books by
him have come out and the two released
in the Kolkata Book Fair, 2006 have
brought him some recognition and media
coverage.
Manoranjan Byapari
Manoranjan Byapari’s family came to
West Bengal after Partition and lived in
a refugee camp. When his father refused
to go to Dandakaranya (Madhya Pradesh)
where the refugees were being forcibly
sent, he stopped receiving all government
subsidy. Thereafter the family faced dire

4116 Economic and Political Weekly  October 13, 2007

poverty and sometimes no food was cooked
at home. Manoranjan did not get a chance
to go to school, his childhood was spent
in grazing goats and cows. When he was
a little older he tried to earn – sometimes
as a helper in tea shops, at other times
as sweeper, car cleaner, coolie, cobbler,
and for a while he even begged on the
streets to collect money for an orphanage,
a percentage of which he was allowed to
keep. At some point he got involved in
militant politics and thereafter drifted
towards an anti-social way of life. As a
result he had to spend some years in jail.
It is in jail that he learnt to read and write
from some of the other inmates. This was
a skill that excited him and he practised
writing regularly by using a stick on the
dusty jail yard. By the time he came out
of the jail he had got into the habit of
reading magazines even though he could
not always understand all the words. He
became a rickshaw-puller for a while and
would sometimes ask his passengers the
meanings of words that baffled him. At
this point a serendipitous event changed
the course of his life. That day he had
been wondering about an unfamiliar word
‘jijibisha’ (a word of Sanskrit origin, in
Bangla it means “the  desire to live”) when
he had a passenger who looked like a
school teacher. While dropping her at her
house he asked her if she could help him
with a word. The lady was surprised
because it was an unusual word, not
likely to be part of a rickshaw-puller’s
vocabulary. “Who are you?”, she asked,
“where did you find this word?”. His
passenger and the lady in question hap-
pened to be Mahasweta Devi, the well
known writer who works with tribals and
edits a journal called Bortika which high-
lights the voice of the people from the
margins. It was in this journal that
Manoranjan first appeared in print. This
was a piece titled ‘Riksha chalai’ (‘I Pull
a Rickshaw’) and he used the pseudonym
“Madan Datta”.
Since then Manoranjan’s short stories
and poems have appeared in dozens of
journals and he has published the follow-
ing books: Britter Shesh Parba (Last
Section of the Circle) 2001 (collection
of 22 short stories), Jijibishar Golpo
(Stories about the Desire to Live) 2005
(collection of 17 short stories) and Anya
Bhuban (Another World) 2006 (novel).
The novels serialised in journals and
awaiting publication are Chandal Jiban
(Chandal’s Life), Chhanna-chhara (Root-
less), Batase Buruder Gandho (The Air
Economic and Political Weekly  October 13, 2007
Smells of Gunpowder), and Amanushik
(Inhuman).
II
Dalit Literature in Bangla
By Manoranjan Byapari
The body of writing that is today
designated as “dalit literature” began less
than half a century ago in Maharashtra.
The term was first used in 1958 and took
some time to gain currency. This literature
is part of a protest movement against the
caste-based inequality that has been in-
grained in our society for centuries. The
language of this writing is direct, blunt
and explosive – devoid of stylistic elegance
– and creates a problem for the literary
establishment by challenging its aesthetic
standards.
In West Bengal dalit writing began
nearly 20 years after Maharashtra, although
the central figure of the dalit movement,
Babasaheb Ambedkar, had a close relation-
ship with this eastern region. He was
elected to the constituent assembly from
Bengal through the enterprise of Jogendra
Nath Mandal. The Bengalis are a politi-
cally conscious people, but to understand
the late emergence of the dalit movement
here one has to examine closely a certain
sequence of socio-political development.
The most organised, developed and
populous section among the dalits in
Bengal are the namahshudras who were
earlier known as chandals. The name of
the community was changed as a result
of a petition made by them to the British
government in 1911. The present popula-
tion of namahshudras is nearly two crores.
Prior to 1947 almost 90 per cent of them
lived in East Bengal in the districts of
Khulna, Faridpur, Jessore and Barishal.
Their history after Partition is well known.
The fear of communal violence drove them
away from their villages. In the darkness
of night they crossed the border, leaving
behind their land, houses and all material
possessions. Year after year they lived under
trees, on pavements, on railway platforms,
in refugee camps – existing at a subsistence
level. In the name of rehabilitation, some
were sent to uninhabited islands in the
Andaman region, some were packed off
to the forests and the un­productive terrain
of Dandakaranya in Madhya Pradesh and
other barren pockets of the country. Thus
an organised and cohesive community got
fragmented and lost its strength.
Some people see a design in the dif-
ferential treatment meted out to the upper
caste refugees and the dalit refugees in
Bengal. When the upper caste people
uprooted from East Bengal set up some
149 unauthorised new colonies in and
around Kolkata – in Jadavpur, Dumdum,
Sodepur, etc, the state did not take any
action against them. But when the namah-
shudras attempted to occupy an uninhab-
ited island in the Sunderban area called
Marichjhapi, unspeakable atrocities were
committed by the state machinery to
evict them from there. (The Marichjhapi
Massacre is one of the darkest events of
Bengal history. It was conveniently erased
from national memory until the novelist
Amitav Ghosh recreated it in vivid detail
in his novel, The Hungry Tide, in 2004
– Translator’s note.)
Thus for decades after independence the
dalit community in Bengal was so com-
pletely demoralised and scattered (some
of them stayed on in East Pakistan) that
there was no collective life to speak of. In
their unrelenting struggle for survival
and security, creative activities like writing
were unaffordable luxuries. Dalits in other
states did not have to lead such a precarious
existence and they could organise themselves
to initiate social and literary movements.
It is only decades later that the dalits
in Bengal began to piece together their
broken lives and today one finds substan-
tial number of novels, short stories, essays
and poems written by them. Some people
are unwilling to grant this recent writing
a separate status by designating them as
“dalit”. They point to the long tradition
that existed in Bengal of writing about
the deprived and the underprivileged. The
writers who have contributed to this tra-
dition include names like Rabindranath
Tagore, Bibhutibhusan, Tarashankar and
Manik Bandopadhyaya, Satinath Bhaduri,
several other “progressive” writers and
those who belonged to the Kallol and
Kalikalam groups in the 1930s and the
1940s. What the dalit writers are doing
today are seen by these critics as merely
an extension of that tradition.
It is true that many of these earlier
writers focused on the sufferings of the
socially deprived without any condescen-
sion. They might have been sincere in
their sympathy but could not have written
from felt experience. They were like
humane doctors who can locate the source
of the pain and try to cure it but only the
person who has been through the suffering
can understand the true nature of the pain.
There is a well known aphoristic line in
Bangla which encapsulates this difference,
4117
“If you have never been bitten by a snake,
you will never know the agony of poison
in your blood”. For the dalit writers re-
cording the agony is not an end in itself,
it is part of their movement for change.
All those who suffer economic exploit­ation
are victims of our inequal system, but if
one is born outside the Hindu ‘chaturvarna’
structure, the economic deprivation is
compounded by social humiliation. Behind
every civilisation there is the hard work of
invisible groups of people who are deprived
of human dignity. These are the tillers of
land, producers of food, the cleaners of
dirt, makers of implements, etc. They live
outside the rituals of religion, surviving
on leftover food. They are like the lamp-
stand which carries the light of civilisation.
Those who are above receive the glow,
whereas, they, the underprivileged, receive
only the sooty oil that oozes down on
them. The Hindu scriptures ordain that
the killing of a shudra is tantamount to
the killing of a thief, or cat or a dog, a
donkey or a crow. The sin can be atoned
by fasting for a day and a night and doing
appropriate “pranayamas”.
In the name of religion the shudras were
forbidden to read and write, wear decent
clothes, or save money. Centuries of such
repression was bound to erupt in protest
some day. It is not surprising that the first
generation of people to articulate their
feeling would think of literature as a
social movement rather than an aesthetic
activity.
Before talking about Bangla dalit lit-
erature today, we need to look back to a
phenomenon called ‘matua sahitya’ which
emerged in the 19th century under the
influence of the Vaishnava movement
started by Sri Chaitanya. The moving
force was Harichand Biswas (1812-1878)
who belonged to the namahshudra com-
munity and lived in East Bengal. His
followers called him Harichand Thakur,
and his son Guruchand Thakur (1847-1937)
brought a new dynamism to the ideas of
his father by emphasising the importance
of education in social change. At that time
there were no schools for namahshudras.
Guruchand got in touch with an Australian
missionary called Mead and the first school
for the namahshudras was started in a
village called Odakandi.
Although the initial impulse was religious,
the matua movement soon began to empha-
sise education in a big way. Guruchand
Thakur knew that consciousness building
is the first step towards self-respect and
education is the only means for achieving
4118
it. Matua creativity expressed itself in
three ways: ‘kathakata’ (story-telling in
large gatherings), ‘jatra’ (folk plays) and
‘kobi-gaan’ (rhymed couplets) composed
in traditional ‘payar’ rhythm and orally
presented in public. Most of these com-
positions were a combination of poetry,
history and popular philosophy expressed
in an easily intelligible language, geared
towards raising people’s awareness. Some
of these verses are now available in print
– for example several collections of
Harichand Thakur’s compositions were
compiled after his death variously by
Nityananda Halder, Narayan Gosai,
Manindra Ray, Upendra Nath Biswas,
Tarak Chandra Sarkar and Bhagaban
Chandra Biswas. But a great deal is lost
to us because initially these were part of
an oral culture.
In 1911 in an essay titled, ‘Dharmer
Adhikar’ (The Right to Religion), Rabi-
ndranath Tagore wrote about the condition
of the namahshudras in rural Bengal:
I saw in the villages that no other caste
would plough the land owned by the
namahshudras; no one would harvest their
crop; no one would build their houses.
In other words, the namahshudras are not
considered fit to receive even the minimum
cooperation that is needed for living in
a human society. For no fault of theirs
we have made their life difficult at every
step. From birth to death they are made
to serve a sentence of punishment.
Elsewhere in the same essay Tagore
pointed out that this was done in the
name of religion.
It is not human nature to stoop so low. It
was religious injunction that forced people
to behave like this. Men and women of our
country were being tortured and discrimi-
nated against in the name of religion.
The rise of the matua movement has to  be
seen as a reaction to this condition. And
this movement needs to be recognised as
the first organised dalit activity in Bengal.
Journals
One of the distinctive features of any
movement in Bengal – literary or cul-
tural – is the production of small magazines.
There is a long tradition of publishing
such journals, which often, because of
limited funds, look shabby and ordinary.
The pages may be few, the cover unat-
tractive, but the intention and commitment
behind the publications are clear. From
1912 to 2000 there have been over a
hundred such magazines that published
Economic and Political Weekly  October 13, 2007
writings by dalits and their news. Among
the earliest are the Namahshudra Suhrid
that started publication in 1912 from the
village Odakandi where the first school
for this community was founded, followed
by Pataka from Kolkata in 1914. Pataka
was edited by an unusual man called
Mukunda Bihari Mullik (born in 1888).
He had managed to get himself educated
and realising the importance of collective
action, had founded All Bengal Namah-
shudra Samiti; Pataka was the flagship
journal of this association. Jagaran was
started in 1943 in Kolkata. The energy as
well as funding for this journal came
from Jogendra Nath Mandal who was
an associate of B R Ambedkar. Mandal
struggled to get an education and after
becoming a lawyer involved himself in
organisational work and activism. After
Partition when he became the law minister
of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan),
Jagaran shifted from Kolkata to Dhaka.
Many dalit journals that came out in the
late 1940s – like Namahshudra, Sadhak,
Prachar were from East Bengal. Partition
created an upheaval in the lives of the
dalit refugees and there was a temporary
lull in literary activities but by the late
1960s and 1970s there was a new spurt
of journals – most of which still continue,
e g, Nabaarun and Nabarupa (both edited
by Raju Das, a poet, short story writer
and the author of some 20 plays), Bahujan
Darpan, Bharatbasi, Samaj Chetana and
Purba Bharat. Nakul Mullik who, follow-
ing the model of Maharashtra, established
the Bangiya Dalit Lekhat Parishad (Bengal
Dalit Writers Association) in 1987, has
been running a journal Gram Bangla since
1978. Many more journals began coming
out in the 1990s: Dalit Kontho, Neel Akash,
Adal Badal, Ajker Eklavya. In 1996 a
journal called Chhiyanobboi (Ninety-six)
was launched to commemorate 96 villages
of East Bengal. Manjubala, one of the
major women writers in the dalit move-
ment has been editing Ekhan Takhan since
1996. Today the major magazine of the
dalit movement is Chaturtha Duniya (The
Fourth World) that started publication in
1974. Another journal worth a special
mention is Aikyatan (Orchestra), primarily
a research-based journal that carries essays
on society, culture, literature and initiates
informed debates.
Novels
On the whole fewer novels stand out
in Bangla dalit writing when compared
to poems and short stories. Among the
noteworthy novels mention must be made
of Maati Ek Maya Jane (The Soil Knows
Magic) by Mahitosh Biswas who has also
written Paye Paye Path (Footsteps Make
a Path). Sudhiranjan Haldar (born in 1946)
wrote three novels of which Aranyer
Andhakar (Darkness of the Forest) is the
most well known. Mani Mandal, who
belongs to the malo community, wrote
Murmu, a novel about the love between
a santhal young man and a Hindu girl
which has been widely acclaimed. Brajen
Mallik’s (born in 1939) Rakte Ranga
Rupasi Bangla (Beautiful Bengal Turns
Blood Red), a major novel in three vol-
umes that is set against the Bangladesh
liberation struggle of 1971. Samarendra
Baidya’s novel Pitr-irin is set in the late
19th and early 20th centuries when a
group of socially deprived people worked
hard to make an arid region cultivable.
The novel is remarkable both for its
regional flavour and universal human
appeal. Kapil Krishna Thakur – eminent
as a poet and as an essayist – has also
written a successful novel Ujantalir
Upakhyan (The Story of Ujantali).
A dalit novelist who needs to be spe-
cially highlighted is Advaita Mallabarman
(1914-1951) whose only novel Titash Ekti
Nodir Naam (available now in English
translation by Kalpana Bardhan as A
River Called Titash) was published five
years after his death. This novel has
secured him a durable place in the his-
tory of Bangla literature and many read-
ers do not even remember his caste
identity. More than 10 editions have ap-
peared since the book came out in 1955.
It is an epic saga of the malo commu-
nity in east Bengal to which the author
belonged. He writes about the love, hopes
and tribulations of this fishing commu-
nity and their daily struggle for existence
but the novel transcends mere documen-
tation and sometimes touches the level
of poetry. Titash is not just a river in this
novel, it is the very source of life, the
means of sustenance of the people who
live along its banks. The river is drying
up, threatening to wipe out an entire way
of life. The novel weaves into its texture
this subtext of impending tragedy.
Born in a village in east Bengal, Advaita
Mallabarman was orphaned in childhood
but finished his high school education
through the help of neighbours and well-
wishers in the village. Unable to study
any further, he went to Kolkata in search
of a living. He worked for various journals
Economic and Political Weekly  October 13, 2007
– big and small – and devoted whatever
spare time he had to his own writing.
When Buddhadeb Bose included his
poems in his Ek Poisay Ekti series, the
literati of Kolkata took notice of him.
But money was never enough: overwork
and malnutrition took their toll on his
health. Tuberculosis was a dreaded dis-
ease those days, treatment was expensive
and proper care could at best prolong
life, not necessarily lead to a cure. The
Ananda Bazar Group of Publications
got Advaita Mallabarman admitted to a
tuberculosis hospital, but as soon as his
health improved a little, he discharged
himself and began work on his epic
novel, Titash. The intense effort he put
in writing this novel aggravated his con-
dition and he had to be hospitalised again.
He knew his days were numbered, and
without telling anyone he left the hospi-
tal to put all his energy in completing
the novel. He managed to finish the
novel but died soon after.
When Mallabarman was writing Titash,
Manik Bandopadhyay’s famous novel
Padma Nadir Majhi (available in English
translation by Humayun Kabir as Boatmen
of the Padma) had already been published.
That too dealt with a river and those who
lived by the river. Mallabarman’s friends
sometimes discouraged him from burning
himself out by trying to write a novel
which would probably not do anything
new. They doubted if he could write bet-
ter than Manik Bandopadhyaya, Mallabar-
man only replied, “The son of a brahman
has written from his point of view. I will
write from mine.”
Manik Bandopadhyay’s novel remains
an outstanding work. But Mallabarman’s
claim of writing as the son of a malo
had its own vindication. “I will write
from my point of view” is the central
articulation of the agenda of dalit writing
and remains valid to this day.
Short Story
There is a large crop of short stories
by Bengali dalit writers but these are
hardly noticed by the literary establish-
ment of Kolkata. One does not have to
go very far to seek the reason. In main-
stream writing short stories have been
the site of a lot of experimentation in
recent years – in style, language and
narrative techniques. In some cases the
borderline between prose and poetry has
become blurred. But the dalit writers have
stayed away from such innovations –
preferring to represent life in a realistic
mode and choosing to write in a language
that would be intelligible to the people
of their community. Quite understandably
the highbrow critics have looked down
on such writing or ignored it complete-
ly. But scores of dalit writers carry on
nevertheless in the pages of small jour-
nals – with energy and confidence and
a sizeable number of them have also
brought out collections of short stories.
Among the scores of published volumes
of short stories by single authors, only
some titles are mentioned here at random:
Anya Yehudi (The Other Jews) and Mad-
humati Onek Door (Madhumati Is Very
Far) by Kapil Krishna Thakur (who is
also one of the major poets), Bratya
Janer Golpo (Stories of the Excluded
People), Aakash, Maati, Mon (The Sky,
the Soil and the Mind) by Bimalendu
Haldar and Biplaber Maa (The Mother
of Biplab) by Dhirendra Nath Mallik.
There is an anthology titled Chaturtha
Duniyar Golpo Sankalan (Stories from
the Fourth World) which includes dalit
writing from Bangladesh, West Bengal
and Tripura.
Poetry
Poetry by far is the most popular genre
in Bangla dalit literature and the list of
published poets runs into hundreds. Among
the poets who deserve special mention
are Anil Sarkar, Anil Ranjan Biswas,
Kapil Krishna Thakur, Shyamal Pramanik,
Achintya Biswas, Manjubala, Manohar
Biswas, Mohan Tanu Mandal, Amar Biswas,
Narendra Das, Shanti Biswas and Benoy
Majumdar. Anil Sarkar has written at least
six volumes of poems: Bratya Jane
Kavita, Swajaner Mukh, Shesh Dalil,
Batashe Payer Shabda, Ashwamedher
Ghoda, Hira Singh Harijan and five
books for children. At present he is the
education minister for the state of
Tripura. (I have attempted below translat-
ing only one extract from Anil Sarkar’s
work out of the many poems by various
writers that Manoranjan Byapari had used
as illustrations in his original Bangla
essay – Translator’s note.)
Beneath my dark skin runs a red river
Raging with the waves of burning tears
My mother was the daughter of a slave
My father a chandal, not of the Aryan
race
Since birth I am branded because of them.
Benoy Majumdar (1934-2006) is an un-
usual name in the context of dalit literature.
4119
Like Advaita Mallabarman his name is
well known to readers of mainstream
Bangla literature and most people know
him not as a dalit poet but as part of
the rebel group of poets of the 1960s
of whom Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shakti
Chattopadhyay and Sarat Mukhopadhyay
(incidentally, brahmans all) are the best
known. Benoy Majumdar studied for two
years in Presidency College, the premier
institution of Kolkata and then went on
to get a first class degree in mechanical
engineering. He became a cult figure
through his unusual poems and their
striking imagery. In the 30 years from
1958 to 1988 he published some 10
volumes of poems – in between bouts of
insanity during which he would be in-
stitutionalised. The last years of his life
he lived alone and in obscurity in a
village. Three of his volumes are ad-
dressed to a woman variously called
Gayatri and Ishwari – Gayatri-ke (1961),
Phire Esho Chaka (1962) and Ishwarir
Kobitaboli (1964). (This woman, accord-
ing to literary grapevine of Kolkata is
none other than Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, an academic icon today based in
Columbia University, USA, who left
Presidency College to go abroad in 1962
– Translator’s note.)
There is nothing in Benoy Majumdar’s
themes to identify him as a dalit poet,
but for the majority of the other poets
outside the charmed circle of the upper
caste literary establishment, the awareness
of exclusion remains a persistent ingredient
of their creative work. Some deal directly
with rebellion, making their poems seem
like fists thrown up in the air; some
arrange their alphabets in fire, some
attempt to pluck the moon from the sky.
Some breathe despair and lament their
fate. But while most of their lines smoulder
with anger sometimes they also resonate
with dreams. Many of these poets are
little known outside the dalit circle. Some
have published slim volumes from small
presses, but most of their work remains
confined to the pages of little magazines.
They do not have money, power or re-
sources, but they have creative energy
and an amazing staying power. Collec-
tively the voice of resistance dominates.
Some poems are against temples and
their rituals, some rail against the San-
karacharyas, some raise their voice against
superstition. But underlying most of their
work is also the hope of a future where
inequality of birth would cease to matter.
In any country, in any society, the poets
4120
are the heralds of change. The Bangla
dalit poets, let us hope, will not be an
exception.
Non-fiction Prose
One of the noticeable features of non-
fiction prose by Bengali dalit writers is
an awareness of the all-India dimension
of the dalit movement. Nakul Mallik has
written a biography of Mahatma Jyotiba
Phule, Pradip Ray has written a book
about Periyar Ramaswami and more than
half a dozen books by different writers
are available on the life and ideas of
B  R Ambedkar (e g, Ranjit Kumar Sikdar,
Dhurjati Naskar, Neetish Biswas, Sukriti
Ranjan Biswas, Jagadish Mandal and
others). In 1992 Manohar Biswas compiled
a volume called Dalit Sahityer Digbalay
(Horizons of Dalit Literature) in which
13 essays from different Indian languages
were brought together in a Bangla trans-
lation to create a wider consciousness.
Arjun Dangle’s English anthology of
Marathi dalit writing Poisoned Bread also
became available in Bangla translation
in 1997.
Another distinctive trend is the focus
on the history and culture of the under-
privileged sections of Bengali society.
Kapil Krishna Thakur has published a
study of the matua movement and its
effect on the lower caste and deprived
people of Bengal. Kiranmayi Talukdar
also has written a book on the matua
movement. Her other book is a biography
of the dalit leader Mukunda Bihari Mallik.
Gopal Biswas has edited a volume called
Banglar Kobigaan O Lokekobi Bijoy
Sarkar – about kobi-gaan, a form of folk
entertainment in rural areas where poets
present their work orally and also about
one particular poet who was the most
popular performer in the genre. Dhurjati
Naskar has a book on the folk culture of
the Sunderban region and Bimalendu
Haldar has written on the spoken language
of South 24 Parganas and the culture of
its people. Naresh Chandra Das has a
book tracing the vicissitudes of the
namahshudra community. Anil Ranjan
Biswas has written a book on the question
of reservation in a democracy and col-
lected his essays on current topics under
the title Tarka, Bitarka O Kutarka (Debates,
Discussions and Bad Logic).
Apart from books some journal articles
also indicate the intellectual ferment among
the dalits. Many of the essays on literature
are self-reflexive; for example, Manohar
Economic and Political Weekly  October 13, 2007
Biswas’s path-breaking essay on the
aesthetics of dalit writing appeared in the
journal Manaslok (1996), Kapil Krishna
Thakur’s theoretical reflections on the
uniqueness of dalit writing was published
in Utsab Bhumi. In the journal Adhikar,
a two-part essay (published in December
2001 and January 2002) gives a useful
overview of dalit writing. Chatutha
Duniya, the main organ of the dalit move-
ment in Bengal has published several
seminal essays on related subjects.
The list of theoretical essays on dalit
literature will remain incomplete if men-
tion is not made of the work of some
non-dalit writers on the subject. The re-
search journal Aikyatan published a
special issue on dalit literature in 1998 in
which Hiren Mukherjee wrote an essay
titled, ‘Duniyar Dakhal Nebe Daliter Dal’
(the Dalits Will Claim Their Share of the
World). Another major study was by
Jyotiprakash Chattopadhyay in the autumn
number of the well known literary and
cultural journal, Anustup in 2000. In the
tenth issue of the Bangla Akademi journal
Jyotirmoy Ghosh wrote ‘Sahitye Pratibad
O Pratibad Sahitya’ (‘Protest in Literature
and Literature in Protest’). Finally in 2005
we have an entire book on the subject by
Sandip Bandopadhyaya, Daliter Akhyan-
britta (The Narrative Circle of Dalits). In
the ‘Introduction’, the author writes “I am
the disobedient son of a respectable and
conservative brahman family of Kolkata
who has thrown away his sacred thread.
In order to atone for the sin of my ances-
tors I dedicate this book to the dalits of
my land.”
At the beginning of the 21st century it
is clear that dalit literature in Bangla can
no longer be wished away or consigned
to invisibility or relegated to the margins.
Whether one likes it or not, this sapling
has taken root in the soil. EPW
Email: meenakmuk@yahoo.co.in
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