Who is a Dalit?

Author Interview

“Who is a Dalit?”

“One who rebels against the caste system,” snap comes the answer from Sharankumar Limbale, Marathi writer and an icon of Dalit literature.

“And, how do you define Dalit literature?”

“Dalit literature uses the written word as a weapon against the inhuman oppression of Dalits by the Brahminical social order that denies them basic human rights and dignity.”

Dalit literature, Dr. Limbale told The Hindu, is the uprising of the written word against the millennia-old social injustice manifesting itself as brutalities committed on Dalits all over the country.

“The so-called mainstream literature is the product of the imagination of upper caste writers about middle-class issues, but Dalit literature is based on the lived experience of the writer.”

Dalit literature, Dr. Limbale told The Hindu, is the uprising of the written word against the millennia-old social injustice manifesting itself as brutalities committed on Dalits all over the country.

Through unbelievable poverty and inhuman caste brutalities all around him, he fought to get a decent education. On the way, he wrote poetry and stories, actively took part in the Dalit Panthers movement and worked at the grassroots for the uplift of Dalits. At age 22, he married an illiterate girl.

Akkarmaashi, written when he was just 25, tells his life in a Maharwada (the living space allotted to the untouchable Mahar community) on the outskirts of a Maharashtra village near Solapur. He was one of the 12 children of a Mahar woman, who was kept as a concubine by the upper-caste village heads.

Extract from the interview of Sharankumar Limbale which was published in The Hindu, Dec 28, 2009.

Sharankumar Limbale was a member of the Dalit Litrary Movement that took Maharashtra, and its capital Bombay, by storm in the late 1950s, continuing in strength to the 1970s.He has written 40 books, fiction and non-fiction, and is best known for his biography Akkarmashi. Currently, he is the Regional Director, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik.

He is the author of Hindu:a novel translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee  and published by Samya  Feb 2010.

For the entire interview visit: http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/28/stories/2009122853740400.htm