1. Representaion of DalitIndian English Literature
Society

2. Indian writing in English has remained enigmatic as far as
projection of dalit life is concerned. There are very few dalit
authors who write in English for their own people. Dalit
readership for English literary works too is very low. Then the
question
is often broached that when a Non-dalit writer portrays dalits in
his work, who does he write for and on whose behalf?
Most of dalits characters in Indian English literature are portrayed
by upper caste Hindu authors. Such portrayals, based on mere
observation, turn out to be shallow, inauthentic and just
stereotypes.
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3. Unfortunately, not many of our novelists writing in English care about these
authorial responsibilities. Most of them still cling to such hackneyed themes as
‘East-West Encounter’, ‘Tradition-Modernity Conflict’, ‘Alienation’, ‘Spiritual
Quest’, ‘Search for Identity’, and the like. That most of our English novelists
live either in metropolitan cities or in foreign/ western countries is
an important and deciding factor in the choice of themes and characters. They
hardly have any first hand experience of Indian life, not to speak of rural life,
and therefore they feel more comfortable and secure with selecting themes and
characters from the privileged class of people. As a result, not only dalit, but
also the under-privileged classes of Indian society rarely find space in Indian
novels in English.

4. • Non-Dalit major practitioners of the genre have
embraced the Dalit sensibility against the grain of
their own caste or class and cast their gaze at the
country’s grim underbelly.

5. • Prominent among those who have passed with
flying colours by exposing the faultlines of our
fragmented society in this growing segment of
writing the nation are Arundhati Roy, Amitav
Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Vikas
Swarup and Aravind Adiga .
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6. •When Indian novelist
pen a literary work about the lower classes,
there is always a risk of caricature.The tradition of Upper caste writers dealing
with the subject of Untouchability or dalit life starts with the publication,
although after nineteen publishers' rejection, Mulk Raj Anand's came with his
first novel "Untouchable"(1935).
Other works by Anand-Coolie
(1936),Two Leaves and a
Bud (1937),The Old Woman
and the Cow (1960),and The
Road (1961).
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7. About The Book...
•Anand seems to lay down the test to the
novelists who are upper caste
sympathizers that they should be fiery
voice of the people and they should
be able to give a new vision of life
realizing the pains, frustrations and
aspirations of others, and by cultivating
the his incipient powers of expression,
transmutes in all art all feelings, thoughts
and experiences.
However the problem of untouchables
does not seem
to have properly addressed in this novel.
stand up for the cause of the
untouchables, unlike his predecessor
and contemporary writers .
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8. Arvind Adiga
Aravind Adiga's
The White Tiger
is a winner of
Man Booker
Prize 2008.
A brutal view of
India's class
struggles is
cunningly
presented in
Adiga's debut
about a racist
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9. Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things, debut novel of Arundhati Roy, is a
story of forbidden, cross-caste love and what a community
will do to protect the old ways. Roy, a great champion of the
cause of the Dalit and the deserted, points out those
unnoticed shades of a social problem which generally
escape the eyes of social scientist in the novel.
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10. In the novel, Jadhav tells the aweinspiring story of his family's struggle for
equality and justice in India. He vividly
brings his parents' world to light and
unflinchingly documents the life of
untouchables -- the hunger, the cruel
humiliations, the perpetual fear and
brutal abuse. While most Dalits had
accepted their lowly position as fate,
Jadhav's father, Damu, rebelled against
the oppressive caste system and fought
against all odds to forge for his children
a destiny that was never ordained. It is a
story of survival, of oppression as
grievous as slavery or apartheid, and of
victory, as the author gets an education
and learns to embrace his identity.
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11. •
Another novel that focuses on dalits is Shanta Rameswar Rao’s Children of
God (1976). The central characters of the novel are dalits and the novelist
presents a down-to-earth picture of caste oppression through the womannarrator whose son was beaten and burnt to death for entering a temple
more than 25 years after Independence. Like Anand’s Untouchable, and
other dalit narrations, Rao’s novel also gives an account of the various
forms of social abuse: being deprived from using the common well, being
forced to wash laundry only downstream and at night etc.
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12. Q&A by Vikas Swarup
Red Hibiscus by Padmini Sengupta
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
The Fine Balance by Rohinton
Mistry

13. It is not surprising that only a handful of Indian English
novelists have prioritized the Dalit issue in their works.
Quantitatively, the number of works is not impressive, though
only a few of them are of quite enduring quality.
It must be noted that the 'gleefully skewed' portrayals of lower
classes in their works have managed the upper caste authors' to
win accolades. The upper caste writers enlisted above have won
the series of prestigious awards for their works in which the
depiction of low class characters scored the maximum
points.
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14. Dalit literature, being the most powerful form of literary
expression today, has acquired a prestigious position in
Indian English literature. It focuses on writing that includes
Dalit characters, or descriptions of Dalit life and
experiences. Influenced by post-modern literary
movements, it questions mainstream literary theories and
upper caste ideologies and explores the invisible twilight
zones of neglected issues. The literature is essentially
against exploitation, and made use of writing as a method
of propaganda for the movement.

15. Both Serious Men and Untouchable attempt to represent the Dalit
experience. The novels try to hone in on the Dalit’s psyche in order to
expose the failures of the nation-state. Both novels discuss the
continuing problem of the caste system. Similar to Joseph, Anand is
interested in depicting the discrimination within Hinduism and its
effects on his Dalit protagonist. The authors use different literary
styles to interpret the Dalit experience – Serious Men uses satirical
realism while Untouchable uses a more standard realism. Yet Serious
Men succeeds in portraying the reality of Dalit experiences without
defining the identity of its protagonist.
While both novels discuss similar issues, Serious Men is able to
revolutionize the literary characterization of the Dalit and create a
protagonist that reflects modern India.
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16. In this way, these LITERATURE encapsulate the
pain, humiliation, and poverty of this community,
which has lived at the bottom of India's social
pyramid for millenia. These are truly inspiring book,
that reveals untouchables 's quest for dignity and
the recognition of their human worth, rather than
to India's own success in eradicating the evils of the
caste system, for its inequalities and iniquities
persist. There is much here both for the foreigner,
ignorant of much that is hidden in India, and for
Indians who are all too familiar with caste. These
novels are a sign that change is possible in India and
that indeed it is, if slowly, underway. The clock will
go forward, for too many now in India see what the
Buddha saw two thousand years ago.