Essay On Dalit Self

Conflict of the self and the society: A Critical review of select Dalit Autobiographies

KiranKumar B1, Dr. N S Prasantha Kumar2

1(Research Scholar, Department of English (SSL), VIT University, India) [e-mail]

2(Assistant Professor, Department of English (SSL), VIT University, India) [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

Dalit self and the Hindu caste society are always at bay. They are always at conflict. The source and cause of conflict between the dalit self and the society is the phenomenon called caste. Dalit self undergoes a traumatic experience of discrimination, humiliation and exploitation based on caste which are explicitly sponsored and advocated by the Hindu caste society itself. The dalit self and the society diverge in their nature. The dalit self wants to voice out for justice, equality and fraternity whereas society tries to suppress the voice and presence of dalit self in achieving these goals. The entry of the dalit self is forbidden and prohibited in certain significant places and dalit self has to undergo a conflict of caste identity in educational institutions, conflict of purity and impurity in religious temples, conflict of sexual identity in public places, conflict of poverty which comes from the society itself. The Hindu society does not uphold and

Being marked as Mahars we couldn‘t join them. So Mallya, Umbrya, Parshya, all from my caste, began to play touch-and-go. We played one kind of game while the high-caste village boys played another. The two games were played separately like two separate whirlwinds. Play over, we settled down to eat. Boys and girls from the high castes like Wani, Brahmin, Marwari, Muslim, Maratha, Teli, fishermen, goldsmiths and all the teachers, about hundred or so sat in a circle under a banyan tree. We, the Mahar 39 boys and girls, were asked to sit under another tree. The high-caste ones said a prayer before eating, which didn‘t make any sense to us.