A good discussion today at Churchgate SNDT. It was a gathering of around 15 English Teachers from degree colleges and Post-graduate Departments.
Two papers were read and discussed in an exciting fashion. The first paper was presented by Ms Putul (i hope i am getting the name correct). She spoke about the two Dalit Autobiographies from the Marathi language which have been translated into English: Urmila Pawar's The Weave Of My Life: A Dalit Woman's Memoirs translated by Maya Pandit Publisher: Columbia University Press(June 2009) and Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke: The Autobiography of a Community, Baby Kamble, Orient Longman, 2008, p.178.
Foregrounding her paper Putul raised many an issues including but not limited to the issues of translations, Dalit Writing & Dalit Conciousness, The discourse of victimization and Victim hood
and laid out a rich thought provoking analysis. The discussions saw many a points including the point of Literary Historiographies, the exclusion of Dalit writing from the canon and our own very standardized expectations from texts that we read. That's the reason perhaps Dalit Writings want to shock the reader and come out as shocking. Another interesting point was about the welfare state response and the debate of how Dalit's have been politicized and the tribals have not been politicized in a similar manner- in terms of reservations and the benefit to be had..
This of course is not all that happened: there was lot more in the paper and the discussion. Please comment on this- Put in all your opinions... That's why this blog is there. The other paper Sujit Chandak talking on Marwari identity in India as seen through a Marathi novel. Let's discuss the above paper first and next week i will write a post on the Marwari Identity in the Margins paper... Pl. put in all your comments...SHOOT. . .
Yes, great that the teachers could meet and both papers presented today held promise for multiple levels of thinking.
ReplyDeleteThree points stick in my mind: one, that dalit writings are not meant for bourgeois literary consumption;two, that autobiographies of individuals cannot be read as representations of a community; and three, that all marginalised people are not necessarily victims.
I'm also thinking about how we would teach these texts in our classrooms - we would certainly not look at the aesthetics but focus on the politics but what happens when the shock value of these texts and the issues they raise end in the mind of a reader? My point is if every dalit text is a narrative of 'humiliation and hurt' - would that mean we could use any dalit text as a starting point for a discussion on Dalitism? As Sujit says, let's keep the discussions going in this adda!
Meenakshi
Dear Dr. Meenakshi Shivram,
DeleteNamaskar /\
My name is Sagar Sonawane and so sorry for not writing anything related to your blog here. My wife Varsha is a student of MA-II in SNDT and listens to your audio lectures. We both are now a big fan of yours. Trying to search and contact you since many days. We really love your way, presentation, voice and everything. Would be really glad to have some words with you and your blessings on my wife.
Please reply if possible.
Regards,
Sagar Sonawane
sagar.0909@gmail.com
(M) +91-9819616766
Kudos to Sujit for taking this idea a step ahead... Bring it on!!!
ReplyDeleteIt is good to have a discussion blog such as this. I was glad to read about Putul's paper. I have heard people point out that dalit writings opened up the literary discourse in our societies. Meenakshi Shivram's point about dalit writings having shock value is a bit sad. If at all, they arouse a sense of shame in the upper caste society. In fact, the political content of dalit writings is what makes their aesthetics special. In the recent years dalit writers have invigorated the scene of literature in most Indian languages.
ReplyDeleteAs for research, much work is needed because so far scholarship on dalit writings has sadly focused only on the 'humiliation and hurt' part. What impact dalit literature has had on the so called 'mainstream' literature, how it has remade public discourses, and how the prevalent notions of aesthetics are transformed by them are issues to be seriously explored. Some very fine work is being done in this area. Works of K Satyanarayan and D R Nagaraj are notable.
------------ Kamalakar Bhat
It was really a wonderful gathering.Thanks Sujitji for making it.wish you a same association.
ReplyDeleteIt is great to have this platform to express and discuss.
ReplyDeleteYes, Mr. Bhat, 'shock value' may not have been the right phrase. But the Dalit movement has strong parallels with the feminist movement and I was thinking of how Kamala Das' My Story created a flutter in literary circles. The book was read not because of its literary value but because of its foregrounding of issues that had remained unvoiced in the public domain till then. There was then a period of time when all women's writings were read 'merely' as an expression of hurt and repression. As you have rightly mentioned, other experiences and realities also have to be explored and studied within subaltern discourses.
ReplyDeleteMeenakshi Shivram