Author: Omprakash Valmiki
Publisher: Radhakrishna Prakashan
Year: 2016
Language: Hindi
Pages: 164
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788171198542
Description
Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography talks of growing up in a village near Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, in an untouchable caste, Chuhra, well before the defiant term Dalit was coined.
For the first time, Dalits are writing about their lives themselves. They have long been written about by others, by anthropologists, historians and novelists. Infighting against the gross and tremendous injustice that has been their heritage for centuries, Dalit writers give voice to their aspirations for achieving equality. . As he states bleakly, Dalit life is excruciatingly painful, charred by experiences…only he or she who has suffered this anguish knows its sting.
Joothan refers to the scraps left on plates that are then given to Dalits to eat. In some ways it is a symbol of the demeaning existence imposed on the Dalits. Valmiki’s story is one of terrible grief and oppression, of survival and achievement, of his emergence as a freer human being in a society that remains compassionless towards Dalits.
REVIEW
indispensable to those who would understand modern South Asia.
-Sumit Guha, Professor History, Brown University.