Introduction
Dalit means broken, oppressed, untouchable, downtrodden, and exploited. They come from poor communities which, under the Indian caste system, used to be known as untouchables. They constitute nearly 16% of the Indian population. Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable.
Dalits are a mixed population consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions. Dalit is not a new word. Apparently, it was used in the 1930s as a Hindi and Marathi translation of ‘depressed Classes,’ a term the British used for what is now called the Scheduled Castes. In 1970 the ‘Dalit Panthers’ revived the term and expanded its reference to include Scheduled Tribes, poor peasants, women, and all those being exploited politically, economically, and in the name of religion.
So Dalit is not only a caste, but it is also a symbol of change and revolution. The word “Dalit” does not appear in any sacred scriptures or historical texts of India. It is actually a word based on 17th-century European notions about the Indian caste system. The word is derived from Sanskrit and means “ground”, “suppressed”, “crushed,” or “broken to pieces”. It was first used by Jyotirao Phule in the nineteenth century, in the context of the oppression faced by the erstwhile “untouchable” castes of the twice-born Hindus.
According to Victor Premasagar, the term expresses their weakness, poverty, and humiliation at the hands of the upper castes in Indian society. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi coined the word “Harijan,” translated roughly as “Children of God,” to identify the former Untouchables. The terms “Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes” (SC/ST) are the official terms used in Indian government documents to identify former “untouchables” and tribes. However, in 2008, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, noticing that “Dalit” was used interchangeably with the official term “Scheduled Castes,” called the term “unconstitutional” and asked state governments to end its use.
After the ruling, the Chhattisgarh government stopped using the term “Dalit” officially. Instead, the words “Adi Dravida”, “Adi Karnataka”, “Adi Andhra” and “Adi-Dharmi” are used in the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Punjab, respectively, to identify people from former “untouchable” castes in official documents. These words, particularly the prefix “Adi”, denote the aboriginal inhabitants of the land.
Although discrimination based on caste has been prohibited and untouchability abolished in India, discrimination and prejudice against Dalits in South Asia still exist.
Since India’s independence in 1947, the country has implemented an affirmative policy of reservation, which was further expanded in 1974 to set aside jobs and provide education opportunities for Dalits. By 1995, 17.2 percent of all jobs in India were held by Dalits, greater than their proportion in the Indian population. In 1997, India elected K. R. Narayanan, a Dalit, as the nation’s President. Many social organizations have also proactively promoted better conditions for Dalits through improved education, health, and employment.
In the context of traditional Hindu society, Dalit status has often been historically associated with occupations regarded as ritually impure, such as those involving leatherwork, butchering, or the removal of rubbish, animal carcasses, and waste. Dalits worked as manual laborers cleaning streets, latrines, and sewers. Engaging in these activities was considered polluting to the individual, and this pollution was considered contagious. As a result, Dalits were commonly segregated and banned from full participation in Hindu social life.
For example, they could not enter a temple or a school and were required to stay outside the village. Elaborate precautions were sometimes observed to prevent incidental contact between Dalits and other castes. Discrimination against Dalits still exists in rural areas in the private sphere, in everyday matters such as access to eating places, schools, temples, and water sources. It has largely disappeared in urban areas and in the public sphere. Some Dalits have successfully integrated into urban Indian society, where caste origins are less obvious and less important in public life.
In rural India, however, caste origins are more readily apparent, and Dalits often remain excluded from local religious life, though some qualitative evidence suggests that its severity is fast diminishing.
Historical context: The term “Chandala” is used in the Manu Smriti (literally: The recollection of Manu or, with more latitude, the laws according to Manu) in the Mahabharata. In later times, it was synonymous with “Domba”, originally representing a specific ethnic or tribal group but which became a general pejorative.
In the early Vedic literature, several of the names of castes that are referred to in the Smritis as Antyajas occur. They have Carmanna (a tanner of hides) in the Rig Veda (VIII. 8,38), and the Chandala and Paulkasa occur in Vajasaneyi Samhita. Vepa or Vapta (barber) in the Rig Veda. Vidalakara or Bidalakar are present in the Vajasaneyi Samhita. Vasahpalpuli (washerwoman) corresponds to the Rajakas of the Smritis in Vajasaneyi Samhita. Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who recorded his visit to India in the early 4th century, noted that Chandalas were segregated from mainstream society as untouchables.
Traditionally, Dalits were considered to be beyond the pale of Varna or the caste system. They were originally considered as Panchama or the fifth group beyond the fourfold division of Indian people. They were not allowed to let their shadows fall upon a non-Dalit caste member, and they were required to sweep the ground where they walked to remove the “contamination” of their footfalls. Dalits were forbidden to worship in temples or draw water from the same wells as caste Hindus, and they usually lived in segregated neighborhoods outside the main village.
In the Indian countryside, the Dalit villages are usually a separate enclave a kilometer or so outside the main village where the other Hindu castes reside. Some upper-caste Hindus did warm to Dalits like Ramanuja. Such Hindu priests were demoted to low-caste ranks; an example of the latter was Dnyaneshwar, who was excommunicated into Dalit status in the 13th century but continued to compose the Dnyaneshwari, a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Eknath, another excommunicated Brahmin, fought for the rights of untouchables during the Bhakti period.
Historical examples of Dalit priests include Chokhamela in the 14th century, who was India’s first recorded Dalit poet, and Raidas, born into a family of cobblers. The 15th-century saint Sri Ramananda Raya also accepted all castes, including untouchables, into his fold. Most of these saints subscribed to the Bhakti movements in Hinduism during the medieval period that rejected casteism. The story of Nandanar is popular, wherein a low-caste Hindu devotee was rejected by the priests but accepted by God. Due to isolation from the rest of Hindu society, many Dalits continue to debate whether they are ‘Hindu’ or ‘non-Hindu’.
Traditionally, Hindu Dalits have been barred from many activities that were seen as central to the Vedic religion and Hindu practices of orthodox sects. Among Hindus, each community has followed its own variation of Hinduism, and the wide variety of practices and beliefs observed in Hinduism makes any clear assessment difficult.
Status of Dalits in Modern India: Since 1950, India has enacted and implemented many laws and social initiatives to protect and improve the socio-economic conditions of its Dalit population. By 1995, 17.2 percent of all jobs in India were held by Dalits, which is greater than their proportion in the Indian population.
Of the highest-paying, senior-most jobs in government agencies and government-controlled enterprises, over 10 percent were held by members of the Dalit community, a tenfold increase in 40 years. In 1997, India democratically elected K. R. Narayanan, a Dalit, as the nation’s President. In the last 15 years, Indians born in historically discriminated minority castes have been elected to the highest judicial and political offices. The quality of life of the Dalit population in India, in 2001, in terms of metrics such as access to healthcare, life expectancy, education attainability, access to drinking water, housing, etc., was statistically similar to the overall population of modern India.
In 2010, international attention was drawn to the Dalits by an exhibition featuring portraits depicting the lives of Dalits by Marcus Perkins. In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, Dalits have revolutionized politics and have elected Mayawati, a popular Dalit chief minister. Many Hindu spiritual leaders assert that though the caste system is present in some Hindu texts, it was meant to serve only as a division of labor and not meant to stratify or discriminate against social groups based on caste.
There are no verses present in any Hindu text that support caste-based discrimination, though the Manu Smriti, a text written several years later after the various Hindu texts, contains verses that assert the superiority of certain castes over others. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna asserts that an individual’s caste is determined by his duty and not his birth.
Even in the Vedas, the holiest texts of Hinduism, there are verses that strongly call for equality, like verse no. (10:191:4) of Rig Veda which reads “Samaani va akuthi, samanaa hrudyani va, samaana vastu vo mano, yatha va sahsuhasti,” which means “Oh humans! Let your pledges be one, let your hearts be one, let your thoughts be one so that you are always united.” Thus, Hindu texts do not mention the presence or discrimination of a Dalit caste, indicating that Dalit discrimination arose in society due to the corruption of religious practices by social hierarchy.
History of Dalit Literature
One of the foremost and earliest Dalit scholars is Shri Valmiki, author of the famous epic poem Ramayana. Shri Valmiki is considered the oldest and greatest poet in Indian history. He is called Maha Kavi or Adi kavi in Sanskrit.
Dalit literature forms an important and distinct part of Indian literature. One of the first Dalit writers was Madara Chennaiah, an 11th-century cobbler-saint who lived in the reign of Western Chalukyas and who is also regarded by some scholars as the “father of Vachana poetry.” Another early Dalit poet is Dohara Kakkaiah, a Dalit by birth, six of whose confessional poems survive. Modern Dalit literature is literature about the Dalits, the oppressed class under the Indian caste system, and forms an important and distinct part of Indian literature.
Although Dalit narratives have been a part of Indian social narratives since the 11th century, with works like Sekkizhar’s Periya Puranam portraying Dalit women as half-naked and sexually exploitable and praising the killing of thousands of Dalits on “Kazhumaram” in the hands of Gnanasambandan, Dalit literature emerged into prominence as a collective voice after 1960. It started with Marathi and soon appeared in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil languages through self-narratives like poems, short stories, and most importantly, autobiographies known for their realism and their contribution to Dalit politics.
It denounced as petty and false the prevailing romanticism with the bourgeois Sadashiv Pethi literature treated the whole Dalit issue, ignoring the social reality of appalling poverty and oppression of caste Hindus resulting from the bourgeois character of this culture. It is often compared with African-American literature, especially in its depiction of issues of racial segregation and injustice, as seen in slave narratives.
In the modern era, Dalit literature was energized by the advent of leaders like Mahatma Phule and Dr. Ambedkar in Maharashtra, who focused on the issues of Dalits through their works and writings. This started a new trend in Dalit writing and inspired many Dalits to come forth with writings in Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, and Punjabi. By the 1960s, Dalit literature saw a fresh crop of new writers like Baburao Bagul, Bandhu Madhav, and Shankar Rao Kharat, though its formal form came into being with the Little magazine movement. In Sri Lanka, Dalit writers like K. Daniel and Dominic Jeeva gained mainstream popularity in the late 1960s.
Dalit Writers in Maharashtra (Marathi):
Arun Kamble, Shantabai Kamble, Krushna Kamble, Raja Dhale, Namdev Dhasal, Daya Pawar, Annabhau Sathe, Bandhu Madhav, Laxman Mane, Laxman Gaikwad, Hari Narake, Sharankumar Limbale, Waman Nibalkar, Bhimsen Dethe, Bhau Panchbhai, Ambadas Shinde, Murlidhar Bansode, Kishor Shantabai Kale, Mayur Vhatkar, Heera Bansode, Joyti Lanjewar, Mallika Amershekh, etc.
Karnataka (Kannada):
The first-ever known Dalit writer was from Karnataka. Madara Chennaiah (12th century), and Dohara Kakkaiah were the earliest known. Later, at the end of the 20th century (1970), Prof. B. Krishnappa, Dr. Siddalingiah, Devanooru Mahadeva, Deviah Harave, Prof. Aravinda Malagatti, Prof.
M. N. Javaraiah, Prof. Govindaiah, Prof. Chenanna Valikar, Sathyaanada Patrota, V. Munivenkatappa, Mulluru Nagaraja, and Mogalli Ganesha paved the way for the enrichment of Kannada Dalit Literature. Tamil Nadu’s (Tamil) Ka. Ayothi dass Pandithar is the pioneer of Dalit literature and philosophy in India as well as South India. Rev. John Ratnam (Editor, Dravida Pandian), Rettamalai Srinivasan (Editor, Parayan), K. Appadurai (Editor Tamilan), Periasamy Pulavar (Poet), and many writers contributed to Dalit literature.
In Andhra Pradesh (Telugu), Gurram Jashuva, Kusuma Dharmanna, Boyi Bheemanna, Kolakaluri Enoch, Siva Sagar (KG. Sathyamurthy), Gaddar, Boya Jangaiah, Chilukuri Devaputra, Kathi Padmarao, Bojja Tharakam, Endluri Sudhakar, Vemula Yellaiah, G. Kalyana Rao, Satish Chandra, GR. Kurme, Madduri Nageshbabu, Kalekuri Prasad, Gogu Shyamala, Jupaka Subhadra, Jajula Gowri, MM. Vinodini, Sujatha Gidla, Thullimalli Wilson Sudhakar, Challapalli Swarupa Rani, Sikhamani, etc. Gujarat (Gujarati) has some eminent Dalit writers, including Neerav Patel, Dalpat Chauhan, Pravin Gadhvi, Raju Solanki, Sahil Parmar, Shankar Painter, Harish Mangalam, Bhi. Na. Vankar, Yashavant Vaghela, Pathik Parmar, Chandraben Shrimali, Mohan Parmar, Madhukant Kalpit, Jayant Parmar, B. Kesharshivam, Raghavji Madhad, B M Parmar, and Joseph Macwan.
About the Writer (Joseph Macwan)
Joseph Macwan was born on 9th October 1935 in Tranol near Odd in the Anand district of Gujarat, which is also known as Charotar Pradesh. Macwan was born into a poor Vankar family that follows the Christian religion. Joseph Macwan is one of the best writers of Gujarati literature, especially Dalit literature. Macwan was a witness to poverty, the caste system, and the suffering of the untouchable class in Gujarat. He completed his B.A. with first class in 1967 and his M.A. in 1969 with second class. He also completed his B.D. in 1971 with first class.
Then he joined as a lecturer in college. Some people put pressure on him to leave the college job and go to a village school, and not only that, he suffered from many more problems because he came from a lower-class Dalit family, and some people could not digest the progress he made even though he is Dalit. Later, he joined as a teacher at Saint Xavier High School, Anand. He witnessed the injustice and suffering of Dalits, so he wrote about his experiences in his novels using the medium of Charotari language and suppressed characters of the village.
His novel “Vyathana Vitak” and “Aangaliyat” received the first prize from the Gujarat Sahitya Academy. He also received a prize from the Sahitya Academy Delhi in 1989. Additionally, many of his other writings have received various awards. He died on March 28th, 2010, in Ahmedabad.
The first Gujarati Dalit novel, “Angaliyat,” skillfully translated by Rita Kothari from Gujarati as “The Stepchild,” works on four levels. It is a gripping tale of love, heroism, humiliation, revenge, and death. It presents a vividly colored picture of the lives of two neighboring villages in the Charotar district of central Gujarat. It is a document of the politics of the pre-and post-Independence years, as seen from the perspective of the downtrodden. Finally, it is an account of the struggle of one Dalit community against its upper-caste oppressors, spurred on by two opposing ideologies, the Gandhian and the Ambedkarite. The novel has twenty-six chapters, and each chapter plays an important role in the whole novel. Macwan tells the real and factual story of Dalits and other downtrodden communities.
Macwan used the Charotari language (one of the dialects used in Charotar Pradesh in Gujarat) for local flavor. While the whiplash of the derogatory Charotari term “death” (now banned) used for some groups cannot be conveyed in English, Kothari does a good job of limning the struggle of four “transgressive” Vankar lives on the outskirts of a village run by the landowning Patidar and Thakurs in the Charotar region of Gujarat. “The Stepchild” is a cornerstone of Gujarati literature, the first Dalit novel set in rural Gujarat in the 1930s, which draws attention to its own aesthetics and political ideology.
Rich in local idioms and expressions, the novel vividly explores the ethos, fears, and aspirations of the Vankar community through the characters of Valji, Methi, Teeharam, and Bhavaankaka. “Angaliyat” in Gujarati is a child whose mother leads him by the hand to his stepfather’s house. This is metaphorically the social position of the Vankars, a Dalit community. Significant from several points of view, the novel provides a view of history from below. Caught in external and internal forms of subjugation, the community of weavers, the Vankars, is subject to oppression from the more powerful upper castes, the Patels.
Through the use of powerful dialogue, the author illustrates the subtlety and complexity of the major Dalit characters and elevates them, but they are ultimately defeated by the dominant castes in the story. The novel critiques the systems of internal colonization that exist within the Hindu caste system, which are far more difficult to fight than the British colonization of the land. Angaliyat represents the recently emerged genre of the Dalit novel. Today, Dalits are asserting their identity and challenging a society that earlier excluded them by writing about their lives themselves.
This translation is aimed at students and general readers interested in regional Indian literature and anyone trying to understand South Asian society. Angaliyat tells the story of oppression and exclusion by transforming the vanquished into the victor, and by turning the periphery into the core. Teeha and Methi, and Valji and Kanku, fiercely oppose two oppressive social structures, one represented by landowning, aggressive, and vicious Patidar and Thakor village leaders and the second by greedy and manipulative Dalit caste leaders.
Both Valji and Teeha are ultimately killed, but in the end, they refuse to submit. The portrayal of Methi and Kanku as pure women challenges the age-old perceptions of higher castes that denigrate the practice of remarriage among backward communities. The stepchild who follows the mother to a new home holding her finger or angali remains on the periphery of the stepfather’s family. Angaliyat signifies the secondary, the peripheral, never accepted by the core family or society.
Beginning of the Novel
Teeha and Valji are neighbors and inseparable friends from the Vankar or weaver caste. Surprisingly, the Vankars are a scheduled caste in Gujarat. Valji and his wife Kanku would dearly like to see Teeha married. Unknown to them, Teeha is in love with Methi from Shilapaar village next door. Loyalties towards the village and pargana sometimes override caste loyalties, and so there are hurdles in the way of their marriage. Teeha is the finest weaver in the district and a man of great physical courage. Teeha is very popular in Shilapar. The event that sets the story in motion occurs at Shilapaar. Teeha has persuaded Valji to accompany him there to auction their cloth.
In the course of the auction, an upper-caste man notices Methi approaching with a pot of water on her head. He aims a stone at the pot, drenching her completely. Teeha springs to her defense. In the challenges and counter-challenges that follow, Teeha humiliates the man, Nanio Patel, so thoroughly that he swears revenge. Now, the Patels of Shilapar become very angry and look for revenge for Nania Patel’s ultimate insult to the whole village done by Teeha Parmar. They consider Naniya’s insult an insult to the whole Patel community.
The rising action of the Novel
From here, the story proceeds through many twists and turns of the plot to its inevitable end, acquiring in the process an entire cavalcade of characters that play their various parts in the revenge drama. Some use the opportunity to serve their interests. The community as a whole gets drawn into a situation they would rather not be part of. Ranchhod Dehlawala of Teeha’s village is the key manipulator in the drama. A shrewd Congressman, later to become a Minister, he has enough power to influence the course of events.
On the other side of the line from him stand Bhavaankaka and the Master. Bhavaankaka is a very wise and clever elder of the village. The whole village respects him a lot because he is a very knowledgeable and worldly-wise man. The spiritual Bhavaankaka tries to weigh the scales on Teeha’s side but fails. The Master is another wise person in the village; he has knowledge of laws and orders. The Master attempts to raise the consciousness of the Dalits so they may unite and fight the common enemy. He too fails. Dehlawala’s strength lies precisely in the Dalits’ disunity and lack of self-awareness.
As he says to his nephew, “The day they achieve self-recognition, the sun will set on us.” Whatever the odds and however hard the struggle, Teeha knows the vital importance of fighting. When Methi’s brother Moti remarks, “One can’t live in water and risk enmity with the crocodile,” Teeha snaps back, “To hell with water and crocodiles… People like us either become extinct or we suck up all their water itself… The British sun is still warm. Once Independence arrives, our days will be numbered.”
Dialogue as Texture
It is observations like these that give muscle to Teeha’s character. In fact, Macwan uses dialogue with tremendous verve to reveal character. The abundance of dialogue in the novel, peppered as in the above case with proverbs and sayings, serves to lend texture to the translation too, though English cannot reproduce the dialectal registers of the original. Rita Kothari explains in her insightful introduction that Macwan’s use of the local dialect of Charotar was a significant departure from the Sanskritised language that marked serious Gujarati literature.
While Macwan clears an independent linguistic space for his characters, he locates his female characters in the psycho-emotional spaces traditionally assigned to women in mainstream novels. Teeha and Valji are opposites in many ways. Teeha has a wider perspective on life than Valji. He is the leader; Valji is the leader. But the women, Kanku and Methi, are like twins — both beautiful and pure. Kanku marries Dana after Valji’s death, but only to stop people from ascribing an impure significance to their relationship. Marriage, ironically, gives them the freedom not to be husband and wife.
Methi is on the point of committing suicide after leaving her alcoholic, wife-beating husband. Teeha sees her in time to save her. From then on, she lives in his house, but separately, caring for him as a wife, but without actually being his wife because she is still married to the other man. Teeha, in turn, cares for her and her son Goka as his own without ever overstepping the limits of their relationship into anything remotely sexual. In time he too is persuaded to marry to prevent tongues from wagging about him and Methi.
Climax of the Novel
The latter part of the novel revolves around these emotional and moral dilemmas. Ultimately, Teeha dies at the hands of Dehlawala’s men. But the novel ends on a defiant note. There are surprises: the wronged Vankars see the British in India as an impartial authority free from casteism and corruption and, despite the presence of Gandhians among the Vankar elders, a Congress-led independent India is feared for the coming “ram rajya” which would mean elevation of the higher castes to national office and further repression of the Vankars, and for the loss of livelihoods through the resulting industrialization.
In the story, Valji and Teeha are killed, mourned by Methi, who has stayed devoted to Teeha even after his marriage to someone else, and Kanku, Valji’s wife, who then remarries in defiance of upper-class norms. Goka carries on Teeha’s work. As Teeha’s stepson, he is an analyst; and yet he is a truer son than the two born of Teeha’s flesh and blood. They abandon Teeha’s home and loom while he stays back to honor him.
When Dehlawala inaugurates the first school in Ratnapaar village and declares that whoever pays a donation of over Rs. 1,000 to the school will have their name inscribed on the marble plaque, Goka steps forward to donate Rs. 7,000 “in the name of Teehabhai Gopalbhai Parmar.” Joseph Macwan ends the novel with many questions hanging in the minds of the readers. The climax of the novel is very impressive and appropriate. The novel ends with the tragic death of Teeha Parmar, but his stepchild Goka is proud of his father’s courage and his guts to fight against the diplomatic games of Patels.
At the climax of the novel, Goka proudly donates seventy thousand rupees in the name of Teeha for the first school in Ratnapar. Truly, the novel is a mirror of society during that time in Gujarat, not only Gujarat but is representative of the whole Dalit community in India.
Conclusion
Published in 1987 as part of the wave of Dalit writing that burst forth after Gujarat’s reservation riots of 1981 and 1985, The Stepchild is arguably the first Dalit novel to be written in any language. Maharashtra, where Dalit writing began, has produced fine poetry, autobiographies, short fiction, and drama, but no novels.
Unfortunately, despite winning critical acclaim and a Sahitya Akademi award, Angaliyat remains untranslated in other Indian languages. One hopes the present translation will open the door to others. According to the editor, the suffering and experiences of the Vankars have not been accommodated within Gujarati mainstream literature, which has been distinguished by a “privileging of the literary over the political and substantive.” Macwan’s complex novel, with its many forms of storytelling, is “a tale of a culture that is extinct and pushed into oblivion. It is not written to re-establish its prestige but to acknowledge and sing of its strength and character.”
Bibliography
- Macwan, Joseph. ‘Angaliyat’ (original Gujarati version). Published by Bhagatbhai Bhuralal Sheth R.R. Sheth & Company, Mumbai, 2003.
- Macwan, Joseph. The Stepchild: Angaliyat (English version). Translated by Kothari Rita. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, India, 2012.
- Abedi, Razi. “Dalit Literature: The Voice of the Downtrodden” from The Best of Gowanus New Writing from Africa, Asia, and the
- The Caribbean. Published by Thomas J. Hubschman, Gowanus Books, Brooklyn, 2001.
- Prasad, Amarnath. Dalit Literature: A Critical Exploration. Published by Sarup and Sons, New Delhi, 2007.
- Thorat, Sukhadeo. Dalits in India: Search for a Common Destiny. Published by Sage Publications Private Limited, New Delhi, 2009.
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