The story presents the thoughtless and tragic exploitation of Dukhi Chamar by a Brahmin from whom he needs a favor. You can find it in a standard collection of Premchand’s stories such as The World of Premchand (translated by David Rubin). I read it in my high school Hindi class, where it made an enormous impression on me. It’s a short story, written in 1931, by the greatest figure of Hindi literature in the twentieth century. Premchand, “Deliverance” The World of Premchand, trans. This collection includes the pivotal Annihilation of Caste and some of his writings on Buddhism. (Gandhi attacked untouchability but also romanticized the caste system in some of his pronouncements.) A deep and wide-ranging thinker, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism toward the end of his life as a protest against caste. Gandhi, with whom he tussled over Gandhi’s inadequate position on caste. Ambedkar (1891-1956), the most important Dalit leader of modern India. It is appropriate to start the list with Dr. All the works are widely available either in the original English or else in English translation. Nevertheless, Dalit literature and voices help orient this list, which aims not to be representative but rather to present some highlights. The works are not all by Dalits, for the experience of caste, and the need to critique it, is not their burden alone. From there, the Boom spread to other languages, and now there are significant bodies of work in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and other languages.īelow are eleven works that may serve as an introduction to caste. Many trace the origins of the Boom back to Dalit writing in Marathi, which began to gather force in the Seventies. The Boom represents the entrance of new and vital voices onto India’s literary stage-that is into forms of artistic production from which they had formerly been excluded (of course, Dalits, often musicians and performers, have had their own powerful expressive forms going back centuries). This is one reason “the Boom in Dalit literature”-as some have called it-of the last few decades is so important. One truth about caste, however, is undeniable: in all its manifestations through history it has been the name for a monstrous and irredeemable system of social hierarchy and oppression based on horrific notions of ritual pollution and exclusion. These, though, are only partial truths, for history is replete with examples of the changeability of caste, and in practice there are thousands of castes. What exactly is caste? You might have heard somewhere (perhaps in a high school or college classroom) that there are four ancient and unchanging castes in India ranging from Brahmins at the top, through Kshatriyas and Vaishyas in the middle, to Shudras at the bottom, with a fifth group of so-called Untouchables-the preferred term now is Dalits-even further below. Even so I had to learn, and unlearn, many things about caste while completing my two most recent books: the novel Ghost in the Tamarind, which narrates an inter-caste romance between a Brahmin man and a Dalit woman against the backdrop of powerful anti-caste movements in southern India and a co-edited collection of academic essays on caste and life narratives.
I grew up in India living the reality of caste every day. It is not just one of the most prominent social features of India it is at the heart of many of the past and present fissures of the country.
Nevertheless, to understand India you have to understand caste, whose intricacies are unarguably difficult. Caste is not unique to India, and no country should be reduced to a single social category, no matter how intrinsic a part of its reality.
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