• Dalit writings have a sense of defiance, identity and revolt. The struggles that Dalit writers have had to go through provide them with intellectual clarity and self-confidence.
• The essays in this collection discuss themes from various regions.
• A piece on the dilemmas that a translator faces delves into the problems and politics of representation of the subaltern in an Amitav Ghosh novel.
• Another chapter makes a comparative study of Dalit and Holocaust (Nazi Germany) literatures which share experiences of subjugation, suffering and torture.
• An analysis of Narendra Jadhav’s memoir Outcaste  that  travels from ‘bitter memories’ to ‘better dreams’ across three generations finds Dalits attaining recognition and success against dreadful odds.  A look at some Bengali Dalit poems shows how revolutionary anger is channelled to achieve an aesthetic effect. The creation of a forum for marginalised women writers in Andhra Pradesh is vividly described.

Sankar Prasad Singha is Professor at the Department of English, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal.

Indranil Acharya is Associate Professor, Department of English, at Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal.

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements by the Editors

Dalit Literature: An Introduction

1. ‘The Petty Done, the Undone Vast’: Dalit Literature in Translation 
   G. K. Das
2. Shattered Amphora and Translation of Dalit Poetry: Re-configuring the Myth of the Origin Angshuman Kar
   
3. Dalit Literature and its Translation: A Critical Enquiry                    
   Raj Kumar
4. Enhancing the Epistemology of Dalit Literature: A Comparative study of Dalit and Holocaust Literatures
   Panchanan Dalai
5. Hierarchy of Exploitation amongst Indigenous Communities: A Reading of Anil Gharai’s ‘The Almond Flowers’
   Indranil Acharya
6. Understanding Rajbanshi Cultural Politics: Moving from the Oral to the Literary
   G. N. Ray
7. Classical Realism, Dalit Ontology and the Autobiographical Self in Joothan and The Outcaste
   Priyanka Srivastava
8. Living in Translation: The Translator’s Dilemma in The Hungry Tide
   Raja Basu
9. Politics and Poetics of Writing/Translating Dalit
   Harish Narang
10. Dalits of Bengal: An Appraisal of the Two Paradigms on Their Origin
    Achintya Biswas
11. An Odyssey from Bitter Memories to Better Dreams: Language and Identity-Politics in Narendra Jadhav’s Outcaste
    Asis De
12. Bengali Dalit Poetry Past and Present: A Critical Study
    Manohar Mouli Biswas
13. From Alisamma Women’s Collective to Mattipulu: Dalit Women’s Journey towards Solidarity
    K. Suneetha Rani
14. Between Anger and Aesthetics: Rhetoric of Restraint in Recent Bengali Dalit Poetry
    Tajuddin Ahmed