Joothan: The Eventful Journey of a Dalit Man from Dust to a Man of Substance


Abstract views: 93 / PDF downloads: 61

Authors

  • Subhendu Dutta Research Scholar Department of English North Eastern Hill University, Tura Campus, India

Keywords:

Victim, Marginalised, Untouchability, Casteism, Identity, Challenges

Abstract

A Dalit is a victim of the inexorable caste-system. He has no self respect and is treated like an animal by the members of the upper-caste. A careful observation of a Dalit’s life reveals that a Dalit woman is someone who gets doubly marginalised. On one hand, she is victimised by a frustrated Dalit man while on the other she gets subdued by the caste-centric society. The curse of untouchability has led to the physical repression of the Dalits. With the passage of time, many dalits have raised their voices to change the system. Dalit autobiography is one such medium of protest. It has enriched literature by expressing things related to the varna system. Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is an earnest attempt through which he has registered his protest against a compassionless society manipulated by casteism. The current paper makes an attempt to study Joothan (2007), a Dalit autobiography that shows a man’s suffering and struggle to establish his identity as a member of the society. The paper explores the ways in which the writer has presented his eventful life through various incidents that had shaped his personality. The book is life itself as in every page, the author has given us a thorough description of Dalit life and the challenges associated with it.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Valmiki, Omprakash. Joothan. Trans. Arun Prabha Mukherjee. Kolkata: Samya, 2014. Print.

Abrams, M. H. And Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 10th ed. New Delhi: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.

Hunt, Sarah Beth. Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation. New Delhi: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Ilaiah, Kancha. Why I Am not a Hindu: A Shudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy. Kolkata: Samya, 2012. Print.

Kamble, Baby. The Prisons We Broke. Trans. Maya Pandit. Delhi: Orient Longman, 2014. Print.

Kumar, Raj. Dalit Personal Narratives Reading Caste, Nation and Identity. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010. Print.

Limbale, Sharankumar. The Outcaste. Trans. Santosh Boomkar. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.

Mendelsohn, Oliver and Vicziany Marika. The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print.

Nimgade, Namdeo. In The Tiger’s Shadow: The Autobiography of an Ambedkerite. New Delhi: Navayana Publishers, 2010. Print.

Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English. Singapore: Longman Singapore Publishers, 1990. Print.

Downloads

Published

2017-12-31

How to Cite

Subhendu Dutta. “Joothan: The Eventful Journey of a Dalit Man from Dust to a Man of Substance”. The Creative Launcher, vol. 2, no. 5, Dec. 2017, pp. 35-39, https://thecreativelauncher.com/index.php/tcl/article/view/682.

Issue

Section

Research Articles