Locating and Interrogating the Savarna Trace in Selected Marathi Dalit Short Stories

Abstract

In the present time modern urban India denies the existence of caste prejudices and caste-based discriminations. Educated urban people talk of “caste” as concept which is centuries old and quite outdated. But how far it is true is a matter of question. Since even today when it comes to marriage, educated families look for boys or girls from the same caste, caste consciousness always remain at the back of the mind of an educated youth while forming the friend circle, and caste discrimination becomes more prominent when the so called educated modern urban families do not allow their domestic help to use the same plates. Down the ages it has been observed that the Savarnas or the so-called upper caste people have always occupied the central position in the society and continuously shaped and dictated the fate of the Dalits leaving them no choice to construct their lives according to their own will and wish.   Literature, however, has always been the mimetic platform which has inspired the common people to rethink, reevaluate and bring about reformative and revolutionary changes. The present paper attempts to hear those unheard voices of the Dalits who have long been oppressed by the upper caste people in this casteist Indian society. The present paper analyses two short stories written by two prolific Dalit writers namely Baburao Bagul and Sharankumar Limbale. Through a close reading of Bagul’s “When I Hid My Caste” and Limbale’s “The Dalit Brahmin”, the present paper aims to identify and comprehend how instrumental and phenomenal is the trace of the upper caste in the lives of the Dalits and how this hegemonic savarna social system has caused the unbuilding of the identity which the Dalits have so ambitiously built equal to that of the Savarnas.