Probing the Present

Dalit writers and critics argued in the 1980s and the 1990s that they were denied recognition in the Telugu public sphere on the basis of caste identities. Yet they now seek recognition in that sphere on the basis of their caste identities. Dalit claims to self-representation in the Telugu public sphere cannot be read just as claims to produce authentic literature. These are claims specifically made for recognition in the public sphere as poets, writers, scholars, and critics. The essay argues that the shift to the new notion and function of contemporary Dalit writing could be conceptualized by mapping larger structural changes, such as the emergence of the new social groups and the rise of Dalit writing, within the Telugu public sphere and through a reading of Dalit discourse, including Dalit poetry, as forms of debates and literary controversies. 

This essays considers the centrality of the iconic twentieth-century Hindi author Munshi Premchand in an emerging Dalit literary critical discourse. It investigates how Premchand has emerged as a singularly powerful cultural symbol around which Dalit literary and political identities are constituted. It is primarily through a critique of Premchand’s writing that Dalit writers and critics seek to intervene in the mainstream Hindi literary sphere. This essay also shows how these literary-critical debates contextualize ongoing processes of renegotiation of identity and representation in the literary spheres of the Dalit public, specifically related to gender. This brief analysis of the rhetoric of critical counterdiscourses in the Hindi Dalit literary sphere reminds us that caste, class, and gendered identities are regularly repositioned by advocates for the competing interests of diverse social collectivities.