Contextualizing Bengali Dalit Identity: Reflection on Jatin Bala's On Firm Ground

Abstract

Although Dalit identity has been a topic of much deliberation over time and place, such an issue in the context of Bengal is rarely spoken up. It is partly due to the prevalent myth that caste is not an influential aspect of the socio-political landscape of Bengal. Such a myth was purposefully nourished and propagated so as to mark the Dalit intellectual tradition and history of Bengal as absent, thereby sidelining the caste discourse. Due to the monopoly of class-centric and Brahmanical scholarship, the incredible archive of Dalit literature from colonial Bengal failed to draw its due recognition. Even in the post-partition period, there remained the near total absence of translations of Bengali Dalit literature, as a result of which the voice of the Bengali Dalits never reached the outside world. However, there have been a few small-scale initiatives in recent years to translate Bengali Dalit writings, which are important for disseminating the conditions and experiences of Bengali Dalits to a wider audience In fact, the substantial body of Dalit writings in Bengal not only signifies the strong presence of Dalit aesthetics and identity politics in Bengal but also vindicates the fact that the Dalit literary tradition of Bengal has become the victim of the politics of recognition. While referring to Jatin Bala's story "On Firm Ground", the present article attempts to situate Bengali Dalit identity against the backdrop of dominance and resistance.