The political and aesthetic significance of contemporary Dalit literature

This article attempts to offer a critique of cultural critic D. R. Nagaraj’s theoretical approach to the analysis of contemporary Dalit literature. According to Nagaraj, contemporary Dalit literature is a literature of decultured Dalits which articulates rights and entitlements in liberal polity. Rejecting claims of a separate aesthetics for Dalit literature, he locates Dalit literary contributions in the broad sphere of Indian culture and argues for a new aesthetics for Indian culture. His aim is to recover from the Indian tradition the civilizational contribution of Dalit writers, such as folk and oral cultural forms. This framework undermines the theoretical innovation and aesthetic significance of contemporary Dalit literature. Proposing Dalit literature as a form of contemporary politics in the sphere of modern Indian literary culture, Marathi Dalit critic and writer Baburao Bagul presents Dalit literature as a modern, written, and Ambedkarite tradition that reconfigured modernity, invented new modes of writing, and imagined Dalit as a generic identity, lived experience, and perspective in modern Indian literary history. Dalit literature is human and democratic, Bagul argues, as it draws on the humanist legacy of Buddha, Christ, Phule, Ambedkar, and also the Western Enlightenment. A reading of some Dalit texts, following the discussion of Bagul, illustrates the limitations of Nagaraj’s approach