Maitrey Singh - Week 4

Week 4
Submission 4/10
Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit by Manoranjan Byapari
The book is about a Bengali Dalit and elaborates on the life of this person,Byapari, who is considered a Chandal or the lower caste who is portrayed as a poor, beaten by caste going through his life in socio political and tragic conditions. Byapari tries to shed light on what he considered to be the highest degree of pain that is being poor and Dalit at the same time and this intersectionality becoming the master to his puppet. The first two chapters East Bengal, Partition and West Bengal” and “Dandakaranya Rehabilitation Project, Food Riots and Calcutta” talk about the tragedies which took place after the partition in the life of a Dalit Refugee who was born in a house which consisted of eight other brothers. The autobiography also delves in the origin of the word “chandal”. The British used to call the Shudras “chandals” during the late 1800s. The author then goes on to talk about the Hindu Muslim Riots which made a Dalit’s life even more miserable and the rehabilitation projects where the Dalits were relocated to camps in which all the Dalits had to suffer fatal diseases including the Plague. 
The rest of the four chapters talk about the life Byapari lived after he ran away from home and fights his way to make any kind of living whatsoever just to stay alive. In these chapters he sheds light on one specific instance including a Brahmin cook Amulaya Thakur and an upper caste havaldar who sexually abused him twice. The autobiography continues to elaborate on the injustices and accusation Byapari had to face due to his caste. The autobiography does a great job in displaying the disparity which exists between two humans belonging to the same place but just because their name is different one has no agency over his own life and is thrashed around by the puppet show that is life for Byapari. 

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