Nayonika Sen - Week 4

Brief Summary of Joothan, written by Om Prakash Valmiki 


Autobiographies are usually stories of success and achievements. One’s life must be ‘extraordinary’ for it to be worthy of being written about. What then entails a separate ‘Dalit’ autobiography, different from any other kind? The Dalit narrative is rooted in hardship, struggle, strife, grief, hurt, and discrimination. It doesn’t have a ‘happy ending’; there is no end. The word joothan means left-over and it is symbolic of how Dalits are compelled to live their lives, as an unwanted residue of an otherwise ‘structured’ society. 
The autobiography of Valmiki follows his suffering from childhood, struggles of blatant humiliation and discrimination in the classroom where his teachers would actively humiliate him and try to reinforce his inferior status. His father had to go door-to-door begging the upper-caste Tyagis for permission to send his son to school to learn. The strongest act of resistance he claimed was when he saw an incarnation of ‘Durga Maa’ in his mother, when people of their caste asked for more for the work they had done, and the Tyagis had taunted them for not only taking a basket of joothan but asking for food for their children. His mother emptied the basket in fury in front of Sukhdev Singh. 

He went through a period when his ‘name’ was a matter of concern. It was a difficult decision between retaining and reclaiming his Dalit identity and avoiding discrimination and humiliation from the upper-castes. Dr. Dharamvir told him that ‘Om Prakash’ is nobody without being Om Prakash Valmiki. As mentioned earlier, there are no happy endings. The autobiography ends with Valmiki traveling with his wife on a train where they encounter and eventually get well acquainted with a prosperous-looking family. And the wife asks them their caste. When he says ‘Bhangi’, there is silence. And the silence persists throughout the remaining journey; an oppressive, disgusted silence. There is no ‘relief’, there is no ‘joy’, their existence was rooted in rejection. 

Nayonika Sen

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