Week 4- Aishwarya Ramkumar

Interrogating my Chandal Life- An autobiography of a Dalit 

Manoranjan Byapari is a Dalit writer who is well known for his articles in Bengali literary magazines. Even though he received no formal education, his experiences with life, trauma, and achievement have made him a profound writer, and recipient of the Suprabha Majumdar prize in 2014.  

In his autobiography 'Interrogating My Chandal Life", Byapari traces his journey from a child faced with immense exploitation, hunger, and unemployment to a man who questioned oppressive institutions and emerged as a well-known activist and writer. 

He mentions in his story, a rather profound quote wherein he refers to himself as a man everyone would have seen. He says this in an attempt to point out the inevitable roles that each individual is destined to play, in a society infested with caste and untouchability. He grew up as a refugee child, who had to fight for food and see his sister and father die during to a lack of food and non-access to treatment. A victim of the system, he was a lost adolescent who somehow found his way to the CPIM. He was branded an active Naxalite, owing to his avid participation in the agrarian revolution in the 1970s. He saw this movement as a chance to break away from this system, to revolt and to fight his oppression. Owing to his involvement in this movement, he was charged and sent to prison. It was in prison that he was taught how to read and write, and he opened his mind to many new avenues and ideas through books. After this enlightenment, he claims that he was disillusioned when he joined the CPIM and thought of it as a vehicle to fight capitalism and oppression and move closer to his ideal of an egalitarian society. 

After serving his time in prison, he found employment as a rickshaw plier. He considers this one of his finest decisions as this was how he was introduced to his guide and mentor Mahasweta Devi, an educator, and writer. When he asked her the meaning of a rather complex word, impressed with and encouraging of his endeavor, Mahasweta Devi offered him the opportunity to write in her journal. He accepted and described his journey of writing as something far more difficult than dealing with ammunition and bombs. He finally excelled and had his first publication. 

His story is an inspiration as it traces his journey from trauma to triumph, from disillusionment to clarity, from confusion to cause. In an attempt to realize his cause, he contributed significantly to Dalit literature.