Abhinav Singh-Week 5

Abhinav Singh
20141297




                                                                                DALIT AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Autobiographies are a part of a literature that brings personal accounts of life on public domain. They incite others too to relate with their human emotions and circumstances with the actual reality experienced by the autobiography-writer. Autobiographies serve different purpose in several times and if autobiographies of Dalit writers are called as narrative of pain, it carries certain historical truth. In an autobiography, its a traditional trend to glorify the self and boast about the extra-ordinary quality of oneself. But that changes at the hands of a Dalit writer. When he/she writes, its about denial of opportunities, even to measure as a ordinary creature. The self becomes the representative of all other Dalits who were crushed down and kept down due to their Dalit identity.
Though not all but few autobiographies have touched upon the difficulty of women among Dalits. they're unequal partners and are further down the ladder of caste and sub-caste. They bear the burden of patriarchy, moreover as low caste. Aesthetics have also been debated among Dalit writers and demanded different parameters of aesthetics to evaluate the dalit writings. Theirs argument is that since Dalit writers do not have access to education and high literature, so unlike other writers they portray reality which torments them and live sort of a beastly creature.
These autobiographies are filled with filthy abuses because the writers are abused several times over for intimidation, they cannot write poetically about the wonder of nature and neither can they depict stories of romantic love in their writing because the fundamental struggle of survival and dignity are foremost for them. Only hope for them was within the big cities, where castes are on the wane, but as autobiographies reveal in cities also their struggle continues. 
Dalit writing draws its ideological strength from Ambedkar's struggle. Their basic philosophy is that the real picture of a Dalit's pain and anguish can only be captured by a Dalit. Which is why writers have taken to writing autobiography for they see it as the most potent weapon. Therefore, unlike other fictional writings, autobiographies have flourished most among the Dalits.


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