The correspondent speaks about his experience of his participation in a seminar on Dalit literature in Bombay. Since it was the first get-together of Marathi and Gujarati Dalit writers and critics it discussed about the problems that the Dalit writers faced especially in Gujarat. Gujarat writers had published a magazine called Akrosh and soon became known worldwide due to the ban of one of its issues. The seminar was a great success because the participants made serious effort to go into the social and historical genesis of Dalit protest in Gujarat. The speakers went into the history of Dalit consciousness and Dalit movement and observed that Gujarat has lacked continuous movement for social reform and protest. The Gujarat movement had better understanding of the questions of, does and should the rejection of ‘Brahmanical’ literature necessarily involve turning one’s back on traditional literature as literature and language. The seminar also discussed about the critical estimate of the trends in the Dalit literature. The Gujarat Dalit literature was less dominated by Ambedkar and his personality and the movement appeared more open minded. The main stream literatures relate to a world of experience which is very small and narrow but the Dalit writers were unaware of a bigger world of which even their areas of experience are a part. In this article the writer feels about the narrow mindedness of the Dalit writers.
Date of Reading: 16/06/16
Bibliography: G. P. D,Dalit Literature, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jan. 16, 1982), pp. 61-62, Published by: Economic and Political Weekly.
An Artistic Atelier 