Towards a Theory of Dalit Literature

The meaning Dalit literature acquires must be seen through the prism of the “historical silence” of its writers and their previous generations. This historical silence, when manifested through words, Dalit literature being its embodiment, emerged through theoretical frameworks. To understand Dalit literature in its profundity, it becomes necessary for us to pay keen attention not only to what Dalit writers have been writing, but also to the writers who have argued about the existence of a theory of Dalit literature, which has hardly gained any recognition among literary critics in India and abroad.

Three writers from Maharashtra, Baburao Bagul, Sharad Patil, and Sharankumar Limbale, have helped construct a theory of Dalit literature. Bagul’s 1981 work, Dalit Saahitya: Aajche Krantividnyan (Dalit Literature: Today’s Science of Revolution), Patil’s 1988 work, Abrahmani Sahityanche Saundaryashastra (Aesthetics of non-Brahminical Literature), and Limbale’s Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature (2004) are three major works that argued the case for a theory of Dalit literature.