Check in every Thursday for a new set of five! This week's selection includes Jevha Mee Jaat Chorli Hoti by Baburao Bagul and Aydaan by Urmilla Pawar.
Jevha Mee Jaat Chorli Hoti by Baburao Bagul
Translated as When I Hid My Caste by Jerry Pinto
Baburao Bagul’s debut collection of short stories, Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli Hoti, revolutionized Dalit literature, bringing to it raw energy and a radical realism—a refusal to understate or dress up gritty, brutal reality. Through the lives of people on the margins, Bagul exposed the pain, horror and rage of the Dalit experience. The unnamed young protagonist of the title story risks his life and job, and conceals his caste from his fellow workers in the hope of bringing about social change.
Chhavani Halte Ahe by Arjun Dangle
This collection of poems was the winner of the Maharashtra State Award. Dangle; a well-known Marathi writer, translator, and editor of seminal works of Maharashtrian Dalit literature was one of the founding members of the Dalit Panthers; a militant organization modelled after the Black Panthers. His critical works are standard reference books in many universities in Maharashtra. For Dangle, Dalit Literature is associated with a movement to bring about a change (from Corpse In the Well: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Autobiographies).
(1977)
Vinda by G.V. Karandikar
Translated as The Sacred Heresy: Poems of Vinda by G.V. Karandikar
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi fellowships and Jnanpith Prize, this is a self-translated collection of poems by a stalwart of Marathi poetry. Karandikar translated works of Aristotle and Shakespeare into English as well.
Devdoot the Angel by Sudhakar Gaidhani
Translated by Om Biyani
In the words of the translator, “The poem has the quality of eloquence. The original is a cascadingly fluent, eminently recitable free verse poem, punctuated by expositions, interspersed with echoes from folk songs and traditional hymns, parodic, sardonic, witty, aphoristic, blunt. Its one-stretch 90 minute readings have enthralled varied categories of listeners. It is not a cloister poem at all. Within a short time of its publication, lines from it were read in a legislative assembly, scrawled on village walls, printed on invitation cards, quoted in lecture halls and commended by India’s ex-deputy Prime Minister Y.B Chavan as containing ‘the wisdom of ages.’”
Aydaan by Urmilla Pawar
Translated as The Weave of my Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs by Maya Pandit
It is an autobiographical novel—one of the first to be written by a Dalit woman—who has been a prominent figure in the Dalit and feminist movements in India. In the foreword to the English translation, Wandana Sonalkar, referring to the title, writes that "the lives of different members of her family, her husband's family, her neighbours and classmates, are woven together in a narrative that gradually reveals different aspects of the everyday life of Dalits, the manifold ways in which caste asserts itself and grinds them down".
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