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president, Sohanpal Sumanakshar, the bdsa first petitioned the ncert to drop the book from the syllabus, or at least to delete the word “Chamār” from copies of the novel distributed to students. Then the bdsa filed suit in the Delhi High Court, arguing that the novel violated the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, passed in 1989, that is meant to protect Dalits from vio lence and public shaming on the basis of their caste.3 According to Sumanakshar, a lack of response to both of these pleas resulted in the book burning as a protest.
The burning of Rangbhūmi should be seen as more than a zealous, reac-tionary response to a lack of administrative attention to the bdsa’s cam-paign to have the book replaced on a school syllabus, or a minor dispute over the use of a single word taken to extremes. Rather, what we might call the Rangbhūmi incident has a much deeper significance when seen in the context of a historical debate among Dalit writers and critics over whether or not Premchand’s lit er a ture can be considered Dalit lit er a ture, or whether non- Dalit writers can ever genuinely represent Dalit experience. It brings to the fore the fundamental dilemma of applying au then tic standards to Dalit identity and experience as well as contested standards of legitimacy for repre-sen ta tions of a Dalit perspective in lit er a ture. Such a determined and vio-lent banishment of Premchand from the fold of Dalit lit er a ture demands a closer look at the po liti cal and social character of the contemporary Hindi Dalit literary sphere. Where are its bound aries? Who is included, and who is excluded? Who has the authority to make these decisions, and how are they contested? How do gender and class interact with caste in negotiating these bound aries? What is perhaps most fascinating about this incident (and others that followed, which are discussed below) are the strong reactions and condemnations it attracted from other Dalit writers, publishers, editors, and critics, and the vigorous debate about it within the alternative discursive space of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere. Im por tant to consider as well is how this incident makes clear the ramifications of the discussions, debates, and per for mances in the Hindi Dalit literary sphere in more mainstream public sphere discourse. Almost a year and a half after the book burning it appeared that the bdsa’s protest had been successful. In January 2006, the ncert agreed to replace the word “Chamār” with “Dalit” and also deci ded to in-clude the works of Dalit writers in the curriculum for the ninth and eleventh grades.
Recently, historians of caste in modern India have increasingly focused on the multiple po liti cal and cultural pro cesses that have contributed to the profound transformation of Dalits from stigmatized subjects into modern
po liti cal agents.4 Central to this modern proj ect of identity construction is the oft- cited critical reclamation and rewriting by the Ambedkarite movement of the very term “Dalit” from its use as a term of subjugation and humilia-tion to a radical asserhumilia-tion of po liti cal awareness and agency. These studies have been exemplary in their employment of local- level historical, legal, and media archives to seek out the rhetorical pro cesses of identity construc-tion. This essay seeks to extend this proj ect of understanding the pro cesses through which the Dalit identity continues to be, as Anupama Rao puts it,
“vibrantly contested” by turning to lit er a ture, in this case the Dalit critique of non- Dalit lit er a ture, as the principal site of contemporary culture wherein Dalits are engaging in fundamental debates about caste, class, and gender.5 In the following discussions of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere’s vari ous criti-cal engagements in recent years with the lit er a ture of Premchand, it becomes clear that Dalit critical discourse is a central site for the shaping of the con-tours of a vital Dalit public sphere.6
There has been substantial and impor tant work on Dalit lit er a ture in vari-ous Indian languages in the past de cade that has made impor tant pro gress in improving our understanding of the role of lit er a ture. Dalits have embraced lit er a ture as a way to imagine new versions of social real ity and reconstruct their communal identity and cultural projects that are intimately paired with the real- world po liti cal mobilization.7 Yet few scholars of Dalit lit er a ture have paid attention to the flip side of Dalit lit er a ture, the Dalit critical engage-ment with an already existing mainstream modern Indian literary sphere in which Dalits have been the objects of repre sen ta tion by non- Dalits for at least the past century. The Hindi Dalit literary sphere is a vibrant site of not only Dalit creative writing— autobiographies, short and long fiction, poetry, and drama— but it is also full of a specific brand of literary criticism, one that evaluates modern Indian lit er a ture, by both Dalits and non- Dalits, from a Dalit perspective. But what the following discussions—of the ways in which this critical gaze has reevaluated, critiqued, and, in one very power ful ex-ample, literally rewritten Premchand’s nationalist- era realist prose of social consciousness— will attest to is the diversity of perspectives and concerns in the Dalit literary sphere. It is in the friction between these subject positions where the work of constituting Dalit identities is achieved. The productive work of Dalit literary criticism is in revealing those social ideologies that have become normalized in, among other places, literary repre sen ta tion and against which a Dalit counterpublic must push. Dalit lit er a ture and literary criticism therefore function as a corrective space where the intimate connec-tion between ficconnec-tion and the construcconnec-tion of real ity is laid bare.
The burning of Rangbhūmi in 2004 and the discussions about identity and authenticity it has engendered in the Hindi Dalit literary sphere warrant significant attention as a cultural per for mance, one that can provide insights into the ways in which this alternative public sphere engages, opposes, and redefines the limits of traditionally elite Hindi literary discourse and sociopo-liti cal rhe toric. The public burning of Rangbhūmi in India’s capital city, point-edly enacted on the 125th anniversary of Premchand’s birth, was an attack by the bdsa on one of India’s most revered literary heroes. For the bdsa to take on the monumental figure of Premchand in such public and literally incendi-ary fashion is a power ful testament to the identification of the group’s mem-bers with a sense of self- definition and purpose that has been constructed at variance with the normative northern Indian public imagination.
A towering figure in the modern Hindi literary mainstream, Premchand has also come to inhabit special, and more contested, terrain in the Hindi Dalit literary sphere in the years since the bdsa’s burning of Rangbhūmi and the subsequent acquiescence of the ncert to the demands of the bdsa. A close analy sis of the vari ous debates that have sprung from this radical sym-bolic act allows us to understand the nature of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere as a space for the complex negotiations of vari ous Dalit identities. I assert that these debates raise impor tant questions about the politics of collective identity formation among marginalized communities whose members are intent on making critical interventions in mainstream public discourse.
Rather than characterize all of Dalit writing—be it poetry, fiction, auto-biography, criticism, or journalism—as a singular mode of oppositional dis-course, it is far more accurate and productive to consider the Hindi Dalit literary sphere to be a space where dif er ent discourses can encounter each other and exchange ideas— discourses that are all relevant to the contempo-rary Dalit experience in Indian society and that do not find a place in the discursive contours of the dominant public. The Hindi Dalit literary sphere is constituted by the existence of debates and discussions about Dalit experi-ences, aesthetics, politics, and so on. It is a space for discourse that is unlike that in wider and more dominant public spheres for the very reason that it privileges above all others the voices of Dalits and entertains topics of dis-course that are ignored in more mainstream discursive spaces. Specifically—
and this is most exemplified by the final example of the Dalit reevaluation of Premchand examined in this essay— the Hindi Dalit literary sphere engages lit er a ture itself as a corrective space, ever conscious of the perilously close connection between literary repre sen ta tion and the constitution of social real ity.
The debates about Premchand provide a context in which to negotiate dis-parate subidentities and agendas within the Dalit public sphere that fracture particularly along lines of class and gender. It is through this framework, then, that I approach the discussion about Premchand’s writing in Dalit literary counterdiscourse of the past de cade from a variety of angles. First, tracing public debates among Dalit critics in the months following the Rangbhūmi incident in 2004, I will consider the employment of the critical concept of
“Dalit consciousness” as it applies to a par tic u lar reading of Premchand’s “The Shroud” (“Kafan,” 1936) a story that is broadly criticized in Dalit counterdis-course, while widely appreciated in the Indian literary mainstream as a sensi-tive portrayal of the societal degradation of untouchables. Next I will consider a growing articulation of a Dalit feminist rhetorical identity as it is refracted through continued debates over “The Shroud,” debates that emerged after the publication of a particularly controversial book by the Dalit critic Dharamveer in 2005, and I will weigh the responsibilities of Dalit writers in the twinned projects of representing the real ity of Dalit life and imagining the utopian possibilities of a transformed social order. Fi nally, I will profer the example of a short story by the Dalit author Ajay Navaria, first published in 2009 and included in his 2012 short story collection, Yes Sir, that boldly engages with the “prob lem” with Premchand and ofers readers a completely new version, not just of his major works, but also of the author himself.
Premchand and the Dalit Hindi Sphere
The interventions of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere in the analy sis of main-stream lit er a ture and literary figures, in moves both literary and nonliterary, are key to constituting that sphere as a provocative and power ful alternative public in its own right. Thus, by choosing such a potent cultural icon as Premchand as the center for debates about issues of inclusion and exclusion and authority and identity, Dalit writers are defining the very bound aries of the Dalit public sphere. Key issues that arise in the renewed debate over the significance of the bdsa’s action that erupted in the Hindi Dalit literary sphere after the book burning in 2004 include the charge that Premchand’s lit er a ture lacks realism; that he privileges class over caste in his social critique (a perspective at odds with Ambedkarite politics); and fi nally that as a non- Dalit and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, he is incapable of Dalit authorial authenticity. In between the printed lines of debate and polemic and in the shadows of reasoned discussion, personal attacks, and sometimes outlandish claims lies the negotiation of the bound aries of the Dalit public sphere, along
with answers to questions of inclusion and exclusion that are fundamental to its construction.
The discourse of cultural symbols, both celebratory and critical, is a prac-tice that intimately engages the representative symbol and its constitutive public in a reflexive pro cess of construction and reconstruction. There are high stakes for members of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere in defining a re-lationship with Premchand, in embracing him or rejecting him as a Dalit author, a member of that same counterdiscursive sphere, because the whole of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere will then in some sense be known, under-stood, and assessed by its members’ stance toward his texts within the more dominant mainstream. There is some danger in uncritically embracing him in the hope that his name and status will confer respectability on the lin-eage of Dalit lit er a ture, if, as we will see, the mode of his repre sen ta tion of Dalit characters does not fit the nascent ideology of the Hindi Dalit literary aesthetic, one that is still finding its feet in the first de cades of an or ga nized Hindi Dalit literary sphere. Yet there is also danger in rejecting Premchand, in asserting that only authors who can claim a Dalit identity from birth can have authority over and access to Dalit repre sen ta tion. In this case, Dalit writers may be charged with isolating and radicalizing their literary sphere, limiting others’ access to it and thereby reducing its integrative and transfor-mative possibilities.
Premchand’s prose has long been celebrated among mainstream audi-ences as the vanguard of socially conscious realism in Indian lit er a ture.8 And in Premchand’s realism, sometimes a corrupt system breeds corrupt victims, as in his story “The Shroud.” The story is about two Dalits, Ghisu and Madhav, a father and son, both from the Chamār caste. When the story opens, Ghisu and Madhav are sitting outside their small hut eating roasted potatoes and trying to ignore the screams of Madhav’s wife inside, who is dying in child-birth. Neither will go inside to see her out of a certain amount of shame, and also because each man fears that the other will guzzle more than his fair share of potatoes if left alone. Fi nally, their bellies full, they lie down to sleep in front of the dying fire. Premchand explains that the two are known as the laziest people in the village, and that in their pursuit of doing as little work as pos si ble, they constantly live on the edge of starvation. He writes, “in a so-ciety where the circumstances of people who labored night and day was not much better than [Ghisu and Madhav’s], that such a consciousness should be born among those who, compared to the farmers, knew how to profit from their own impotence, and who were at times almost prosperous, should come as no surprise.”9 When Madhav’s wife and unborn child are found dead
in the morning, Ghisu and Madhav set out begging for the money to pay for the wood and shroud required for the cremation. They manage to collect five rupees and arrange the wood, but they balk at spending the rest of their money on a shroud that will only be burned up with the bodies. Instead, they spend the money on liquor and fried snacks, and as they become more and more drunk, they alternately praise Madhav’s wife for her gift of abundance after death and fall into spells of grief at her difficult and joyless life. The story ends with father and son drinking themselves into oblivion, and showing no final re spect to the corpse of Madhav’s wife.
The pages of Dalit literary journals in the months after the burning of Rangbhūmi subjected Premchand to the critical gaze of the Dalit public sphere, and many Dalit writers severely criticized Premchand’s depiction of these two Chamār characters as heartless and lazy drunks, paying little attention—
unlike other critics—to the critique of the system of institutionalized in-equality that produces such characters.10 Writing in the prominent Dalit lit-erary journal Apeksha, Sumanakshar asserted that “in six- lakh [six hundred thousand] villages in the country today you can go into any Dalit settlement and not find a single man with such a lack of sympathy.”11 He accused Prem-chand of creating negative Dalit characters only to win the praise of elite readers who would exult in finding confirmation of their opinion of Dalits as slovenly, inhuman creatures. Such characters are not realistic, according to Sumanakshar, whose notion of realism is inextricable from the exigencies of honor and forthrightness outlined in the concept of “Dalit consciousness.”12 His notion of realism is also tightly intertwined with an idealistic view of Dalit society as ultimately humane and compassionate, and Sumanakshar believes that any “realistic” Dalit character would be representative of that ideal. He regards Premchand’s depiction of Ghisu and Madhav as devious and selfish, therefore— showing not individual characters but false repre-sentatives of a Dalit community under vicious attack by a non- Dalit writer interested in catering to the casteist ideology of the dominant public.13
The assessment of au then tic realism is made in Dalit readings of Prem-chand by using the critical lens of Dalit consciousness. The first line of Sharan-kumar Limbale’s Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Lit er a ture reads, “by Dalit lit er a ture I mean writing about Dalits by Dalit writers with a Dalit conscious-ness.” He goes on to define Dalit consciousness: “The Dalit consciousness in Dalit lit er a ture is the revolutionary mentality connected with strug gle.
Ambedkarite thought is the inspiration for this consciousness. Dalit con-sciousness makes slaves conscious of their slavery. Dalit concon-sciousness is an impor tant seed for Dalit lit er a ture, it is separate and distinct from the
con-sciousness of other writers. Dalit lit er a ture is demarcated as unique because of this consciousness.”14 Omprakash Valmiki writes of Dalit consciousness in Dalit Sahitya ka Soundarya Shastra (Aesthetics of Dalit lit er a ture): “Dalit consciousness (chetnā) is deeply concerned with the question, ‘Who am I?
What is my identity?’ The strength of character of Dalit authors comes from these questions.”15 “Dalit consciousness” is an idea based on the liberation ideology of B. R. Ambedkar expressed in a text in which a Dalit character is fully cognizant of the religious and po liti cal origins of his exploited social status and, rather than accepting that status, is enlivened by a desire to strug-gle for freedom— not just for himself, but for his whole community. It is an expression of loyalty to the Ambedkarite message of the human dignity of Dalits. It is Dalit experience rendered realistically. But for many Dalit writers, then, the question of whether the Dalit experience has been depicted realisti-cally also depends on how honorably the Dalit character is portrayed.16
According to some, a lack of Dalit consciousness can come from confu-sion between caste and class- related oppresconfu-sion. Omprakash Valmiki— one
According to some, a lack of Dalit consciousness can come from confu-sion between caste and class- related oppresconfu-sion. Omprakash Valmiki— one