This online roundtable is a pre-conference event on Dalit magazines with editors and subject experts from West Bengal and Maharashtra. It is being organised in association with the Network on Dalit and Adivasi Literature and Bonington Gallery as part of our Formations Series.
Conceptualised to draw the attention of researchers working in this field within and outside India, the roundtable will be moderated by Dr Nicole Thiara and Prof Judith Misrahi-Barak.
Funded by the Research Seed Grant Scheme, GITAM (Deemed to be University), the project on Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines intends to critically engage with the underrepresented area of Dalit Periodicals within the broad research field of Dalit Studies. It aims to trace and collect periodicals published in Bangla and Marathi (1950-2000) and look into their publication process, circulation and readership.
Besides, it aims to build a digital repository of Bangla and Marathi periodicals to facilitate easier access, a historiographic narrative on the evolution of Dalit literary periodicals in Marathi and Bangla and encourage translations of Dalit writings published in these periodicals.
As part of the outreach programme, a three-day conference is being organised in GITAM, Hyderabad, titled “Vernacular Periodicals and Dalit Writing: Production, Circulation and Reception” from 1st March to 3rd March 2023 in association with the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. This conference aims to bring together editors, subject experts, early career scholars and graduate students to initiate a conversation across Indian languages and to reflect upon the vernacular Dalit periodicals critically.
The discussion will primarily focus on:
1) the possibility and scope of research in the area of vernacular periodicals and Dalit writing,
2) the challenges in such research and
3) the significance of such research.
A retired central government employee, Dhurjati Naskar, is an essayist, poet, and novelist from South 24 Parganas of West Bengal. He has been involved in editing periodicals since the early 1970s. Some of the periodicals edited by him are: Bangla Maati (Soil of Bengal), Dakkhin Barasat Sahitya Patra (South Barasat Literary Magazine), Baridhati, Dakhina Path, Baruipur Sambad (Barupipur News), Bharatiya Pundra Samachar (Indian Pundra News) and Pundra-Poundra Badhav. These periodicals, predominantly literary, also published essays concerning the history, ethnonational and folk traditions of the Poundra community. He is a member of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sangstha (Kolkata), West Bengal Dalit Sahitya Sabha and a founding member of Dr Bhusan Chandra Naskar Archive. He has been a recipient of the West Bengal Sahitya Akademy Award in the year 2019.
Prof. Sipra Mukherjee teaches English at West Bengal State University. Her areas of interest are religion, caste, folklore and orality. She has been a visiting fellow at the department of English University of Hyderabad, School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. She has received many national and international research and travel grants. Some of them are – ICSSR research grant for a research project on ‘Interpreting Folklore: Understanding the relationship between folklore, religion and caste in East India’, 2013-2015; a Research Grant from the University Grant Commission, India, ‘Faiths in the Margins’, 2009; Luce Grant from Comparative Religion Programme, on Religion and Human Security: Negotiating the Power of Religious Non-State Actors, University of Washington, 2008. Besides her research on the intersection between caste and religion, she has been an avid translator. Her translated works include the Autobiography of Dalit writer Manoranjan Byapari, Interrogating My Chandal Life, 2018, and Under My Black Skin Flows a Red River: Translations of Dalit Writings for Bengal, 2021, which she co-edited along with Prof. Debi Chatterjee. She is also a member of Ebong Alap, a voluntary non-profit society which works with youth to encourage critical thought.
Dr Asit Biswas is an Associate Professor of English in West Bengal Education Service, currently posted at P.R. Thakur Government College, Thakurnagar, West Bengal. He completed his PhD research on the film adaptation of western texts in Bengali films from the University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal. He has published seventeen research papers, six Dalit short stories, two Dalit plays and some poems in Bengali. He is the co-editor of the book Shotoborsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya; Dalit Poems, Dalit Literary Horizon (translation of Manohar Mouli Biswas’s book, Dalit Sahityer Digboloy), Songs and Dialogues from Bengal in English Translation and Dalit Protest Unbridled: Two Dozen Plays of Raju Das. He also published the book Pardon Not: Marichjhampi Massacre, a translation of the novel Kshama Nei by Nakul Mallik. Recently his translation of Kalyani Thakur’s novella Andhar Bil O Kichhu Manush (Andhar Bil and Some People) has been published by Zubaan. At present, he is translating a Bangla epic.
Urmila Pawar is a widely known Indian (Marathi) writer. She has been active in the Dalit and feminist movements in India since her early life. She was a part of the Marathi Dalit feminist magazine Aamhi Maitarni which was published during the 90s. She has eleven publications to her credit including the popular Marathi short story collection translated into English as Mother Wit by Prof. Veena Deo (Hamline University, USA), published by Zuban. Her Autobiographical narrative Aydaan translated into English as The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs by Prof. Maya Pandit remains most popular even today (it has been translated into other Indian languages as well – Hindi, Kannada and Tamil). Many of her short stories have been prescribed in the syllabus framework of Indian universities as well as universities abroad (Colombia University, USA).
A bilingual poet, translator, editor, critic and columnist, Dr Chandrakant Patil writes in Marathi and Hindi and occasionally in English. He has several publications – collections of Marathi poems such as Nissandarbh, Ittambhoot, Bayaka ani Itar Kvita, and a collection of Hindi poems Apni Bhasha Ke Sameep to mention a few. Besides, he has also published six critical essay collections and twenty-five collections in Marathi and Hindi translations. He is popularly known for his active engagement in the Little Magazine Movement in Maharashtra during the 1960s and 1970s. He acted as one of the editors and publishers of the highly discussed little magazine Wacha. Besides, he was also one of the founder members of Wacha Prakashan that published the first collections of avant-garde poets of Marathi, such as Bhalchandra Nemade, Manohar Oak, Satish Kalasekar, Dilip Chitre etc. He has been a recipient of national and state-level awards for his various contributions – Sahitya Akademi Translation award (1991), Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Akademi (1994), Bhasha Vruddhi Sammaan, Govt. Of Maharashtra (2022).
Prof. Dilip Chavan is an academic scholar and a professor of English at SRTM University, Nanded, Maharashtra. His doctoral work, Language Politics under Colonialism: Caste, Class and Language Pedagogy in Western India, was published as a book by Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars in 2013. He writes in Marathi and has published nine books on contemporary social issues such as language, caste, class, imperialism, and women’s education. Some of his notable works are – Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar ani Jativyawastha Ant (1998); Shikshan: Jatvargiya Vastav ani Samatavadi Paryay (1999); Stree Shikshanacha Sangharsha (2007); Dr Ambedkar ani Bhartiya Shikshanatil Jatisanghrsha (2003); Samrajyavad: Bhasha ani Sanskriti (2010); Corona ani Stree-Purush Vishamatecha Prashna (2022). He also has a keen interest in translations from English to the Marathi language (he is working on the Marathi translation of Braj Ranjan Mani’s book Debrahminising History). Besides, he has been a part of the widely read fortnightly ‘Pariwartanacha Watsaru’ as its executive editor. He has been associated with academic institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore.
A graduate from the University of Hyderabad, Dr Sayantan Mondal is currently an Asst. Professor in the department of English at GITAM, Hyderabad (Deemed to be University). His areas of interest are Reading-Print readership, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Dalit Studies and Translation. Sayantan has been an Erasmus Mundus Fellow at the University of Oxford during 2015-16. He has received the University of Heidelberg Travel Grant 2015 and the University Grants Commission Travel grant 2016. Presently, he is working on a research project titled “Mapping Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines”, along with Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman. This project aims to trace Bangla and Marathi Periodicals and the exchange of ideas on the caste question. Some of his published works are – Of Caste-Class and Dalit Writing, 2015; An Introduction to the World of Monoranjan Byapari, 2015; Language and its People: A Comparative insight into the Kurdish and Rohingya Genocide, 2019; Prantik theke Dalit: Nandonikatar Rajniti o Dalit Chetona (From Marginalised to Dalit: Politics of Aesthetics and Dalit Consciousness), 2022; Migration and Cultural Identity: An Introduction, 2022.
Having received a doctorate in English (Cultural Studies) from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFL-U), Hyderabad, Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman is an assistant professor of English at GITAM (Deemed to be University), Hyderabad campus. His doctoral research, Religious Conversion and Dalit Experience: A Study of the Meanings of Conversion among the Neo-Buddhists, emphasises the phenomenon of Dalit conversion to Buddhism and studies the conversion movement in Nanded district (Marathwada region, Maharashtra) through collecting and analysing historical records – pamphlets, posters, record books etc. He is a recipient of a prestigious Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, doctoral fellowship for his doctoral research. He has been publishing in the area of Dalit Studies/literature on issues such as caste, colonial intervention into the caste question, Dalit identity and culture etc. Currently, he is involved in a research project, “Mapping Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines”, along with Dr Sayantan Mondal.
This free, online-in conversation event with writer Gogu Shyamala is part of our Formations series, hosted in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre. This segment of Formations, CADALFEST, relates to the Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival (CADALFEST) taking place across India and in Nottingham. CADALFEST is the first international festival series dedicated to artists whose work creatively resists caste discrimination and social exclusion in India.
This event will take start at 4 pm (GMT) and 8.30 pm Indian Standard Time.
Gogu Shyamala will discuss her literary and academic work to mark the republication of her short story collection Father May be an Elephant, and Mother Only a Small Basket, But…, by Tilted Axis Press in March 2022. Her focus on the perspective of Dalit women and children as well as her stories’ celebration of Dalit strength and culture will be explored. Gogu Shyamala will tell us about her choice of, and experimentation with, the short story form, and how she sees her role as writer, academic and activist. We will also discuss land relations and the link to caste, sexual violence, inter-caste love and other key concerns of her fiction and academic writing.
Gogu Shyamala will be in conversation with Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Bethan Evans, Judith Misrahi-Barak and Nicole Thiara and the session will conclude with Q&A with the online audience via YouTube chat.
Tilted Axis is a non-profit press publishing mainly work by Asian writers, translated into a variety of Englishes. Founded in 2015, Tilted Axis are based in the UK, a state whose former and current imperialism severely impacts writers in the majority world. This position informs their practice, which is also an ongoing exploration into alternatives – to the hierarchisation of certain languages and forms, including forms of translation; to the monoculture of globalisation; to cultural, narrative, and visual stereotypes; to the commercialisation and celebrification of literature and literary translation. Tilted Axis values the work of translation and translators through fair, transparent pay, public acknowledgement, and respectful communication. They are dedicated to improving access to the industry, through translator mentorships, paid publishing internships, open calls and guest curation.
Dr. Gogu Shyamala is one of the foremost contemporary Dalit writers in India, as an author, researcher, editor, and biographer writing in Telugu.
Her English collection of short stories, Father may be an elephant and mother only a small basket, but… is a landmark in Indian literature; the collection was also translated into German and some of the short stories into French. She produced an anthology known as Nallapoddu (Black Dawn), which is a collection of 51 Dalit women’s writings (from 1921 to 2002) from across the Telugu-speaking Indian federal states. It has one of critical acclaim in literary world. She wrote a biography of the first Dalit woman legislator, Cabinet member and Endowment Minister in the former state of Andhra Pradesh, India. She worked on domestic violence and Dalit women. She is the co-editor of Anthology of Dalit writing in Telugu published by Oxford University Press. She has participated in the World Conference against Racism, and in literary events in Australia, Germany and Jaipur. Mentoring rural students on access to Higher Education and researching specific causes for dropouts, Gogu Shyamala also made documentary film called Memetla Saduvaale (Merit Interrupted).
Her writings are part of the syllabus in higher education in several Indian states and as well as the University of San Francisco in the USA. Her writings were translated into Indian languages such as Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati. She holds a PhD in the area of Dalit Women Biographies, Gender and Caste in Telangana, from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She received several awards including Gandapenderam, she been worked as Research Fellow at Anveshi and as residence fellow at IEA Nantes in France on Dalit folklore and art farms. At present she is working as an independent scholar researching and writing biographies of rural Dalit women. She studies Dalit women’s literature and the history and mythology of Dalit literature as well as collecting palm leaf manuscripts of Dalit Puranas for contemporary scholarly studies.
Sowjanya Tamalapakula holds a PhD in the area of Violence, Gender and Caste from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
Areas of study include gender and intersectionalities with particular emphasis on the issues of Dalit women. She is currently teaching and guiding in the School of Gender Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. She teaches intersectionalities, sexuality, cinema, media and women’s writing for post-graduate students. She has published in various national and inter-national journals on gender, caste, cinema and media. Her recent paper ‘Caste-ing Queer Identities’ published in NUJS-Law Review journal is a critique on how caste operates in the queer intimate spaces.
Another paper titled ‘Politics of Inter-caste Marriage among Dalits: “Political as Personal”’ has been published in Asian Survey, University of California, Berkeley. She has been invited to contribute a paper ‘“Whatever Happened to Jogta, Jogtin?: Instrumentality of Religion in non-Brahman Cultural Assertion and Marginalization of Dalits’ for the Journal of Critical Philosophy of Race, Penn State University. She contributes regularly to Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle, The Wire, The News Minute, The Citizen, The Print, Youth Ki Awaz, Velivada and Roundtable India.
Bethan Evans is a recently qualified Doctor of Philosophy in English, specialising in black British literature, specifically the black British short story and its position in the publishing industry. Her thesis is titled ‘Publishing Black British Short Stories: The Potential and Place of a Marginalised Form’. Bethan has written articles for the Literary Encyclopedia and the Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism, and is currently co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, due for publication in 2025. She is the Project Officer for ‘On Page and On Stage: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts’.
Judith Misrahi-Barak is Associate Professor at University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France, where she teaches English and postcolonial literatures. Her prime areas of specialization are Caribbean and Indo- and Sino-Caribbean literatures in English, diaspora and migrant writing. She has published numerous articles and book chapters in edited collections, among which Tracing the New Indian Diaspora (Om Dwivedi, ed. Rodopi, 2014); Turning Tides: Caribbean Intersections in the Americas and Beyond (Heather Cateau and Milla Riggio, eds. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2019); or Windrush (1948) and Rivers of Blood (1968): Legacy and Assessment (Trevor Harris, ed. Routledge, 2019). She is General Editor of the series PoCoPages (Pulm, Montpellier). Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean is the latest volume (2020).
http://www.pulm.fr/index.php/collections/horizons-anglophones/pocopages.html
Her latest publications are a chapter on Edwidge Danticat’s short stories (Bloomsbury Handbook on Edwidge Danticat, 2021), an article in a special issue of The Caribbean Quarterly on Sino-Caribbean literature (2021), and Kala pani Crossings: Revisiting 19th century Migrations from India’s Perspective (co-edited with Ashutosh Bhardwaj, Routledge, 2021).
Her monograph entitled Entre Atlantique et océan Indien: les voix de la Caraïbe anglophone was published with Classiques Garnier (Paris, 2021).
Dalit literatures are among her more recent interests, and she was Co-Investigator on an AHRC Research Network series on ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’ (2014-16) and is now Co-Investigator on an AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement on ‘On Stage and on Page: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts’ (2020-23).
Caste in Cinema, co-edited with Joshil K. Abraham, is forthcoming with Routledge (November 2022).
Nicole Thiara is Co-Director of Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Research Network Series, ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’ and its Follow-on Grant ‘On Page and on Stage: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts’.
She teaches Postcolonial and Contemporary Literature at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her area of research is Dalit and diasporic South Asian literature and her current research project is the representation of modernity in Dalit literature.
Her publications include Salman Rushdie and Indian Historiography: Writing the Nation into Being (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), ‘The Colonial Carnivalesque in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 52: 6 (2016), ‘Subaltern Experimental Writing: Dalit Literature in Dialogue with the World’, Ariel 47:1-2 (2016), pp. 253-80, and with Annapurna Waughray, ‘Challenging Caste Discrimination with Literature and Law: An Interdisciplinary Study of British Dalit Writing’, Contemporary South Asia 21:2 (2013), pp. 116-32. With Judith Misrahi-Barak and K. Satyanarayana, she co-edited the critical volume Dalit Text: Aesthetics and Politics Re-imagined (Routledge, 2019) and special issue on Dalit Literature in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature 54 (1), March 2019 with our Open Access editorial ‘Why Should We Read Dalit Literature’ accessible here.
This free, online-in conversation event with multimedia artists Subash Thebe Limbu and Osheen Siva is part of our Formations series, hosted in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre. This segment of Formations, CADALFEST, relates to the Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival (CADALFEST) taking place across India and in Nottingham. CADALFEST is the first international festival series dedicated to artists whose work creatively resists caste discrimination and social exclusion in India.
This event will be streamed live on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel. Book your free place now.
In recent times, the rapidly changing socio-political, environmental, and technological changes have centralised focus on reimagining and reconfiguring futures. While the Futurism movement, which began in Italy and spread to other European countries, sought to cleave off from the past and prophesized exciting futures through new technologies, futurisms that emerged from the margins were motivated by different urges – to question Eurocentric ideas of progress, development, scientific rationality, and techno futures. Afrofuturism, Latinx Futurism, and different kinds of Subaltern Futurisms have imagined alternate futures through speculative art and fiction by firmly holding on to the past.
In the Indian subcontinent, artists Subash Thebe Limbu and Osheen Siva have conceptualised Adivasi Futurism and Tamil Dalit Futures respectively. This conversation will discuss how they utilise the anti-caste philosophy that guides their multimodal artwork. It will explore how the artists use speculative art to posit alternate futures that resist caste and privilege their identities. The conversation, moderated by Prof. K.A. Geetha and Priteegandha Naik will discuss Dalit and Adivasi futurism and the potential it offers to dream up new and equal futures.
Subash Thebe Limbu is a Yakthung (Limbu) artist from what we currently know as eastern Nepal. He works with sound, film, music, performance, painting and podcast.
Subash has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins (2016), a BA in Fine Art from Middlesex University (2011), and an Intermediate in Fine Art from Lalit Kala Campus, Kathmandu.
His works are inspired by socio-political issues, resistance and science/speculative fiction. Indigeneity, climate change, and Adivasi Futurism are recurring themes in his works.
He is based in Newa Nation (Kathmandu) and London.
Osheen Siva is a multidisciplinary artist from Thiruvannamalai, currently based in Goa. Through the lens of surrealism, speculative fiction and science fiction and rooted in their Dalit and Tamil heritage, Siva imagines new worlds of decolonized dreamscapes, futuristic oasis with mutants and monsters and narratives of queer and feminine power.
K.A. Geetha is an Associate Professor the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Goa Campus, India. Her research interests are Dalit writing, Post-Colonial literatures, Women Studies and Cultural studies. She has worked extensively on the literary production and reception of Tamil Dalit literature.
Priteegandha Naik has submitted her thesis on Dalit-futurism which discussed Dalit Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Science and Technology Studies. She and is currently working as a Research Associate at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.