{"id":216,"date":"2014-06-26T13:57:36","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T13:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/?p=216"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:19:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:19:42","slug":"centre-for-new-writing-hosts-ahrc-funded-event-on-dalit-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/2014\/06\/26\/centre-for-new-writing-hosts-ahrc-funded-event-on-dalit-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Centre for New Writing hosts AHRC-funded Event on Dalit Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"099<\/a>Local writers and international scholars attended an event on Dalit Literature hosted by the Centre for New Writing and co-organised with Paul-Valery Montpellier and Nottingham Trent Universities.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Historically, Dalits (formerly labelled as\u00a0‘untouchables’) have been considered to\u00a0exist outside caste. They have\u00a0traditionally been assigned to menial tasks such as cleaning toilets and sweeping streets. The scholar and activist Associate Professor K. Sayanarayana explained to the audience that\u00a0Dalits were long denied a state education and illiteracy rates traditionally have remained high. For a Dalit, then, the very act of writing is\u00a0itself a revolutionary act. He also explained that, while many Dalits shared the widespread Indian belief that British colonialism was self-serving, they do appreciate the fact that\u00a0it allowed them, through figures such as Ambedkar, to assert the\u00a0rule of law over and above the rule of\u00a0caste.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was an honour to hear\u00a0Ajay Navaria read from his short story collection, which was published last year following its translation into English by Laura Brueck, who was also on the panel. Laura explained that\u00a0Navaria is an experienced writer who has been writing for 15 years in Hindi, but the translation of his collection into English had a\u00a0major effect on his standing as an author. Even\u00a0among Indian readers\u00a0of Hindi texts, she explained, the greater international status of an English language publication\u00a0suddenly won him high\u00a0praise as ‘a rising star of Indian literature, as though he was a newcomer to the scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

Traditionally, Dalit literature has\u00a0taken the form of autobiography.\u00a0This has, to a degree, encouraged\u00a0the idea that\u00a0Dalit literature\u00a0provides unmediated access to authentic Dalit experience.\u00a0Partly to combat this tendency, Ajay Navaria\u00a0has\u00a0adopted the short story form to experiment with voice and to explore\u00a0a wide range of Dalit experiences in a nuanced way. Using the short story form has helped to silence critics of Dalit writing, who see such writing only as popular and\u00a0non-literary. Ajay wanted to combat this charge by focusing on the writing craft to produce\u00a0stories that are experimental, intertextual and\u00a0technically\u00a0proficient.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked by a writer in the audience, Agrena Mushonga, about the future of Dalit literature,\u00a0Navaria linked the\u00a0fortunes of Dalit literature with India’s destiny: ‘If Dalit literature rises’, he said, ‘then India will rise.’<\/span><\/p>\n

A recording of the event will shortly become available\u00a0in the\u00a0Centre for New Writing’s sound archive<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local writers and international scholars attended an event on Dalit Literature hosted by the Centre for New Writing and co-organised with Paul-Valery Montpellier and Nottingham Trent Universities.\u00a0\u00a0 Historically, Dalits (formerly labelled as\u00a0‘untouchables’) have been considered to\u00a0exist outside caste. They have\u00a0traditionally been assigned to menial tasks such as cleaning toilets and sweeping streets. The scholar and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}