Dalit Aesthetics: Situating Sharankumar Limbale’s Poetics

Abstract

In the traditional stratified Indian society Dalit is a class nomenclature now assigned to a group of oppressed, downtrodden people in India. These people have been treated as social outcasts, and their voice has been silenced for centuries. Dalit writing in its formative years has been largely about articulating protest, patriarchy and the demand for space for the Dalit in social, cultural, and political spheres. Over the years activist thinkers like Ambedkar have tried to evolve an ideology supporting the Dalit cause. This has given rise to a body of literature which has engaged itself with this ideology. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature: History, Controversies and Considerations is Sharankumar Limbale’s magnum opus and his contribution to the literature on Dalit aesthetics. It conveys a poetics that is subversive and resists canonical logic. The canvas offered is experiential in nature, and the language used engages one, being poetic, counter hegemonic and counter brahmanical. Limbale questions the mainstream aestheticians’ doctrines of the age-old concepts of satyam, shivam and sundaram and problematizes the concept of beauty, pleasure and propriety. This brings to mind the problem of meaning and interrelationality exhibited in experiential literature. This article proposes to make the postcolonial reading of Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature positing Indian Society as the repressive monologic power. It seeks to situate Limbale’s poetics in the dynamics of cultural discourse of subalternity.