Reformulating Chandal/Charal Identity: Dalit ...

Reformulating Chandal/Charal Identity: Dalit Agency and Protest in the Autobiographies of Manoranjan Byapari and Kalyani Thakur Charal

Author Name : Asish Kumar, Dr. Jati Sankar Mondal

ABSTRACT Since the last decade the Dalit literature in Bangla has drawn significant focus by being an area of academic exploration as well as potential research. Though Bangla Dalit writing in its modern sense is a post 1970’s phenomenon, but the seed of it was there in the writings and preachings of Harichand-Guruchand Thakur and others who inspired the lower caste people to come forward and to educate themselves in order to fight against casteism. Although partition heavily affected the Namasudra community of Bengal, the Dalit Namasudra writers have rightly fought back through their writings by portraying the social oppression and injustices done towards the lower caste people in the name of caste and class. Bangla Dalit autobiographies written by the writers belonging to the Namasudra community have aptly pointed out the Dalit experiences, oppression and suffering of the people of their community. Two such noted Dalit Namasudra autobiographies are Manoranjan Byapari’s Itibritte Chandal Jiban (2012) translated into English by Sipra Mukherjee titled Interrogating My Chandal Life (2018) and Kalyani Thakur Charal’s Ami Keno Charal Likhi (2016). Apart from portrayal of injustice and oppression, these autobiographies also significantly focus on the word ‘Chandal’ and ‘Charal’ respectively and thereby deals with the socio-political issues related to their caste identity and derogatory words; as well as their protest by reinserting the word in the title of their autobiographies. This paper is an attempt to study how the Dalit Namasudra writers namely Manoranjan Byapari and Kalyani Thakur have used the term ‘Chandal’ and ‘Charal’ as their agency in their testimonios as a protest against the politics of nomenclature and to uphold their agency of their original belonging.