Marginalization And The Indian English Literature (original) (raw)

Literature represents life and life is a social reality. A writer, who is a member of a society, is possessed of specific social status and he / she receives some degree of social recognition and reward. De Bonald considers “literature is an expression of society”. In a world when issues relating to human rights have been under critical focus, literary depictions of the experiences of marginalized groups have acquired great significance. The modern spurt in Dalit literature in India is an attempt to bring to the forefront the experiences of discrimination, violence and poverty of the Dalit. Expression of these experiences have long been buried in silence, often with religious and social sanction and relegated to the margins as non-literary. More recent is the trend to deny their existence altogether. The growing corpus of Dalit texts, poems, novels and autobiographies, however, seek to rectify this phenomenon by examining the nuances of Dalit culture. Dalit literature is one of the most important literary movements to emerge in post-independence India. The transformation of the stigmatized identity of these so called ‘untouchables’ to a self-chosen identity as Dalit is a story of collective struggle waged over centuries. Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, two towering figures in the pantheon of Dalit history, were the first to appropriate the word. The voice of the marginalized and the oppressed is a great tool to recognize the obscured conditions that exist in the world around. With the knowledge gained from marginalized literature, we will be able to fight ignorance surrounding the lives of these people and the prejudice that is a result of that ignorance. One of the important objectives of Indian English writers of fiction has been the creative interpretation of Indian society and its culture and the ‘formulation and projection of the Indian image. The Indian society is broadly classified into three main communities, namely, the upper-caste, the non-upper-caste and the depressed classes. Among them, there existed many castes and sub-castes, which followed numerous practices and usages; surprisingly each of them is unique. The influence of upper-castes is greatly felt in the socio-religious and cultural lives of the marginalized sections over the years.