Dalit Autobiography as Counter-Canonical Literary Genre

Abstract

Dalit autobiography is not a comfortable genre. It is not supposed to be. When Omprakash Valmiki published Joothan in 1997 and Bama published Karukku a year earlier, they were not adding politely to the Indian literary canon; they were challenging its foundations. This paper examines both texts as interventions that unsettle the aesthetic norms, epistemological assumptions, and social hierarchies embedded in mainstream Indian literary culture. Drawing on autobiography theory (Lejeune, Smith and Watson) and Limbale’s aesthetic of Dalit literature, I argue that Valmiki and Bama deploy life-writing not as self-expression in the liberal humanist sense but as political testimony, communal witness, and aesthetic provocation. Their narratives demand to be read on their own terms terms that privilege fidelity to experience over formal elegance, collective identity over individual personality, and the urgency of social justice over the pleasures of aesthetic contemplation. Whether the Indian literary establishment is ready for that demand is another question.