Afflictive, Dissident and Assertive Voices in Indian Dalit Autobiographies: A Study from Socio-economic Perspectives

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, an unprecedented bulge can be seen in the number of dalit autobiographies, dalit personal narratives and memoirs. Due to revolution in education system and the equal opportunities to all the people belonging to every community, dalit writers have written their personal narratives and shared their personal and private realms of agonies, pain, and oppression with other people after getting influenced by the European models. The spurt in dalit autobiographical narratives in different forms reveals how they were relegated from the core and vital issues of national importance. The trials and tribulations of dalit women, their exploitation, torture and triple marginalization remains the core theme of dalit women‟s autobiographies. Dalit men‟s autobiographies are the saga of sufferings, tortures, caste discrimination, hunger, deprivation and ostracization. The present research paper is an attempt to explore the afflictions and age-old sufferings of those people who live at the fringe in the mainstream society. Only selected Dalit men‟s autobiographies have been taken for analysis in the present research paper.