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Abstract

The Dalit Literary movement irrupted on the scene in the early 1970s in the state of Maharashtra, India. Unblinking in its criticism of casteism and unnerving in its depiction of Dalit oppression, the movement sought to concretize the political aims of B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) through cultivating a critical Dalit consciousness liberated from caste identity and history. The movement enjoyed success in uniting Dalit groups across the country under this new name. However, fifty years later a new generation of Dalit and Dalit-supporting thinkers have begun to critically examine the implications of Dalit identity focusing particularly on its rootedness in suffering at the expense of a liberative and transformative social vision. At the center of this critique is a concern for memory—how the past is perceived and received by Dalit communities and the Dalit Literary movement’s assessment and application of pre-“Dalit” Dalit traditions. Writing prior to the advent of the Dalit Literary movement and on the eve of Indian independence, the Telegu poet Gurram Jashuva (1895-1971) in his celebrated epic poem Gabillam (The Bat, 1946) provides a model that holds in tension the hopes of both the early Dalit poets and a new generation of writers and activists.

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