Joothan by omprakash valmiki

“Caste is a very important element of Indian society. As soon as a person is born, caste determines his or her destiny. Being born is not in the control of a person. If it were in one’s control, then why would I have been born in a Bhangi household? Those who call themselves the standard-bearers of this country’s great cultural heritage, did they decide which homes they would be born into? Of course, they turn to scriptures to justify their position, the scriptures that establish feudal values instead of promoting equality and freedom.” ― Omprakash Valmiki, “The savarnas constructed all sorts of mythologies: of chivalry, of ideals. What was the outcome? A defeated social order in the clutches of hopelessness, poverty, illiteracy, narrow-mindedness, religious inertia, and priestocracy, a social order embroiled in ritualism, which, fragmented, was repeatedly defeated by the Greeks, Shakas, Huns, Afghans, Moghuls, French, and English. Yet in the name of their valor and their greatness, savarnas kept hitting the weak and the helpless. Kept burning homes. Kept insulting women and raping them. To drown in self-praise and turn away from the truth, to not learn from history—what sort of a nation-building are they dreaming of?” ― Omprakash Valmiki,

Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. R. Ambedkar. A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.

P:05 columbia university press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Joothan: A Dalit’s Life was first published by Samya, an imprint of Bhatkal and Sen, 16 Southern Avenue, Kolkata 700 026, India, in 2003. This edition is not for sale in South Asia. © 2003 Omprakash Valmiki English translation copyright © 2003 Arun Prabha Mukherjee All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Valmiki, Omprakasa 1950– [ Joothan. English] Joothan/Omprakash Valmiki; translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–231–12972–6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Dalits—India—History. I. Mukherjee, Arun Prabha. II. Title. DS422.C3V275 2003 305.5፱122፱0954—dc21 2002041710 designed by lisa chovnick Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 P:10 foreword Arun Prabha Mukherjee Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is among the few books that have had a profound effect on my consciousness. It brought to the sur- face, as a scalpel penetrating deep into the flesh, the details of my childhood and adolescence in a small town in northern India where casteism and untouchability were accepted, where untouch- ables cleaned our latrines and carried the excrement away on their heads. When they asked for water, it was poured into their cupped hands, from a distance. No untouchables studied with me in my school or later at college. My textbooks di...

Dalit writing, global contexts: Om Prakash Valmiki's Joothan is the shining pinnacle of Hindi Dalit literature The English translation of Joothan — a magnum opus of Hindi Dalit literature — is an event in which we have witnessed both, the importance of translation as well as how translation of Dalit literature has many political dimensions that are yet to be unravelled. • Joothan was first published in 1997. • Its impact in the stagnant, Brahminical landscape of North Indian literature was like that of a volcano erupting in a placid town. • Six years later, it was translated into English by Arun Prabha Mukherjee (a Brahmin professor and literary critic) and published by Samya, an imprint of the (Savarna) publishers Bhatkal and Sen. Editor’s note: In India, the use of English is a product of colonisation. It is a language that embodies colonial narratives about the country and its people. Notably, it remained exclusive to Brahmin and Savarna writers until recently, and close examination of their writing reveals that they were often elitist and frequently prejudiced in their depiction of society. Where Dalit characters find mention, they appear as ‘subjects without history’, to use the term coined by Edward Said. Indian writing in English, therefore, rarely did serve the purpose that good literature is supposed to: to depict the lives of people through literary imagination. With the emergence of Dalit literature, the lives and histories of the marginalised have gained repres...