The invisible ink of Dalit literature

English-language works by Dalit authors have garnered acclaim, but systemic barriers continue to obscure their voices in India’s literary landscape.

Yashica Dutt burst onto the scene in 2016, claiming to have “come out” as a Dalit in the wake of Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

For several decades now, middle-class Dalits have had access to English-medium education. However, despite this educational advancement, the presence of Dalits in senior positions within India’s mainstream English media and book publishing remains notably scarce. Few Dalits work as editors or hold roles as senior writers, highlighting the persistent barriers to representation in these influential sectors. The culprit behind their exclusion is not the usual right-wing Hindutva politics but rather the Gandhian Harijan-making politics, adopted by the Indian secular culture, that undermines Dalit aspiration and autonomy.

Modern Dalit writers face a unique blend of systemic and cultural exclusion that distinguishes their struggle from that of other marginalised groups, such as African Americans in the US, who benefit from vital support from the mainstream (white) literary establishment. Twenty-first century Dalit literature needs new strategies and ownership of the English language to break out of the regressive cultural norms it is trapped in and to make itself heard globally.

As I argued on the ABC website, Dalit voices remain firmly shut out of the privileged-caste journalistic and literary echo chamber. This professional segregation is carried out quietly, though a young Dalit poet like Gautam Vegda may also experience severe bullying by a privileged-caste publisher.

Recent years saw a mini-revolution taking place when three Dalits published English-language books after reaching the US. Each of these authors belongs to a distinct ethnic and linguistic group, highlighting the immense diversity within the over 200 million Dalits in India.

These three works—Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (2017) by Sujatha Gidla, Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019) by Yashica Dutt, and Caste Matters (2019) by Suraj Yengde—would likely not have been published if the authors had lived in India. Despite receiving positive reviews for their books, significant career opportunities eluded them without long-term market (publishing, TV, film industry) and institutional support. The anticipated wave of new Dalit authors writing in English for broader audiences outside of university classrooms did not materialise. While Yogesh Maitreya’s Water in a Broken Pot: A Memoir, published by Penguin in 2023, is a notable exception, the book has not been reviewed in mainstream media other than in Hindustan Times by Suraj Yengde.

Highlights

• Despite access to English-medium education, Dalits remain underrepresented in senior positions within India’s mainstream English media and book publishing, facing systemic exclusion rooted in cultural norms.
• Recent English-language books by Dalit authors Sujatha Gidla, Yashica Dutt, and Suraj Yengde gained initial attention but struggled to maintain momentum, highlighting the challenges Dalit writers face in achieving long-term success and recognition.
• Excessive academisation of Dalit literature has been counterproductive, and new strategies are needed for Dalit voices to break out of regressive cultural norms and gain global recognition beyond university curricula.

At this point in time, it looks as if Dalit writing (including in English translation) is more likely to become an academic curiosity or a research project in Indian or Western universities rather than a mass movement or popular culture. Consider Ajay Navaria’s brilliant, provocative early work in Hindi, such as his story Cheekh (Scream). After the famed English translation of his stories Unclaimed Terrain (2014), he travelled the world, made presentations, and taught at international universities, but simultaneously, his literary output dried up. The excessive academisation of Dalit literature has proved counterproductive, a kiss of death.

Post-publication, Gidla continues to work as a subway conductor in New York City, Dutt is a freelance writer trying to establish herself as a caste discrimination activist in the US, and Yengde has pursued a second PhD at Oxford University.

Sujatha Gidla at the US National Book Festival in 2018. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

Meanwhile, big commercial publishers in New Delhi bring out dozens of English-language books for the mass market each year, written almost exclusively by dominant-caste writers, including those living in Western countries. Soon after publication, there are talks of adapting them into web series or movies.

Dalit invisibilisation in publishing and media

Why and how does Dalit invisibilisation persist in English book publishing and mainstream media? I try to explore this question through my assessment of the three acclaimed Dalit-authored books in English, focussing on their reception and how, after the initial buzz, they largely vanished from public memory except for showing up in odd university curricula or appearing on lists of “Dalit books you must read”.

Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants is a pioneering English-language work by a Dalit person for general readership. Born in northern Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana) to a Dalit Christian family, Gidla has lived in the US for several years. She narrates a compelling tale of outcastes and rebels, especially of her uncle K.G. Satyamurthy, often with unsettling honesty. Her book received glowing reviews in major outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian (by Amit Chaudhari), and The New York Review of Books (Pankaj Mishra). The reviews are underpinned by surprise that she could write a book in English and even have it published commercially. Conversely, the Dalit-origin historian Chinnaiah Jangam wrote a fiercely critical review, accusing Gidla of gross misrepresentation, historical inaccuracy, and the dehumanisation of Dalit lives. Jangam’s assessment reminds us that Dalits can strongly differ from one another in the pursuit of intellectual integrity and authenticity.

Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants is a pioneering English-language work by a Dalit person for general readership | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

After publication of her work, Gidla appeared on several American platforms, gave public talks, and appeared in India’s lit-fest circuit. She was the first Dalit author to become visible internationally. This visibility also brought her online abuse for drawing attention to the caste system. Every Dalit author is subjected to this unique form of trauma by dominant-caste trolls. Over time, the limelight dissipated without long-term institutional support and commercial success for Gidla. Two younger Dalit writers, more recent arrivals in the US, followed Gidla. Both had Ivy League connections via Columbia and Harvard, making it impossible for the Indian intellectual elite and media to ignore them.

“Coming out”

Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit is perhaps the most readable of the three books. Dutt’s fast-paced narrative takes place in the Hindi-speaking regions of north India, primarily Rajasthan and Delhi. The second edition contains two chapters on caste in America.

With a knack for online campaigning and perfect timing, Dutt burst onto the scene in 2016, claiming to have “come out” as a Dalit in the wake of the tragic suicide of the Ambedkarite activist and scholar Rohith Vemula. She also proved to be an engaging speaker in her various media interviews. Coming Out as Dalit appeared in 2019 and became the first Dalit-authored English work to win the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Award. She too was trolled for talking about continuing caste discrimination in the West.

Yogesh Maitreya is one of the notable Dalit authors writing in English for broader audiences outside of university classrooms. Maitreya in Mumbai in 2020. | Photo Credit: PRASHANT WAYDANDE

Dutt’s memoir reads like a series of gripping blog entries or news articles, chronicling her childhood struggles in a patriarchal family, in casteist Rajasthan, and later during her time as a student in Delhi’s elite St. Stephen’s College. She describes concealing her caste, navigating Delhi’s cosmopolitan world, and getting a call centre job, thanks to her English-speaking skills. Later, Dutt broke into the prestigious English-language media, working as a fashion reporter for Hindustan Times while still hiding her caste. The book’s last parts include a page-turning series of events and coincidences that lead to her securing a scholarship to Columbia University to study journalism.

Coming Out as Dalit was an introduction to a Dalit person’s experience of hiding one’s caste identity in modern India to avoid discrimination. Despite high-profile interviews, positive reviews, and appearances in Indian mainstream media, Dutt did not gain a substantial career as an author or journalist. Declaring herself a Dalit loud and proud also meant that she remained outside the influential Indian academic and literary networks in the US as well.

By 2023, Dutt’s book was fading from public memory when she was caught up in the sensational tide surrounding Prime Video’s Made in Heaven series that seemed to draw on Dutt’s life. Unlike Dutt’s narrative, the main character in the web series is a Maharashtrian Buddhist, an academic, and soon to get married. Even so, Dutt’s demands for credit, whether formal and paid or honorary, appeared justified. As the controversy became noisier and uglier, Dutt started an aggressive Twitter campaign supported by liberal Indian academics who have otherwise never spoken of the lack of Dalit representation in their own profession. Bollywood’s public relations machinery dismissed her claims by issuing a patronising statement, diverting everyone’s attention to Sumit Baudh, who later critiqued Dutt’s appropriation of the term “coming out”.

Ironies and perils of Dalit identity

As I was interested in English writing by Dalits, I dug deeper and realised, like many others, that Baudh could well be one of the earliest persons to have “come out” as a Dalit as well as a queer person through his essay “Reflections of a Queer Dalit” published on the TARSHI website in 2007. Dutt has hit back at the suggestion, asserting that Baudh merely wrote an unknown blog post compared to her much more dramatic and public self-outing. Her website claims ownership of the concept: “Through ‘coming out’ as Dalit, Yashica Dutt established a new vocabulary to express the unique experience of Dalits...”

In his essay, Baudh introduces himself: “My jati (sub-caste) is Jatav which comes under the Chamar caste. In terms of caste prescriptions, Chamars are leather workers.” He carries on: “I don’t know anyone in my immediate or distant family who works on leather.” And yet, Baudh’s family suffered degrading caste contempt. Baudh also mentions his earliest experience of disclosing his caste: “I came out as Dalit the very first time at the age of 18, to a roommate at my college.”

The scholar Sumit Baudh critiqued Yashica Dutt’s appropriation of the term “coming out”. | Photo Credit: @BaudhSumit/X

Baudh continued to write about the ironies and perils of his Dalit identity, for example in a January 2015 article for The Indian Express that also appeared a few days later as a blog and on Round Table India. His queer identity also brought forth the intersectionality of being Dalit. I subsequently came to see Dutt’s book in new critical light. Baudh’s landmark 2007 essay was known in local academic circles but never entered the popular discourse, having come before the Internet and social media revolution.

A remarkable thing about the Made in Heaven furore was how easily it hid Bollywood’s caste privilege and the fact that a Brahmin actress played the Dalit character. If the Bollywood producers believed that they drew on the composite works of many Dalit writers, how about formally recognising and compensating them all?

Dutt is right that she was dissed arrogantly by Bollywood because she is a woman from the Bhangi sub-caste, traditionally associated with the demeaning work of manual scavenging. However, she would have been treated the same had she been a woman from the Mahar or Chamar castes.

The bitter experience of the Dalit YouTuber Sumit Chauhan should alert us to the fact that for India’s mainstream commercial media, all Dalits are despised untouchables.

Yengde is the most visible Dalit academic and public speaker. Compared with the generally middle-class upbringing of the other Dalit writers I have mentioned, Yengde’s background was starkly disadvantaged. His recent rise owes mainly to the Harvard University association that brings considerable clout, as his influential right-wing Hindu critics never tire of mentioning. If Dutt’s narrative is breezy at times, Yengde’s leans heavily into scholarly hypotheses and theorisation. The declaration on page 11 hardly sounds appetising: “This book aims to Socratize the dialogical thinking on caste.” Beginning in the third chapter, “The Many Shades of Dalits”, Yengde presents Dalits via various theoretical labels—token, conservative, reactive, elite, self-obsessed, harmful, etc.—that come across as heavy-handed lecturing.

The book’s compelling parts include his experiences of growing up in a marginal slum area amid dismal socio-economic conditions. We read a heartbreaking account of how his maternal grandmother hid her work as a maid in a Bania (merchant caste) household. The 10-year-old Yengde decided to follow her one day and was “mortified” to see her cleaning a toilet. Then, feeling the urge to urinate, Yengde used the toilet with his grandmother’s permission, only to be spotted by a lady in the house who directed vicious abuse and contempt at the elderly woman and her grandchild.

Suraj Yengde is the most visible Dalit academic and public speaker. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons 

The narrative takes on a journalistic tone as the grown-up scholar Yengde describes his meetings with highly accomplished Dalit civil servants. He exposes the hypocrisy of dominant-class Dalits who distance themselves from the anti-caste struggle in an attempt to pass as dominant-caste people. The book could have benefited from more personal details about Yengde’s professional journey, including his time in South Africa, Europe, and Harvard. His experiences with caste in the West would be particularly interesting to explore.

Yengde comes across as personable as well as a combative Ambedkarite. The hyper publicity surrounding him, like Shobhaa De calling Yengde “the rockstar writer”, can set unrealistic expectations. On the other hand, overemphasising one’s Dalit identity carries a risk: one may become confined to the “Dalit writer” brand, a label reinforced by academia, in contrast to dominant-caste individuals who can position themselves as Indian or global writers.

Ironically, the fight to be casteless becomes the reification of caste identity, as evident in the Chamar pride songs or Dutt’s constant reminders that she comes from the Bhangi sub-caste.

Finally, we must acknowledge that these three Dalit writers emerged despite the obstacles posed by dominant-caste academic and literary cliques and toxic social media trolling. While their groundbreaking works garnered immediate public attention, they did not offer significant career opportunities beyond academic circles. Their books have not opened doors for other Dalit writers, which diminishes India’s literary and intellectual life.

I will not end with prescriptions or calls to action since they rarely penetrate India’s globally affluent, dominant-caste superstructure. Yet, new Dalit-origin writers will undoubtedly emerge, producing radical Indian-English books that challenge the ancient cultural hegemonies and injustices hidden in plain sight. Only then can diverse Indians realise their shared destiny, heal, and unite.

Rajiv Thind is a literary scholar and emerging fiction writer based in New Zealand.