Unveiling the Margins: A Subaltern Analysis of Dalit Muslim Identity in the literature

Abstract

: Dalit literature has served as a crucial forum for the writers, poets and scholars to challenge the negative perceptions and discriminatory praxis that has surrounded the Dalits in India. The issues which Dalit literature raises is not only the depiction of agony, suffering and oppression but also the invocation of self-respect and equal status in the society. Since it has evolved, it has dealt predominantly on Hindu caste as Hinduism explicitly allows discrimination on the basis of castes. Although the equivalences of Hindu   caste system is found in the practices of Muslim community in India, Islam does not approve casteism. Hence, there is a significant denial on the discussion of the Dalit Muslims in the academic horizon. Therefore, the paper attempts to bring the Dalit Muslim discourse into the mainstream literature by close reading select literary texts: Shaik Yousuf Baba’s Marfa (2000) and Vegetarian Only (2017), Khaja’s Roots (2007) and Kavi Yakoob’s Avval Kalima, Let us Speak Out, Who Am I? and Conspiracy (2014). Further by deploying the theoretical postulates of Limbale and Spivak, this essay explores how are the poets asserting their Dalit Muslim Identity through literature? And how by the usage of their style of writing Telugurdu construct their new Dalit Muslim identity? Thus, demanding their recognition and separate need within the Indian Muslim community.