Anger In Dalit Poetry Summary

The paper seeks to explore the manner in which Namdeo Dhasal uses anger constructively as a literary innovation to articulate the silent rage of dalits who have been relegated to the bottom of social hierarchies since thirty centuries. In Dhasal’s poetry, one observes the startling possibility of anger as a mode of organizing and articulating emotional energy. The paper will further explore how Dhasal deliberately uses the subversive diction to challenge the elitist upper caste notions of decorum and balance.
Keywords: activism, anger, caste, dalit, protest, subversive diction
Indian poetry today is no longer monolithic: it is more polyphonic than ever before, perhaps because of a break-down of unifying concerns, and homogenizing ideologies

It is not a single cohesive literary movement with its own literary ideology. Anything published by a Dalit writer is considered Dalit literature. Alternatively, anything that reveals the life of the Dalit or any aspect of it is regarded as Dalit literature. The average Dalit in India is still illiterate and socially immobilized. This is a gap that is seen between the Indian elite and the majority of Indians, but it becomes an even wider gulf when the Dalit elite is juxtaposed with the average Dalit. The audience of all Dalit literature is predominantly non-Dalit. Dalit writing today is extremely varied. Apart from the realistic, non-realistic, naturalistic and quasi-journalistic fiction that constitutes the staple of Dalit prose writers, there are surrealistic and expressionist poets among the Dalit whose writing is extremely sophisticated or avant-garde. The Dalit poets like Namdeo Dhasal and Aijun Dangle have created an alternative poetics that throws overboard classical values like propriety, balance, restraint and understatement. They also often use a deliberately subversive diction that challenges middle class notions of

Dilip Chitre notes that the “purpose of the Dalit Panther was to bring young dalit men and women together and organize continuous action and protest against the oppression of dalits in Maharashtra and elsewhere in India” (Dhasal 13) Evading several attempts of assassination, Dhasal nevertheless suffered serious injuries at several points in his Panther career. In 1975, the Congress, the Shiv Sena and the Republican Party regarded Dalit Panther as their prime enemy, and the Dalit Panther’s moving spirit Namdeo Dhasal was their prime target. However, Dhasal continued his political activism through organizations and through his political writing, namely poetry. Chitre writes: “…Namdeo is a born activist and Dalit Panther his raison d’etre, as much as poetry is the life of his spirit. Namdeo cannot separate his activism from his poetry, and his poetry is only the literary form of his activism” (Dhasal 15). In recognition of his irrepressible talent, Dhasal became the recipient of the only Lifetime Achievement Award to be given by India’s national academy of letters – the Sahitya Akademi – at its golden jubilee in