Joothan: An Untouchable's Life - Hardcover

Omprakash Valmiki

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231129726 ISBN 13: 9780231129725

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2003

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Omprakash Valmiki is the author of two collections of poetry and one of short stories. As editor and publisher of numerous magazines, he has played a vital role in the propagation of Dalit literature.Arun Prabha Mukherjee is professor of English at York University in Toronto. She is the author of Postcolonialism: My Living and Oppositional Aesthetics: Readings from a Hyphenated Space.

Reviews

Newly translated from Hindi, Valmiki's memoirs invite us into the bleak life of one born into India's lowest caste. As Valmiki's unflinching candor makes clear, India's caste system has survived legal abolition as a potent cultural reality, relegating tens of millions of chandalas (untouchables) to social ostracism, degrading labor, and hopeless poverty. Valmiki details these harsh realities as he has experienced them through living in the squalid shanties of the basti, scavenging meat and leather from putrid roadside carrion, and enduring ridicule and persecution from social superiors. But Valmiki also shares with his readers the inspiring account of how he and other untouchables--who have renamed themselves Dalits--have forged a strong social and political movement to press for their rights as Indian citizens. Though often frustrated by Hindu elites, the Dalits have advanced their cause with impressive dignity and courage. As an editor and writer, Valmiki has done much to stake out a space for Dalit literary expression, well exemplified by this narrative. Fascinating cultural and personal history. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231129726
• ISBN 13: 9780231129725
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160