Sharankumar Limbale is a Marathi novelist, poet, critic, and short story writer. He was born to an outcast landless mother and an upper-caste father. Therefore, he describes himself as an ‘Akkarmashi’. He has penned more than 40 books, including fiction, poetry, and criticism, but is best known for his autobiographical novel Akkarmashi published in 1984. The majority of his works address the problems of Dalits. Along with this, his works also reflect the marginalization or exploitation that happened in the name of casteism. He also wrote a critical work Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature. This is considered a landmark in the field of the Dalit movement and Dalit aesthetics. He also won the Saraswati Samman award in 2020.
“About Dalit Literature”- An introduction
"About Dalit Literature" is an essay written by Sharan Kumar Limbale. In the work, he redefines the purpose and aesthetics of Dalit literature. He opposes the traditional way of looking at the literary work written by Dalit writers. In the essay, he presents a new set of criteria to judge Dalit and black writing. In the work, he demanded a separate aesthetics for Dalit literature which is formed based on social circumstances. In other words, he says that the Dalit aesthetic is something that is not prepared based on the beauty of work but on the social circumstances or treatment of Dalits in the work.
In the essay, Limbale opposes the notion of Satyam Shivam Sundaram. He believed that this notion is something fabricated or constructed one which helps upper-class people to exploit and alienate Dalits. Instead of the notion Limbale proposes a new yardstick or criteria to measure the quality of a Dalit literary work. Equality, liberty, justice, and fraternity are the yardstick proposed by him.
Critical Summary of the essay, About Dalit Literature.
In the first paragraph, Limbale defines the meaning of Dalit Literature. He says that Dalit literature is a piece of writing about Dalits by Dalit writers with a Dalit consciousness. Dalitness is one of the important quality that possessed by Dalit literature. It has to highlight the pains and sufferings of Dalits or outcastes from the hands of upper caste people.
In the second paragraph, he expresses his disagreement with traditional aesthetics, which considers the beauty and pleasure that arise out of a work. Limbale says that traditional aesthetics did not consider the fundamental roles of the Dalit writers. The fundamental role of Dalit writers is to highlight the exploitation and pain of Dalits in our society. Traditional aesthetics disregards sociological factors and considers only things that are connected with beauty. By rejecting traditional aesthetics, he proposes new and distinctive aesthetics for Dalit literature. Further, he says that traditional aesthetics is not acceptable for Dalit writers as they disregard the pains and suffering of the Dalits.
By opposing traditional aesthetics and upper-caste critics, Limbale says that it is not appropriate to force Dalit writers on what they write and how they write. It is the writers or critics who decide what to write or what not to write. He also reminds upper caste critique by saying that the same work can be read in with different interpretations. Therefore it is also possible to read Dalit literature according to the role of Dalit writers.
In the next paragraph, Limbale opposes the attitude of upper-caste critics who reject the demand for separate aesthetics for Dalit literature and promote a universal value for evaluating their work. He says that after a serious discussion on the topic no critic makes any engagement with aesthetic analysis of the Dalit literary text. One more thing he says is that not even the critic who stands for the separate aesthetic did not make any model criticism based on the careful and detailed analysis of Dalit literature.
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