• Dr. Sarita Jain

The term 'Dalit' is synonymous with poor, exploited, oppressed and needy people. In every civilized society, there are some types of inequalities that lead to social discrimination. And in India, it comes in the garb of Casteism'. The dalits are deprived of their fundamental rights of education, possession of assets and right to equality. Thus Dalit Literature emerges to voice for all those oppressed, exploited and marginalized communities who endured this social inequality and exploitation for so long. The major concern of Dalit Literature is the emancipation of Dalits from this ageless bondage of slavery. Dalits use their writings as a weapon to vent out their anger against the social hierarchy which is responsible for their degradation. Indian Dalit literature, which can be traced back to a corpus of writings from Maharashtra in the 1960s, refers to literature of the oppressed, usually associated with a diverse group of people historically considered the lowest among the Indian population and known as “untouchables.” This Dalit consciousness and self-realization about their identity has been centrally focused in various vibrant and multifarious creative writings and is also widely applauded in the works of Mahasweta Devi, Bama, Arjun Dangle, D. Gopi, Ajay Navaria and in many more. The anguish represented by the Dalit writers is not that of an individual but of the whole outcast society. The primary concern of present paper is to show how Dalit writers shatter the silence surrounding the unheard exploitation of Dalits in our country in their writings. And how Dalit Literature has become a vehicle of explosion of these muffled voices. The paper makes an attempt to comprehend the vision and voice of the Dalits and their journey from voiceless and passive objects of history to self-conscious subject. It also focusses on Dalit experience of modernity as shown in Navaria’s short stories.

Self-realization, Identity, Exploitation, Caste, Subaltern

"Indian Dalit Literature: Alienation and Loss in Dalit experience of Modernity", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.8, Issue 6, page no.a434-a448, June-2021, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2106055.pdf

"Indian Dalit Literature: Alienation and Loss in Dalit experience of Modernity", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.8, Issue 6, page no. ppa434-a448, June-2021, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2106055.pdf