Ambedkarite Consciousness and the Dalit Aesthetic: Reading Bama's Karukku, Sangati and Vanmam with Omprakash Valmiki's Joothan, "Amma" and Short Stories

Author

Jyothy Boudharaj, Dr. M. Sridhar


Abstract

 This article examines how the political philosophy of B. R. Ambedkar shapes the form and purpose of Dalit literature through a comparative reading of two foundational writers from different linguistic regions of India: the Tamil writer Bama and the Hindi writer Omprakash Valmiki. Bama's autobiography Karukku (1992) and her novels Sangati (1994) and Vanmam (2002) are read alongside Valmiki's autobiography Joothan (1997), his short story "Amma" and selected stories such as "Salaam", "Shavyatra" and "Pachees Chauka Dedh Sau". The study argues that these texts translate Ambedkar's central ideas into narrative practice: caste as graded inequality, the annihilation of caste through education, agitation and organisation, the rejection of scriptural authority, the critique of patriarchy as a pillar of caste, and the moral ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity. It further argues that Ambedkarite thought supplies the foundation of a Dalit aesthetic, theorised by Sharankumar Limbale and by Valmiki himself, which replaces the Brahmanical criteria of beauty and pleasure with the criteria of truth, pain, resistance and social commitment. Using a qualitative, interpretive and comparative method grounded in close reading, the article shows how testimony, collective narration, Dalit dialect and the refusal of consolation become aesthetic choices with political meaning. The analysis attends to the intersection of caste and gender, and to the conflicts among Dalit sub-castes that Ambedkar anticipated. The study concludes that Bama and Valmiki, despite their regional, religious and linguistic differences, share an Ambedkarite vision in which writing becomes an act of self-respect and a means of social reconstruction.


Keywords

Ambedkarite theory; Dalit aesthetics; Bama; Omprakash Valmiki; Karukku; Sangati; Vanmam; Joothan; caste and gender; graded inequality; testimonio; self-respect; Dalit consciousness



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References


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