옴쁘라까슈 발미끼의 자서전, 『주탄』(Joothan)에 나타난 달리뜨의 사회문화적 정체성

Abstract

Dalit literature, which has come into prominence in Hindi literary world since the 1990’s, is the product of a socio-cultural movement rooted in Dalit consciousness. Here the emphasis is placed on the authenticity of experience rather than on literary imagination. As a consequence, autobiography has become the major genre of Dalit literature. In this genre the author goes through the process of exploration of his identity by looking back upon past events and in the process also reconstructing his self-identity in the autobiography. But it is the socio-cultural identity that gets constructed in Dalit autobiography since the experience presented therein is essentially social. Dalit is a self recognized chosen socio-cultural identity which forcefully expresses the oppressed status of this socially marginalized class in Indian society. There are some other names that have been provided for this class as identity-markers, names such as Untouchable, Harijan, SC (Scheduled Castes), but these are names that this oppressed class wants to discard. . Joothan is an autobiographical account of Omprakash Valmiki’s journey from his birth moving through his upbringing as an untouchable in the newly independent India of the fifties, to his present recognition of himself as a Dalit. This transformation from the stigmatized identity of an untouchable to a self-recognized and chosen identity as a Dalit is possible only at the individual level but not at the social level. Therefore, Valmiki admits in the very last sentence of Joothan that “… in their eyes, I am only an SC, the one who stands outside the door.” Considering the term SC as a synonym of untouchable, he duly recognizes that he is just an untouchable for the caste Hindus. Thus, the present socio-cultural identity of the Dalit as described in Joothan has two aspects: first, by identifying himself as a Dalit, Valmiki struggles to realize his dream of building a society on the principles of human dignity, equality and respect at the individual level, but secondly, at the same time he cannot discard the stigmas attached to his identity as an untouchable at the social level, experiencing thereby a difficulty in entering the center stage of society from his perceived marginalized position.