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Bengali Dalit Literature and the Politics of Recognition

Abstract Bengali Dalit literature has been published for over a century but is yet to be appreciated by a larger mainstream readership. In this essay, I examine how the ‘absence’ of Bengali Dalit literature was constructed by several social, political and ideological factors that together obscured the cultural history of Bengali Dalits. Using literary texts—primarily autobiographies—written by Bengali Dalit authors as an entry point, this essay analyses the explicit and implicit mechanisms of Brahmanical oppression that have prevented Bengali Dalit writers from consolidating their distinct identity. Set against the critical debate regarding the subaltern’s (in)ability to speak and/or be heard, this essay records Bengali Dalit literature’s triumph over casteist endeavours to relegate it to the periphery.