Associate Professor

Department of English & Other Foreign Languages

Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith,

 Varanasi, U.P., India 

Namdeo Laxman Dhasal (15 February 1949-15 January 2014) was a Marathi poet, writer and Dalit activist from Maharastra, India. He was one of the founders of Dalit Panthers in 1972, a social movement was aimed at in the destroying caste hierarchy in Indian society. The movement  was active in the 1970s and the 1980s during which time it popularised the usage of the term Dalit in India. Dhasal was awarded the 'Padam Shri' in 1999 and lifetime achievement award from 'Sahitya Akademi' in 2004. He has also received 'Golden Jubilee Award'. Following Dalit panthers movement worked for the reconstruction of society on the basis of the Phule, Shahu and Ambedkar's movements.

During this time, Dhasal also wrote two novels and published pumpletes such as 'Andhale Shatak (Century of Blindness) and Ambedkari Chalwal (Ambedkarite movement) a reflection on the socialist and communist concepts of B.R. Ambedkar Later, he published two more collections of poetry : Mi Marale surychya Rathache sat Ghode (I killed the seven Horses of the sun) and Tujhe Boat Dharoon Mi Chalalo Ahe (I'm walking, Holding your Finger).

His Poetry

i. A Current of Blood (2019)

ii. Aakrosh Kaa Kooras (2015)

Marathi

i. Golpitha (1973)

ii. Tuhi lyatta Kanchi (1981)

iii. Moorkh Mhataryane dongar halvle.

iv. Amchya itihasatil ek aprihary patra : Priya Dharshani (1976).

v. Gandu Bagichha (1986).

Dilip chitre translated a selection of Dhasal's poems into English under the title Namdeo Dhasal : Poet of underworld, poems 1972-2006.

Awards ;- He received Maharashtra State. Award for Literature in 1982, Soviet Land Nehru Award for Golpitha in 1974, Padma Shri in 1999, Life time Award in 2004. 

Daya Pawar (1935-1996) was an Indian Marathi language author and poet known for his contributions to Dalit literature that deals with the atrocities experienced by the Dalits or Untouchables under the hindu caste System. He was Buddhist by religion. He gained name and fame for his autobiographical novel Baluta (1978). His works are :-

i. 'Kondwada' (A collection of poems).

ii. Baluta, (An autobiographical Novel).

iii. Vital, (a collection of short story.)

iv. Chawdi, (a collection of essay.)

v. Dhammapad, Traslated from pali into Marathi.

vi. Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar's documenty film 1993.

vii. Asmitadursh (1967) first poems collection.

Awards

i. Received Padamshri in 1990

ii. Maharastra Government award for Baluta 1979.

iii. Maharastra Government award for Kondwada 1975.

iv. Ford Foundation fellowship 1982.

Baluta created ripples in literary circles and earned him many awards at levels including one from the Ford Foundation. It got translated Into several languages. The strength of the books are the simple, straight forward and to the point portrayal and a transparent realistic illustration of the ethos around him. The book created a new genre in Marathi literature. Many autobiographical books talking about harsh experiences, hard realities were written after Baluta. Although he earned name and fame through his novel Baluta, poetry was his forte. He gave expression to the oppression of the Dalits through his verse.  

Famous Marathi playwright and critic Vijay Tendulakar even compared namdeo Dhasal with "Saint Tukaram",  the famous Bhakati Poet of Maharashtra.

According to Sudheer K Arora poetry of Namdeo Dhasal attempts to treat Dalit issues, live experience and sufferings realistically. Dhasal's concept of Dalit is panoptic. He chooses female as the moscat for representing the downgraded and stigmatized among humankind. The poem is a tale of exploitation of Mandakini Patil, a prostitute who represent not only prastitutes but all the women who become the vicitim of lust particularly of the higher caste. When he narrates their pain and suffering it seems that it is a tale of every women. The beginning and end with the same Quatrain is very touching and symbolic." What Dhasal has to say, says through symbols. Mark the excerpt for symbolical interpretations :

"On a barren blue canras

Her clothes ripped off, her blasted open.

A sixteen-year old girl surrendering herself to pain.

And a pig : It's snout full of blood."

Here, he present the scene of a sixteen-year old girl who is lying on a blue canvas on which she surrenders herself to pain before a pig. The poet foregrounds 'barren blue canvas' in order to represent the sexual exploitation. The canvas which is blue shows melancholy and dependency of the girl as well as suggests the sexual impropriety. Blue may also mean the people who belling to the nobility or aristocracy.

"People who are merely involved in living are actually dead, and gone old. They fall in love and get into a tangle of body and mind."

Here poeple can not see beyond body and mind. Body become priority for them such man Dhasal thinks, are dead while living. He celebrates the woomenhood in Mandakini to the extent of sacredness when he calls her eyes 'flames' and her touch a spark for revolution.

Further, Mangesh Kulkarni says in his 'Burning Languages; Aesthetic and politics in the Poetry of Namdeo Dhasal", that the publication of 'Golpitha' (1972), a slim collection of Marathi poems, marked the emerence of a stunningly new poetic voice. It's author Namdeo Dhasal was a young, working class, Dalit citizen of Mumbai Underworld, whoses poetry created shock-waves in the domain of culture : even as Dalit panther, a Militant activist origination which he co-founded in the same year, Shook up the political Sphere.

A passionate agonism is at work in Dhasal's poetry which conjures up 'War Machines' or Communities of resistance seeking to target an array of hegemonic social stricture under girding the states :

"O innumerable suns blazing in my blood

Your mothers and sisters are still violated in bazaas

Neros still run amok like rouges, brazenly touching people in public squares.

Your novels are still bulldozed

For laying claim to a loaf of bread or a fistful of water"

Dr. Asim Twaha opines in his "Namdeo Dhasal", an Angry Panther :  A study of selected poems" that representation of Dalit in the writing of non-Dalit writers in the pre-Ambedkar period was mostly removed from what Dalit truly are : Daslit characters were typically portrajed as "Helpless and Childlike people". However, the emergence and rise of Babasaheb Ambedkar as a national figure matirated Dalit writers to take literature an instrument of authentically exposing the age-old persecution inflicted on Dalits by the upper caste population Among others, Namdeo Dhasal is one of such writer in the world of Dalit literature, who is closely related Dalit movement. Dhasal's poetry confineed to the depiction of the pain and suffering of the untouchable. He uses poetry as an instrument to portray the grief and misery of socio economically rejected population as well.

One of the important playwrite Vijay Tendular Summed up Dhasal's poetry very perfectly. "The world known as 'Golpitha' in the city of Mumbai - begins where the frontier of Mumbai's while-callas world end and non-main's land opens up. This is world  where the night is reversed into the day, where stomachs are empty or half empty, of depression against death or the next day's anxieties, of bodies left over after being consumed by shame and sensibility, of insufferably flowing sewerage, of diseased young bodies lying in the gutters braving the cold by holding their knees to their bellies of the jobless, of beggars of pick packets, of pick packets, of holy mendicants, of neighborhood tough guy and pimps……."

According to Dilip Chitre- "The Dalit and the lumpen become Namdeo Dhasal's central preoccupation as a creative writer, a political thinker and as activist." Dhasal had alwas longed for an equal world. Once writing a piece of poetry, he said-

"While I weite this at night

at's there o' clock

Though I want to have a drink

I do not feel like drinking.

Only want to sleep peacefully

And tomorrow morning see no varnas."

Famous critic Robert Bohm  rightly said "Dhasal of course make no apologies for his writing. Instead, he relentless in his insistence the reader know why he weites the way he does. And so he regales us with the extraordinary deprivation and garbage that is both literal and spiritual." In his poem "Man, you should Explod." he said -

"Man, you should drink human blood , eat

spit roast human flesh, Melt human fat

And drink it,

Smash the bones of your critics…"

According to an eminent Marathi writer “Vyannkatesh Madgnlkar."  If I have to name one poet, whose poetry carried that odor/smell/stench of pain, humiliation, suffering, agony, anguish and the anger, raw courage, desire and commitment to destroy the system which created this and everything related to it for unification of humanity, I will name Namdeo Dhasal."

In his poem :Worry" Dhasal is worried abont future and remains indifferent to immorality and spirituality.

"I do not wish to get chained to this God-crated hell for me every day brings a smile to the lips of fortune whether the ambrosial coud rains jmmortality or not I don't wish to entomb myself here in a trounce As for me I still have to worry Abont tomorrow's bread."

On the other hand Dilip Chitre painted out, "Namdeo Dhasal's universe is untouchable too. It is loathsome and nauseating universe, a journey into it is a journey from the sacred into the profane or if we were to see it in purely secular and material terms, if is a journey from the clean to the dirty, from the sanitized to the unsanitary, from the healthy to the diseased." (Poet of Underworld)

Dhasal's poetry, which was steeped in harsh word attempted to translate the violent experience of Dalits and the oppressed. Author 'Sudhir Arora'  in his article Voicing Dalits: The poetry of Namdeo Dhyasa, wrote that through his poetry Dhasal had lunched from the very start single handedly - a - Guerrilla war against the effete middle class and sanitized world of his literary readers."

Pu La Deshponde  reviewed for power's literature that "On reading the current of book the character of blind traditions stuck to our eyes that makes us unaware of facts will meet away in the tears that fill our eyes on seeing this horrifying reality will emergy new ways of hope. Reader will then seek to be more human henceforth in life, creating new kingship among mankind and free the society from artificial and vexing bond, right?"

In the article city and body: A study of selected poems of Namdeo Dhasal Divya Shah Quoted Zelliot's opinion that "Dhasal is the political maverick and always creative poet."

The title of one of the poems 'Kamatipura' suggests the location of Kamatipura in Bombay which according to Susan Dewey is "The biggest and the oldest area dedicated to prostitution in all of Asia." (Dwey 131) The poem divided into seven stanza depicts the dark and hideous world of kamatipura as the speaker says 'this is hell, This is an ugly agony." Using Metaphor of porcupine, the poem unfold the plight of prostitutes. The deceased bodies of prostitute are like "potassium cyanide" baring the pain of whoring and waiting for lotus to bloom.

Vinay Dharvadhar in one of his article 'Dalit poetry in Marathi" argues that Dhyasal's poems represent the life of "Urban untouchables usually living in street side slums, selling up house on the public side walks in a metropolis like Bombay."

Discussing the significance of Dalit literature, Dharwadkar argues that "The rejection of the post that flows through the heart of Dalit politics and identity the dalit literary and poetic bloodstream." (Dharwadkar 321)

It is possible to discuss poems such as "The Eternal Pity." 'on the way to the Dargah' in the context of Grosz's argument as the bodes of pimps, prostitutes beggars and orphans are brought forth on roads and pavements as the speaker says, in this life carried by a whore, not even side walks are ours."

Anupama Rao  argues that in Dhasal's work the prostitute is constructed "as a symbol of detritus life, her body sucked dry and left to shrived and die" (Rao)

According to J.V. Pawar in 1971 Dhasal had even organized a 'Morcha' of people involved in sex work and transgender people-both groups were invisible, in the political realm from Kamathipura towards Chaitya Bhumi. If one who knows about structural social reality thinks about this action symbolically and pragmatically, this is a Journey from dirt to self respect.

Satish Kalssekar,  Dhawal's close friend and fellow poet pointed out how his poetry evolved, "Namdeo Dhasal poetry in the early period seems more aggressive whereas in the later period, it becomes more wise and appears more mature."

Libertarian Pu.La. Deshpande  said about Pawar's famous autobiographical work Bluta "The cataract of blind traditions struck to our eyes that makes us unaware of faces will away in the tears that fill our eyes on seeing this horrifying reality will emerge new rays of hope. Reader will then seek to be more human henceforth in life.'

In Daya Pawar's words, "It was unlikely that I would have had the courage of my convictions at that age. But were they my convictions? Here, in school, I was being taught "Always speak the truth" and there, I was taking Dada's look to see at Chor Bazar. The world I learned about at school seemed fraudulent compared to the world I lived in."

In the article, Vlice of protest through the selected poems of Daya Pawar and Arjun Dangle.' M. Akila writes "Mostly people are marginalized in the name of sex, religion, race and caste. Caste plays a major role in all nook and cover of India. The four tiers if the Verna system are Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudharas. Among the four tiers Sudhra who are the labours and  service providers occupy the least cadre. Communities that come under the four tiers of Verna are turned as Savarna.

Dalit and scheduled tribes who do not belong tgo any of the four tiers of Verna system are referred as Ararna. These people are commonly called Marginalized." The poem "You wrote from Los Angeles" is penned by Daya Pawar, shows his anger towards the people by whom the Dalits were suppressed and ill treated. The poet feels satisfied by seeing the Indian being ill treated as curs by the white people in a foreign land. He feels good that the same when he is alive. The lower caste people were treated as dogs.

"Now you've had a taste of what we've suffered

In this country from generation to generation."

The poem "Oh! Great poet" by Daya Pawar also talks about the sufferings of marginalized people. Here poet attacks an great poet 'Valmiki', Who is well known for his epic poem "Ramayana". Valmiki belongs to Dalit community. But Daya Pawer chides valmiki that he failed to register the sufferings of Dalit community.

"Oh great poet,

How then would we call you a graet poet?

Had you written just a single verse.

Exposing this injustice, this outrage

Then would your name have been charred in our heart."

In the opinion of Jerry Pinto Daya Pawar Works -

Jerry Pinto  viewed about Bluta that,"I picked up Baluta after I read about the life and times of another Dalit poet, writer and activist Lal Dil Singh of Punjab that led me to look up Dalit writings. While the oppression faced by many of Indian's people on the basic of their caste or religion continues to this day and age," this book is a deep refection of not just the injustice brought examination of Pawer's play within the oppressed. Daya Pawer spares none: not his community, not the high caste people, not the politician, not the authorities, not his family and critiquing practices, belief systems, personal principles policies and taking a position."

'Chandramohan. S', a poet, in his recently published book, 'Letters to Namdeo Dhasal, has attempted to bring into focus many fiery issues related to the Dalits, tribal's and women as well. He did not miss the opportunity to document the incidents which recently shook the nation and in the mean time certain incidents which did not even make any mention in our busy lives.

Appreciating Namdio Dhasal's poetry, Prof Waman Nimbalkar writes: "Namdeo's poetry strikes like the lightening that bursts the sky. The injustice, atrocities and poverty along with a sacrilege of cultural language that expresses heart reading, shouldering agony burn like a blaze of fire. (79)

Through the translation Dilit Chitre has reproduced the image metaphor and the actual voice of Dhasal: "I seemed of grasp his poem as a whole, yet many years of it seemingly vital details would slip out of my fingers when my translator's hand tries to render them in English. However despite its inadequate in facing the source text, a target text create a stylistic analogue that has to stand of fall on its own, and this is my stance as a translator. (saleh 173)

Dhasal sympathizes with prostitute in Golpitha: "An object of carnal love but still loathed. Unlike a wife the prostitute has no institutionalized sanctity. She is therefore denied dignity as a human being and her status of ultimate untouchable serving other human beings by allowing them to degrade one. (Chitre II)

Vijay Tendulkar describes in the introduction to Galpitha's first publication. That "This is a world where stomachs are empty or half empty----bodies left over after being consumed by shame and sensibility-----diseased young bodies lying by the gutters braving the cold by folding up their knees to their bellies----of the jobless, of beggars, of pickpockets, of hilly mendicants, of neighborhood tough guys and pimps. (10)

Through his writhing, many a time Dhasal expressed his anger emotional language against the system that made a section of people untouchable. In the poem. "Man, you should explode, he says:

"This splendorous city for which we gave blood.

And won in return the prerogative to eat stones

We must this very moment put dynamite"

Under its sky kissing buildings. (34) Namdeo said in an interview with Dilip Chitre, "speaking of my own poems, there is no such thing as a fixed time for writing. When I was a taxi driver, I went to a particular eatery to have food. I would sit there and write whatever I had on my mind."

In an interview given to the noted Marathi writers and activists Satish Kalsekar and pradnya Lokhande of the Journal 'Asushthuba' in the special issue on Namdeo Dhasal in 1998, later printed in the third edition of Goldpitha in 1999, Dhasal discusses his artistic and political vision as follows:

"My commitment is that I will express whatever contradictions are there in my political act and in my literary act with all there complexities and agonies. Earlier the structure of poetry was equal to feeling, plus imagination and composition. The academic people to think like that. Feelings, moment, composition, imagination plus contradictions between individual and collectivity plus the universe action and contradiction between all these things are important too. Poetry is reaching out into the ten thousand conditions in the story of what is called the ten thousand years old human civilization and the life of a person who carries it. That is how I define poetry. Hence, I am extremely free with no burden no conventions. From this point of view, It let others say whatever they like about my 'isms' and traditions, but I have this honest opinion about Dalit literature. You should go beyond the narrow concept. The term 'Dalit' is a synonym for proletarian. What a vast world you can access with this kind of vision!." (Translation 128-129)     

During a general talk with Shai Sudheendra Kulkarni, Who served as an aid to former Indian Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee 1998 and 2004, Dhasal gave a very significant advise to the educated Dalit youth. He said, "For many years, we in the Dalit movement had been agitating over issue of emotive nature. But we did not pay enough attention to business and commerce. India's economic and social realities are now changing rapidly. Educated Dalit youth should not look only for government Jobs. They should come forward and prove their mettle by seizing the new being created by Indian's growing economy."

Concerning to Dalit consciousness Daya Pawar said, "Dalit consciousness in a revolutionary feeling which goes against middle class society. It is a system which makes sympathy about downtrodden people. (Ibid:29)

Tracing the development of the Dalit literature, Eleanor Zelliot, in her essay Dalit: New cultural context for an old Marathi word states:-

"While Dalit literature  as a school, a self conscious movement, is a product of the 1960 s. An individual writer from among the untouchables appear in the fourteenth century and again in the Mahar movement, began traditionally by Dyaneshwar in the thirteenth century, was Joined by Saint-Poets from almost all Marathi speaking caste, including the Mahar poet Chokhamela (Zelliot : 1992:37)

Harish Mangolam observed about Dalit poetry that "The feeling of didecation to the society fully flows in the Dalit poetry. The Dalit poets have continuously done the Job to split the web which is the hurdle in the social uplift. Racial theme caste exploitation in their poems like a red color in the blood. With the social reality, poet's self connection is presented. So to understand and enjoy their poems the social reality of their community plus poet's financial cultural and social situation must be known." (Mangolam, 142)  

Critical Analysis and perspective

Namdeo Dhasal is basically known for his focus upon the lives of the poor caste in traditional Indian society. His poems and short stories have been admired for and wide, which occupy prominent position in Indian Dalit literature. He has sensitive insights into the lives of underprivileged and their observation of poverty and caste exploitation. He had sympathy for downtrodden class who were the victim to caste system and exploitation. Namdeo Dhasal's works are not concentrated only with his own class or caste, but also focuses the objectivity.

This seems merely coincidental but there is gradual progress in the caste and social status of his poetry and short stories. As We read Dhasal's poems, a real representation on of marginalized and ostracized people. His poetry is as cry for social justice. Perhaps it has no match with any literature. His voice is definitely load, but it has it's own justification. Oppression seems to be never ending process therefore  we find an appeal to change social system. This is fact that Dalit people have to face the discrimination and oppression in the very area of the mundane life. This is why study is very significant even today because all the means of discrimination are still working in our society and great attempts made by writers have become useless. So this is the big challenge for us to inculcate the idea that discrimination on the basis of caste is destroying the nation as well as entire human society. Untouchables, biasness hierarchy, Exploitation, discrimination and caste system should be banned. In my perspective Indian society should be free from the caste, race and other discrimination too.

As we find that Dalit poetry perceived as a creation of new consciousness. It takes new grounds in terms of experience, sensibility and expression that pave way for peaceful and dignified life of the marginalized. Dalit poetry came into the existence out of a social situation, social compulsion and of individual creative compulsion and of individual creative composes. Dhasal's poems not only all painful but also provide the readers with a traumatic experience and thus present a vision of love and humanity in society.

Thus we find a view that Dhasal's poetry is not merely a medium for the expression of rebellion. It's aim is to pierce through the several worldly screens and give birth to a truth which is different and new.

Nambeo Dhasal's 'Poet of Underworld' his poetry is both a translator's nightmare and occasional delight. I rediscover it every now and 'Golpitha' occupies a position equal to that of Pan-Indian poetry. Namdeo Dhasal through his poetry projects the kind of complicity acquiescence and indifference shown by various quarters of society against the marginalized. His poetic collection is addressed to the oppressed and represent their oppression. His poetry deals with the people, the society, the professions existing on the pious and decent world. In his poetry he uses the manner in which so much reality, rage, power and strength in them that they can serve as the new anthem for the Dalit youth.

The present analysis of Daya Powar's first collection of poems "Kondwada" the atrocities and oppression faced by generations of Dalit. Pawar's writings reflects his alive participation in the social cultural and literary movement on the national level. His was highly effective. But due to oppressive circumstances, he sufferable mentally and physically in his personal life.

Conclusion :-

Daya Pawer and Namdeo Dhasal are regarded as significant signature in the history of Indian Dalit poetry. On the other hand Namdeo Dhasal has become the founder of 'Dalit panther; Through his creative writing, he choose suffering class and marginalized section. Dhasal's poems deals with the caste exploitation, class and gender discrimination. He has been successful to show love and compassion to the poor in order to alleviate their sorrows and make their lives bearable. Dhasal poems shows the live experience of Dalit and ostracized people.

On the other had Daya Power's poems the real representation of Dalit life. He focuses on the 'conspiracy of silence' in his poem 'oh' Great poet' and question to the great poet Valmiki. His writings were the most aggressive and violent display of the agonies of Dalit lives, particularly in Maharashtra.

Dalit poetry is unique in the sense that it builds structural pattern it of Dalit sensibility. It is unusual exceptional in terms of experience and expression-something alien to the so called Marathi Middle-Class sensibility. Dalit poems reefers the themes of isolation, alienation, protest, revolt, struggle for survival, freedom from all sorts of bondage and exploitation, apathy and up rottenness, search for identity, a longing for human dignity. It is the poetry of protest against orthodox, traditional and conventional. Thus Dalit poetry is no doubt that centre around man.   

Work Cited

1. Arora, Sudhir K. "Fragrant Reginal Flowers in Indian poetic vase, A note on Indian poetry translated in English", Postscript (ed) D.C. chambal Vol. XXI January, 2008.  

2. Chitre, Dilip "The Architecture of Anger : On Namdeo Dhasal's Golpitha". Journal of south Asian literature 17 (1982) 93-95 Jstor, Web 21 Jan, 2014.

3. Dewey, Susan, Hallow Bodies : Institutional Response to sex Trafficking in America Bosnia and India. V.K. Kumarian press 2008 print.

4. Rao, Anupma, "Representing Dalit Selfhood" Seminar 558 (2006) Web.

5. Dherwadkar, Vinay, "Dalit poetry in Marathi," Bord of regent of University of Oklahama. 68 web June 2014.

6. Alamdeo Dhasal  us bfUnjkxk¡/kh dks  Table Talk ds fy, etcwj dj fn;k FkkA

7. Anand Mulkaj, "An Anthology of Dalit literature (poems)." Gyan publishing house, 1992.

8. Limbale Sarankumar, " Dalit Voice: Literature and Revolt, "Authorspress, 2018.

9. Sakunthala. A.I. "Dalit Voices In Indian poetry A Study of Malayalam and Marathi poems," prestige Books, 2016.

10. Dalit consciousness in the poetry of Namdeo Dhasal.

11. Nimbalkar, Woman. Dalit Literature : Nature and Role, trans. From Marathi by Prof. Vandana Pathak and Dr. P.D. Nimsarkar. Nagpur probodh prakashan, 2006 print.

12. Chitre, Dilip Namdeo Dhasal Poet of Under world prems (1972-2006) Chenni : Navayana, 2007, Print.

13. An interview with Namdeo Dhasal, Conducted by satish kalsekar and prandya Lokhande in Golpitha, 1999, (97-151), print.

14. Golpitha, 3^rd Edition, Mumbai, Prabhat Publications, 1999, Print.

15. Dangle, Arjun ed. No Entry for the New New Sun : Translation from modern Marathi Dalit Poetry, Hyderabad : Disha, 1992, Print.

16. Mangalam, Harish, "Gujarati Dalit poetry" Dalit Literature : A critical exploration, Amarnath Prakashan New Delhi 2007 : 142 print.