Dalit writers say the emergence of low-caste literature has taken place alongside a broader growth of consciousness and activism, particularly in urban India. While in rural India, caste remains all-pervading, in cities many of the signs and signals that identify a person’s caste have vanished. In cities, too, Dalits are better organised to stand up for their rights. Dalit literature represents a powerful, emerging trend in the Indian literary scene. Given its overarching preoccupations with the location of Dalits in the caste-based Hindu society, and their struggles for dignity, justice and equality, this literature is by nature oppositional. With the growing translation of works by Dalit writers from various regional languages into English, Dalit literature is poised to acquire a national and an international presence as well as to pose a major challenge to the established notions of what constitutes literature and how we read it. Sehgals’s Unconscious Cast[e] and Dalit Writings is a provocative and thoughtful account of the debates among Dalit writers on how Dalit literature should be read. In this book, authors explore several crucial questions: What is Dalit literature? What are its concerns and features? What aesthetic considerations should be taken into account in interpreting Dalit writing? Is it appropriate to apply to Dalit literature the criteria used in assessing the work of non-Dalit writers generally and high-caste Hindu writers in particular? Who is a Dalit, anyway?

• English Literature > English Literature
• Political Science > Dalit Studies
• Sociology > Sociology

• Methodology Of Teaching English: Tools, Techniques and Methods 
• Effective Communication Skills 
• Critical Interactions : Reading 20th Century Literary Texts 
• D.H. Lawrence : Man and Artist 
• Modern Fiction and Criticism