Caste and Class: Trends and Challenges for ‘Dalits’ with the compass of Indian Writing

The study of colonial discourse directly release work such as Said’s has however blossomed in to a garden when the marginal can speak or spoken to, even spoken for. In this way the pose modern era plurality of cultures, genders and ethnicities is established with argument that no particular type should be privileged over others. There should be an equal representation for each class, caste, gender, race, and culture. Dalits and the marginalised were literary pushed empowerment for the establishment of the egalitarian society.The impact of these ideologies and the margin for the contemporary history and geography of the world’s civilization to be established. By describing multilingual, multicultural ethos of these oppressed people it will become a tool in social expansion of knowledge helped in the blossoming of Dalit literature in all Indian languages. It is one of the many newly emerged literatures of the post 1950 global scenario but with the difference that it is indigenous, home made with local traits and habitation and is experimental. Dalit literature empowers the marginalised by retrieving the voices, spaces and identities silenced or suppressed by casteist powers. It examines the human condition and provides inspiration for struggle to the marginalised because authentic shame, anger, sorrow and indomitable hope are its cardinal ingredient. The position of Dalit literature can be graphically understood in terms of the paradigms such as the colonized or colonizer, oppressed or oppressor, victimised or victimiser, dominant or dominated and subject or subjugated.

Dalit Literature is simultaneously universal, global and glocal. It is universal because starting from the ages to ages, from the ancient Greek Tragedy to the present Modern times raised the fundamental question: Why does Man suffer? The question has remained the same but the answers might be varied such as God, Fate, Chance, Choice , Evil and Society. In the present Era Dalit writers focuses on victimhood, oppression, suffering and demand of their dignity as human beings and their answers is “ caste”. People may not believe such barriers of caste and creeds, or obstacles of the caste and creeds and breeds but in reality it gets flow in the D.N.A of Indian Society. In a ways “Caste is in root of the Indian Society”. As soon as the child gets birth caste determines his or her destiny. Dalit is a word which has come from the Marathi ward ‘dalan’. i.e. that class which is called exploited class. In this way Dalit literature is pan-Indian in its scope, impact and motivation- cutting across provincial and linguistic boundaries. The indeliable impact of Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar on this literature is clearly perceptible. By the 1960s Dalit literature saw a fresh crop of new writers like Baburao Bagul, Bandhu Madhav and Shankarao Kharat though its formal form came into being with the little magazine movement. Dalit voice, a political magazine which started publishing in 1981, was another potent force in the rise of Dalit literature in India. The living world of Dalit oppression is found in different bhasha literature but due to the similarity of they are inner bond. `Mass literature, Literature of Action, Literature of Protest and Marginalized literature are different names of this emerging genre of literature which blossomed world over out of socio-political and cultural transformation. Dalit literature is a composite and homogenous body of massive creative corpus emerging from different regional Bhasha literature such a Marathi , Kannad, Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, Madiga , Kannada etc....Dalit Literature in various Indian Writing in English is “ the burning charcoal of Dalit experience” however , ‘ Dalit literature’ can be called as the post-colonial literature. The term post colonial in relation to Dalit Literature is not intercultural but intracultural because both colonizer and the colonized were still are within India, the one is in the centre and another is on the periphery.

The word Dalit is highly related the Indian cosmos which has been specially used erstwhile so-called Untouchables or the scheduled castes of India to describe their political identity. Dalit literature is written for such category of people who are crushed and the downtrodden.

According to Bishop A.C Lal “The word ‘Dalit’ is a beautiful word because it transcends narrow national and sectarian frontiers. It is a beautiful word because it embraces the sufferings, frustrations, expectations and groaning of the entire cosmos.” Human suffering, woes, inner conflict, injuring of the self , the damage of the ‘self honour’ by the society, deprivation is the esoteric theme of the Dalit literature. Dalit literature is the solid voice in the literature which has been represented firmly by the writers with the exactness which can’t be separated the existence of the real sufferer. It’s not soft voice but the solid strike with the clear words and the clear expression as the exact condition of the ‘Dalit samaj’. Dalit literature is the outcome of the society in which the inequality of the human doesn’t exist. Dalit literature is the reason of those crushed, suppressed voice which was engraved by force by the so called authorisers of the society who got born in upper surface of the society and called themselves superior and the real owners of the society. Mankind can bare the strikes of the natural disaster which can be so harsh, which can be tolerated but the pain suffering arises by the man to man is much disastrous and painful which is the most terrifying aspect of the human life and existence. Suffering, pain, pathos, woes, given by man to man is more intensely and painful than the suffering cause by the Nature.

History is the witness of such human suffering , pain, pathos, revolt, the unspeakable violence caused by man to his fellow human being. In the ancient time the ‘Varna Pratha’ was established in the society to set up better management of the society but it damaged the human hierarchy. The society is for human but the human and humanity both disappeared from the social understanding of sphere. The whole effort was for better enhancement and set up of society and enhancement of the management of the society but it brought the inequality in the human world. Royal became royal and down trodden became much more deprived, ignored, suppressed, the isolated and victim of violence both physically , psychologically and socially. In the Medieval time exploitation was done of the peasants by the feudal lords continued without any sense of remorse on the part of the oppressors. In the time of the British colonialism the gap between various ‘Varnas’ were widen to keep divided the Indian society on the very social sphere by wish and target. Socially declared downtrodden were remained the same and exploited much more like low caste pesants, chamars, Bhangis, Dhobis etc.....the society didn’t give them chance to raise from the social platform and the Britishers supported the same for divide and rule in India. In Ghandhian Era the total equality was efforted to establish but some aspects were not completely removed or reformed. Still in the Modern age the glimpses remained in the society. The trends and challenges with the Dalits still go on with the days pass. It appears that we have accepted violence as a way of our life. Where there is violence there is suffering and violence in our times springs from so many sources. Social inequalities on the basis of caste, class, race and gender too breed violence, obviously it is man-made phenomenon. The violence of the white against black, the non- tribals against the tribal population, the upper class against the low caste people, the patriarchal violence of men against women breed counter violence as the oppressed will also rise in revolt one day against enemy. The vicious circle of violence goes on endlessly the engulfing the life of innocent people. In India more than one-sixth of its population suffers from neglection and humiliation just because they born as the deprived and downtrodden class. The suffering they undergo is man- made and hence more painful and unfortunate. The suffering undergo by the depressed class went unnoticed until recently as the writers and artists hardly captured the indignities and inhumanities suffered by the untouchables or Dalits.

This paper explores the dark corners of the trends and challenges for Dalits with the special reflection of some glittering works of some very famous writers such as Munshi Prem Chand, U.R. Ananthmurthy, Raja Rao, MulkRaj Anand, Om Prakash Valmiki, Arundhati Roy and the poet like Arjun Dangle too.

All of Anand’s ‘untouchables’ are from real life, reflects the reality of the real life. Caste incompetence is the disability, which a person has to suffer as a consequence of his belonging to a low caste. The worst affected by caste incompetence are the so called ‘untouchables’. These untouchables nowhere may draw water from a common well, or even though they are Hindus, they couldn’t enter to the temple to offer the offerings to the God. Neither had they had that right to at least see the idols of the God. They are not allowed to talk to the cast people from a distance nearer than that prescribed untouchable peeps in to the life of the outcast untouchables through the character of Bakha who presents the misery, inhuman treatment of the crushed, oppressed and they have knots before independence . It also highlights how an ‘untouchable’ leads the life meaner than the animals and how he has to tolerate inhumane insult and abuse. Bakha , the protagonist of the novel ‘Untouchable’ had been ashamed of the Indian way of performing ablutions. He remembered so well the Britishers abused them as: ‘ Kala admi Zamin par hagne wala’(black man, you who relieve yourself on the ground) (page-10). The untouchables are socially isolated people who lead a deplorable and miserable life beyond imagination. According to E.M. Forster---- “ The sweeper is the worse than a slave, for the slave may change his master and his duty even become free, but the sweeper is bound for ever, born in to state from where he can never escape.”

Truly this view shows that the cleaner of the dirt itself has been addressed as the polluted. The sweepers clean the latrines, dirt and other filth but as the people hate the dirt and garbage, they also hate the sweepers by taking as the shape of dirt. As the garbage thrown out of the village, just the same way the untouchables too thrown out of the village having ‘outcastes’ colony. As per the social designs they have to live outside the village, neither get pure drinking water nor good and healthy food, besides the thrown stale food of the casts Hindus. Sometimes they die like flies by unsolved diseases too. There are not only divisions of castes, but also the watertight compartment of Indian people and culture. One should bear in his/her particular class, grow up, eat, drink, marry and die in the caste. This has become the tyranny.

In the beginning of Mulk Raj Anand’s ‘Untouchable’ we find the very beginning description from the colony of the untouchables.

“The outcastes’colony was a group of mud-walled houses that clustered together in two rows.........A brook ran near the lane, once with crystal- clear water, now soiled by the dirt and filth of the public latrines .....the odour of carcases left to dry in its banks, the dung of donkeys, sheep, horses, cows and buffaloes heaped up to be made in to fuel cakes and biting. Choking pungent fumes that oozed from its sides. The absences of a drainage system had through the rains of various seasons......which gave out the most offensive stink. And altogether the ramparts of human and animals refuse that lay on the outskirts of this little colony, and the ugliness, the squalor and the misery which lay within it, made it an ‘uncongenial’ place to live in (page-1). People also make them realise that what is their responsibilities, limitations, codes, conditions. etc....

In the novel the old black moneylender shouting towards Bakha in his sharp southern diction that ---

‘There is not a latrine clean.
You must work for the pay you receive’
(page-11)

The outcastes are exposed to the sub-human life of long-term diseases. They are underfed, weak and prone to infections disease Lakha suffers from Asthama, Bakha’s mother dies because the family fails to give her right timely treatment, Bakha also has some illness. Whenever such critical condition happens with any untouchable, none help them, that they’ll be ‘polluted’ if they help them, see them, touch them, even enter in to their colony.

The novel ‘Untouchable’ presents the social and the religious rigidity in such a design that it reflects the strong focus on the cast Hindus’ darkest sight of the mind and motives who do not want the untouchables to upgrade but to smash under their foot, yet who can at least fulfil their wrong need and of course the cleanliness of their day to day routine. Bakha is the centre of those untouchables who have been oppressed for thousands of years. Bakha is an 18 years old son of Lakha , the jamadar of all North Indian cantonment town. He is bullied everyday by his ageing father to clean the latrines. He wakes up by the abuses of Havildar Charat Singh, a cast-Hindu, a famous Hockey player but suffering from piles, for not keeping a latrine clean for him. But he puzzled by seeing that Bakha remains clean himself, he is not the filthy kind of belonger of the sweeper caste. He has some good impact over his mind about Bakha that he promises to give him a Hockey stick who loves to play games. After cleaning many latrines, Bakha gets thirsty and tired, he wants to drink water but when he comes back at home, he gets neither water nor tea, for there was no water at home. Sohini goes to fetch water from the caste- well. Now the trouble of the day for Bakha and his sister begins- a series of humiliation and shocks. At the well, Sylph like Sohini confronts a humiliating circumstance typical of India, we can see over in the villages of India. The quite normal scene is occurred every now and then that the lots of scolding and insulting happens by the name of if the outcastes touch the well that becomes polluted while only the cast people have the right to fetch the water from there. When Sohini goes to fetch the water there were more then ten outcastes wait for fetching water to get the mercy form the cast Hindus. Gulabo is the washerwoman who claims “a high place in the hierarchy of the castes among the low castes.”(page25) and who had a well-known Hindu lover in her youth time, was feeling the extreme jealousy by Sohini who was looking quite beautiful in her age, but of born in low caste family. So she does not leave even a single chance to humiliate Sohini. She takes her as the biggest rival. She even tries to beat her. Om Prakash Valmiki creatively illustrates in his “Sahavayatra” the fact that there is untouchability even among the ‘untouchables’ too. The lower hates the lowest. He poignantly records the misery, helplessness, humiliation, insults, oppressions and brutality that the lowest caste has to suffer in a society of lower caste. Gulabo, the washerwoman, scolds Sohini like anything at the well as soon as she looks her. She unconsciously betrayed her feelings in the mockery and light-hearted abuse which she showered on Sohini.

‘Go back home.......There is no one to give you water here! And, at any rate, there are so many of us ahead of you!’ she starts to use extremely bad words for silent innocent Sohini.. ‘Bitch, why don’t you speak! Prostitute, why don’t you answer me ?’ Gulabo insisted.‘You annoy me with your silence, you illegally begotten! You eater of dung and drinker of urine ! You bitch of a sweeper woman ! I will show how to insult one old enough to be your mother.’ (page- 16-17) Pandit Kali Nath was fascinated by the beauty of Sohini. He had seen her before, noticed her as she came to clean the latrines in the gullies in the town- the fresh young from whose full breasts with their dark beads of nipples stood out so conspicuously under her muslin shirt, whose innocent look of wonder seemed to stir the only soft cord in his person, hardened by the congenital weakness of his body, disillusioned brazened by the authority he exercised over the faithful and the devout. And he was inclined to be kind to her. Pandit Kali Nath had wrong intentions for Bakha’s sister so he gave first preference to her so he could entrap her in to the false intentions and can fulfil the carnal desire. When she refused for that he began to shout--------

‘polluted ! polluted ! polluted !’ ‘Get off the steps,
you scavenger! Off with you ! You have defiled
our whole service, You have defiled our temple !
Now we will have to pay for the purificatory ceremony.
Get down, get away, you dog!’(page53)

The upper caste Hindu gave them the remnant of their food left after they have taken. The untouchables had to live in a ghoulish condition where derogatory epithets, were used excessively like ‘illegally begotten (page 17) ‘Bitch’, ‘prostitute!’ ‘wanton!’(page28) ‘son of pig!’(page131)’,‘dirty dog!’ (page53) ....etc....

Bakha couldn’t even tolerate the thought that someone who holds Sohini like this and burst in to anger by thinking that-------

“ Why didn’t I go and kill that hypocrite! , I could
have sacrificed myself for Sohini. Everyone will know
about her. My poor sister! How can she show
her face to the world after this?”(page-56)

As the episode of Pandit Kali Nath trying of Sohini’s Seducing, shows the practice of untouchability is essentially a matter of pretentious religiosity and exploitation. Bakha shows the brutality of the untouchables feels like a ‘tiger at bay’. The religious terms make the person so blind that except him he takes others as the out of existence. Feelings of humiliation frequently injured Bakha, but helpless Bakha felt just burning within himself, getting anger and almost feel like the wounded wolf, searching the reverse revolt with silent lips snarling. When Bakha goes to beg for food from the cast Hindu’s house, the house wife gets started to scold him more than ever and flung a bit of cake towards him which fell at the dirty pavement.

‘You eater of your masters, she shouted,
‘may the vessels of your life never float the sea of existence!
Go! Get up, get up! May you perish and die!
you have defile my house !
Go! Get up, get up! You eater of your masters!
Why didn’t you shout if you wanted food
Is this your father’s house that you come and take rest here? (page-63)

He wins the humiliation because he rested his fatigued body on the wooden platform of her house and defiled it. On the contrary the same house wife treated the Sadhu with at most respect and honour. Bakha is apologised. Though she argued that—

‘Why did you sit down on my doorstep, if you had to sit down at all?
You have defile my religion! you should have sat there
in the gulley! Now I will have to sprinkle holy water
all over the house! You spoiler of my salt! Oh ! how terrible!
You sweepers have lifted your heads to the sky, nowadays.....
(page-63)

The woman changes her behaviour when she saw the saint. Instead of giving the bread respectively to Bakkha she flung the bread to him which has been wrapped into the dust and at the same place the child of that woman was relieving himself. Bakkha felt disgusting. She forced him to clean the drain first then and then he will get the bread. He picked it up quietly and wrapped it in a duster with the other bread he had received. He was too disgusted to clean the drain after this, especially as the little boy sat relieving himself before him. He threw the little broom aside and made off without saying a thank-you. (page- 65) Bakha too doesn’t like the dirty, wet bread, he too feels irritation and the feeling of the disgust like anybody else in the world and especially who prefers the cleanliness.

Moreover he faced a whole lot of humiliation when an act of love involves the demon of defilement, the child in him is grievously hurt. Bakha lifts the child who falls unconscious on being hit by a stone in the melee in the midst of hockey. Game and carries him to his house. Despite the taboo against his touch, he couldn’t help of being merciful towards him. Instead of being thankful to him the mother of that child started to scold him and cursed him alleging, that he has killed her son and defile her house. Bakha touched to the quick and his heart-strings are violated by this rude charge. He runs like Buddha sitting under a piple tree in the plain he begins to nurse his despair. Untouchables deal with the outcast engaged in an intense struggle with the oppressive forces.

Bakha the undefined representation of the lowly castes people who faced and tolerated the oppression of the caste Hindus from the ancient times till the half of the Modern Era. Bakha presents the untiring journey of oppression and humiliation from the very beginning of the day till the end of the day, it’s in a ways the symbol of the long, long years untiring and the oppressive journey of the lower castes with a silent lips and the voiced self within, which always flooded to come out as was of Bakha. Even today after 60 years of Indepencence , the Dalits continue to suffer social neglect; the Dalit women are paraded naked in the streets; Dalit colonies are set ablaze; they work as labourers and their wives are raped and they too are beaten.

‘Joothan’ is an autobiographical novel in which he has expressed the heart agonies as an untouchablity victim. This novel begins by the detail description of the poor living surrounding by Chuhra community, where poverty regained supreme. The lake of civic amenities, and poor sanitation facilities were the curse of that dwelling place. Animals like pigs and human begins shared the same living place as there no other place to go. In this concern we find one of the most breathing atmosphere in the poetry of Arjun Dangle who has given the horrific picture of their wretchedness entitled as “Chhavni Hilti Hai” (The Cantonment has Begun to Shake) :

We fought with crows,
Never even giving them the snot from our noses.
As we dragged out the Upper Lane’s
dead cattle.
Skinned it neatly
And shared the meat among ourselves,
They used to love us then.
We warred with jackals-dogs-
Vultures-kites
Because we at their share. (Abedi)

The narrator in ‘Joothan’ describes the hardship what he has faced in his life. The writer faces series of various obstacles while getting the primary and the higher education. People of the upper class created the disaster for him at each and every steps of his life. Even some of the teachers and the head master too oppose to give him education which can be reflected through such words..

“What is the point of sending him to school?”
What has a crow became a swan?”

Dalit child passes through the physical, psychological, and social harassment by the upper class even by the inter low castes too. As we see in Mulk Raj Anand’s ‘Untouchable’ Sohini got lot of and constant humiliation by the washer woman Gulabo. ‘Joothan’ means the left over remnants of food from wedding or at home which is relished by the Chuhras. The ariter expresses the inner fury by the words that----“ What sort of a life was that?After working hard day and night the price of our sweat was just ‘ Joothan’”.

The social ostracism faced by the chuhras haunted the writer’s mind since his childhood right up to his adulthood. Even he was deceived by the Brahmin girl in love when she got that he is Valmiki but not Brahmin , it is just by the name only he is that, actually he belongs to the Bhangi’s family. It is jubalpur which gave him the healthy world of human where he could find the place for himself, and the enhancement too. A kind of healthy clean air of healthy attitude of the human world he could realise. Valmiki poured his anger through the inner conflict that—

“Being born is not one’s contrast, then why would have I been born in Bhangi’s household? Those who call themselves the standard- bearers of this country’s great cultural heritage, did they decide which homes they would be born into?”

Dalit writers like Valmiki are thus producing literary analysis and literary theory simultaneously with their literary creation. On the one hand, their work has broken the hegemony of high caste literary establishment which can no longer continue to present its choices as universal and timeless, and on the other, by producing their own literature they have created their specific corner in the literary revolution called ‘Dalit Literature’.

In the short story of Om Prakash Valmiki “ The Killing of a Cow” an element of resistance is embodied through Sukka, a Dalit , has menial job at Mukhiyaji’s home has a beautiful wife and his wife was observed lustfully by Mukhiyaji. Mukhiyaji wanted to satisfy his sexual desire through Sukka’s wife. Sukka stopped his work there and chewing over his words that “She will not come to your haveli” when Mukhiyaji threatened him he again resists that-

“It’s when I work , Mukhiyaji,
that you give me two handfuls of rice.
She will not come to your haveli.”

Though Sukka received the severe punishment for this revolt. This shows that in the past the Dalits had to submit themselves before the mad desire of the upper caste people. If they resist they had to face the harsh treatment by them that they couldn’t even exist in their own community. Dalit is of low caste, part of low caste but like other upper castes he/she is also a face of his/her caste . It doesn’t mean that he/she is least or degraded born person. Dalit is a combination of the realization of the joy, experiences, sorrow and the deep feeling of humiliation and insults which has been given by the other castes people. Dalit literature is not the stories of merely the woes, pain, pathos, or unacceptable inhuman experience which can be seen by the literary perspective only but it’s a sociological , perspective which is highly related with the society and the social experience. It is that which says the saga of the silent crushed voices, the slow but steady and stony resistance of the souls.

Society and social management is not something related to the ownership of any one. It’s not something or somebody’s authority that one can crush other and divide other or consider him as degenerated and low. Dalit literature is the voice of the unvoiced souls, where we have to spend a time to, peep in to. We must study the socio-economic condition of dalit as that will enable us to make out the real meaning and significance of dalit literature.

“Kanthapura”, Raja Rao’s gretatest classical novel portrays radical social changes, and marks a turning point in the history of modern India. “Kanthapura” is not merely a socio-political document against the Colonial power but prophesies future social changes and the saga of the unification of the castes and the low castes for the freedom movement. “Kanthapura” shows the deep rooted orthodoxy of caste system. The Brahmins against pariahs. Moorthy the Brahmin but the saint of the village. He is the true devotee of Gandhian ideals. He goes to the Pariahs’ houses . He takes tea and food with them too. He preaches them Harikatha. He doesn’t keep any difference between touchables and the untouchables. But his mother doesn’t like. She warned him not to enter in house except he gets bath with Ganga water. She got the deepest shock when Venkamma poisoned her ears by Moorthappa’s living, eating and even spreading the rumours of having physical relationship with the pariah woman. She dies by getting this shock. Moorthappa was not even allowed to offer last ceremony to his mother. Even Moorthy , when he cames back to home he too take bath with sacred Ganga water and sit in the courtyard to eat. Even he too couldn’t leave what he is. He can’t forget himself that he is a Brahmin. He doesn’t keep the barriers of castism but he can’t give up in which community he born and what his social status. It the Gandhian ideals which leads him ahead to follow the path of Satyagraha , truth , equality etc. People didn’t have much ignorance about the colonialism of the Britishers but Gandhian untouchability. Women irrespective of caste and creed step out of their house to take part in the popular rising. Even if they are beaten , threatened tortured by their husbands and raped by the police and harassed by them too they tried to support the Ram reign.

In the stories of Munshi Premchand he identified Untouhability is the worst evils of the existing Indian society. In “Shudra” there is a tale of Untouchable woman who is transported as a part of a racket involving trafficking in women. These poor underdogs of the society often become easy prey to the cunning traffickers. In other story “ Mandir” there is a pathetic tale of a wretched Dalit mother who is desperate to take her sick child to the temple to pray for his recovery. But the priest by no means allows her to enter as her entering will defile the temple. She became so impatient that she breaks the lock of the temple and tries to enter it but the priest caught het red handed. She was too much badly beaten by some men. One Thakur pushed her so hardly and that time her child got thrown out of her hand but without motion and she too fell there. Her child got dead. She screamed a lot. She was accused to defile the temple. Though there was the question of her own belief yet nobody understood the motherly feelings. The rules of the society became much more important rather than the humanly feelings. She was Chamar so that she was not entered into the temple. The rule of the man for the God that the God is not available for the other castes people whom the people don’t consider at least as the human than the animal.

“Salvation” gives a picture of inhuman torture by Brahmin on a poor illiterate Chamar, Dukhi who take the priest almost as the representative of almighty God. Dukhi died due to Starvation and his body was not allowed for the last offering, instead the Dalits dragged his body outside of the village to feed on jackals and vultures. This shows no sign of repentance for such action and no sympathy for them even after death.

In “ Samskara” the greatest novel written by U.R. Ananthmurthy , also shows the trends and challenges both for the Dalits. Naranappa , the Brahmin has illegal relationship with the low case prostitute called Chandri. The whole novel is revolving around the last offering , the last samskara of the dead body of Naranapa. The Brahmin community never accepts the revolted caste Hindu who slept with the low caste woman. They want share i9n the property of Naranapa but they don’t want to give him last offering to his body. Chandri the Dalit prostitute offers that in the dark night with the help of Naranapa’s friend without anyone’s knowledge. The term is here that if the person resists against any trend of the society he/ she is not at all able to get the human rights even. The question is “Who is Naranapa?” “A Brahmin or an Untouchable?” Caste looks here the barrier and the bond of living ones the person goes out of it he/she becomes criminal of the society.

“The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy, narrates the same shocking experience of inhuman on the Dalits. Velutha , the paravan and professionally a skilled carpenter, is introduced as bare-bodied referring himself to be an untouchable and not middle-class. “ the parvans were expected to crawl backwards with a broom sweeping away the foot prints so that Brahmin or Syrian Christian would not defile themselves by accidently stepping into parvan’s foot print. To escape from the ghost of untouchability Valutha’s grandfather accepts Christianity but the trouble gets double. They become casteless and therefore devoid of the benefits guaranteed by the constitution. Valutha was appearing himself like touchables which was terrified for his father. Love between Valutha and Ammu also rejected by Mammachi. Valutha is untouchable so he can’t love the upper class woman, is depicted by his Mammachi. Moreover he was accused for the death and kidnapping of Sophie Mol and her two children. Valutha is arrested and inhumanely tortured and beaten till he bled to death. The novelist castigates the society which denies dignified and decent life to certain individuals because they are born in a ‘low Caste’. Though unprotected and unpatronised , Valutha tries to live a dignified life but he becomes the victim of a degrading social system.

The analysis of certain works on the basis of trends and challenges for dalits with the compass of Indian writing point to the fact that the creative writers, Dalit or non- Dali writers do not have any readymade solution of such evils like social degradation, untouchability, castism, classism, upper and lower. But they portray the social realities in such a way that we feel shaken out of complacency.

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