Mamta Kalia

atrocities, and passing judgment on them,
Valmiki brings them into a new discourse
of human rights and justice.
It is interesting to note in this regard
the caste and classbased responses to
a short story by Valmiki in the May
2000 issue of the Hindi monthly Hans.
The short story entitled “Ghuspaithiye”
(Intruders) describes the physical
violence directed at Dalit students in
a medical college. The June issue of
the publication had a letter from a reader
saying that Valmiki was perhaps
remembering things that had happened
in his youth and claiming that such
accounts of the past were no longer
true.
A letter in the July issue supported
Valmiki, reiterating the truth of his
rendering.
Valmiki, like many other Dalit writers,
demands the status of truth for his writing,
taking issue with those who find Dalit
literature lacking in imagination. Valmiki’s
insistence that all persons and events
in Joothan are true poses a considerable
challenge to postmodernist critics who
propose that autobiography’s truth is
‘constructed,’ that the autobiographic
narrator shapes a presentable self by
reprocessing his/her memories in order
to fit the present. Dalit autobiography
claims the status of truth, of testimony.
Naming people and places by their real
names is one of the strategies through
which Valmiki establishes the status of
Joothan as testimony and it gives.
Joothan the status of documented Dalit
30 :: April-June 2010
history.
The timbre of the voice, for that
reason, is exhortatory. It demands
answers, and points out contradictions.
While the text has many moments of
deep sadness and pathos, its predominant
mood is ironic. The narrative comments
are inevitably in an ironic voice, pouring
sarcasm on the cherished cultural ideals
and the myths of high caste friends.
Valmiki makes fun of their wellmeaning
advice to him to write about universals
rather than about the ‘narrow circle’
of particularism. He relentlessly exposes
the double standards of friends who are
greatly interested in literature and
theatre, and yet practise untouchability
in subtle ways like having a different
set of teacups for their untouchable
visitors.
Indeed, Joothan demands a radical
shift from the upper caste and upper
class reader by insisting that such a
reader not forget his/her caste or class
privilege. Unlike canonical Hindi or
English writing where the reader’s, or
the writer’s, caste and class are often
considered irrelevant, Joothan’s dual
addressivity problematises the reader’s
caste and class. While Valmiki’s irony,
satire, harangue and anger are directed
at non-Dalit readers, Dalit readers are
seen as fellow sufferers.
While ‘we’ is demarcated to mean
‘we Dalits’ in the text, the upper caste
and upper class readers are distanced
by the use of pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’