Abstract:

2023 marked 60 years of the publication of Baburao Bagul's collection of short stories titled _Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli Hoti_. First published in 1963, Bagul's anthology formed a landmark event for Dalit literature in the Marathi language. In the years that followed, several other landmark texts of Dalit literature emerged in Maharashtra in a variety of genres: poetry, novels, short stories, and autobiographies/memoirs. Such a plurality of genres is represented in Bagul's own writings: _Maran Swast Hot Aahe_ (1969) was another anthology of short stories, _Sud_ (1970) was a short novella,_ Ambedkar Bharat_ (1981) was an epic novel in two parts, _Dalit Sahitya: Aajche Krantividnyan_ (1981) was an analytical-theoretical overview of the revolutionary potentials of Dalit literature, and _Veda Aadhi Tu Hotas_ was a collection of poems.

This paper begins with the hypothesis that such a plurality of genres has gradually given way to the overproduction or saturation of autobiographies/memoirs in the broader stream of Dalit literature. If one considers the translation of a work of literature as a reasonable benchmark to gauge its popularity and circulation, it would be fair to say that save Bagul's _Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli Hoti_, nearly all full-length works of Dalit literature in Marathi from the latter half of the 20th century which have been translated into English have been autobiographies or memoirs. The genre of fiction--novels, poetry, short stories--has broadly undergone a neglect both in the production of original writings as well as in the market of English translations. Dalit literature in the English language has fared even worse in terms of narrowing down the plurality of expressive genres. Bestsellers from the category of Dalit literature in English from the last decade or so have all been autobiographies/memoirs.

How does one interpret or analyze the near-complete eclipse of the genre of fiction from the literary production of Dalits in India in the recent past? Does the emergence of Dalit cinema and Dalit studies have something to do with this purported decline of Dalit literature? This paper is a modest attempt at thinking about the validity of these two questions in order to reflect upon the law of genres that has historically overdetermined the production of Dalit literature in India.