Early Dalit Literature and Culture in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Western India

Abstract

This seminal article analyses some of the early origins of Dalit protest in 19th-century western India. The article and its Marathi primary sources have subsequently been much re-quoted and paraphrased in later secondary academic publications on Dalit protest in western India. The article focuses on the ways in which 19th-century Orientalist Protestant Christian missionary engagement with Marathi religious texts, particularly bhakti Hindu texts, had an influence on early Dalit Marathi writing and political expression in western India. The article argues that Dalit agency must however be conceptualized in Dalit terms as the driving force for Dalit identity transformation in this period rather than in terms of Sanskritization, westernization or a direct inversion of caste Hindu values.