Interrogating my chandal life: An autobiography of a Dalit

Interrogating my chandal life: An Autobiography of a Dalit, Manoranjan Byapari, Sage -Samya; Rs.550; Pages 356 One of the great enduring injustices of Hinduism (which the ruling dispensation hoping to ride and remain in power does its best to obfuscate) is its varna or caste system. Under the rigid tenets of the Hindu caste system which its proponents laud as division of labour, people born into the lowest caste — formerly untouchables, later Harijans, designated the ‘depressed class’ by Dr. Ambedkar and today self-classified as Dalits (the oppressed) — were divinely ordained to perform the lowest of low-end jobs such as cleaning drains, toilets, removing animal carcasses etc, and never rise above their status. This searing autobiography translated from the original in Bengali provides telling insights into how Dalits survive in a repressive, discriminatory society in which, although abolished by law and the Constitution, the caste system is far from dead. This narrative adds to the stories of grit and determination, of courage and endurance that characterise Dalit autobiographies — Bama’s Karukku translated from Tamil and Sharankumar Limbale’s Akkarmashi translated from Marathi. Manoranjan Byapari (alias Jeeban or ‘life’ in the early parts of the narrative), unschooled and untaught, learnt the alphabet in prison from another elderly inmate, etching his letters with a twig on the soft earth of the courtyard outside his prison cell. Gifted a box of chalks by a compassionate sepoy, he learned to write on a cement floor, forming words, transforming into “a traveller from darkness to light”. At a prison blood donation camp, he earned Rs.20 as a donor and was allowed to invest in pen and paper, and learned to read, borrowing books from Naxalite prisoners. When he was released for lack of evidence, he returned to his old haunts in the Jadavpur (a south Kolkata suburb) area and his old trade of plying a cycle-rickshaw and doing numerous, back-breaking menial chores to eke out a living. Quite by accident, Byapari was ‘discovered’ by the Bengali socio-political activist, Sahitya Akademi and Jnanpith award-winning writer Mahasweta Devi, whom he ferried in his rickshaw one evening. She was surprised when he asked her the meaning of an uncommon Bengali word in a book he was reading. She encouraged him to write his own story and that was the beginning of an incredible journey that culminated in an invitation to the prestigious Jaipur Literary Festival last year. Byapari has penned several novels, essays and over 100 short stories published in obscure magazines. Currently, Byapari remains a fearless activist for human rights even as he struggles to stave off poverty by doing odd jobs including that of a cook in a residential school for poor children, leading an “un-writerly existence”. Unlike other Dalit autobiographies, Byapari’s focus is not merely his personal fight against demeaning injustices and discrimination. He finds himself constantly caught up in the interstices of history where his caste and class perspective provides new insights into events like the partition of Bengal, the refugee crisis in post-independence India, 34…