Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki is one such work of Dalit literature, first published in Hindi in 1997 and translated into English by Arun Prabha Mukherjee in 2003. Valmiki and a few others like him have breached an opening for our understanding and knowledge about a people so marginalized that they disappeared from the world's awareness, their cultures, lifestyles, folk knowledge, and aspirations represented nowhere in mainstream or scholarly sources.
Most significantly, though, Valmiki's story is a voice from the half of India that has been voiceless for countless generations. Omprakash gives us an anatomy of oppression.
The highest purpose of Dalit writing is not beauty of craft, but authenticity of experience. He describes how these people are subject to an institutionalized slavery. Himself born in a desperately poor family in North India, the lowest caste in Indian society, a community of the illiterate Untouchables, he describes from his personal experiences the torments of the Dalits who even have no right to fight for education or food. Omprakash Valmiki’s voice is today recognized as an empowered voice of a writer who works on behalf of Dalits. But Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is written from the personal experiences of dalit who rises to prominence from his marginalized presence.
The name ‘Untouchable’ always brings to our mind Mulk Raj Anand’s book. A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.An Untouchable’s Narrative of An Untouchable's Life Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule.
India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s.
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