FDP- Programme at Dr.MGR University, Chennai.

FDP- Programme at Dr.MGR University, Chennai.

Topic: Subaltern Literature

• Literature represents the culture and tradition of a language or people.  It is clear that literature is constantly changing and evolving. Literature is a contested term, as new mediums for communication provide different types of contemporary literature.
• English literature is the study of literature written in the English language. The writers do not necessarily have to be from England but can be from all over the world. It represents writers from different parts of the world, but it covers every major genre and style of writing as well. It deals with universal themes and values that help us grow in our everyday lives. It also teaches us about different periods and faraway places.
• At Present, the contemporary writers explore the social, political, and cultural issues of the present day, including migration, diaspora, cultural adaptation, caste, class, and race relations. In addition to strengthening our skills as a reader, this session will offer you the opportunity to understand the new literary field “Subaltern Literature.”
• Subaltern literature covers the themes about the masses, Dalits, the deprived, oppressed, marginalized, neglected, and Indigenous sections of society.
• The term ‘Subaltern’ is first used by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. He was an Italian Marxist philosopher and communist politician. He wrote on political theory, sociology, and linguistics. He emphasized the importance of the word ‘Subaltern’ in as far as class, gender, caste, marginalization, race, and culture of the society.
• The word ‘Subaltern’ is drawn from the Latin roots sub- (“below”), and alternus (“all others”). It is used to describe someone of a low rank (as in the military) or class (as in a caste system). It can also mean somebody who has been marginalized or oppressed. In short, a subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a social, political, or other hierarchy. It can also mean someone who has been marginalized or oppressed.
• Gramscicoined the term ‘subaltern’ to identify the social groups excluded and displaced from the socio-economic institutions of society in order to deny their political voices.
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. Her book Can the Subaltern Speak?  highlights the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed Marxism’s contemporary relevance while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labour and capitalism’s “worlding” of the world. She used the term for the colonized and the oppressed people, working-class, gender, and the women whose voice has been muted.
• Ranajit Guha is a historian of the Indian Subcontinent who has been vastly influential in the Subaltern Studies group and was the editor of several of the group’s early anthologies. His book Subaltern Studies Reader explores the course of subaltern history from an early concentration on peasant revolts and popular insurgency to an engagement with the more complex processes of domination and subordination in a variety of the changing institutions and practices of evolving modernity.
• Guha attempted to uncover the true face of peasants’ existence in colonial India. He pointed out that the peasants were denied recognition as a subject of history in his own right, even for a subject that was all his own. Elitist historiographies were unable to put the peasants’ conditions and their insurgency in the correct perspective as they could not go beyond limitations that were characteristic of their historiographical schools.
• Subalterns people are voiceless because they are completely excluded from the spheres of hegemonic discourse. They are unaware of the extent and the true cause of their oppression and lack the means to either fully realize or to disseminate their discontent to a wider audience. They live in isolated areas, use localized speech not easily understood by outsiders, and have little contact with the hegemonic forces yet are still intimately affected by their every action.
• In the 1970s,Subaltern started to signify the colonized people of the Indian sub-continent and depicted a new perspective of the history of an imperial colony as told from the colonized rather than that of the colonizers.
• In the 1980s, the scope of enquiry of Subaltern Studies was applied as an “intervention in South Asian historiography.” This Studies main aim was to indicate the elitist bias found in most of the academic works in South Asian Studies.
• In India, the Subaltern Studies emerged around 1982 as a series of journal articles published by Oxford University Press in India. A group of Indian scholars trained in the west wanted to reclaim their history.  Its main goal was to retake history for the underclasses for the voices that had not been heard previously.
• Subaltern discourse highlights the conceivable political achievements of the collective in their radical endeavour to recover the histories of peasant rebellions and resistance before and after India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and South American’s independence from the British.
• The post-colonial period is an important one for the subalterns because both the nation and the people have just been relieved from colonial rule’s terrible clutches. This period sets out determined to reproduce the colonial experience of the subalterns in literary works.
• Subaltern writings are narratives of trauma, pain, resistance, protest, and social change. These writings have a profound social obligation wherein the majority of the writers try to create a classless society. Subaltern literature is Dalit, Tribal, African or Black and Aboriginal document the sufferings and atrocities committed upon a large section of the

Dalit Literature

• Dalit literature is writing of pain and agony. Its beginning can be traced to be the undocumented oral folklore and tales of the past decades. It is a genre that was established in the 1960s and 1970s when a spurt of Dalit writing was published in Marathi.
• Dalit literature is a recent offshoot of Indian literature, and it represents an emerging trend in the Indian scene. It is primarily a social and human document, which deals with the people who had been socially, economically, and politically exploited in India for hundreds of years. The Aryans invaded India and implemented the new law of Varna to protect the nation, particularly the indigenous aborigines. Ancient, Medieval, Early modern India excommunicate untouchable from Hindus. Several invaders did not consider the welfare of indigenous untouchables.
• The termDalit literally signifies the depressed and suppressed groups of various social formations. The word “Dalit” refers to people who are broken, oppressed, untouchable, downtrodden, and exploited. They come from the poor background, which under the Indian caste system used to be known as untouchables. The term “Dalit” bears its first trace in the first Dalit Literary conference of the Maharashtra Dalit Sahitya Sangha in Bombay in 1958.
• In the words of M. F. Jilthe,”The voiceless found a voice here; the wordless found a word here.”In the sixties, the wordDalit became an explosive catchword for social, cultural, and political revolutionary movements launched by untouchable castes, essentially the Mahars, in such expressions as “Dalit “
• The British Indian Empire gave some basic reforms schemes to the historically deprived society. Identity has been a recurring theme for the major Dalit writers in India. The question of identity is more often than not addressed from the point of social marginalization. Dalit writers and intellectuals are divided on this issue. Dalit writers and activists today stridently oppose the cultural stereotyping of Dalits. They rightly point out that such stereotyping would perpetuate the marginalization of Dalits.
• Dalit literature expresses a rejection of unequal order and demands equality, liberty, fraternity, and justice, and there is a revolt in their writings to overcome the anguish and rejection. The experiences conveyed in Dalit Literature constitute an engagement in self-search to achieve self-respect and the rejection of traditions and religion that are opposed to such self-respect.
• Dalit Literature aims to highlight the disabilities, difficulties, atrocities, and inhuman treatment meted out to Dalits in society. The main objective is to create social awakening among the downtrodden. Dalits are essentially a means toward achieving a sense of cultural identity. The inferiority complex based on “to be a Dalit” is now disappearing.

(Notable Dalit Writers: Namdeo Dhasal,Meena Kandasamy, Bama, Ajay Navaria,Leeladhar Mandloi, Manoranjan Byapari,Raja Dhale.P Sivakami, Sharankumar Limbale,Imayam, Gaddar, Dr C S Chandrika, Daya Pawar, Urmila Pawar, Ravikumar,  Baby Kamble, Anita Bharti, Shantabai Krishnabai Kamble, Aravind Malagatti, Siddalingaiah, Kotiganahalli Ramaiah, Omprakash Valmiki, Vijila Chirappad,and  Debi Roy).

Tribal Literature

• Tribal literature is the literature of a search for the identity of exposing the past and present forms of exploitation by outsiders, and threats to tribal identity and existence, and resistance.
• Tribals are ‘Adivasi’ or original dwellers, living in the subcontinent from unrecorded time and possibly driven into the forests by more aggressive settlers – Aryans being the earliest to subjugate them socially.
• The term “tribe‟ is derived from a Latin root “ribuz‟ meaning the three divisions into which the early Romans were grouped: any one of three divisions of the people representing the Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan settlements or any of the later political divisions of the people (Oxford English Dictionary 1530).
• ‟The word “tribes‟ refers to cultural heritage and historical identity conce It is used for the tribe as a separate group of persons having their own identity and cultural traits. The tribes are live in isolated areas, and their social lifestyle is different from mainstream society.
• Tribal writings are different; Tribal writers have benefitted from the rich oral literary tradition of the community. There is no central genre of Tribal literature like autobiographical writings in the case of women’s literature and Dalit literature. It draws energy from the tradition of tribal uprisings, the language and geography of those uprisings also assume significance. The original writings of the Tribal authors are in their languages.
• The Tribal literature in Hindi is greatly influenced by the rich literary tradition of indigenous languages. A part of this literature has been translated into other languages. The literature written in different Tribal languages is translated into major languages like Hindi, Bangla, Malayalam, Telugu, Toda, and Tamil, thus acquiring a national form.
• Tribal literature is the literature of search for identity, of exposing the past and present forms of exploitation by outsiders, and of threats to tribal identity and existence, and resistance. This is a pro-change, constructive intervention, which is dead compared to any sort of discrimination against the descendants of India’s original inhabitants.
• Tribal literature supports their right to protect their water resources, forests, land, and their right to self-determination. Tribal and non-Tribal writers have portrayed Tribal life and society through poetry, stories, novels, and plays.
• Tribal literature is marching ahead, imbued with the rebellious sentiment of the Birsa, Sidho-Kano, and other revolutionary Tribal leaders and their movement. The contemporary Tribal writings and the discourse are in the early stages. It is heartening to find that useless debates like “empathy versus sympathy” is on its margins.

(Tribal Writers: Ganesh N. Devy , Verrier Elwin, Gopinath Mohanty, Narayan, L. P. Vidyarthi, Kumar Suresh Sing, Rose Kerketta , Alice Ekka, Andre Beteille, Sunil Janah , G.S. Ghurye, Aijaz Ahmad, and Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay).

African Literature

• African American Literature created an advancing wavefront in the United States of America during the twentieth century as a voice of protest against racial discrimination. African Americans were prevented from enjoying life because of their race.
• African literature is the literature of or from Africa and includes oral literature. It primarily consists of memoirs by people who had escaped from slavery; the genre of slave narratives includes accounts of life under slavery and the path of justice, freedom, and redemption.
• African American literature began with the slave narratives. African American life is nothing but a struggle for freedom, equality, and fraternity. Even the American whites aspired for liberty from the reigning British. They did not treat slaves with human love and dignity. The blacks appealed to the traditional Christian gospel of the universal brotherhood of humanity.
• African American literature challenged the dominant culture’s attempt to segregate the religious hum of the political and spirit from the flesh, insofar as racial affairs were concerned. This new genre of writing in America began during the times of slavery, 1619 to 1865. Some slave narratives have used a potpourri of genres. Slave narratives were anti-slavery, directed to a national and international audience.
• African American writing is another word called ‘Black writing.’ It is an important part of English literature. It is also considered a body of literature written by the writers of African descent in the United States.
• African American literature starting with narratives by slaves in the pre-revolutionary period, focused on freedom and abolition of slavery. The period following the Civil War until 1919 is dubbed the Reconstruction period. Its themes were influenced by segregation, lynching, migration, and the women’s suffragette movement.
• The 1920s saw the Harlem Renaissance and the “flowering of Negro literature.” as James Weldon Johnson called it. Since World War II, African American literature has delved into modernist high art, Black Nationalism, and postracial identities.
• The earliest African American literature was focused on the “indelible stain” of slavery on American soil. The writers focused on themes of slavery, emphasizing cruelty, indignity, and the ultimate dehumanization of slaves. They were mostly written by slaves who had escaped into freedom.
• African American literature explores the issues of freedom and equality long denied to Blacks in the United States. This literature presents the African American experience from an African American point of view. In the early Republic, African American literature represented a way for free blacks to negotiate their new identity in an individualized republic.
• The African American race was ghettoized, persecuted, and viciously outlawed from all avenues of decency, hope, progress, and livelihood. The basic myth of racism is that white skin brings with it cultural superiority that the whites are more intelligent and more virtuous than the black by the mere fact of being white.
• On the psychological level, whiteness is automatically equated with beauty and culture and blackness with ugliness and slavery. When the African slave was torn from his homeland and brought to the New World, he was quickly denied his native culture.

Black Witres:Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Waldo Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou , W.E.B.Du Bois , Octavia Estelle Butler, Malcolm X, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka,Gloria Naylor, Alex Haley, Phillis Wheatley, Claude McKay, Toni Cade Bambara, and etc,.).

Aboriginal or Indigenous Literature

• Aboriginal literature is an inimical descendant of the oral tradition and the transmission of storytelling. It holds an important position in the lives of many Aboriginal people. Therefore, the elders of the Aboriginal communities find it important to pass on this knowledge to younger people and articulate the black past and contemporary Aboriginal identity.
• Aboriginals are considered as Indigenous people. The word ‘Indigenous’ not only refers to people but animals and plants. This term though more widely accepted as an appropriate reference, is not preferred by Aboriginal Australians because of its inclusion of plants and animals in its meaning. Internationally, this is the more accepted term and is also preferably used by the United Nations.
• The word ‘Indigenous’ not only refers to people but to animals and plants. This term, though more widely accepted as an appropriate reference, is not preferred by Aboriginal Australians because it includes plants and animals in its meaning. Aboriginal people are familiar to most by having dark skin. This is not the case, but it does make for another negative association with the term Aboriginal.
• Racism is the greatest scourge Aborigines have needed to fix with, and they are as yet fighting a guileful type of prejudice that keeps them separated from appreciating the balance and value that different Australians underestimate and appreciate in that nation.
• Aboriginal peoples need to be acknowledged as people with as much rights and obligations as different Australians. They would prefer not to be separated against or thought of as unique in relation to mankind since they are Aborigines, however, need to experience their lives free from the scourge of any sort of prejudice since they have much to offer to this inside and out. Their battle for social equity in the field of prejudice is progressing until the point that white Australians accept Aborigines as a vital part of Australian culture.
• Indigenous people are a significant and important portion of humanity. Their heritage, ways of life, stewardship of this planet, and cosmological insights are an invaluable treasure house for all.
• Most of the indigenous peoples’ the natural world is a valued source of food, health, spirituality, and identity. The land is both a critical resource that sustains life and a major cause of struggle and even death. Each indigenous culture is distinct and unique. While many peoples can express similar worldviews and a common indigenous identity, their cultures are nonetheless based on different histories, environments, and creative spirits.
• Aboriginal literature initially descended from the oral tradition and transmission of storytelling. It holds an important position in the lives of many Aboriginal people. Therefore, the elders of the Aboriginal communities find it important to pass on this knowledge to younger people, especially children, through this storytelling tradition.
• Indigenous people nowadays raise awareness regarding the preservation of their cultural heritage. There are numerous Aboriginal stories throughout Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where different stories are known to different communities and regions. The most known stories are the stories of the dreaming, which tell about a particular Aboriginal community’s ancestral being, history, and the making of its people.
• Today, Dalit, Tribal, Black, and Aboriginal’s writings are traced from oral narratives. Through these writings, the writers are tried to get their cultural identity and history. These people are united as Indigenous. They are struggling to gain their own identity as Indigenous of the land or country. The liveliness and authenticity of their expressions are captured all across their writings. Shame, anger, sorrow, and indomitable hope are the trademarks of this marginalized people and literature created by them.

(Aboriginal Writers: Alexis Wright, Kim Scott , Bruce Pascoe , Sally Jane Morgan, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Mudrooroo, Tara June Winch, Kevin Gilbert , Lee Maracle, Larissa Behrendt, Thomas King, Richard Wagamese, Eden Robinson, Tomson Highway, Jackie Huggin, Jeannette Armstrong, Maria Campbell, Basil H. Johnston, and Emily Pauline Johnson).