Sahityasetu

Abstract:

Autobiography has numerously been conceptualized ranging from self revelation to self evaluation, from life making to world making, from self-restoration to self care, from historical artefact to cultural narrative and such conceptualizations suggest the fact that it is an inclusive literary domain encompassing the vast landscape of both personal as well as collective life. Against the backdrop of the hegemony of several power centres together with economic deprivation and cultural oppression of the powerless ‘other’, autobiography becomes a powerful medium to reflect and interrogate the issues like identity and otherization, power and hegemony, crisis of identity and recovery of identity. In this context, dalit autobiography demands a significant place in the modern literary discourse precisely because it is born out of the lived experience of the excruciating pain, humiliation and oppression of a dalit life. Such an autobiography is the repository of the unending saga of sufferings, of myriad human predicament and man’s insensibility and brutality to other man thereby permitting historical research by exploring modern subjectivity along with the framework of capitalism and social relations. Further, instead of merely a linear narrative of the victimization process by the narrator, dalit autobiography essentially functions as the performative act/ social act for the members of an otherized group as it creates awareness as well as mobilizes resistance against the different forms of oppression. In this connection, the present paper attempts to analyse the dynamics of dalit identity as represented in Manohar Mouli Biswas’ Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal.

Key Words: Autobiography, Dalit identity, Namasudra refugee, Oppression and resistance, Manohar Mouli Biswas

Being a part of an expanding and complex genre, autobiographical narrative draws critical attention in the context of literary discourse. Due to its troubled boundary between fact and fiction, authorship and selfhood, individual memory and shared reality, recollection and imagination, autobiography is characterized by an inherent quality of being both distinct and cryptic thereby encompassing a broad variety of research perspectives. Etymologically speaking, autobiography is essentially a narrative based on the self, an embodied point of view that gets manifested in the structure of perceptual fields, each of which is centred on the location in space and time of the embodied perceiver. In this regard, Philippe Lejeune (1982) conceptualizes autobiography as a “retrospective prose narrative” which is “written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is in his personal life, in particular, the story of his personality” (4). According to him, autobiography is a narrative in prose, dealing with the life of an individual, where the author, narrator and protagonist are identical; and it is essentially written from a “retrospective point of view”. Lejeune’s definition is grounded on the notion of ‘self’ and ‘reality’ in the sense that the narration of self should correspond to the narrator’s experience of reality. From this perspective, autobiographical narratives can be understood as referential and descriptive since the language the narrator uses denotes real objects and describes actual circumstances. But the truth value of autobiographical disclosure has always been a point of debate. Autobiography as a truthful and unified narrative of a coherent self has vigorously been challenged by the poststructuralist critics according to whom, self is fictional or illusive therefore not being representable, knowable and communicable directly and transparently through language. The truth value of autobiography is also the major concern for some of the autobiographical theorists/critics including James Olney, Roy Pascal and Paul John Eakin according to whom, the process of selecting, ordering, and integrating the narrator’s lived experiences according to the narrative purpose in autobiographical narrative entails certain imperatives of imaginative discourse. That the art of autobiography demands the constant negotiation between reality and fiction, accuracy and distortion, memory and imagination is aptly highlighted by Paul John Eakin (1985) according to whom, in autobiographical narrative “memory and imagination conspire” (63).

Besides a literary convention, autobiography is also a cultural as well as historical practice/ activity precisely because it exposes the material conditions, cultural norms and historical convention against which the germination and evolution of the self takes place. There is no denying the fact that the kind of subject represented in an autobiography serves a cultural purpose and in this connection, Betty Bergland (1994) maintains that the autobiographical self “presupposes a relationship between the speaking subject and the uttered discourse” (133). Further, Stephen Greenblatt (1990) posits that texts are cultural, not because of reference to a world beyond themselves, but by virtue of the social values and contexts which they have successfully absorbed. By highlighting the personal experiences and epistemological processes, autobiographical narrative situates a specific cultural pattern and practice thereby vindicating the strong historiographical significance. As personal reality cannot be separated from cultural reality, autobiographical narrative can essentially be seen as the art of making history through contextualizing the self. The personal testimonies are not only the building blocks of the self-narration but also serve as the cultural touchstones and historical artefacts as a result of which, such narrative provides powerful stimuli to reflect on the collective consciousness. In this connection, Jill K. Conway (1999) rightly comments, “that magical opportunity of entering another life is what really sets us thinking about our own” (18). Conway’s view stands similar to James Olney (1980) who conceptualises autobiography as “a monument of the self as it is becoming, a metaphor of the self at the summary moment of composition” which attempts to build “a metaphoric bridge from subjective subconsciousness to objective reality” (121).

Viewed from the perspective of James Olney, autobiography is no more simply the self narration but essentially a socio-political document through which communities construct their own memories by attributing social meaning to acts/events. Through autobiographical self disclosure, judgement as well as reflection on important social and political issues might be recorded. In this regard, Paschalis M. Kitromilides (2010) in the article “Autobiography as Political Theory'' considers autobiography as a “political engagement with intellectual life and personal sentiment” (82). Further, according to Kitromilides, autobiography is a public project characterized by the interplay between self discourse and self disguise. The art of self-disclosure and disguise is methodologically applied to the narration so as to make writing a standard piece of criticism devoted not only to the self but to the society in general. While establishing the link between the reconstruction of one’s past and the societal condition/practice and to make one’s personal experience as part of the objective understanding of the world, Marc Eli Blanchard (1982) in the article “The Critique of Autobiography” characterizes autobiography as an “associative metonymic process” in which private memory becomes the universal language (111).

There is no denying the fact that memory and retrospection are integral to the construction of the autobiographical self. In fact, one’s sense of the self depends, in a fundamental way, on memories of one’s past experiences and the capacity to call those experiences to mind. While considering memory as a very important determinant of identity construction, John Locke (1948) asserts, “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person” (257). In a similar way, Grice (1941) argues that the self is constructed from the recollection of personal experiences and, therefore, “is to be defined in terms of memory” (340). Further, memory is not simply a matter of reflecting on the properties of the subjective mind; rather, memory is a matter of how minds work together in society. While establishing memory as a social phenomenon, Halbwachs (1992) views, “It is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories” (38). Halbwachs argues that memory is organised by social frameworks thereby emphasising the role of the dynamics of culture together with collective consciousness in the formation and retrieval of personal memory. Such an interaction between personal and social, private and public is best exemplified by the autobiographical memory wherein the construction of a narrative self through personal memory and reminiscence essentially signifies the birth of a cultural identity.

Identity configurations emerge from the variegated experiences of ever-deepening past thereby providing the framework for cognition, organization and interpretation of the experiences of the present. Further, the meaning and position of identity within the cultural matrix depend on the multi-layered social formations including material, political, social, economic, religious and linguistic structures as well. As a socio-cultural construct, identity is formed through human interactions with others and in relationship to social, cultural, and political contexts. Being the product as well as the process developed through social relationships, identity construction as well as reconstruction is heavily imbued with self /other dichotomy. In this regard, the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) puts forward his ‘master-slave dialectics’/ ‘lordship-bondage dialectics’ through an encounter between the two self- consciousnesses in which ‘one’ masters the ‘other’. Further, Hegel’s interrogation also brings to the fore that the essence of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is not fixed, rather an ongoing process of becoming which comes closer to the notion of the postmodern subject who is bereft of having a fixed identity. In this connection, Stuart Hall (1992) rightly comments, “...The fully unified, completed, secure and coherent identity is a fantasy” (277). Hall’s concept of the postmodern identity aptly vindicates the fact that identity is never a stable and immutable entity, rather a process characterized by constant crisis and negotiation.

The issue of identity bears significance in the autobiographical narrative precisely because autobiography is essentially the narration of identity including personal as well as collective. In the autobiographical narrative self is introduced, introspected and interrogated against the backdrop of identity formation, identity crisis and the quest for identity. The dynamics of identity is best reflected in the dalit autobiography wherein the projection of the dalit life is made against the backdrop of the politics of identity and the dialectics of oppression and emancipation. Needless to mention, the genesis of dalit identity lies in the politics of caste and exclusionary practices as a result of which, the very term ‘dalit’ designates both the condition of oppression as well as the spirit of resistance to the oppression. Unfortunately, caste is an inerasable construct of the Indian mindset which consciously or unconsciously operates in all the aspects of life including social status, occupation, cultural identity and religious participation. Partha Chatterjee (1989) in his seminal essay “Caste and Subaltern Consciousness” maintains that the voices of the outcastes like chandalas, doms, hadis, namasudras, fakirs etc. have been neglected by the mainstream historiographers as ‘unheard’ and that caste constitutes a moot point in subaltern consciousness (169-209).

Caste, being associated with the notions of purity and impurity, becomes the ideological tool on the part of the upper caste elite to suppress the voice of those who belong to the lower caste categories like the chandala and namasudra who are made to suffer from the stigma of ritual impurity and are forced to live in abject poverty, illiteracy and without the access to socio-political power. Relegating them to the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy, the society has snatched away from them the right to a dignified life. It is under these pressing socio-cultural circumstances that the voiceless ‘other’ develops the spirit of resistance to dismantle the oppressive power centres. It also suggests that the marginal space is the space for emancipation which is pertinently theorized by bell hooks (2015) according to whom, marginal space is the third space of radical possibility and the space of liberation (152). That prolonged marginality ignites emancipatory movements can satisfactorily be justified by the fact that both the literary movement in the form of dalit writings and the various socio-religious reform movements including the Mahar Movement of Maharashtra, Satashodak Samaj, Adi Dravidian Movement of Tamil Nadu, Neo-Buddhist movement and Dalit Panthers Movement take active role in challenging the legacy of oppression and injustice.

It goes without saying that autobiography becomes the convenient medium for many literary figures to articulate the personal as well as the shared experiences of the dalit community and in this connection, the writings of many writers including Sharankumar Limbale’s The Outcaste (Akkarmashi) (2003), Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan: An Untouchable’s Life (2003), Daya Pawar’s Baluta (1978), Vasant Moon’s Growing up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography (2001) and Narendra Jadav’s Outcaste: A Memoir (2003) bear testimony to the fact that autobiographical narratives offer a wide spectrum of dalit experiences encompassing the vast regional landscape of diverse settings. Like other regional literatures, dalit identity also receives enough literary exposure in Bengali writings which bear a unique historical background. The narrative of Balaram Hadi of Meherpur, an untouchable in the district of Nadia in West Bengal, is not only the historical document of caste-based oppression and otherization but also a powerful signpost of envisioning the voice of the ‘other’. Further, the emergence of the Matua sect under the leadership of Hari Chand Thakur in the Gopalganj subdivision of Faridpur district of the present day Bangladesh became the part of the Namasudra social movement in 1872. Significantly, the devotional songs (kirtans) performed collectively by the followers of the sect reflect the ego of the depressed community and also the hope for their social empowerment. The indigenous oral literatures and folk culture of the Matua sahitya (literature of the Matuas) remain the privileged source, allowing us to study the oppressive politics of the upper class Bengali elite and also the way in which namasudras envision to create an alternative space for themselves. In the post-independent period, Bengali writings on the dalit as well as the act of translation get further impetus through the formation of the ‘Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha’ together with the various magazines including Adalbadal (Change), Dalit Mirror and Chaturtha Duniya (The Fourth World) and these all are solely devoted to the publication and circulation of the dalit writings. In this direction, Dalit Sahitya Academy has recently been set up to promote dalit literature under the chairmanship of the renowned Bengali dalit writer Manoranjan Byapari. Here it is pertinent to note that Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit (2018) stands significant in the context of Bengali dalit autobiography. Further, the writings of several other prominent writers like Manohar Mouli Biswas, Kalyani Thakur Charaal, Manju Bala and Jatin Bala pertinently bring to the fore the issue of dalit identity against the backdrop of cultural ostracization and economic deprivation in their respective literary works. The present paper hinges upon the autobiographical representation of the dalit identity with reference to Manohar Mouli Biswas’ Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal.

Manohar Mouli Biswas is a well established name in Bengali dalit literature. He was born and brought up in a peasant family in a far off village in the district of Khulna in the pre-partition East Bengal. Although poverty and hunger, oppression and deprivation shaped his childhood days, he equally developed the spirit of endurance together with the fervent will to survive in the midst of gruesome challenges. Through ardent tenacity he confronted his deprived state of life and finally became successful in situating himself as a major voice in Bengali dalit literature. His literary corpus includes four collections of poetry, a short story collection, and several collections of essays. Besides translating several poems of Bengali dalit poets into English, he also compiled a book titled Shatabarsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya (A Hundred Years of Bengali Dalit Literature). Biswas was actively associated with Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha as its president during 2013-2015. Further, he edited an English magazine titled Dalit Mirror so as to promote dalit literary and cultural movement. In this direction, he also contributed significantly to the quarterly literary journal Chaturtha Duniya (The Fourth World) and to the theatre wing Chaturtha Mukh (The Fourth Mouth).

Biswas’ Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal was originally written in Bengali under the title Amar Bhubane Ami Beche Thaki and was published in 2013. The translation of the text was done by Angana Dutta and Jaydeep Sarangi and was become available in 2015 with the additional subtitle Growing Up Dalit in Bengal. Significantly, this remains the first Bengali dalit autobiography which has been translated into English. In fact, choosing an appropriate title for this autobiography remained an arduous job for Biswas who initially chose the name Prisnika (kochuripana / water hyacinth) then renamed it Life and Death of Prisnika. He also thought of giving a straightforward title Life and Death of Kochuripana though finally the autobiography appeared with the present title. He dropped the idea of having the word ‘prisnika’ in the title precisely because he did not want to identify himself with water hyacinth. As he has developed a strong sense of glory in connection with his dalit identity, the word ‘prisnika’ goes against that sense of pride. Although the word ‘parisnika’ is not attached with the present title, it bears metaphoric significance, suggesting the crushed identity of the dalits who are bereft of care and support just like kochuripana (water hyacinth): “...I felt that we were living like water hyacinth plant on this earth. Sometimes steady and unmoving in stagnant water, at other times playing about in flowing water in someone else’s rhythm” (71). As the present title suggests, the narrative develops through Biswas’ remembrance of growing up in colonial Bengal against the backdrop of abject poverty and hardship along with the stigma of low caste identity. Through personal narratives the autobiography traces the trajectory of the making of dalit identity.

Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal presents the stark reality of the dalit world wherein depravity, humiliation, pain and suffering pervade the dalit community. In this connection, Biswas himself articulates, “This world of mine is the dalit’s world of illiteracy, the dalit’s world of poverty, the world of keeping the dalits powerless, the dalit’s world of sickness, the world of spending childhood in malnutrition, the world of being unwanted, the world of jealousy-violence-hatred-abuse...” (xix). Being a hardcore realist, Biswas also agrees to the fact that these living conditions may remain present among the poverty-stricken non-dalit people but in the context of dalit people such frightening conditions continue to exit endlessly precisely because they are ‘trapped under the weary weights of untouchability” (xx). The vicious practice of untouchability not only becomes the condition of existence for the dalits but also signifies the violent expression of power politics on the part of the upper caste people. It becomes the ideological tool to suppress the dalit voice thereby sustaining the politics of exclusion.

Through recollecting the childhood memories, Biswas has brought to the fore the making of the otherized life of a namasudra. All the socio-cultural aspects in the life of a namasudra including food habit, dialect, rites and rituals, dress and garments are heavily stigmatized so as to make them culturally isolated and socially voiceless subaltern. In this regard, while highlighting the food habit of the namasudras, Biswas also vindicates the fact that food is attached with caste prejudice. There is no denying the fact that food and eating habits function as the identity marker. It is through food that the caste status and also kinship status are defined and differentiated. Further, food as a cultural symbol is also attached with the notion of purity and pollution as a result of which, food strongly interacts with hierarchy and status, power and hegemony, oppression and subordination. In this connection, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1964) aptly highlights food as the point of origin for the understanding of cultural practices. In much the same way, Gopal Guru (2009) observes that food becomes the metaphor for cultural hierarchies therefore it is not politically neutral. That dalit is victimized by the food politics perpetuated by the upper caste people gets a pertinent reflection in the second chapter of Biswas’ autobiography wherein the author puts emphasis on the fact that dalits are mockingly addressed by the food that they consume and also by the caste that they belong to: “YOU ARE ALL pork-eating namas” (9)! In fact, it becomes a practice on the part of the upper caste people to assign names to the low caste people on the basis of the food that they eat and it is well vindicated by the fact that Mahars become ‘mrutahar’ precisely because they eat dead animals. Similarly, people belonging to the Chuhra caste are situationally forced to survive on discarded food which gets a poignant articulation in Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan: A Dalit’s Life (1997). It is equally true that food is not a matter of choice for such deprived people of the society who are crushed by the wheels of utter poverty, hunger and starvation. Under the sway of poverty, namasudras are forced to survive on unusual food items like ‘shaluk or shapla’, ‘kochu-leaf (taro), shapla fruit called ‘dhaep’ etc. (74). Therefore, the notion of purity and pollution attached with food stands inappropriate for these people for whom survival remains the biggest challenge.

Biswas hinges upon the namasudra food habits so as to situate food as the means of cultural otherization. He articulates, “Usually the babus would not enter the neighbourhood of the low castes, nor did they sit and eat together with them” (10). As the ‘pork-eating namas’ bear the stigma of impurity, peoples belonging to the upper caste subscribe to the practice of untouchability so as to maintain purity within themselves. Biswas narrates the arrangements which are generally made by the namasudra household for the visit of ‘thakurmashai’ (priest) for performing religious rituals. It is a common practice on the part of the ‘thakurmashai’ who is essentially a Brahmin, not to accept any food or drink from someone who belongs to the low caste as a result of which, separate arrangement is made for his food in which either he himself cooks food or a person belonging to the Brahmin caste prepares food for the priest. Further, the place for cooking food for the ‘thakurmashai’ needs to be purified which gets articulated in the autobiography: “The woman of the household would neatly smear one end of the veranda with cow dung, which acted as a cleanser and a disinfectant. If the place had a mud stove then that would be smeared with cow dung as well” (10-11). Surprisingly, unlike the priest who performs worship or other rituals in the upper caste households, the priest of the sudra household fails to get equal status and dignity in the society: “Just as the lower castes were abhorred, similarly the priests who came to worship in our homes did not get adequate respect in society because of being low status ‘baun’- brahmin. They were known as bauns of the charals, or priests of the outcastes'' (68-69). Such practices aptly vindicate the fact that the politics of untouchability is deeply ingrained in the minds of the upper caste people whose authoritative presence not only threaten the identity of the dalits but also equally threaten those who are directly or indirectly associated with the dalit world.

It goes without saying that the dalit experiences are made out of the inhuman torture and hypocrisy of the upper caste elite. Dalit identity as the ‘other’ is shockingly evident in every respect of their lives and in this connection; Biswas in his autobiography has picked up some piercing childhood memories which still nest in his imagination. He painfully recollects the sudra boatmen who are subjected to the hypocrisy of the higher caste Hindu elite. The namasudra boatmen are generally avoided by the upper caste Hindus and Biswas poignantly articulates, “If on the same spot there were the boats of the Muslims and shudras, the higher caste Hindus usually avoided the latter. They preferred to board a Muslim’s boat.” (56). Due to the politics of recognition, the poverty-ridden namasudra boatmen are never blessed with equal treatment in social relations and Biswas reveals his sorrow-stricken heart:

“Sometimes, or rather frequently, I felt there would remain a gap somewhere in accepting us genuinely as ‘Hindus’ and letting us develop on a par with the more advanced caste groups of the Hindus. We were only used in the head count for making Hindus the majority. Socially, economically, culturally and educationally, we were a massive heap of garbage at the bottom” (56).

Biswas firmly believes that communities are national resources. He also asserts that the namasudras fail to situate themselves as national resources precisely because they are ruthlessly victimised by the large scale prejudice, discrimination and the politics of recognition as well. Biswas’s frustrated story of an unrequited love with a girl from a non-dalit caste makes it clear that the caste-based prejudice is an inerasable construct of the Indian mindset. Cursed with the stigma of untouchability, namasudras are always identified as inferior, submissive, dependent and subservient to the upper caste although such biased and stereotypical notions of the dalit identity never diminishes Biswas’ strong sense of community pride: “Just as everyone is proud of their community, I am no exception” (57).

Dalit world is essentially the world of chronic poverty, hunger and starvation and Biswas’ real life experiences remain no exception. Together with the upper caste hegemony there remains the curse of poverty which redoubles the hardship of Biswas. As he grows up in the midst of multiple scarcities in his childhood, Biswas learns the art of negotiation so as to overcome the crisis with the help of available resources. In the realm of his education too, he boldly confronts day to day crises. He painfully recollects,

“While studying in the lower classes of school I would have to face varied scarcities. If one day the pencil wore out, the next day I ran out of writing papers. The money for buying paper and pencil could not be acquired in time and so many strategies had to be adopted. I would write on blank pages twice-one with a pencil and then with ink” (64-65).

In spite of having such scarcities and persistent hardship, Biswas maintained a genuine interest in learning as a result of which, he generally stood first in the class. Of course, he received moral support from his parents who instilled the value of education in Biswas’ mind. As namasudras are mostly involved in manual labour due to the lack of education, Biswas’s father never wants his child to do physical labour as the “people who live their lives out of physical labour face great neglect” (65). The vision of “a life of self-respect, free of condescension” was always cherished by his father and it was also highly valued by Biswas. But for the construction of a life based on self-respect and dignity, one needs to have both talent and accessibility to academic resources. Being deprived in every respect of life, the talent of namasudras is neither wholeheartedly recognised nor do they get any congenial environment to establish themselves with the help of individual potentialities. It is in this context that the author asserts, “...talent is a human capacity by birth. Talent is not anyone’s caste privilege” (61). Being influenced by the character called Velutha in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Biswas highlights the fact that talent needs to be cultivated through proper education failing to which one remains bereft of professional prospects. Just like Valutha who, in spite of having skill and potentialities, is circumstantially compelled to work as a carpenter in a factory precisely because he has less education, similar is the case with other namasudra children and it is in this context that Biswas comments, “If one gets to cultivate his talent then one becomes an engineer, if not one becomes a carpenter” (61).

Bengali dalits are also the worst victim of partition. Needless to mention, the partition of India marked the greatest mass exodus in human history with an unfathomable number of victims. The large-scale violence together with the trauma of migration, cultural dislocation and geographical displacement shattered millions of people as they were helplessly made the uprooted refugees in the independent India. Here it is pertinent to note that refugee is not a homogenized identity therefore encompassing the vast myriad of conditions and experiences. The upper-caste as well as class elite Bengali migrants became successful in relocating themselves within a short span of time whereas the situation remained the worst with the impoverished Bengali namasudras whose helplessness gets a poignant articulation in Biswas’ autobiography: “We were not like the aristocratic rui or katla fish who could cross over the borders immediately with the partition of the land and seek a living on the other side. We, like the common chunoputi fish, stayed back in our motherland, primarily because of sheer helplessness” (84). The namasudras, those who somehow crossed the border immediately after the partition, were ruthlessly compelled to inhabit in the various makeshift refugee camps and then were dispersed to Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Dandakaranya for resettlement. In an interview with Jaydeep Sarangi, Mohini Gaurav and Angana Dutta, Biswas exposed the dirty politics and erratic governmental policies in the name of rehabilitation scheme which completely crushed the lives of the helpless namasudra refugees: “Yes, in the refugee camp the segregation of people that was on the basis of caste identity was a surprising one” (91). The higher caste East Bengalis were fortunate enough to get the permanent settlement in the posh localities and business areas. In this connection, Biswas also brought to the light the strategy of changing the surname adopted by some of the namasudras with the hope to get permanent resettlement like the upper caste East Bengalis although such a strategy did not bring the desired result to them.

Unlike the ‘bhadralok’ (gentle folks) East Bengalis, namasudras were not prepared with the socio-economic capital to resettle themselves in the immediate post-partition Indian setting. Here it is apt to note that ‘bhadralok’ (gentle folks) and ‘chhotolok’ (people without status) are the standardized identity markers in colonial Bengal which even continues in the post-partition landscape of Bengal. The majority of the bhadralok come from the three high castes namely, Brahmins, Baidyas and Kayasthas who enjoy a comfortable and stable public life under the status quo of social order. On the contrary, ‘chhotolok’ refers to those people who are directly associated with agriculture and manual labour and are devoid of socio-cultural prestige and financial affluence. The politics of ‘bhadralok’ continued endlessly and it was precisely the reason why the uprooted namasudra refugees did not get the espousal that they expected from the native ‘bhadralok’ of West Bengal, who, despite belonging to the same linguistic group, generally maintained a socio-cultural distance from them. The lower caste refugees were also left unaided by the ‘bhadralok’ migrants, with whom they had a wide socio-economic and cultural gap as a result of which, the miseries of the namasudra refugees remained absolutely immeasurable. They became the uprooted minority who were not only haunted by the trauma of partition and physical displacement but also failed to find any strategy to survive with dignity and voice. While exposing the horrifying conditions of the namasudra refugees in the resettlement colonies, R. Mallick (1999) comments, “In the unforgiving physical conditions of these resettlement colonies many Dalit refugee families perished; others suffered unimaginable hardship and privations” (105–06). It was precisely the reason why Biswas’ father and other senior members of the family initially remained less interested in crossing the border for resettlement. Of course, at the age of eighteen years Biswas became the vagabond refugee in the independent India in 1961 and at that time his father together with other senior family members all had passed away. In an interview with Jaydeep Sarangi, Mohini Gaurav and Angana Dutta, Biswas revealed his struggling days when he was “oscillating like a pendulum between the Baharaich camp of UP and the Chandapura camp of Maharashtra...” (93). Extreme financial crisis together with the fear of uncertainty and insecurity ruthlessly shattered his body as well as fractured his mind and in this connection, Biswas poignantly articulates in the same interview, “Much of this time there was no paisa in my pocket. No food to eat, no shelter to sleep in, no kith or kin to look after me. A vagabond and a hundred percent vagabond refugee in India’ (93). Biswas’ struggling life in the refugee camps characterised by excruciating pain and humiliation, angst and anxiety vindicates the fact that the uprooted namasudra refugees persistently face the crisis of identity in both pre as well as post-partition period. Even after the partition, the Bengali dalit refugees were inhumanly forced to succumb to an unsure destitute life which also gets a poignant articulation in the autobiographical narrative of Manoranjan Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit (2018). Further, the transition of identity from the untouchable namasudra of the colonial Bengal to the dalit refugee /uprooted minority in the post-partition phase also testifies the fact that identity is never a fixed entity, rather characterized by constant crisis and negotiation.

An analysis of the Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal done in this paper from the perspective of dalit identity, establishes the fact that dalit autobiography is the product made out of revelation and revolution, oppression and emancipation, hunger and anger. Through the poignant revelation of his childhood experiences, Biswas brings to the fore the trajectories of the dalit world wherein identity crisis is not a phase rather an everyday experience. As the dalit literary movement is based on identity politics, the construction of identity through personal narrative has convincingly been done by Biswas in his autobiography. While doing so, he brings to the fore the dalit experience shaped by the rhetoric of violence and the politics of difference, trauma and agony, stigmatization and oppression together with eternal servitude of the caste-based ‘other’ under the hegemony of the elite Brahminical society. His life narrative also epitomises an incredible assertion of the indomitable human spirit to resist and survive against the most deadly situations. The revolutionary spirit to resist the legacy of oppression and deprivation so as to construct an alternative space for the restoration of a dignified identity springs from his experience of crisis and catastrophe. Being the representative voice of the namasudra community in Bengal, Biswas has aptly exposed the psyche of his derived community and it is precisely the reason, why personal and communal, private and public dimensions of human existence are satisfactorily intertwined in his narrative. The cultural agony of the namasudra community expressed by his bleeding heart substantiates the theoretical framework of James Olney according to whom, the autobiographical self performs the act of a metaphoric bridge between subjective world and objective reality. Due to the subtle combination of the self and the world, Biswas’ autobiographical narrative stands as a valuable cultural document in which one can locate the dynamics of dalit identity against the backdrop of the culture of oppression and the strategies for survival.

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