OPEN BORDERS

Open Borders for Adivasi and Dalit Literature
and Performing Arts

This online workshop series is held in collaboration with the Network ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’, hosted by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), UK, and the research centre EMMA at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (UPVM), France, with the India-Indonesia Program at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. The pandemic forced us to postpone the face-to-face AHRC festival events on Dalit and Adivasi literature and performing arts, but Open Borders offered a productive way to collaborate until we could meet again in person.

The aim in creating Open Borders was to establish an online platform for authors to present, perform, and introduce their work, for translators or academics to discuss their work and collaborations, and for PhD students and early career scholars to present their research and make contact with colleagues across the world in a supportive environment.

Since 2020, together with her colleagues, Judith Misrahi-Barak and Nicole Thiara, Marina Rimscha organises the webinar series Open Borders for Adivasi and Dalit Literature and Performing Arts and is the executive editor of the YouTube channel On Page On Stage. Marina Rimscha teaches Hindi and Hindi literature in the India-Indonesia Program of the Department of Asian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main research interests are Hindi language, Hindi literature, Dalit literature and performing arts and Adivasi literature. At the moment, she is completing her PhD. at the University of Bonn, Germany, entitled “Text and Subtext: Narrative techniques in Hindi Dalit Autobiographies”.  With a number of her students, she is also working on a project of literary translation of selected Hindi poetry into Hebrew. Her publications include ‘Candalas und Dalits, Unberührbare in Indien einst und heute’ (2008) and ‘Construction of a Buddhist Identity for Dalits in Tulsi Ram’s Autobiography’ (2021).

Recordings of Open Borders events can be viewed below.

OPEN BORDERS & Formations
23rd February 2023

Mapping A Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines

This online roundtable is a pre-conference event on Dalit magazines with editors and subject experts from West Bengal and Maharashtra. It is being organised in association with the Network on Dalit and Adivasi Literature and Bonington Gallery as part of the Formations Series. Conceptualised to draw the attention of researchers working in this field within and outside India, the roundtable will be moderated by Dr Thiara Nicole and Prof Judith Misrahi-Barak.
Funded by the Research Seed Grant Scheme, GITAM (Deemed to be University), the project on Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines intends to critically engage with the underrepresented area of Dalit Periodicals within the broad research field of Dalit Studies.

It aims to trace and collect periodicals published in Bangla and Marathi (1950-2000) and look into their publication process, circulation and readership. Besides, it aims to build a digital repository of Bangla and Marathi periodicals to facilitate easier access, a historiographic narrative on the evolution of Dalit literary periodicals in Marathi and Bangla and encourage translations of Dalit writings published in these periodicals. As part of the outreach programme, a three-day conference is being organised in GITAM, Hyderabad, titled “Vernacular Periodicals and Dalit Writing: Production, Circulation and Reception” from 1st March to 3rd March 2023 in association with the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore.

This conference aims to bring together editors, subject experts, early career scholars and graduate students to initiate a conversation across Indian languages and to reflect upon the vernacular Dalit periodicals critically.

The discussion will primarily focus on:

1) the possibility and scope of research in the area of vernacular periodicals and Dalit writing.
2) the challenges in such research.
3) the significance of such research.

6pm IST / 12.30pm GMT

Register here.

Mr Dhurjati Naskar
A retired central government employee, Dhurjati Naskar, is an essayist, poet, and novelist from South 24 Parganas of West Bengal. He has been involved in editing periodicals since the early 1970s. Some of the periodicals edited by him are: Bangla Maati (Soil of Bengal), Dakkhin Barasat Sahitya Patra (South Barasat Literary Magazine), Baridhati, Dakhina Path, Baruipur Sambad (Barupipur News), Bharatiya Pundra Samachar (Indian Pundra News) and Pundra-Poundra Badhav. These periodicals, predominantly literary, also published essays concerning the history, ethnonational and folk traditions of the Poundra community. He is a member of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sangstha (Kolkata), West Bengal Dalit Sahitya Sabha and a founding member of Dr Bhusan Chandra Naskar Archive. He has been a recipient of the West Bengal Sahitya Akademy Award in the year 2019.

Prof. Sipra Mukherjee
Prof. Sipra Mukherjee teaches English at West Bengal State University. Her areas of interest are religion, caste, folklore and orality. She has been a visiting fellow at the department of English University of Hyderabad, School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. She has received many national and international research and travel grants. Some of them are – ICSSR research grant for a research project on ‘Interpreting Folklore: Understanding the relationship between folklore, religion and caste in East India’, 2013-2015; a Research Grant from the University Grant Commission, India, ‘Faiths in the Margins’, 2009; Luce Grant from Comparative Religion Programme, on Religion and Human Security: Negotiating the Power of Religious Non-State Actors, University of Washington, 2008. Besides her research on the intersection between caste and religion, she has been an avid translator. Her translated works include the Autobiography of Dalit writer Manoranjan Byapari, Interrogating My Chandal Life, 2018, and Under My Black Skin Flows a Red River: Translations of Dalit Writings for Bengal, 2021, which she co-edited along with Prof. Debi Chatterjee. She is also a member of Ebong Alap, a voluntary non-profit society which works with youth to encourage critical thought.

Dr Asit Biswas
Dr Asit Biswas is an Associate Professor of English in West Bengal Education Service, currently posted at P.R. Thakur Government College, Thakurnagar, West Bengal. He completed his PhD research on the film adaptation of western texts in Bengali films from the University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal. He has published seventeen research papers, six Dalit short stories, two Dalit plays and some poems in Bengali. He is the co-editor of the book Shotoborsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya; Dalit Poems, Dalit Literary Horizon (translation of Manohar Mouli Biswas’s book, Dalit Sahityer Digboloy), Songs and Dialogues from Bengal in English Translation and Dalit Protest Unbridled: Two Dozen Plays of Raju Das. He also published the book Pardon Not:
Marichjhampi Massacre, a translation of the novel Kshama Nei by Nakul Mallik. Recently his translation of Kalyani Thakur’s novella Andhar Bil O Kichhu Manush (Andhar Bil and Some People) has been published by Zubaan. At present, he is translating a Bangla epic.

Urmila Pawar is a widely known Indian (Marathi) writer. She has been active in the Dalit and feminist movements in India since early in her life. She was part of the Marathi Dalit feminist magazine Aamhi Maitarni which was published during the 1990s. She has 11 publications, including the popular Marathi short story collection translated into English as Mother Wit by Professor Veena Deo (Hamline University, USA), published by Zuban. Her autobiographical narrative Aydaan, translated into English by Professor Maya Pandit remains popular even today and has been translated into Hindi, Kannada, and Tamil as well. Many of her short stories have been prescribed in the syllabus framework of Indian universities as well as universities abroad, such as Colombia University in the USA.

Dr Chandrakant Patil
A bilingual poet, translator, editor, critic and columnist, Dr Chandrakant Patil writes in Marathi and Hindi and occasionally in English. He has several publications – collections of Marathi poems such as Nissandarbh, Ittambhoot, Bayaka ani Itar Kvita, and a collection of Hindi poems Apni Bhasha Ke Sameep to mention a few. Besides, he has also published six critical essay collections and twenty-five collections in Marathi and Hindi translations. He is popularly known for his active engagement in the Little Magazine Movement in Maharashtra during the 1960s and 1970s. He acted as one of the editors and publishers of the highly discussed little magazine Wacha. Besides, he was also one of the founder members of Wacha Prakashan that published the first collections of avant-garde poets of Marathi, such as Bhalchandra Nemade, Manohar Oak, Satish Kalasekar, Dilip Chitre etc. He has been a recipient of national and state-level awards for his various contributions – Sahitya Akademi Translation award (1991), Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Akademi (1994), Bhasha Vruddhi Sammaan, Govt. Of Maharashtra (2022).

Prof. Dilip Chavan
Prof. Dilip Chavan is an academic scholar and a professor of English at SRTM University, Nanded, Maharashtra. His doctoral work, Language Politics under Colonialism: Caste, Class and Language Pedagogy in Western India, was published as a book by Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars in 2013. He writes in Marathi and has published nine books on contemporary social issues such as language, caste, class, imperialism, and women’s education. Some of his notable works are – Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar ani Jativyawastha Ant (1998); Shikshan: Jatvargiya Vastav ani Samatavadi Paryay (1999); Stree Shikshanacha Sangharsha (2007); Dr Ambedkar ani Bhartiya Shikshanatil Jatisanghrsha (2003); Samrajyavad: Bhasha ani Sanskriti (2010); Corona ani Stree-Purush Vishamatecha Prashna (2022). He also has a keen interest in translations from English to the Marathi language (he is working on the Marathi translation of Braj Ranjan Mani’s book Debrahminising History). Besides, he has been a part of the widely read fortnightly ‘Pariwartanacha Watsaru’ as its executive editor. He has been associated with academic institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore.

Dr Sayantan Mondal
A graduate from the University of Hyderabad, Dr Sayantan Mondal is currently an Asst. Professor in the department of English at GITAM, Hyderabad (Deemed to be University). His areas of interest are Reading-Print readership, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Dalit Studies and Translation. Sayantan has been an Erasmus Mundus Fellow at the University of Oxford during 2015-16. He has received the University of Heidelberg Travel Grant 2015 and the University Grants Commission Travel grant 2016. Presently, he is working on a research project titled “Mapping Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines”, along with Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman. This project aims to trace Bangla and Marathi Periodicals and the exchange of ideas on the caste question. Some of his published works are – Of Caste-Class and Dalit Writing, 2015; An Introduction to the World of Monoranjan Byapari, 2015; Language and its People: A Comparative insight into the Kurdish and Rohingya Genocide, 2019; Prantik theke Dalit: Nandonikatar Rajniti o Dalit Chetona (From Marginalised to Dalit: Politics of Aesthetics and Dalit Consciousness), 2022; Migration and Cultural Identity: An Introduction, 2022.

Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman
Having received a doctorate in English (Cultural Studies) from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFL-U), Hyderabad, Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman is an assistant professor of English at GITAM (Deemed to be University), Hyderabad campus. His doctoral research, Religious Conversion and Dalit Experience: A Study of the Meanings of Conversion among the Neo-Buddhists, emphasises the phenomenon of Dalit conversion to Buddhism and studies the conversion movement in Nanded district (Marathwada region, Maharashtra) through collecting and analysing historical records – pamphlets, posters, record books etc. He is a recipient of a prestigious Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, doctoral fellowship for his doctoral research. He has been publishing in the area of Dalit Studies/literature on issues such as caste, colonial intervention into the caste question, Dalit identity and culture etc. Currently, he is involved in a research project, “Mapping Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines”, along with Dr Sayantan Mondal.

OPEN BORDERS #7
With Adivasi filmmaker Seral Murmu

Monday, March 7th 2022 at 6 pm in India (2.30 pm Israel, 1.30 pm France, 12.30 pm UK)

Seral Murmu is a filmmaker who graduated from the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, India. His films focus on tribal issues, identity and struggle for equality and against injustice. He sees his films as a means to give strength to the tribal resistance happening in different parts of India.

Belonging to the Santhal tribe, Seral Murmu was born and brought up in Ghatshila, a small town near the bank of the river Subarnarekha. He started his journey assisting documentary filmmakers while studying as an undergraduate in Mass Communications at St Xavier’s college Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. During his work as an assistant, he was able to observe closely how powerful the film medium is. He thus decided to be a filmmaker telling his own stories to the outer world. Ranchi was the epicentre for tribal activists fighting for tribal rights and justice. He became closely associated with the activists, joining hands with them and making documentaries to give voices to those who are often unheard.

He has collaborated as a cameraman and an editor and made eight documentaries and short fiction films. His short films Rawaah and Sondhayni have been screened at national and international film festivals and received numerous awards. He is currently working on a feature length documentary on the history of Santhali cinema. He is assigned to make two documentaries for Ramdayal Munda Tribal Research Institute, Ranchi, India and works on an ongoing project on Megaliths of Jharkhand and Tribal Resistance. He is deeply interested in tribal folklore, myths, arts and folk songs, all of which form the base of his storytelling.

The webinar is meant as an interactive conversation. Last autumn, Seral participated in the New Art Exchange Mela. Two of the three films that were shown, Rawaah (10 min.) and Remains (5 min.), can be viewed as part of the recording of the event under the following link. At 15.00 minutes exactly Seral gives a short introduction of both films, after which the films start. Please view these short films ahead of the Open Borders session so that you can actively contribute to the conversation we’ll be holding with Seral on March 7th.

OPEN BORDERS #6
Purnachandra Naik and Surya Simon: Caste Performativity and Politics of Spectacle

Caste Performativity and The Politics of Spectacle

Purnachandra Naik (School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, UK) and Surya Simon (School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK)

Monday, February 21^st 2022 at 6 pm in India (2.30 pm Israel, 1.30 pm France, 12.30 pm UK)

Purnachandra Naik examines the life-writing Vasti by the prominent Ambedkarite Vasant Moon to map the politics of spectacular events in the urban space of Nagpur during the peak of the Ambedkarite movement.In the 1940s and 1950s, urban space in Maharashtra played a pivotal role in the emergence and dissemination of the Ambedkarite movement. Dalits that formed the core of this movement came from urban neighbourhoods and ghettos. They repurposed roads, courtyards, verandas, parks and maidan in the urban space to articulate Ambedkarism in a declamatory and spectacular fashion. Through spectacularly charged events like flag-hoisting ceremonies and military-like parades by Samata Sainik Dal, they sought to register visibly their consciously forged Ambedkarite identity and politics in the public domain.

Surya Simon’s work develops a performative theory of caste to highlight the social prevalence of caste practices in continuing unabated discrimination of Dalits. Through the analysis of selected Tamil Dalit personal narratives in translation, Surya’s work explores the possibilities of Dalit agency and liberation in the ambivalences and paradoxes present in the sites of caste performativity. Her work emphasises the importance of social and relational reformation (involving Dalits and non-Dalits).

Purnachandra Naik is a PhD student in the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University (UK). In his thesis titled ‘Reading the Rejected: Dirt, Spatiality, and Subjectivity’ he examines ‘dirt’ in underappreciated Dalit literary genres like songs, poetry, and short stories.

Surya Simon is an Associate Tutor and a Research Associate at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich. She pursued her doctoral studies from the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, UEA. Her doctoral thesis titled, “Performativity in Dalit Literature: Identification, Disidentification and Re-identification in Contemporary Dalit Personal Narratives” developed a new performative theory of caste to explore Dalit identity and agency.

OPEN BORDERS #5
Kanika Singh and Hafsa Sayeed: Isolated by Caste

Isolated by Caste – Understanding Consequences of Social Exclusion

Kanika Singh (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai) and Hafsa Sayeed (IIT Mumbai)
Monday, December 13th 2021 at 7 pm in India (3.30 pm Israel, 2.30 pm France, 1.30 pm UK)

This webinar seeks to understand how caste functions as a framework of social exclusion. The metaphysical idea of individual loneliness is juxtaposed with the socio-economic dynamics of a marginalised community. Kanika’s work focuses primarily on the ways loneliness is forced on Dalit individuals by society. It seeks to explore different mechanisms that Dalits use to cope with systemic exclusion. These include phenomena like othering, passing hypervigilance, etc. Hafsa’s work attempts to understand the overlapping layers of socioeconomic and cultural deprivation among the Sheikh community in Kashmir. Her work is derived from the insights collected during fieldwork in this area. She explored the manifestation of social exclusion due to caste identity using the capability approach. Kanika’s work seeks to expand on the idea of individual loneliness that has been meted out to the Dalit community at large. She explores different types of loneliness present in Dalit literature and how it takes a toll on individuals in their quest for reaffirming and liberating their identity from hegemonic Brahminical markers. This webinar creates a dialogue between two different methodologies and an interdisciplinary venture to understand multiple ways in which caste operates through social exclusion.

Kanika Singh is a doctoral candidate at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. For her M.Phil. thesis, she worked on the complexity of the notion of merit and how it is used to keep Dalits from entering higher education in India. Her work has featured in journals such as the Voice and Dalit. Her current area of interest is Dalit literature; she is especially interested in the works of Dalit authors who resist a homogenous Dalit identity in favour of nuanced expressions of Dalithood.

Hafsa Sayeed is a doctoral candidate at IIT Mumbai at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. She has pursued her M.Phil. from TISS, Mumbai and has completed her M.Sc. Economics from Pune. She has varied in-the-field experiences, from the rural areas of Jharkhand to Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. She is interested in interdisciplinary research.

OPEN BORDERS #4
With Des Raj Kali and Neeti Singh

Discussing Des Raj Kali’s rebuttal to Mahabharat’s Shanti Parva: ‘Treatise on Peace’

Thursday, April 8th at 6 pm in India (3.30 pm Israel, 2.30 pm France, 1.30 pm UK)

Des Raj Kali  is an acclaimed Punjabi Dalit writer, historian and columnist. He has authored over fifteen books – fiction and nonfiction; his primary areas of interest are the Ghadar movement, Dalit issues, Punjabi literature, myth and culture. As a journalist and columnist, Kali is very active on Punjabi social media. He also publishes a literary quarterly called Lakeer. 

Des Raj Kali’s novel, Shanti Parav, is an oblique response and rebuttal to its (close) namesake – Shanti Parva – the twelfth book of Mahabharata which is a treatise on peace, the ideals of state laws – statehood, and the pertinence of punitive measures implemented by the state. Located in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition, Kali’s Shanti Parav discourses the subterranean and palimpsest tendencies of power, privilege and violence. The agency and representations of violence around us may have changed, but beneath the veneer of justice and democratic right, the structures of abuse and violence continue to regurgitate as crudely and as brutally across land, time and state. In terms of its approach to literary form, structure, aesthetics and the discourse that it posits, Shanti Parav can be read as a work of poised resistance, as work that is experimental, polyphonic and poststructural, and as writing that has opened up new avenues for fiction in general as well as for fiction in the dalit-scape of writing and discourse. 

Neeti Singh is a translator and a poet who writes in English. She works with The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat, as Associate Professor of English. Dr Singh’s doctoral research was on Bhakti Poetry in Medieval India, its Inception, Cultural Encounter and Impact, with Special Reference to the Work of Kabir and Nanak. She has published four books and over twenty research papers, till date.  

OPEN BORDERS #3
Dalit poetry with Satish Chandar

Dalit poetry with Satish Chandar

Monday, January 18th at 6 pm in India (2.30 pm Israel, 1.30 pm France, 12.30 pm UK)

Satish Chandar is a poet, short story writer, novelist, satirist, literary critic and a lexicographer. His works have been translated into Indian languages along with English. He is an editor of repute in Telugu speaking states, as he has launched and worked in many mainstream newspapers. He has received 11 awards for his contribution in literature and journalism. He has so far published 21 books including five collections of poetry. The Fifth Veda-Dalit Poetry is the 22nd and the first one in e-book format.

For this Open Borders Webinar, Satish Chandar will read a selection from his recently published collection, The Fifth Veda. This has 36 poems, which were originally written in Telugu and translated into English by the author himself. The period in which he wrote these poems spanned across three decades (1989 – 2018). He wrote on various atrocities against Dalits like the Tsundur massacre and occurences of caste discrimination such as Rohith Vemula’s suicide. The poems in the book have been categorized into classroom, love-marriage, village, land, language, worship, politics and race.

The reading will be followed by a discussion with the poet.

OPEN BORDERS #2
With Malarvizhi Jayanth and J. Balasubramaniam

Writing Dalit Autobiography in Colonial India: The Story of Rettaimalai Srinivasan

Speakers:

Malarvizhi Jayanth (independent scholar) 

J. Balasubramaniam (Madurai Kamaraj University) 

Monday, December 7th at 6 pm in India (2.30 pm Israel, 1.30 pm France, 12.30 pm UK)

While Dalit autobiography is often demarcated as a genre that rose to prominence in the 1990s, the work of Rettaimalai Srinivasan (1860-1945) shows its longer genealogy. Late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Dalit writing in Tamil such as his autobiography and other examples of flourishing Dalit journalism and political engagement from the period are yet to be admitted into either the literary canon or much of existing literary or political histories. Srinivasan was a Dalit leader in colonial India, whose autobiography, written and published in the Tamil language in 1938, is likely the first Dalit autobiography. This book provides a missing piece of anti-caste history, detailing the work of a Dalit leader who stood by the national leader Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in the struggle for freedom from caste in colonial India. Rettaimalai Srinivasan is known at the national level for having accompanied Dr. Ambedkar to the Round Table Conference in London to discuss the question of equitable representation. As he notes in one of his works, there were two kinds of freedom struggles being waged in colonial India – one against the British and the other against caste. In the anti-caste freedom struggle, people fought for such freedoms as the right to walk on public streets and the right to represent their people on the international stage. Srinivasan notes in his autobiography that “I helped people, not only in Madras Presidency, but all over India achieve national freedom and win their rights” – calling his struggle a freedom struggle then is consonant with the vocabulary that he himself used to describe his work. Demonstrating the truly national scope of the anti-caste movement in late colonial India, his autobiography sheds light on the struggle for a different kind of freedom waged by Dalit leaders of the time.

Srinivasan is slightly better known in the state of Tamil Nadu due to the publication of his autobiography and the pamphlets he published in Tamil. A forthcoming translation of his autobiography and newly discovered letters and documents will demonstrate how he worked at the national level as well. His autobiography is more of a political biography, chronicling his work for the betterment of Dalit groups both at the regional level in Madras Presidency and at the national level for British India. In it, he often conflates his well-being with that of Dalit castes as a whole. Along with his other work, this autobiography further demonstrates his work as a national leader of the Depressed Classes (as the Dalit castes were known during the colonial period), especially during the Round Table Conference, the runup to the Poona Pact, and in the campaign against opening up the Civil Service exam. He also published an open letter to Gandhi, detailing the nature of caste discrimination and protesting Gandhi’s support for separate schools for Pariah children. Together, his works demonstrate the vibrant diversity of Dalit political thought and action in late colonial India.

Malarvizhi Jayanth holds a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include slavery, caste, religion, and colonialism in southern India. She has completed a study of the abolition of slavery in southern colonial India for her dissertation and is currently working on translating and editing the works of Rettaimalai Srinivasan in English. 
J. Balasubramaniam teaches journalism at Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamil Nadu, India. He specializes in the area of Dalits and print culture, intellectual history and digital media. He has published a book on ‘History of Dalit Journalism from 1869 to 1943’ in Tamil. Presently, he is working on a book on Rettaimalai Srinivasan in Tamil. 

OPEN BORDERS #1
With Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis, Raju Das and Namita Das

Breaking Barriers: a Conversation with Two Bengali Dalit Writers

Moderator and translator Dr. Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis is in an online conversation with Raju Das and Namita Das

Tuesday, October 27th at 3pm in India (11.30am Israel, 10.30am France, 9.30am UK)

Breaking Barriers: Conversation with Two Bengali Dalit Writers

Does caste matter in West Bengal? The question is not new anymore, but it has certainly not become a cliché. It still holds relevance given the hostility of the mainstream elite Bengali literary society which denounces the endeavour of Bengali Dalit writers to etch a separate identity of their own. Although the root of Bengali Dalit literature can be traced back to the late 19th century, it was not recognized at the national and international levels until recently. Authors such as Manoranjan Byapari and Kalyani Thakur Charal are no longer strangers to Indian readers and scholars studying Dalit literature. Yet, many contemporary Bengali Dalit writers who have the potential to bring significant changes in the field of Bengali literature and theatre are still not known to the wider reading public. Raju Das and Namita Das are two such names. The couple has been writing and performing Bengali Dalit plays for more than fifty years. Not only did they publish stories and anthologies of plays, they also founded their own drama groups. The first group “Shantikunjo Natuke Dol”, which was established in 1977, is still actively performing in and outside Kolkata. The second drama group “Shantikunjo Blind Natya Academy”, which has twenty-one visually –challenged actors, was established in 2009. The zeal of Raju and Namita Das is truly admirable. Despite societal challenges and financial constraints they have been writing, performing and advocating Dalit rights with sincerity and dedication.

“Breaking Barriers: Conversation with Two Bengali Dalit Writers” is an hour-long interactive session which will focus on the work of Raju Das and Namita Das and the challenges they encounter. The couple will perform a short play in Bengali, written and directed by them. The gist of the play along with introductory comments will be provided in English by the moderator before the beginning of the performance. The moderator will also read out an excerpt from the play which she has translated in English from the original Bengali version. Finally, there will be a question-answer session where the audience can interact with the performers. The aim of this session is to create space for meaningful critical dialogue which will enable us to break barriers between the “Centre” and the “Margins”.

Dr. Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis

Runa is currently teaching at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities in Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania. Her research areas include Dalit Literature, Gender and Media studies. Her scholarly writings have been published in several peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Runa is also a creative writer and translator. Her translated stories have been published by the Orient BlackSwan and Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, India.

SERIES INTRODUCTION