‘Poisoned Bread’: Protest in Dalit Short Srories

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the state of Maharashtra in western India saw a resurgence of anti-caste political struggle and, simultaneously, an explosion of literature by writers from formerly ‘untouchable’castes. 1 Writing often in anger and with a sense of urgency, the writers drew from a shared experience of caste subordination and from the low caste civil rights movement that had accompanied India’s independence from the British in 1947. The writers identified themselves as Dalit, an old Marathi word meaning ‘ground’or ‘reduced to pieces’, thus calling attention to the continuing oppression of untouchables in Indian society. Since the 1970s, the term Dalit has gained currency as a self-chosen name of political and cultural identity for untouchable communities throughout the country. The greater political consciousness and exposure to literacy that Maharashtrian Dalits experienced are embedded in historical …