| I am fond of all literature written by Omprakash Valmiki e.g.Joothan,Grahan,Utaran and many more. While anecdotes of discrimination and violence abound, Valmiki's autobiography is by no means Manichean. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. The lower castes people are suffering because they are by birth outcaste. It is a rare glimpse into that other history of India, of marginalized section of people about whom few talks and almost nobody writes. It is related to the word "jootha," which means polluted and such scraps are characterized as "joothan" only if someone else eats them.
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. Arun Prabha Mukherjee, a professor of English at York University in Canada did a great job by making the work available to a wider audience, She has illuminated the book with her thoughtful and insightful foreword.
For decades after that, the dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Most significantly, though, Valmiki's story is a voice from the half of India that has been voiceless for countless generations. »
Indian literature: "Untouchable" and proud of it "... We could knoe the miserable life led by the low class people...
"Joothan" literally means scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or for the family pet in a middle-class urban home. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. S’il cite autant de noms, c’est pour leur rendre hommage ou pour régler ses comptes.
He describes the pathetic conditions of the untouchables through the character Bakha, their immitigable hardships and physical and mental agonies almost with the meticulous skill of historical raconteur.
As a document of the long silenced and long denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is not only a contribution to the archives of Dalit history, but a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.
Joothan: An Untouchable's LifeOmprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s.
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