dalit vs aboriginals

Dalits Vs aboriginals

A Comparative perspective on subalternity/marginality:

dalits vs aboriginals Dr Rajesh Kumar, Motilal

Nehru college(Eve),University of Delhi.

The semiotic system by which the indigenous peoples of

Australia and India (categorizing Aborigines of Australia

and Dalits of India as being offsprings of ‘indigene’ group)

have been represented looks __as Terry Goldie writes in an

article entitled “The Representation of the Indigene”__something like a chessboard in which the semiotic pawn

signifying the indigenous person can only be moved in very

circumscribed ways. Terry Goldie is of the view that the

shape of the signifying process as it applies to indigenous

peoples is formed by a certain semiotic field, a field that

provides the boundaries within which the images of the

indigene function. The existence of such semiotic field

constitutes an important aspect of the ‘subjugated

knowledges’ to which Foucault refers in Power/Knowledge. The

indigene is a semiotic pawn on a chess board under the

control of the White signmaker (in the case of Aboriginals

in Australia) and the caste Hindus signmaker (in the case of

Dalits in India). And yet the individual signmaker, the

individual player, the individual writer, can move these

pawns only within certain prescribed areas. The signmaking

is all happening within two fields of discourse: one is that

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of British imperialism and the other is that of caste

oppression by the caste Hindus.

As well as extending the chessboard analogy, it would

not be oversimplistic to maintain that the play between

white and indigene (in the case of Australia and Dalit and

the caste Hindus (in the case of India) is a replica of the

black and white squares, with clearly limited oppositional

moves. The basic dualism, however, to be noted here, is not

that of good and evil but that of Oppressor and the

oppressed, racialism and caste oppression.

Dalit writing in India and Aboriginal writing in

Australia have begun to emerge discursively as powerful

visible forms of protest against a chequered history of

exploitation both in socio-politically materialist and

discursive realities. These subaltern discourses have thus

become sites for the contestation and negotiation of

identities at several levels and in several ways. However,

there is no denying the fact that there are many divergences

and convergences between these two writings. I seek to touch

upon some of the areas/platforms whereby these are happening

and examine some of the problematics involved therein. It is

true that the construction of ‘Dalit’ in India and

‘Aboriginal’ in Australia as identity categories evoking a

sense of homogenized collective communities has evinced a

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problematic relationship within the social, historical,

political and discursive frameworks of conceptualizing

national identity. This is mainly because the socio-

political and discursive marginality historically assigned

to them have been concomitant with the epistemological

otherization of these subaltern identities within the

national framework.

Dalit Writing in India and Aboriginal Writing in

Australia are not recognized as full-fledged marketable

‘national’ literatures. While ‘Dalit’ literature has been

recognized as a field of rich academic possibilities by the

Indian academic echelons ‘Dalit’ literature has been

unproblematically equated with Maharashtrian Dalit

literature especially that which is available in easily

consumable translated authologies. This situation, however,

is changing slowly as English translations of Telegu, Tamil

and Kannada, Hindi, Orria dalit literatures are becoming

available. It has, however, not changed sufficiently for

dalit literature to be considered nationally or

internationally marketable as bonafide ‘Indian’ literature.

In the same way, in Aboriginal writing the emphasis in terms

of course structuring in literature programs, the

availability of texts at ‘universities’ and the High

commission libraries and focus in translation programs,

remains by and large on the canonized white Australian male

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writers such as Patrick White, Thomas Keneally and David

Malouf. Judith Wright and say, an Aboriginal writer like

sally Morgan or Ruby Langford are added on occasionally as

token representatives of the gender and Aborigine erasures

of what is exported as a ‘national’ literary canon.

Furthermore, it can be easily observed that as these ‘new

literatures’ are opened up for academic research and study

in the postcolonial framework of both countries, the

subaltern voice is variously mediated, appropriated, co-

opted, accommodated and commodified. The dalit or tribal or

Aboriginal ‘predicament’ too finds greater publicity when

mediated, represented or incorporated in the texts of

mainstream writers. As the subaltern begin to make

themselves heard, being spoken for ___ appropriation of voice___ however sympathetic/emphatic, fails to be unproblematic.

The premise seems to be that unless these

discourses/literatures and its texts are made ‘accessible’

to the dominant/mainstream literatures in English

discourse/market through translation and commodification its

protests and substance will not easily leave the domain of

an ethnic soliloquy by the subaltern constituency, of the

subaltern constituency and for it.

The main purpose of my research is to do a comparative

study and find out major divergences and convergences

between Dalit writings and Aboriginal writings by seeking to

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look more closely at one of the most important literary

genres ___ Autobiography. For my research Autobiographies

from both domain of writings have been taken into

consideration. From Dalit writings, I have selected the

following Autobiographies: Om Prakash Valmiki’s Joothan;

Sharan Kumar Limbale’s The Outcaste (Akkarmashi); Vasant

Moon’s Growing up Untouchable in India; Narendra Jadhav’s

Outcaste and Bama’s Karukku. From Aboriginal writings, the

following Autobiographies have been taken: Sally Morgan’s

My Place; Ginibi Ruby Langford’s Don’t Take Your Love to Town; Elsie

Roughsey’s An Aboriginal Mother Tells of The Old and the New and

Glenyse Ward’s Wandering Girl.

Recent critical theory on autobiography serves as an

interesting lens through which to analyse Dalit as well as

Aboriginal autobiographical works, since, unlike the

autobiographies of famous individuals, autobiographies of

marginal groups differ in that they are usually written by

anonymous individuals who emphasize the ordinariness of

their life rather than their uniqueness of the lower classes

can be attributed to racism, colour distinction, caste

discrimination, religious prejudice and economic misery.

These degraded human beings have been worst hit for

centuries. In my research, the past and the present

conditions of these helpless victims of subjugation and

inequality have been critically analysed. As mentioned

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above, similarities and dissimilarities in the social

predicament, depicted by autobiographers of the Aborigines

and the Dalits in India are drawn up for parallel study.

In comparing the two literatures, it has been necessary

to compare the Australian Aboriginal and Dalit societies as

well. Given that the two societies are different in terms of

place and time, country, region, conditions and languages it

is understandable that there should be certain similarities

and on the other hand certain limitations and differences

too. The characteristics of, and the convergences and

divergences between the two literatures under consideration

have been investigated thoroughly in chapter 3 and chapter 4

respectively. Dalit and Aboriginal literatures are mirror

images of the lives, sorrows, problems, pains and revolts of

Dalits and Aboriginals. There are numerous expressions of

red-hot experience and fighting instinct in these

literatures. The most important similarity between Dalit and

Aboriginal autobiographies is the difficult struggle these

writers face to gain the right to speak. More than anything

else, the ‘right’ or ‘ability’ of the marginalized group to

write literature comes under immediate contestation. Both

literatures speak about struggles for human rights and

against exploitation. Despite differences of country &

conditions etc., the similarity in the life experience of

the two communities derives from the fact that both were

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targets of excess injustice and exploitation ___ their

experience of pain is of a world-scale. There are

similarities in the feelings of ownership, entitlement and

superiority demonstrated by the white and savarna societies,

on the one hand, and of revolt against caste/racial

discrimination by Dalits and Aboriginals on the other.

Moreover, Dalit and Aboriginal literary commentators have

rejected the patronizing, sympathetic representations of

white and savarna writers, as well as the unrealistic and

pitying portrayals of Dalits and Aboriginals. Dalits and

Aboriginals speak and write about people who suffer from

injustice in their own societies as well as in other

societies. That is why the human being has become the

counterpoint of both these literatures. Phrases such as

“only he or she who has suffered this anguish knows its

sting” clearly delineate narrative authority for the Dalit

writer. It can be seen how the entire life – narrative in

both literatures is based on the idea of the communal

identity subjectivity in these autobiographies is

complicated by the deep connection between the individual

self and the communal self. The autobiographical narrative

is perceived as the actual site of the power struggle, where

the voice of the marginalized individual contests the

institutionalized narrative of the dominant group.

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In Aboriginal Autobiographies it has been claimed by

many Aboriginal women writers that while the narrative they

unfold is their personal story, their experiences are

similar to those of many other Aboriginal women. For this

reason their autobiographies can be viewed as ‘testimonies’

to the way Aboriginal people were treated by non-Aboriginal

people. Many of the writings are a “testimony” to the

struggle to survive because of the human rights denied to

Aboriginal people. Sexual violation in many cases was

perpetrated by station-owners, and males in households where

Aboriginal women were employed as domestic servants. In most

of the Aboriginal autobiographies I have referred to, at

least one of the women in the family was either raped,

sexually violated or physically harassed by a non-Aboriginal

man she worked for, or did not know. Aboriginal women’s

writing is also a ‘witnessing’ to the rights, or lack of

rights, citizenship given to the Aboriginal people living in

a liberal society. It is true that one of the oldest tenets

of liberalism is equality before the law of legal rights,

equality of citizenship. Having citizenship means

individuals have access to a number of social goods: for

instance, voting rights, medical attention, social security,

legal rights, police protection, etc. What the Aboriginal

Autobiographies under consideration reveal is that

Aboriginal people were not given even citizenship right

(which they got in 1967) and without citizenship right many

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Aboriginal people were denied the basic legal and health

rights. It can be argued that by reading these

autobiographies from the standpoint of the Aboriginal

women’s experiences, through different reading practices,

these narratives can be viewed as a communal “telling” of

the collective experience of people’s judged as ‘inferior’

by the dominant social order. Yet, at the same time, these

writings are a form of resistance to the discourses in the

form of practices of the dominant group.

As for Dalit writings, it is contesting both the very

basis of caste-discrimination as well as the institutional

claim that caste no longer functions as a social force in

Modern India. By writing about their own experiences as a

Dalit, Dalit writers reveal mainly two objectives in their

autobiographies. One is to contest the basis of caste-

discrimination and the other is to expose the reality behind

the institutional narrative that caste no longer functions

as a significant force in the public sphere of modern India.

In other words, that untouchability was abolished by the

constitution of India in 1950, and consequently, there is no

longer caste-based discrimination in government jobs, public

schools, transportation, etc. Thus, Dalit autobiographies

constitute a challenge to this institutional narrative by

presenting before us what they claim are ‘factual’

experiences of untouchability from the writer’s own life.

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Valmiki, for instance, does this by repeatedly narrating his

experience of pain as exclusion due to the continued

practice of untouchability. The Dalit autobiographers who

have escaped poverty, rural superstitions, and ignorance to

join the educated, economically stable, urban middle class,

feel very strongly that they have been unable to escape

their caste. Having escaped the confines of the village,

availed of reservation, a rise in their class status, these

writers continue to experience caste-based discrimination

despite their many ‘successes’. Thus, the narrative agenda

of Dalit autobiographies is to expose the continuation of

caste-discrimination, even in modern times, and even in the

urban centres of India. It attacks the basis of this caste

discrimination in a variety of ways, but especially through

a stable focus on the ‘factual’ recounting of experiences of

discrimination. Furthermore, the autobiography serves the

additional function of re-affirming and strengthening the

link between the individual Dalit writers and the larger

Dalit community. Finally, Dalit autobiography is considered

a form of political assertion for a number of reasons.

Besides giving Dalit entrance into a public space through

identity–based narrative authority, autobiography provides a

space for Dalit writers to regain control over the

constitution and meaning of Dalit selfhood and join in a

show of strength with the larger ‘Dalit’ community.

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Some pertinent comparative aspects in terms of certain

similarities and dissimilarities with reference to Dalit

writing and Aboriginal writing can be mentioned as under:

Dalit writings and Aboriginal writings bear considerable

resemblance because first, the predicament of the Dalits in

India and Aboriginals in Australia go together in the

context of oppression; second, thematically human suffering

because of social discrimination is similar in both

writings; and thirdly and most importantly, the emotional

worlds they inhabit ____ constituting their pain, rebellion,

hopes and desires ____ are similar though there is a lot of

difference in the geographical background. An important

similarity between Dalit autobiographies and the

autobiographies of Aboriginal community is the difficult

struggle these writings face to gain the right to speak.

More than anything else, the ‘right’ or ‘ability’ of the

marginalized group to write literature comes under immediate

contestation, and Dalit writers as well as Aboriginal

writers have likewise been forced to fight for the right to

speak as well as to redefine the boundaries of what can be

said. Dalit writers and Aboriginal writers have attempted to

negotiate the challenge of securing narrative authority by

emphasizing one, the ‘experience of discrimination’ and two,

necessary criteria for writing autobiographies. These

autobiographies are not simply the narration of a life-

story, but they are also used as a means of political

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assertion. They are a process of ‘self-emancipation’ in the

creation of a ‘dissident space’ within the public sphere. At

the same time they are also a process of ‘self-creation’

through the narration of a public persona. Thus, these

autobiographies also serve as means for Dalit as well as

Aboriginal writers to reclaim narrative authority over the

construction of the ‘Dalit self’ or ‘Aboriginal self’. While

dominant Indian society has identified Dalits as ‘inferior’,

‘polluted’ etc., and White British society has identified

Aboriginals as ‘inferior’. These autobiographers ‘re-write’

selfhood, so to speak, in their description of their life

and the life of their communities. Dalit society and

Aboriginal society are not inferior as is claimed by the

dominant communities, but are ‘different’ or ‘oppressed’ or

‘inventive in the face of extreme exploitation’. Thus,

rather than describe their life only as one of ‘victimhood’,

pain becomes transformed into a uniting, ‘enlightening’

experience in which an assertive identity is realized and

incites the individual to action and political struggle.

Watching their community continually oppressed by the upper-

castes (in the case of India) and the white people (in the

case of Australia), the protagonist of the particular

autobiography does not experience his/her pain ‘lying down’,

but rather pain incites him/her to unite with his/her

community in a fight against caste/racial discrimination.

Similarly, the process of ‘reliving’ this pain, while

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writing the autobiography is not viewed as a process of

healing or forgetting in order to move on with one’s life.

It is a way of solidifying individual connection with the

larger imagined community and at the same time contributing

to the political assertion by presenting ‘facts’ of one’s

life to contest casteism (in India) and racism (in

Australia).

The white settlers of Australia have used Aboriginal

people as slave, indentured labourers; teenager girls have

been used as maidservants. In order to teach the captured

black people a lesson, the white people and station-masters

subjected them to painful torture. They were beaten to

death, particularly in prisons; women were brazenly raped by

station owners and masters; pregnant women suffered

abortions from being assigned extremely difficult tasks;

children were separated from mothers, wives from husbands,

and their families were destroyed. There are hair-raising

accounts of these tortures and excesses found in Bringing Them

Home published by Human Rights and Equal Opportunity

Commission (HREOC). Dalits too have been tortured for a very

long time. Dalits have remained outcast and the Hindu Varna

system imposed slavery on them, such was the condition of

the outcast communities that they had neither a village nor

a home. The Adivasis have been pushed into forests and

caves. Needless to say that God did not ordain the slavery

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of Dalits and Australian Aboriginals. Human beings created

it themselves. Having imposed slavery on Aboriginals and

Dalits, White and savarna societies forcibly extracted

labour from them. Whites assigned separate educational

institutions, separate eating places, separate spaces in

trains and buses, and separate residential areas to

Australian Aboriginals. Untouchables, too, were kept outside

the village. Arrangements were made for them to have

separate settlements, separate river banks, and separate

cremation grounds. Since sudras were denied any right to

education by the Hindu caste system, the question of

separate educational institutions did not arise. Later,

during the British days, when they did begin to receive

education, as Omprakash Valmiki states they had to sit in a

separate corner or outside the threshold of the class room.

Actual descriptions of this arrangement can be found in

Valmiki’s Joothan and Sharan Kumar Limbale’s Akkarmashi.

Though Dalit Movements and Aboriginal movements have

proceeded along different paths and taken different

turnings, both movements are struggles for human rights and

against exploitation. Aboriginal people in Australia and

Dalits in India have both experienced inhuman degradation;

their struggle is against it. Despite differences of

country, region, conditions, society and language, the

similarity in the life experience of the two communities

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derives from the fact that both were targets of excess

injustice and slavery ____ their experience of pain is of a

world-scale. There are similarities in the feelings of

ownership, entitlement and superiority demonstrated by white

and savarna societies, on the one hand, and of revolt

against racism by Aboriginals and caste discrimination by

Dalits on the other hand. Because of these similarities

Dalit writers and Aboriginal writers see the pain of each

other as their own, which they have communicated and

expressed through their literatures.

Another significant converging issue appears towards

these writings’ objections to the Writings of Dalit

experiences and Aboriginal experiences by savarna and white

writers. The critics belonging to both writings have made

the same objection saying that ‘the portrayal of us bears no

resemblance to us. The picture that you have drawn of us is

repulsive and distorted. You do not have the capability to

create a sharp and combative image of us’. Aboriginal

critics have argued that white portrayal of Black-fellows

Aboriginals in their literatures has been distorted and full

of contradictions. They have been represented in such a way

that their inner core would appear as black as their skin

colour. Much in the same way Dalit critics have argued that

savarna writers have not portrayed Dalits accurately either

savarna writers have been accused of portraying Dalits in

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their literature based on their own imagination. Due to the

absence of the authentic experience of Dalit life, these

works are lifeless, shallow and distorted. They fail to

bring out the extreme self-consciousness and fighting

instincts of Dalits. Aboriginal and Dalit writers hold that

their experience inspires them to write. This implies that

other writers cannot express their experiences. Dalit

critics argue that it is difficult to accept that non-dalit

writers will be able to communicate the Dalit experience

with the same intensity as Dalit writers. In addition, Dalit

and Aboriginal literatures have both been accused of

obscenity. However, Aboriginal and Dalit writers have

responded to the criticisms leveled against them saying

neither has ever supported obscenity. These writers believe

that people must understand the shameful and inhuman life

that was imposed on Dalit and Aboriginal people. Dalit and

Aboriginal literatures have also been discussed as being

vehicles for revolution, change, conscious-raising, struggle

and social commitment because these literatures view

literature as a form of movement for social liberation and

most importantly these literatures have approval of revolt.

Thus both Aboriginal and Dalit literatures view themselves

as movements for human liberation.

As far as divergences or dissimilarities between Dalit

writings and Aboriginal writings are concerned, to begin

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with, if Aboriginal autobiographies can be viewed as a

dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people (i.e.

White people) about the history of injustices that

Aboriginal people have experienced fighting against racial

discrimination on the one hand, Dalit autobiographies on the

other hand, contest one, the basis of caste discrimination

and two, the institutional claim that caste no longer

functions as a social force in modern India. There are

differences of country, region, conditions, society and

language found in both writings. If the Dalits are the

protagonists of India’s boycotted society, the Aboriginals

are the protagonists of Australian society. The Aboriginals

have been degraded by white society and their differences

are mainly based on colour and blood, and the Dalits have

been degraded by savarna society whose differences are based

on ‘caste’. White children could feed at a Black woman’s

breast, but even the touch and shadow of the Dalits were

considered untouchable by the touchables. While the Blacks

and whites belong to different racial groups, the Dalit and

savarnas do not. The main cause of the Aboriginal’s slavery

was economic where as the main cause of the Dalit’s

untouchability is social Aboriginal people perform labour

but their labour is not considered undignified. Dalits do

the lowest types of work, and their work is considered

undignified. While Aboriginal people can not hide their

colour of skin, untouchables can hide their caste. In

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Australia, Aboriginal people were given subhuman treatment

because of their colour. In the case of Dalits it is because

of their ‘caste’ based on birth. It was because Dalits are

‘untouchable’ that they are subjected to discrimination and

humiliation by savarnas. That means Dalit’s predicament is

much worse than that of the Aboriginal people.

Australian Aboriginal literature protests against the

two centuries of colonial rule, loss of indigenous rights,

culture, languages and identity. It tries to reconstruct the

identity and history of the Aborigines from an Aboriginal

perspective and deconstruct the same that have been created

by the whites. The stolen generation, which was one of the

atrocious consequences of colonialism, is the crucial theme

of Aboriginal literature given the fact that most aboriginal

writing is autobiographical and most aboriginal writers were

stolen children. They were stolen from their people and

culture in the name of education and etiquette and trained

to become good domestic servants in white households. Most

of the autobiographies under consideration depict how the

Aboriginal women writers give testimony to being removed

from their mothers, parents or homes through ‘compulsion’ or

‘duress’ by the station-owners for whom they worked. The

argument put forth by the station owners or managers was

that the children would be taken to get education, but to

the dismay of the girls they found they were being used as

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‘slave’ labour. Many examples of this could be found in My

Place and Wandering Girl which have already been cited in the

related chapters 3 and 4.

Another major issue is the issue of half-castes, who

were born out of the relationship between white men and

Aboriginal women, sometimes vice versa, but considered

illegitimate for most of them were born outside the wed-

lock. They were neither accepted by the whites nor admitted

by the blacks and were removed by the government saying that

since they have white blood, aboriginal mothers are not

eligible to look after them and that they could be trained

to become civilized beings. Sally Morgan, Glenyse Ward, Ruby

Langford and even Elsie explain how the Aboriginal Affairs

representatives had come to “look for the half-caste kids’.

Their mothers would tell them to ‘stay in the bankhouse all

day’. The children would never be caught during those

official visits. Glenyse Ward, Daisy Corunna and others too,

all bear witness to the experience of girls who were sent to

work as domestic servants. All recount the hard physical

work, the racist insults and the wages that they never

received.

All the Australian Aboriginal autobiographies under

consideration are witnessing to the lack of human rights,

specifically, the lack of sexual rights Aboriginal women had

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in relation to non-Aboriginal men. Sexual violation, in many

cases, was perpetrated by station owners and males in

households where Aboriginal women were domestic servants. It

can be argued that the contributing factors to the position

of Aboriginal woman in the community were both the colonial

‘racist’ beliefs and the denial of citizenship, which meant

one’s human rights could be infringed upon. Without

citizenship and knowledge of their legal rights Aboriginal

women had no protection whatsoever in the eyes of the law.

Dalit autobiographies, on the other hand, bear little

resemblance to the Aboriginal autobiographies in terms of

the issues taken up by them concerning racism or racial

discrimination the reason being that Dalit autobiographies

are fighting against the denial of humanity in terms of

casteism. Dalit autobiographies reveal mainly two objectives

in their writings: one is to contest the basis of the caste

discrimination and the other is to expose the reality behind

the institutional claim that caste no longer functions as a

significant force in the public sphere of modern India.

Thus, Dalit autobiographies constitute a challenge to this

institutional narrative by presenting what they claim are

‘factual’ experiences of untouchability from the writers’

own life. In the autobiographical form, these ‘facts’ become

uncontestable truth, since no one knows more about an

individual’s life experiences that the individual himself.

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On balance, at heart it is the ‘truths’ of Aboriginal

and Dalit writers’ experiences that engage the readers of

these autobiographies. It is not the ‘truths’, or the

legitimated speaking positions as recorded in the history

books, or the newspaper reports that the readers of these

autobiographies search for. It is the ‘truths’ revealed in

the speaking positions of those who have been treated as

invisible, or who have been silenced by the dominant voices.

In the writings by Dalit and Aboriginal men/women, it is the

‘petite narratives’ of the life story that are a

‘witnessing’ of other experiences rather than the

legitimated histories. Here is a cursory look at the major

issues of convergences and divergences between Dalit and

Aboriginal autobiographies:

CONVERGENCES

- issues of identity

- literatures of revolt

- both targets of injustice & exploitation

- the experience of pain

- feelings of ownership, entitlements & superiority

demonstrated by white and savarnas; feelings of revolt

demonstrated by Dalits and Aboriginals.

- fighting against social and physical exploitation

- fighting for social justice and human-rights

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- based on the idea of communal identity

- the ‘individual self’ becomes the ‘communal self’

- against civic rights violation

- against violation of political rights

- economic and social deprivation/discrimination

- discrimination in education and employment

- both people used as slaves/maidservants

- sexual exploitation witnessed

DIVERGENCES

- different country, region, conditions, society and

language

- Aboriginals fighting against racial discrimination

based on colour

- Dalits fighting against caste discrimination based on

birth

- Aboriginals degraded by the Whites whereas Dalits by

savarnas

- Aboriginal people dealing exclusively with

(a) land right issues

(b) the stolen generation of Aboriginal children

(c) black deaths in custody

(d) half-caste children

(e) women sexual exploitation

(f) European policies of nihilation, segregation,

assimilation etc.

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(g) issues of multiculturalism and reconciliation

(h) Dalits can become oppressive hiding their caste

whereas Aboriginals can not.

Thus, both writings evince a form of ‘resistance

literature’. They exemplify a form of ‘testimony’ to the

kind of injustices that occur to them and also to the

struggles to survive because of the human rights denied to

them.

At the literary level Dalit literature as well as Aboriginal

literature are still not recognized as full-fledged

marketable ‘national’ literature. Both literatures have been

neglected by the mainstream writers. Today both Dalits and

Aboriginals claim a stake, both in knowledge and the power

more strongly than ever before.

References:

PRIMARY SOURCES

Dalit Writing

BAMA. 2000. Karukku. Translation from the Tamil by LakshmiHolmstrom, Chennai: Macmillan India Limited.

JADHAV, NARENDRA. 2003. Outcase. Translation from the Marathi, NewDelhi: Penguin.

LIMBALE, SHARAN-KUMAR. 2003. Akkarmashi:The Outcaste. Translation fromthe Marathi by Santos Bhoomkar. New Delhi: OUP.

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MOON, VASANT. 2001. Grwoing up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiogrpahy.Translation from the Marathi by Gail Omvedt andIntroduction by Eleanor Zelliot, New Delhi: VistaarPublications.

VALMIKI, OMPRAKASH. 2003. Joothan: A Dalit’s Life. Translation from theHindi by Arun Prabha Mukherjee. Kolkata: Samy Publication.

Aboriginal Writing

GINIBI, RUBY LANGFORD. 1988. Don’t Take Your Love to Town. Australia:Penguin Books.

MORGAN SALLY. 1987. My Place. Fremantale: FACP.

ROUGHSEY, ELSIE. 1983. An Aboriginal Mother Talks of the Old and the New.McPhee Gribble Publication.

WARD, GLENYSE. 1987. Wandering Girl. Broome: Magabala Books.

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