"WE WILL BUILD AN OVERBRIDGE": DALIT POETRY AND IDENTITY IN GUJARAT

Abstract

This thesis explores how contestations of identity and thus representations play out within the performative sphere of Gujarat, and by extension the nation. It examines such contestations in the context of an increasingly monolithic Hindu nationalist idea of India. It takes the Gujarati literary sphere as a site to explore the discourse on inclusion and exclusion of marginalised communities like the Dalits in a homogenising and virulent political environment. Presenting new translations of Gujarati Dalit Poetry, the research contextualises this corpus of poetry in the literary, social and political history of Gujarat, situating the poetry within the region as well as the nation. In doing this, this study focusses on the literary aspects of Gujarati Dalit poetry and demonstrates how its literary strategies are influenced by its politics, creating a new aesthetics and poetics. Drawing on various disciplinary approaches, this is as much a work of social and literary history as of literary criticism.