The End of Postcolonialism: Dalits, Adivasis and the Rhetoric of "Antinationalism" in South Asian Literature

This dissertation argues that the literary representations by the Dalit (formerly known as Untouchables) and Adivasi (India’s aboriginal peoples) writers dismantle the colonizer-colonized binary of the postcolonial literary theory and show that the nature and shape of Dalit and Adivasi subalternity are quite different from those produced by colonial relations. These voices, marginalized on account of caste and indigeneity, necessitate a consciousness that interrogates the dominant high caste and class elitist discourse and its systematic colonization of the literary/cultural and social lives of the Dalit and Adivasi subaltern. Interrogating the centuries old Brahminist practices and discourses that negate the possibilities of social and political solidarity across caste and other marks of identity: Touchables and Untouchables, Adivasis, and non-Adivasis, I suggest that the emergence of Dalit and Adivasi literatures destabilizes the hegemony of the elitist discourse and transcends the analyses of postcolonial theorists and subaltern historians who fail to acknowledge the centrality of caste in Indian society and its contradictions, inconsistencies and injustices inflicted upon the marginalized.

Dalit and Adivasi literatures show that caste is not only a major determinant of the cultural/political identities since the advent of the so-called Aryan invasion in South Asia but also an instrument of suppression, dispossession, and displacement. Through the examination of texts by Bama, Sharankumar Limbale, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, and Temsula Ao I argue that Dalit and Adivasi literary imaginary breaks the “cultural dictatorship” of the dominant discourses and transgresses the limitations of the mainstream literary aesthetics, which is replete with Hindutva ideology and is devoid of low caste identified voices. By evading caste’s permanent divisions and hereditary hierarchy the dominant discourses not only fail to understand caste as a major component in socio-political life of the people in South Asia but also deny its subterranean presence in postcolonial, nationalist, and feminist theoretical frameworks, problematically conflating it with the non-caste categories, such as, colonized, classed, and gendered subjects. It argues that Dalit and Adivasi literatures cannot be “engaged” within the current form of postcolonial literary theory. Instead, it suggests the emergence of Dalit and Adivasi literatures and theory marks “the end of postcolonialism.”