Overview

Anil Gharai is arguably one of the most significant authors of Bangla Dalit literature. His works deal with the stark everyday realities of people on the margins and the complex interplay of domination and subjugation in these spaces. This volume of English translations of some of his most celebrated works seeks to introduce his writings to a new readership in India and abroad. In his works, Gharai explored caste-based and gender-based oppression in the rural areas of coastal Bengal. His protagonists are from remote spaces, from the Dalit community or the indigenous communities—men and women who work and live in extremely exploitative circumstances and whose lives are depicted by Gharai with great care and detail. His novels, short stories and poems, translated in this volume, give voice to the unrepresented and offer a critique of the oppressive caste and class hierarchies and traditions in eastern India. He also focuses on the replication of patriarchal mores within Dalit society and culture. This volume includes critical essays on Anil Gharai and his long interview to reflect on his position in the alternative literary canon of Bangla Dalit literature. Part of the Voices from the Margins series, this critical edition seeks to visibilise the less visible literary texts and traditions. It will be of interest to those scholars engaged in contemporary Indian/South Asian literary cultures, comparative literature, modern Indian literature, minority studies, Dalit studies and gender studies. It will also be useful to students and researchers of social sciences and humanities.

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Anil Gharai was born on November 1, 1957 at Rukminipur in the district of undivided Midnapore. Kak and Noonbari are his first published collection of short stories and novel, respectively. His works deal with the harsh realities of the downtrodden people. He is not merely an author who depicts the beauty and vivacity of nature in his fictional texts; he is also an interpreter of Dalit life with a conscious urge to develop a new aesthetic of Dalit literature. For his outstanding contribution to literature, he has received many awards: Sanskriti Puraskar, Bharat Excellency Award and Gold Medal, Somen Chanda Memorial Award, Tarasankar Puraskar, Michael Madhusudan Award, Mahatma Jyoti Rao Phule Sahitya Puraskar and Bankim Puraskar. Anil Gharai passed away in 2014. Indranil Acharya is Professor and Head of the Department of English, Vidyasagar University, West Bengal. Some of his major publications are Beyond the Sense of Belonging: Race, Class and Gender in the Poetry of Yeats and Eliot (2011), Survival and Other Stories: Anthology of Bangla Dalit Stories (2012), Many Coloured Glass (2013), Towards Social Change: Essays on Dalit Literature (2014), Listen to the Flames: Texts and Readings from the Margins (2016), Paschimbanger Bhasha (2017), Smritibiloper Pore (2017), The Languages of West Bengal (2019), Mahatma Gandhi in Bangla (2022), Geographical Imaginations: Literature and the Spatial Turn (2022), The Almond Flowers and Other Stories (2022) and Writings from the Sundarbans (2023). Dr Acharya is also the Editor of Janajati Darpan, the only international multilingual publication series from Bengal on Indigenous Studies.

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