Counter-Histories from the Margins: Dalit Testimonies and Adivasi Narratives of Resistance

Abstract

History has been a powerful tool for the dominant group to tell their story and marginalise the experiences of other groups. This research paper, instead, focuses on the voices at the margins, on the voices of Dalits and Adivasis, who have recorded their experiences of suffering, hunger, resistance, rebellion and resilience. It aims to explore other archives created through oral accounts, folk memory, personal stories and lived experiences that present alternative accounts to official and bureaucratic histories. A set of marginal stories place on the spotlight those lives and struggles that have often been left out of the mainstream history. Comparing the Dalit autobiographical text, Karukku of Bama and the collection of Adivasi advocacy essays; Dust on the Road by Mahasweta Devi, the paper examines the strategies and approaches used by marginalised communities to challenge the postcolonial systems of domination and the erasure of their history. Both texts are from different social, cultural and regional contexts, but there is a common theme of oppression, dignity, identity and survival.  These narratives are told in different ways, however: While Mahasweta Devi's approach is activist documentation, collective suffering, and political resistance, Bama's is personal testimony, memory, and spiritual questioning. These texts offer an example of the ways in which personal and communal anguish is rendered in effective modes of resistance.  They produce other histories that are stories of, victimhood, courage, self-assertion, survivance against caste, class, state and postcolonial hegemony.