వేముల ఎల్లయ్య కక్క ఆంగ్ల అనువాదానికి ముందు మాట

AfterwordI
Dalits are a community whose rich heritage left unrecorded except as getting mentioned negatively in the Sanskrit epics and plays. They could not record their own history due to illiteracy causing incorrigible loss to what would have contributed to the most advanced productive technology. Having been neglected even in the modern historiography, the Dalits began to represent themselves in different forms of literature.Written Telugu Dalit literature, as a result, has a tradition of hardly three hundred and odd years though not necessarily known by the same nomenclature. It may be traced back to the seventeenth century saint poet, Potuluri Veerabrahmam1, a sudra social reformer who used to make a detour of the Dalit wadas, hamlets educating the people against the caste and untouchability. The hymns written and sung by himself and his disciples were popular among the Dalits who were illiterates. A tradition thus started, continued at different periods of social history of Andhra Pradesh. Another significant writer in this lineage is a saint poet, Yogi Vemana, a non-Brahmin, who wrote simple verse on various forms of superstitions and evil practices including caste and untouchability. Other noteworthy writers like Gurajaada Appaarao and a few others dealt with the caste and the untouchability. However, it should be understood that the Dalits in this period were written about by the non-Dalits rather than the Dalits writing themselves.In the subsequent period, the Dalits grew from the state of being written about to writing themselves during the Nationalist Movement. The Dalit writers of the Nationalist period however confined their concerns, by and large, to the problem of untouchability under the influence of Gandhi. Continuing the Dalit tradition set by such writers as Jala Rangaswamy, Kusuma Dharmanna Kavi, Nakka Chinavenkataiah, Nutakki Abraham, Premaiah and Boi Bhimanna among others, the modern Dalit poets dealt with the themes like untouchability and denial of public places like schools, temples, streets, hotels, and village-wells. Though the Dalits began writing about themselves, they were imitating the mainstream writing both in form and content.Telugu poetic movements, Bhava Kavitvam (Romantic poetry) and Navya Sampradaaya Kavitvam (Neo-Classical poetry) got de-linked from the contemporary socio-political reality. The writers of the former school were worried about themselves while the latter were concerned with the revival of traditionalism. The elements of subjectivity, revivalism and delinking of social life from literature were questioned by Gurram Jashuva, the first modern Telugu Dalit poet known for his outstanding work, Gabbilam (the bat).2 Jashuva questioned the tenets of the established literary aesthetics, and created Dalit poetry in classical form. Jashuva, therefore is considered a pioneer of not only Telugu Dalit literature, but Telugu literature itself.In the post-Independence period, Telugu littérateurs became complaisant and self-serving. This state was bombarded by a group of Telugu poets, who christened themselves Digambara Kavulu, Naked Poets who include Cherabandaraju, Bhairavaiah, Jwalamukhi, Nagnamuni, Nikhileshwar and Mahaswapna. They provided the much-needed jolt to Telugu literature. Their contribution to Telugu literature lies in re-linking literature to society. This was apparent in the way they chose their themes such as poverty, unemployment and political indifference in respect of upliftment of the downtrodden. Their concern for the underdogs was explicit even in the way they got their anthologies launched by making news. The first of their anthologies was released in 1965 at a street-corner meeting by Nampalli Pandu, a rickshaw puller and the second in 1966 by Jangala Chitti, a Hotel servant. Their third anthology, which had kick-started the modern Telugu literature, was dedicated in 1968 to an untouchable man from Krishna District by name Kanchikarla Kotesh, who was burnt alive by the caste-Hindus accusing him of theft. Thus when they dedicated their anthology to Kotesh, they were anticipating the modern social discourses which were to assume the forms of Dalit, feminist, adivasi and other subaltern movements in the times to come.While the first generation educated Dalits were content with the spoils they gained in the form of politics and employment without contributing much by means of liberating their brethren, some of the second generation educated Dalits, being responsible and responsive, took part in the agitations, rallies and public meetings besides making intellectual contribution in the form of academic research, media write-ups and literary output. * * *The Dalit phase in modern literature, society, and politics began late in Andhra Pradesh when compared to Maharastra, where social change and struggles for empowerment of the Dalits gained momentum with the founding of the Dalit Panthers in 1972. In Andhra Pradesh, as in Tamilnad, the Dalit discourse gained its currency in the eighties.The word Dalit became popular in 1985, a landmark year in Andhra Pradesh concerning Dalit discourse and agitations. It was in this year that the notorious Karamchedu massacre3 against the Dalits took place; it was in this year in which Dalit Mahasabha, a social outfit, was founded to fight for the Dalit rights and atrocities against the Dalits; it was in this year that a majour shift in ideological debate and praxis from the class to the caste had been initiated. K.G. Satyamurthy, also known as Sivasagar, a member of the Central Committee of the then People’s War (ML) challenged the leadership of the Party on account of what he had termed caste-based discrimination within the hierarchy of the Party. Having walked out of the Party in 1985, Satyamurthy formed socio-political outfits, and pioneered Dalit poetry becoming a staunch follower of the ideology of Ambedkar.Following the mayhem of 1985, a series of incidents at other places like Neerukonda, Thimma Samudram, Chundur, Vempenta and Cherlapally, among other incidents of atrocities, took place in the subsequent period. Besides the atrocities, the pro and anti-reservation agitations – the BC reservation agitation of 1986 in Andhra Pradesh and the OBC (Mandal reservation) of 1990 helped the Dalits in rallying support and expressing solidarity for the Dalit agitations. As a result, a spurt of Dalit activities, ranging from literary and journalistic discourses to cultural and political forms of protest, had begun. The educated Dalits, belonging to the second generation, who were the beneficiaries of the Ambedkarite reservations, waged various socio-political movements and agitations for self respect, Dalit rights, equality, empowerment and protest.The new generation Dalits began to produce a powerful body of Dalit literature. Telugu Dalit literature in general and poetry in particular, written in the 1990s to the present period, needs to be understood against this background. It was in 1995 that the first anthology of Telugu Dalit poetry entitled, Chikkanavutunna Paata (thickening song) was brought out by G. Laxminarsaiah and Tripuraneni Srinivas, which was followed by another anthology, Padunekkina Paata (sharpened song) by G. Laxminarsaiah4 in 1996. Both the anthologies, though not exclusively Dalit as they contain poems of sudras, are concerted efforts on the part of the poets and the anthologists to bring to light the Dalit ethos, angst, protest, heritage, myth and an alternative vision with a strong element of conscientising the Dalits and the non-Dalits including the oppressor. Some of the Dalit poets included in the anthologies were to become the most powerful voices in Dalit literature showing a direction to the young and emerging Dalit poets. The new generation poets brought out, in the subsequent period, a number of individual anthologies of poetry enriching the oeuvre of Telugu Dalit poetry.* * *It took fairly a long time for the Telugu Dalit novel proper to evolve into what it is now. As in the case of poetry, the Nationalist Movement influenced the Telugu Dalit novel, the most important of which was Unnava Laxminarayana’s Malapalli (a Mala hamlet) 1922 followed by N.G. Ranga’s Harijana Naayakudu (a harijan leader) and Dasarathi Rangacharya’s Chillaradevullu, translated into English as The Lesser Deities. The other noteworthy name in this lineage is Muppala Ranganayakamma, known for her Balipeetham. Kesava Reddy, popular for his Athadu Adavini Jayinchaadu (translated as He Conquered the Jungle); and Aruna, who wrote Elli and Neeli, are known for their writings that deal with Erukala, the pig-tending community. But what is noteworthy of the evolution of the Dalit novel is that while the post 1985 period – a period of Dalit awareness – produced vibrant Dalit poetry, the same was not true of the Dalit novel. There was a void in the Dalit novel after the Nationalist period. The Dalit novel had to wait till 2000, to come of age, which decisively it did. It was in this year that Vemula Yellaiah published Kakka and G. Kalyanarao, Antaraani Vasantham (untouchable spring), a revolutionary novel by a Dalit that shows solution in the extremist violence. The other Dalit novels that deserve mention in this context are Chilukuri Devaputra’s Panchamam and Spartacus’ (Mohanrao) Khaki Bathukulu. * * *The Telugu Dalit literature from its genesis to the present period may be classified into four phases that may enable the readers problematise the writings. However, it may not be possible to demarcate the phases in terms of accurate periodisation.The Dalit literature, exclusively poetry – the novel was yet to take its genesis – of the early period can be termed the Humanist phase in the sense of opposing untouchability and caste without questioning the religious and social sanction of the caste and untouchability. The Nationalist and the pre-Nationalist Dalit writing may be termed the Harijan phase as most of it was an outcome of Gandhian influence during the Nationalist Movement. Dalit poetry by the Dalits and Dalit novel by the non-Dalits were written during the period. The post-Independence period writings, that could be termed the SC phase, by the first generation educated Dalits was imitative of the themes and forms of the mainstream writers who wrote about the Dalits. The writings of the following period could be rightly termed the Dalit phase. The works produced by the second and third generation educated Dalits, who subscribe themselves to the ideology of Ambedkar, who question the predominant Left, attacked the casteist hegemony. It may not be out of place to state that the Dalit discourse – both in politics and literature – strengthened itself and got expanded ever since the Dalits began to question, and deviate from the Left in Andhra Pradesh.It is against the background of the evolution of Telugu Dalit literature through the four phases that Vemula Yellaiah’s writings – poetry and novels – need to be problematised.IIJashuva’s Gabbilam is considered the first groundbreaking work that deviated from the contemporary literary tenets of Telugu literature. K.G Satyamurthy’s ideological deviation from the aesthetics of the Left is the second most important landmark in the evolution of the Dalit literature rather idirectly.5 In this order, Yellaiah’s Kakka, which came out in the beginning of the new millennium, assumes equal importance in the evolution of Telugu Dalit literature in respect of the deviation from not only the contemporary mainstream literature but also from some aspects of Dalit language and literature. Kakka is a signpost in the transition of Telugu Dalit literature in respect of representing Dalitness in content and culture; and reclaiming the Dalit language. The novel assumes significance in the way a Madiga story is delineated in at least three distinctive ways: by the nature of the events presented, by the way they are treated with symbols of madiganess, and by marking its linguistic distinctiveness.Kakka is an inward looking Dalit novel portraying Dalit experience in terms of poverty, disputes and violence vis-à-vis intra and inter-caste rivalries. The events presented in the novel revolve round deprivation, violence, the question of land, self-respect and the politics of Dalit empowerment. It depicts the Madiga life in transition through three generations: the grandmother, the mother and the lead character, Kakka. The novel opens with an exquisite visualization of a generation’s lifespan compressed into a few pages dealing with his grandmother. The Dalit life in the pre-Independence period was entirely carried out by slavery and gleaning the leftovers in the fields as represented by his grandmother. The life of the second-generation Dalits is portrayed by means of Kakka’s mother, Kalemma, a widow. His mother is a classic case of the intra and inter-caste contradictions, characteristic of the caste system. Men belonging to her own caste subject her to physical and mental violence accusing her of sexual relations; alienate her along with her son from their community. Meting out unimaginably inhuman torture, the mother and the son are excommunicated denying them work in the village.Kakka resolves the problem of his mother by getting her suitably remarried. Widow Remarriages among the Dalits are as common and real as the socio-economic problems they confront in the hands of the landlords. The rest of the novel is about Kakka’s growth into a mature adult who realizes that the problem of caste is too complicated with its subtleties and nuances subjecting the Dalits to the oppression both within and outside the caste. The agrarian relations, Madiga culture and ritual, politics of anti-Nizam agitation, inter-caste rivalries, hostility against the Dalits and the futility of the State in changing the Dalits’ lives are portrayed so realistically that the incidents portrayed in the novel sound stranger than fiction to those who are not familiar with the rural Dalit life. The events presented are characteristic of, what may be termed, the Madiga nationalism.Yellaiah’s credit in representing the Dalit life lies equally in the way they are treated. Kakka is an attempt to narrate the unnarratabe. The novelist choses to deal with the lowest social and economic levels characteristic of the social destitution. The treatment of the social subalternity of the Madigas is accomplished by liberally drawing from the symbols of Madiganess that include the Madiga rites and rituals, myth and ceremonies, Dalit and folk deities, which are all essentially different from those of the mainstream Hindu order. The events are treated with the Madiganess as a guiding motive in the characterization, imagery and delineation. The brought-up, growth and maturity of Kakka is renedered realistically tempered with defiance, which is expected of a deprived Madiga. The treatment of the events can best be understood in terms of a series of insights for a social anthropologist. It is in this respect that Kakka stands out to be a true Dalit novel when compared to the most accomplished English novels, Untouchable by Mulkraj Anand and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. In both the novels, the untouchable heroes are portrayed improbably as the ideal, as the desired ones. Anand’s Bakha is depicted as intelligent, able-bodied strong and dignified unlike the average scavenger, who is uncouth and unclean. Roy’s Velutha is built like a God, very gentle and sensitive. The untouchable social subalterns in these novels are created akin to their previlaged counterparts in certain respects. This kind of “bestowing a particular kind of individuality on the untouchable characters is limited”, improbable and unrealistic.6 In contrast, Kakka is not even one among his caste folk; he is less than the rest in the Madiga hierarchy having been excommunicated and denied of caste-occupation and even a bride. Kakka and the rest of the characters in the novel, their occupation, their homes and the surroundings are characteristically uncouth and unclean with the stink and squalor surroundings. However, in spite of their illiteracy, subordination and all kinds of destitution, Kakka and the other Madiga characters in the novel are guided by the materialist rationalism in their outlook; their understanding of discrimination, exploitation, disputes, protest and rebellion, which are germane to the Madiga Others. The social, economic and political subalternity is treated with the symbols of Madiganess.Then comes the most important aspect of the linguistic distinctiveness of the novel. Yellaiah chooses a suitable form to represent the Dalit life in Kakka. While the Dalit literature itself is a defiance of and deviation from the aesthetics of the mainstream literature, Kakka deviates even from the modern Telugu Dalit literature produced during the last two decades. The main deviation of Kakka lies in respect of the distinctiveness of the language that Yellaiah employs in his novels and poetry alike. His attempt is aimed at reclaiming the Dalit language, which he accomplishes at three seminal levels: the orality, the dialect and the register.First, the use of different forms of the oral tradition in the narrative. What is remarkable about the narrative is that there is not a single instance of written mode of communication throughout the novel; the novel is written making use of different aspects of the spoken mode. This is in keeping with the reality of the illiteracy of the Dalit characters and the Dalit reality portrayed in the novel. One of the striking features of the Telugu letters used in the novel is that the novelist avoided diligently certain letters, which are characteristic of the written mode. He replaced the letters meant for written mode of communication by such letters, which find their place in the informal oral communication. Most of the Telugu letters that Yellaiah expressions are not ‘acceptable’ in the written mode. He has successfully avoided the use of the ten aspirated allophones that include, kh, gh, chh, jh, th, dh, thh, dhh, ph and bh, the letters which are characteristic of written mode; which are hardly used in speech even by the educated speakers, except the ones belonging to a particular caste. Further, Yellaiah also avoided the use of the post-alveolar sounds, /n/, /l/; the alveolar, /nt/ and the velar /n/ (the latter two are hardly used by anyone) and the writer admits that they cannot be overcome overnight, and would ascertain the need for overcoming such non-Dalit features of Telugu: “How can Telugu Dalit literature come of age without overcoming the post-alveolar Sanskrit /l/ in the word ‘Dalit’?” According to Yellaiah, there should be no place for the non-Dalit features of Telugu in Dalit literature. “Dalitising Telugu should begin at least with Dalit literature,” Yellaiah affirms.7The next aspect of the linguistic distinctiveness of the orality of Kakka is about morphology, the structure of words. Most of the words Yellaiah uses are not free morphemes; he synthesizes words by mixing with the morphs of other words. Several words used in the novel are not lexical in the sense that they cannot be found in the dictionaries; they cannot be found in isolation. They need to be understood as separate words forming into a new entity. For instance three separate words, katha (story), cheputha (I’ll narrate) and vinu (you, listen) are combined into one portmanteau, kathjepthinu. He would inflect or derive novel forms of words by strangely joining separate words into one word. The joining of the words is accomplished in a different way. This aspect of combining the words, which is characteristic of the oral communication, strengthens his narrative.The structure of the sentences in the novel too does not conform to the established Telugu syntax. Not to conform to the established syntax too is a form of Dalit defiance of the notion of acceptability. Instead of writing sentences in the order of subject-object-verb (SOV), the novelist would go on piling up series of verbs without commas, before introducing the subject and the main verb. The novelist breaks the rules of grammar of written Telugu. His sentences are, opined a reviewer of Kakka, neither grammatical nor ungrammatical. The dexterity of the novelist is demonstrated in the use of the words, which are different from the written mode but familiar to the spoken mode. Another unique feature of the narrative is doing away with punctuation, especially commas and full stops: avoiding commas almost completely, Yellaiah uses full stops sparingly. Most of the paragraphs in the novel run into succession of sentences without being separated by either commas or full stops. The novel abounds in direct speech and what may be called the ‘thinking aloud’ by the characters. He would straight away introduce the direct speech, and in most of the cases, the reader would come to know the speaker of the sentence at the end of the speech. These features are characteristic of orality.Sindu Yakshagaanam, the most popular form of the Dalit folk art; the art of the Dakkali’s who recount the family-lineages of the Madigas; the manner of the speech of an illiterate Dalit in the day-to-day communication have a perceivable influence in the narration of Kakka. The avoidance of the punctuation allows the flow of narration in the manner of Dalit street-plays. The use of the work-chants/songs, songs of various rites, festivals, bonfires and the songs from the street plays is characteristic of the Dalit forms of fork arts. Other features of Dalit folklore include the use of proverbs and abuses that Kakka abounds. A word of explanation concerning the abuses that the novelist employs, and translated accordingly, may not be out of place. The abuses are the most intrinsic part of the conversation of the illiterate Dalit men and women. But what is noteworthy is that the Dalits use the abuses without meaning or intending the pejorative sense of the abuses. Yellaiah uses the abuses in the novel true to the conversation of the Dalits in real life.The second linguistic distinctiveness is the use of the Telangana dialect, which is employed not only for the dialogue but also for the narrative. However, it is not a new experiment to write a novel in the Telangana dialect. Other writers who successfully experimented with the dialect for fiction include Thummeti Raghothama Reddy and Allam Rajaiah in the Telangana dialect, Chakaravenu and Namini Subrahmanyam Nayudu in the Rayalaseema dialect and Raavi Saastri in the coastal dialect. In Kakka, Yellaiah goes ahead of these writers by using the Telangana dialect as spoken by the rural illiterate Dalits.Finally, Yellaiah complements the oral tradition and the Telangana dialect with the Madiga register. On this count, Kakka is the first of its kind as far as Telugu Dalit literature is concerned. What the novelist achieves by means of this is that the readers get an original feeling of what Dalit language is like. The portrayal of incidents dealing with the Madiga occupations such as processing bullock-hide, making leather goods, playing on the drum, rendering agricultural services; cultural aspects like the rituals of birth, death, wedding, puberty, eating bullock-meat and so on are rendered using their own register, as the incidents portrayed are culture specific; Madiga specific. The Madiga register that the novelist employed would best represent the ‘stench’ of the Dalit life. To express it in the stylized, standard, neutral Telugu would have been at the cost of the essential Dalitness. Neutral expressions would generally convey positive connotations romanticizing the Dalit experience. Yellaiah avoided the neutrality of expressions successfully by employing the sociolect of the Madigas.In effect, Yellaiah’s attempt at reclaiming the Dalit language by means of linguistic distinctiveness is aimed at Dalitising Telugu language by liberating it from the influence of Sanskrit as well as the written Telugu. A Dalitised art form would have to be produced as an antithesis of and in opposition to the conventional art form. This is accomplished in defying all the established and known forms and worldviews of the conventional art. As defiance is the crux of Dalit protest, defiance of the conventional art forms the core of Dalit literature. The net impact of all the forms of the orality employed in the narrative is that the novel attains the feature of a genre, shravya navala, an audio-novel – a novel that is read aloud for the pleasure of its sounds, proving that “reading is also a creative act” by means of the “power of language.”8IIIThen how would one go about translating the linguistic distinctiveness of Kakka? Whether it is possible to render these features into English is an important question. It is true that they make the translation much more complicated and challenging. The feats of a translator are to perform a kind of linguistic gymnastics to achieve a semblance of the effect of the original. The oral tradition, the dialect and the register employed in the novel are the cultural matrices of the experience of the Dalits. To render the experience, which is their own, into a language which is not their own (to use Raja Rao’s paradigm) is but approximating the original by means of cultural transfer. The target of any translation therefore is to provide the reader, to the possible extent, the richness of the source text in terms of language and culture. My objective has been to represent the novel without upsetting the readability of English.An English translation of Kakka should not read non-distinctive as in the case of Alburt Camus’ The Stranger or Hemingway’s original English novel, The Old Man and the Sea both of which are characteristic of neutrality of language devoid of local flavour. Instead, the translation of Kakka is expected to carry the flavour of Telugu, the Telangana dialect, maadig register and the spoken mode. This is partly accomplished by Telugising English. The method followed to Telugise English is by means of syntactic emulation. The verb-final structure of Telugu is preferred at times to the English SVO structure, but not at the cost of intelligibility. This aspect of syntax gives the reader a feel of reading a non-native English. This should be alright for a target text produced in the written mode, for it is the written language that conforms to the established word-order. A Dalit text is essentially about the illiterate people who’s Telugu is different from that of the educated ones. The feature of linguistic distinctiveness that the novelist accomplished by defying the ‘acceptable’ forms of syntax, punctuation and the established phrase structure, which cannot be rendered verbatim in a language like english; an attempt has been made to ‘bend’ English without hampering readability. The best way of recovery in translation is not by standardizing the style but by approximating the linguistic ethnicity of the original.Another problem that confronts the translator of a work of this kind is the lexical features. There is a practice of transliterating the source words in the name of retaining the flavour of original Telugu. But this can be avoided in the case of exact substitutes that can transfer the original sense. Lest they not only impede the intelligibility but distract the flow of reading. The method followed, therefore is that a transliterated word is paraphrased in the first occurrence, and then on, its English equivalent is used in the subsequent part of the text. Very few transliterated words are used throughout the text where their equivalents do not exist.Translating the lexical features of a Dalit text is the crux of the work. Some of the words dealing with the Dalit experience do have their English equivalents, which if used, defeats the very purpose of translating a Dalit text. For example a word like ‘beef’, by all means, is the exact rendering of the original. But it would convey the meaning in the Western sense of beef. Instead, an expression like ‘bullock-meat’ or ‘cattle-meat’ would perhaps represent the food habit of the Dalits. Similarly shitting-enclosure is preferred to lavatory; hut for house; head-cloth for turban; shoulder-cloth for towel; wada/hamlets for street; meals for breakfast/lunch; fall on one’s feet for prostrate are some of the examples of how the former in each set may, to some extent, represent the Dalit way of life, while the use of the latter would have either Anglicized and Hinduised or neutralized the original expressions defeating the very purpose of translating a Dalit text.The caste hierarchy and inter-personal relations among the people of various castes is communicated, and best understood by the inflections suffixed to the names and pronouns of the Dalits by the upper caste men. Morphs such as, arey, vay, ra and various forms of abuses and scolding are rendered in English to convey the sense of social hierarchy in the caste system.Thus translating a Dalit novel like Kakka would entail the need for not only Telugising but also Dalitising so as to represent the linguistic ethnicity of the source text by avoiding the translator’s pitfalls of Anglicisation, Hinduisation and neutralization of the Dalit expressions.Notes1 Potuluri Veerabrahmam, whose preachings were recorded in Kaalajnaanam, was famous in the seventeenth century for his preachings and mainly for his remarks on future of the world. He entered Jeeva Samadhi, burial-alive, in the year 1693.2 Gurram Jashuva, Gabbilam, Trans. by K. Madhava Rao, Hyderabad: Jashuva Foundation, 19963 Karamchedu is a village in Prakasham district of AP, where six Dalits were killed and three Dalit women raped by the forward caste men on July 17, 1985; seventeen Dalits were massacred at Chundur on August 6, 11991; in between a minimu of of twenty six of such indcidents of murder or large scvale arson took place klling a total of fifty seven Dalits and setting on fire four hundred and thirty houses of the Dalits. For a detailed account, see K. Balagopal, “Post-Chundur and Other Chundurs,” Economic and political Weekly (October 19, 1991) 4 G. Laxminarsaiah and Tripuraneni Srinivas, Chikkanavutunna Paata, Vijayawada: Kavithvam Prachuranalu, 1995; and G. Laxminarsaiah, Padunekkina Paata, Vijayawada: Dalit Sana Prachuranalu, 1996. 5 K.G. Satyamurthy, who wrote under the pseudonym, Sivasagar was a prominent revolutionary poet and aesthetician, and authored several poems with revolutionary theme before turning into a Dalit thinker. Satyamurthy initiated differing and deviating from the ideology of the Left to adopt Ambedkar’s thought. Though the output of his Dalit poetry was not voluminous, he played a seminal role in getting the literary thrust shifted from the class to the caste. Thus the coming of age of Dalit literature has to do with the giving up of the Left by the Dalit activists 6 Tabish Khair, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English novels, New Delhi: Oup, 2001, 1467 Yellaih expressed these views as a part of the discussions held with the translator at different points of time.8 Kalekuri Prasad in a review of Kakka in The Book Review, (February, 2002), 26. K. Purushotham
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