Resistance and Counter-Resistance in Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan: A Dalit’s Life: A case Study

Abstract

Dalit is always ‘afraid’ in public space and full of ‘anger’ in private space. A Dalit
(wo)man is thus always polarized between two extreme feelings – ‘to be vanished in shame in the
presence of upper caste people’ or ‘to burst into anger and destroy everything when that shame
is ‘recollected in tranquility.’ This ‘terrorized syndrome’ is the natural outcome of the
atmosphere of violence that always surrounds a Dalit. Material violence as well as
psychological violence. Frantz Fanon in his The Wretched of the Earth (1961) deeply
concentrates on the forms of resistance towards these violences. Frantz Fanon and B.R.
Ambedkar have tremendous similarities in their insights and concepts of liberty, selfhood,
humanism, equality and nationalism. Both of them voiced for the empowerment of the marginals.
Both believed that revolutionary resistance is ultimately a humanistic project encompassing all
people. Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan: A Dalit’s Life (2007) is a personal narrative vis-à-vis a
community writing registering the Dalit resistance towards the exclusionary culture of savarna
hegemony as well as Sanskritization. The narrative also shows how savarna people have
organized counter-resistance to Dalit Resistance and forcing the ongoing Dalitization to
subsidence.