MODERN TELUGU LITERATURE: PORTRAYAL OF DALIT IDENTITY, ASSERTION, AND AUTONOMY

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to study and analyze the phenomenon of Dalits' identity, religion and autonomy represented in Modern Telugu Literature. It examines some key historical writings in Telugu literature as well as more recent texts from the twentieth century onwards to argue that Dalit issues were systematically set aside. Nannaya during the eleventh century, for instance, defended caste hierarchies, while upper-caste nationalist reformers such as Gurajada Appa Rao and Kandakuri Veeresalingam in the nineteenth century did attempt to raise some issues and bring in social reforms. Unnava Lakshminarayan was one such upper-caste reformer who wrote a novel Malapalli (1922), about the Mala community’s socio-political and cultural assertion and aspirations. This paper examines the political and the historical issues depicted in the novel to read Unnava’s objective of writing a Dalit subjectivity within reformist and Gandhian frameworks.