Identity: Denial or Assertion
Baran Farooqi
.. Omprakash Valmiki Samya, Kolkata, 2015, 139 pp., 300
August 2015, volume 39, No 8

Joothan: A Dalit’s Life has been reprinted in 2014 with an addition, ‘Remember ing Omprakash Valmiki’. This is the third reprint. The English translation of this originally Hindi book was first published by Columbia University Press at New York, as also by Samya at Kolkata in 2003. Omprakash Valmiki passed away in 2013, after fighting a two year battle with cancer. The translator, Arun Prabha Mukherjee, is a Toronto based academician and scholar. Valmiki was a multi-faceted personality who won fame and acclaim for Joothan an autobiographical account of a ‘Chuhra’ boy, an untouchable caste which employs itself (rather, is forced to employ itself) in cleaning human excreta or skinning dead animals. Much of the account is searing with pain, and fills the reader with a sense of unease and even self-disgust at her (the reader’s) not being able to intervene to alleviate Valmiki’s suffering. However, it is through the same account that the reader also gets clear glimpses of Valmiki’s poetic/creative self, his interest in theatre as well as sports and also his sound grip on subjects of social and political interest. Once out of the clutches of caste ridden, destitute and illiterate village life, Valmiki displays strengths, both of intellect as well as character, despite having a dark, brooding temperament.

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