Spanning A Century

Dalit literary movement stormed the Telugu country in the 1990s after Women’s Writing shook the literary establishment in the 1980s. While Chikkanavutunna Pata (Thickening Song) edited by Tripuraneni Srinivas and G. Lakshminarasaiah in 1995 remains one of the most powerful anthologies to have brought out poetry from a large constituency of writers that included the SCs, BCs, and Muslim Minority writers, it fell short of its expectations with not a single woman writer being represented. The second anthology, Padunekkina Pata (Sharpened Song) in 1996 by G. Lakshminarasaiah tried to correct this imbalance with the addition of a few Dalit women writers. Since then, Dalit writing in Telugu moved away from its earlier extended definition to a more exclusive writing coming from the several sub-castes of the SCs and Dalit women writers. It may be pertinent to remember here that while Srinivas comes from an upper caste background, Lakshminarasaiah belongs to one of the BC communities. Dalit Manifesto (published in the same year as Chikkanavutunna Pata) edited by K. Satyanarayana and Keshav Kumar (both Dalits) assumes significance in this context. The volumes were also distinctly different in that while the first two moved away from the Left, the last one tried to bring the Left and Dalit consciousness together.