An existential exploration of Dalit subjectivity in Bama's short fiction “Annachi” and “Chilli Powder”

The study interrogates two short fictions by Bama to look at how the narrative reflects the idea of Dalit Humanism as a conceptual framework that straddles the notion of existentialism and “earthy humanness”. While the first objective of the study is to trace and decipher the nuances surrounding the construct of “Dalit humanism”, the second objective exclusively deals with “earthy humanness” and its associated set of ethics and rebellion. The final section of the article intends to read the relationality of social inequality, caste stratification, and availability of resources as determining components in Dalit conjugal relationships. Close reading Bama's “Annachi” and “Chilli Powder”, the article also elaborates upon the need to take cognisance of the empathetic humanism that is inclusive in its approach. While the available discourses on Bama's works have excessively dealt with the aspects of caste and gender, the present study incorporates the often-neglected phenomenological dimension, which hints not just at the caste-gender nexus but also projects the paradigms of “rebel” literature. In questioning the verticality of wealth, the arbitrary nature of respect/dignity and subverting the traditional quotients of caste hierarchy, the study employs an intersectional framework offered by Sartre's philosophy of “existentialism is a humanism” and Roja Singh's “earthy humanness” of Dalit women. Even as the study traces the evolution of the discourses on patriarchy in Dalit lives, it illustrates how Bama's conceptualisation of “Dalit Womanism” is uniquely egalitarian and realistic in its function. In determining their identity through divergent contextual moorings in the social mainstream, the study concludes that the Dalits reterritorialise their self-dignity in radically disavowing their construct as the jettisoned other and reorient their personality with the renewed values of dignity, empathy and militancy.