The Construction of Namasudra Cultural Identity in the Fiction of Kapil Krishna Thakur and Brajen Mallick

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to study the strategies of identity formation of the Bangla Dalit
writers in/through their fiction. The paper will focus on the novel Ujantolir Upokatha
by Kapil Krishna Thakur which depicts the world of the Bangla Dalit people and also
attempts to create an alternate narrative of their history. Kalar Mandash by Brajen
Mallick is a fictionalized Biography of Kamini Sundari Gayen who was a Rayani
singer, a folk artist. Her struggle as a child widow presents the Dalit world through a
woman’s perspective. When Dalits theorize on the idea of ‘difference’ they also suggest
that the difference is based on perception and has been manufactured by the dominant
through continued exclusion of the Dalit for centuries. The Dalits’ peripheral status was
enforced and maintained through violence and ideological brain washing. Thus the
Dalit re-conceptualizes their ‘difference’ to be an artificial construct and not ‘natural’
as has been theorized by the dominant group.