How are Punjabi Dalits presented in English fiction, especially in novels by upper caste writers?

Besides Khushwant Singh, it is hard to think of another acclaimed English-language novelist from the Punjab region, unless we count writers from Pakistan. Lately, some writers from the state have been trying to fill the gap. Among their works, two recent novels by Indian Punjabi authors stand out for portraying Dalit lives – Rachhpal Sahota’s Chasing Dignity (2023) and Anirudh Kala’s Two and a Half Rivers (2021). Both authors are non-Dalits, but their choice of subject reflects the increasing academic and literary interest in the injustices of the caste system. Outside India, the British writer Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways (2015) was one of the first novels to closely examine casteism within Sikh society.

It’s admirable that Sahota and Kala mention the Dalit icon BR Ambedkar, albeit cursorily, in their books – a feat that even Arundhati Roy did not achieve in her The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), which featured a Dalit character. As Ruma Sinha suggests in her PhD thesis, Roy’s novels “align themselves with progressive Gandhian philosophy rather than subaltern Ambedkarite politics”. This observation can be extended to much of Indian-English fiction addressing caste discrimination.

Dalits in new Indian writings

Ambedkar’s absence in Indian-English fiction that explores Dalit lives, starting with Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935), raises troubling questions. Could mentioning a brilliant Dalit mind, educated at prestigious universities abroad, unsettle dominant-caste stories? Why do these novels persistently depict Dalits as suffering creatures devoid of meaningful agency, or as docile Gandhian Harijans dependent on upper-caste patronage and pity?

Sahota gives us a strong Dalit protagonist, Jaggi, who also harbours literary ambitions. It’s a promising start, but the book unfortunately suffers from awkward sentences and dialogue, and abrupt shifts in plot and character. Jaggi is depicted as handsome, tall, exceptionally intelligent and noble in his dealings, making him too good to be true in some respects.

Jaggi’s love affairs with upper-caste young women are rather Bollywoodesque in their improbability and melodrama. It strains the belief that none of Jaggi’s classmates can guess his Dalit caste even after long acquaintance. The subplot involving Jaggi’s pursuit of the American Dream stretches credibility. He manages to secure a US visa through financial sponsorship from his dominant-caste father-in-law. And how does he marry a Khatri woman from a rich business family? Let this question prompt you to read the novel and find out.

I appreciate that Sahota’s book contains regional specifics like a visit to Naina Devi temple and Bhakra Dam. It brought back tender childhood memories, including a mundan ceremony at Naina Devi. However, Sahota’s narrative often strays and rambles.

In contrast, Kala’s concise novel is a mature and compelling work, though not without the upper-caste blind spots. The gripping first half of the book is animated by dark humour and trenchant satire about bumbling policemen, government corruption, and human follies, reminiscent of short fictional gems like Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar (2017).

The intriguing setting of the solitary house by the Satluj River aptly reflects the divorced, clinically depressed narrator’s barren life. The diabolical mess of Khalistani terrorism, criminal opportunists and sinister counterterrorism is captured well.

Kala’s descriptions of caste discrimination in a rural Jat-Sikh milieu are somewhat clichéd, as is the young Dalit couple’s reliance on the upper-caste narrator’s benevolence. Aesthetically, the second half of the novel loses focus and a sense of intrigue. The plot becomes hackneyed, and the prose turns flat-footed, relying too heavily on exposition and journalistic takes on corrupt religious cults and politics. The characterisation of the Dalit couple, Shamsie and Bheem, also becomes superficial, as are the anti-Dalit catastrophes that befall them.

But despite its blind spots on caste and the muddled second half, Two and a Half Rivers is an important novel that sheds light on the outcaste victims of Jat-Sikh supremacy, generally ignored in Indian fiction narratives. Kala is among the first to record Punjab’s anti-Dalit atrocities in Indian-English fiction, although the web series Paatal Lok (2018) did it earlier. One wonders why Indian literature lagged behind cinema in pointing out this social evil in Punjab, where Dalits form 32 per cent of the population but own a mere four per cent of its land.

Caste problems in urban spaces

While narratives of rural casteism proliferate, upper-caste novelists seldom illustrate caste discrimination in bourgeois urban spaces, such as theelite universities, the media, and book publishing. Their supposedly progressive fiction rarely touches on the issue of job reservations, even as bigoted and paranoid voices against reservations become shriller. Job reservations were not instituted for economic upliftment but to ensure adequate representation from marginalised sections to govern the country effectively.

For comparison, the United States doesn’t have legally mandated job reservations. Still, the dominant white group implements “affirmative action”, which has delivered the kind of educational opportunities and good public and private sector jobs to African Americans that modern India’s Dalits and Adivasis couldn’t dream of. While Western publishers seek diverse voices, nearly all of the Indian-English fiction writers are from the upper-caste minority.

Curiously, even progressive upper-caste novelists never address the absence of Dalit voices in Indian-English fiction, although they bestow remarkable gifts on their Dalit characters. In Pankaj Mishra’s Run and Hide (2022), the Dalit character is an American billionaire, Sahota’s Jaggi boasts outstanding physical and intellectual powers, and Kala has made a Punjabi Dalit man the charismatic head of an extremely powerful and wealthy religious dera.

These depictions are far from reality. For instance, Punjab’s most powerful deras and the ever-increasing Christian mega-churches are full of Dalit followers, and yet their leaders are almost always from dominant caste Jats and Khatris.

For the broader South Asian region’s sake, one hopes that Pakistani novelists will also expose the blatant persecution of Hindu and Christian Dalits in their country, a topic that has received scant attention from the global literary world.

On the Indian side of the political border, we hope to see more well-crafted English-language novels, also written by Dalits, holding a mirror to society and shining a light on its dark spots.

Rajiv Thind is a literary scholar and emerging fiction writer who lives in New Zealand. His current projects include an Indo-nostalgic novel set in 1980s Punjab, and another that satirises the Indian caste system. He can be reached on his website.