World Literatures
‘Joothan’ is an autobiographical account of Omprakash Valmiki’s journey from his birth and upbringing as an untouchable in the newly independent India of the 1950s and his pride in being a Dalit. Until the advent of Dalit literature, literary representations either ignored untouchables or portrayed them as victims in need of saviors, as objects without voice and agency.
Aruna Prabha Mukherjee, who translated this text from Hindi to English, recalls that Valmiki’s Joothan brought alive her memories of childhood and adolescence in a small town in northern India where casteism and untouchability were accepted, where untouchables cleaned their latrines and carried the excrement away on their heads. When they asked for water, it was poured into their cupped hands, from a distance. She also notices that high-caste Indian writers, both Hindu and non-Hindu who are published both in India and abroad as “representers” of Indian life, seldom deal with caste and caste oppression in their works.
According to Valmiki, he had to relive all those miseries, torments, neglects, admonitions and suffered a deep mental anguish while writing this book. He brought alive the memories of trauma that he had suppressed.
You can download the pdf version of this novel, notes and important questions from the links given below. In order to prepare for your exams, it is advised that you try writing answers to the questions mentioned below.
It should be kept in mind that you can be asked questions based on the entire novel and not just the extract from Joothan included in The Individual and Society which you must have studied in your first semester in the English Discipline subject.
We will provide the summary of the novel, important developments in the plot and a list of important characters in this novel in our next post.
To download notes and full texts of novels, short stories, essays etc. prescribed in the syllabus of ‘World Literatures’, click the link below.