Joothan refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s. The peon would pour water from way high up, lest our hands touch the glass”. He says: “During the examinations we could not drink water from the glass when thirsty. In his novel Joothan he talked about the discrimination they had to face in the school at different points. But he soon settled and both Valmiki and Chanda started a happy married life. They had to struggle a lot during the initial days of marriage. He was not allotted a house in the government colony. Valmiki married Chanda despite the protestations his father accepted her as his daughter-in-law. Reading and writing made him an enlightened human being.
Right from the early stages of his life, Valmiki was conscious of the importance of studies and hence he was always a bright student. The support and encouragement he gained from the family enabled him to face the dangers of being a Dalit. He was fortunate enough to be born in a household where everyone loved and cared for him. After retirement from Government Ordnance Factory he lived in Dehradun where he died of complications arising out of stomach cancer on 17 November 2013.īeing a Dalit child, he was tortured and abused everywhere in society. He was born at the village of Barla in the Muzzafarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. well known for his autobiography, Joothan, considered a milestone in Dalit literature. Omaprakāśa Vālmīki or Omprakash Valmiki (30 June 1950 – 17 November 2013) was an Indian Dalit writer and poet.
A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness. Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid.Īlthough untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule.
"Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals.
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