Unlike states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, Dalit poetry in Kerala has not yet grown into a full-fledged radical literary movement, capable of challenging the hegemonic social and cultural forces. In fact, it has come to acquire some degree of maturity and acceptability only during the 1980s. The late advent of Dalit poetry in Malayalam can be ascribed to the belated spread of Ambedkarism among the marginalized people thanks, particularly, to the predominance of the Marxist ideology and the nationalist ideology of the Congress Party. The Dalits of the state were being ruled by "the 'harijan' consciousness, created by the Congress, and the 'working class' consciousness, constructed by the Communist Parties" (Manoj M. B. and George K. Alex 7). The impact of social emancipatory movements led by stalwarts like Pundit Karuppan, Poikayil Appachan, Ayyankali and Pampady John Joseph had almost fizzled out by 1950s. The Savarnas both in the Hindu and Christian dispensation-the Congress and the Communist parties tried to muffle the voice of the Dalits and barred them effectively from undertaking any literary or intellectual activity that would lead them to the discovery of their roots and identity.
The early stirrings of Dalit poetry can be seen in Poikayil Appachan's songs, a major chunk of which came to us through oral transmission. With the ascendancy of the Progressive Literary Movement of the Communists during the 1940s, Dalit poetry relapsed into a state of torpor, from which it started showing signs of recovery only during the 1970s. Since the Progressive Literary Movement tried to determine social inequality and marginalization on the basis of class, overlooking vital issues like caste and gender, Dalit writers were either ignored or kept away altogether. Even a staunch leftist poet like Kallada Sasi did not receive the kind of attention he deserved. No wonder, Dalit poets like Raghavan Atholi had attacked Communist ideology without re-serve in the eighties of the last century and raised serious doubts about its relevance in liberating Dalits from social and economic deprivation.
However, it can not be denied that the new Dalit sensibility, which characterized the poetry of the marginalized in the seventies, was the result of the critical reading or rereading of Marx-ism and the discovery of Ambedkarism as an emancipatory ideology by Dalit writers and intellectuals. The eighties and nineties were more productive both in quality and quantity of Dalit poetry, until it attained the status of a distinct literary entity by the beginning of the new millennium.
Dalit poets in Malayalam can conveniently be grouped un-der five heads, despite the fact that overlapping is inevitable among those groups as a lot of them produced or have been producing literary works for long periods and the details of their writing and publication are unaccountable. This book attempts a critical evaluation of the poetic works of writers from Poikayil Appachan, whe wrote a few fine hymns and songs between 1905 and 1939, to the modern generation of poets like S. Joseph, M. B. Manoj and M. R. Renukumar, who have already carved a niche for themselves in the mainstream Malayalam poetry.
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