Subaltern Studies and Modern Literary Theories

CHAPTER-I

SUBALTERN STUDIES AND MODERN LITERARY THEORIES

The importance of subaltern studies in the domain of Indian cultural is growing day by day. The question on how the existing cultural forms consider this new cultural form as relevant one, is of immense significance in subaltern politics.

Subaltern studies initially emerged in Indian historiography as a term to consider the significance of suppressed groups in shaping history - ‘A history from the bottom up’. Moving beyond the historiography, which charted the colonized and the colonizers as the key social forces, in the 1970’s the term began to be used as a reference to the colonized people in the South Asian-

Subcontinent. Subaltern studies focus on the domination and oppression of the marginalized in both colonial and the post-colonial societies. They provide a new perspective on the history of the colonized which was entirely different from the perspective of the hegemonic power. The main aim of subaltern studies is to promote the discussion of subaltern themes in the South Asian studies.

The term ‘subaltern’ originated in the 16th century; and is derived from two Latin words ‘sub’ meaning ‘under’ and ‘alter’ meaning ‘other’.1 The literal meaning of the word subaltern, as given in the Oxford Dictionary is,

‘any officer in the British army who is lower in rank than a captain2. As an adjective the term means ‘of lower status’. In the Aristotelian scheme of debate, the term subaltern denotes and means a special word other than a common declaration, it is used untechnically to denote officials of lower ranks etc.3

It was Antonio Gramsci who first used the term subaltern in a non-military sense4. Subaltern now-a-days is used to denote the entire worlds that are subordinated in terms of class, caste, age, gender, or in any other way5. This term also denotes oppression and the attitude of negation. The people having no capital of their own or in their hands, the people who fall back economically and culturally, the people who fall back religiously, politically and socially, the people having no land of their own, the labour class people

1 Ellis Cashmore, Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relation, Routledge London, 1984, p. 356. 2 Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, p.1528. 3 Susie Tharu, Keezhala Patanangal. D.C. Books, Kottayam , 2006, p .23. 4 Gramsci uses the term subaltern interchangeably with subordinate and instrumental. He attaches special significance to this term by incorporating peasants, workers and other groups who are denied access to hegemonic power. ‘Prison Notebooks’ is in many respects, his most important work dealing with these concepts. 5 Ranajith Guha (Ed), Subaltern Studies Vol 5, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,1982, p. 203.

and the people of lower castes can be considered as subalterns. Along with this, a person who gets no consideration as an individual in the society can also be included in the schedule of subalternity. When we try to define the subaltern by keeping in mind the Indian cultural, historical and social backgrounds, it is necessary to find out who the persons are that are kept apart as subalterns. In India, even now it is the caste system that forms the basis of class hegemony. It stands on the basis of the superiority of the upper class and inferiority of the lower class. During the colonial period, among foreigners the upper class people included the British officers of the colonial state, industrialists, businessmen, landlords, missionaries, and moneylenders. Among the indigenous people the superior classes included the powerful feudal landlords, the people holding superior offices in bureaucracy, businessmen and industrialists. The dividing line between the upper class and the lower class varied/varies depending upon the place and time.6

Like other fields, in the field of literature also, the subalternity expects a thorough deconstruction, assessment and reconstruction of the existing concepts. The social concepts like caste, women, environment, and religion have their own part to play in this process. Thus various disciplines like

6 Ranajith Guha, Op.cit, Vol. 1, p.3.

Marxism, Political Science, Legal Studies; Economics, Feminism, Cultural studies and Anthropology started to enter into the concepts of subalternity and have made tremendous contributions in the field of subaltern studies.

In Gramscian thought the term ‘subaltern’ is used to denote those groups in society, who are subjugated to the hegemony of the ruling class. In this sense, the term can refer to any group that is collectively subordinated, whether on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, religion or any other category of identity. Gramsci expands its scope by using it as a reference for any social groups, outside the establishment structures of political representation with particular reference to the marginalized rural peasantry of Southern Italy. In the chapter ‘Notes on Italian History’, he suggests six points for studying the history of subaltern classes. They are:-

1 Their objective formation of the subaltern social groups, by the developments and transformations occurring in the sphere of economic production; their quantitative diffusion and their origins in pre-existing social groups, whose mentality, ideology and aims they conserve for a time.

2 Their active or passive affiliation to the dominant political formations, their attempts to influence the programmes of these formations in order to

press claims of their own, and the consequences of these attempts in determining the process of decomposition, renovation or neo-formation;

3 The birth of new political parties and dominant groups, intended to conserve the assent of the subaltern groups and to maintain control over them;

4 The formation that the subaltern group produce to press their claims of a limited and partial character;

5 Those new formations which assert the autonomy of the subaltern groups, but within the old framework;

6 Those formations which assert the integral autonomy. 7

He states that in every class - divided society, the hegemonic and the subaltern classes are in a state of conflict. Thus in a wider perspective, he uses the term subaltern to marginalized and oppressed groups anywhere in the world.

In Gramsci’s perspective capitalism sustains its exploitation of the subaltern, through the hegemony of culture. He also emphasizes the fact that the nature and the structure of subaltern consciousness vary from one social

7Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (Eds), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Orient Longman, 1996, p .52.

context to another, owing to the difference in their experience of capitalist exploitation and subaltern responses to it. The racial difference has intensified capitalist exploitation in colonial situations.

The capitalistic society bears a special pattern of power and procedures which creates circumstances for the exploitation and suppression of the labor class people. Here the subaltern class changes into or becomes the hegemony of the upper class groups having the power in their hands. In all societies where class conflict exists, we can see this kind of superior loyal relationship existing8.

Here the subalterns are made to believe that they belong to an inferior race and hence they are not fit for making any real contribution to the society. The white settlers always emerge as champions of the superior race. They subjugate the will and aspirations of the subalterns. Very often they resort to violence for the implementation of various policies, for the imperialists believe in the principle that offence is the best form of defence for this subjugation, To quote Franz Fanon, “In the colonies, the foreigner coming from another country imposed his rule by means of guns and machines. In

8 Partho Chatterji, Op. cit, p.25.

defiance of his successful transplantation, in spite of his appropriation, the settler still remains a foreigner… The governing race is the first and foremost those who come from elsewhere, those who are unlike the original inhabitants, the others.”9

Racial subalternity continues to evolve its repercussion even after the colonial rule. In the post-colonial studies,10 the term ‘race’ has paved way for

‘ethnicity’ so as to account for human variation in terms of culture, traditions, social patterns and ancestry.11

The term subaltern figures in the post-colonial theory, especially in the works of the subaltern school of South Asian History that mainly centers to recover the subaltern-peasants, working classes, tribals and women in the anti- colonial resistance movements in India.

Gayatri Chakravorthy Spivak, a major figure in post-colonial and post- structuralist Feminism, has contributed a lot to the study of subalternity in

India. Spivak prefers the model of Gramscian subaltern as it provides more

9 Fanon Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, London, Penguin, 1990, p. 31. 10 In The Empire Writes Back, Ashcroft makes a distinction between colonialism and post-colonialism. Colonialism is used to denote a “period before independence” and post-colonial is used to “cover all the culture affected by imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day” 11 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, (Eds) The Empire Writes Back, London, Routledge, 2004, p. 207.

appropriate and flexible tools of analysis for the study of domination and subordination in power relations. Spivak, in her essay ‘Can the Subaltern

Speak?’ criticizes the theoretical positions of the subaltern historians. She tries to widen the scope of the subaltern studies by revising and widening the

Marxist thought, which forms the theoretical foundation of the project on subaltern studies.

According to Spivak the Marxist interpretation of the Indian society is making a shift from feudalism to capitalism, may explain how the middle class colonized subject became a national subject after colonialism, but it cannot account for the lives and struggles of the subaltern class. So Spivak tries to locate the series of confrontations between the dominant and the exploited groups. Such confrontations need not have serious political or economic bearing on the state, but it doesn’t mean that they have no political agency or meaning. Spivak’s shift of the critical point of view from India’s national liberation movements to the social movements and agency of disempowered people, helps to understand how the agency of change is located in the insurgent or the subaltern.

Spivak uses the term subaltern specifically to refer to the colonized and peripheral subject, especially with reference to those oppressed by the British colonialism, such as the segments of Indian population prior to independence.

Spivak includes within the subaltern resistance and agency the role of subaltern women who had not been paid much attention by the term subaltern historians. She expands the term subaltern to include women from the upper middle class, as well as the peasantry and the sub-proletariat. With the effaced itinerary of the subaltern subject, the track of sexual difference is doubly effaced. The question is not of female participation in insurgency, or the ground rules of the sexual division of labour, for both of which there is

‘evidence’. It is rather, that, both as an object of colonial historiography and as a subject of insurgency, the ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant. If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.12

Spivak does not agree with the subaltern historians who hold the view that the subaltern is a sovereign political subject. The sovereignty of the subaltern is only an effect of the dominant discourse. She argues that the

12 Williams and Wheatshert, “Can the Subaltern Speak”? Colonial Discourses and Postcolonial Theory, Harvester, 1993.p.287.

political will of the subalterns is constructed by the dominant discourse which includes the subaltern within the rubric of their grand narrative; and she completely disregards the different local struggles of particular subaltern groups, such as the Muslim participation in the 1857 mutiny, the industrial agitation of the Jute workers in the early 20th century in Calcutta, or the Awadh

Peasant Rebellion of 1920.13

Spivak’s critique of the subaltern methodology has created a great future among critics and historians. They allege that Spivak is imposing another elite western language on the subalterns. In this regard, Rosalind O’

Hanlon observes: “Those who set out to restore the ‘presence’ of the subaltern end only by borrowing the tools of that discourse, tools which serve only to reduplicate the first subjection which they effect , in the realms of critical theory”.14

Spivak emphasizes that women all over the world are the same. But in certain cases, the experiences faced by them are different. The experiences of white capitalist women and the black proletarian women are different. The difference is only in terms of gender and there is no other difference in the case

13 Stephen Morton, Gayatri Chakravorthy Spivak, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 54. 14 Ibid p.55.

of white woman. Like the black proletarian woman they too are marginalized in terms of sex and class. Women‘s position in subaltern studies points to the importance of recognizing that many different forms of power relations shape positions of subalternity, and that a subaltern position is often in a contradictory relation to power, (as subaltern men, for example), may be in a position of power in relation to some women.

The central theme of subaltern mobilization is a notion of resistance to elite domination. The experience of exploitation and labour endowed this politics with many idioms, norms and values. Ranajith Guha’s separation of the elite and the subaltern domains of political, has great radical implications for social theory and historiography. In the 70’s the standard tendency in global Marxist historiography enabled the historians to look on the peasant revolts organized along with the axes of kinship, religion, caste etc. as the movements exhibiting a back word consciousness Hobsbawn terms this as pre- political. He says that they are pre-political people who have not yet found, or only begun to find a specific language to express their aspirations about the world.

Subaltern studies are focused on subaltern classes especially of peasants and women. The primary interest of subaltern studies is the discussion of subaltern consciousness in a pure form, as a social formation to examine subaltern as an objective assessment of the role of the elite and a critique of elitist interpretation of the role.

Guha uses the concept of the subaltern to rewrite the Indian freedom movement so that the primary history of resistance to colonial power could be found in movements of peasant insurgency which were operating long before the elite leaders like Gandhi and others who imposed their leadership upon them.

Thus the concept of the subaltern is ascribed to a new dynamic political agency which had formerly been described as the Wretched of the Earth, the oppressed and the disposed.

The volumes of subaltern studies represent a tremendous achievement in historical scholarship. They inspire us to think in a new way of the relationship between History and Anthropology and Indian society as their subject.

The struggle of the class subaltern was not directly against the alien colonial power but against the caste and feudal hierarchies. It is here that Dalit movements get amalgamated with other subaltern groups. Caste subordination is a specific Dalit experience that stamps them with a distinct identity. In the studies of subaltern historians, the Dalit identity gets effaced under the larger subaltern identity.

The subaltern are devoiced community, whose articulation is impeded by several ways. In India the Dalit people represent the term subaltern. They are considered untouchables and marginalized from the main stream society.

They are marginalized and have become “the other” of the upper class. Dalit literature evolved as a result of Dalit movements. There are Dalit writings and

Dalitist writings. The works of Dalit writers come under the category of Dalit writings. The literature about Dalit people by the non- Dalits is called Dalitist literature.

The present usage of the term Dalits goes back to the nineteenth century when a Marathi social reformer and revolutionary Mahatma Jyotirao Phule used it to describe the outcastes and untouchables as the oppressed and broken victims of the Indian caste-ridden society. At the same time, it is believed that

this usage was first coined by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. But it was during the 1970s this word established its presence by the followers of the Dalit Panther

Movement of Maharashtra who gave constant reminder of their age-old oppression, denoting both their state of deprivation and people who are oppressed. Today this term is used frequently and has become popular among the Dalit people of various protest movements in India and even in Christain circles.

The word ‘Dalit’ comes from the Marathi root ‘Dal’ and it means

‘held under check’ ‘suppressed’ or ‘crushed’, or in a looser sense

‘oppressed’.15 Though the Dalit identity concept in the modern form and meaning has made the Dalit Literature possible in Maharashtra by the 70’s itself, it was during the beginning of the 90’s only, when Ambedkar’s literary works were translated to different local languages, consequent on which the

Dalit who were not expertise in handling the English language, started to get rooted among the Dalits of other states for their self identity concept. Saran

Kumar Limbale, a Dalit writer and activist, observes that the Dalit Literature developed in Marathi literature as a bye-product of Ambedkar Literature and

15 Dr. Sridhar Thripathi, Gandhi Ambhedkar and Indian Dalit , Mehra Offset Press, 2007, p. 73.

its interference during the period starting from 1920 to 1956. In Europe Dalit

Literature is characterized as Black Literature. It is also called as Black

Writing. Dalit Literature in the beginning consisted of the cries and sufferings of those people who were the real owners of the land but were separated and kept alone in the name of race and colour. Later on it attained the status of the voice of humanity, as well as the voice for liberty against all kinds of oppression. It was in between the 1920’s and the 1950’s that Dalit literature gained the magnitude of a storm. The waves that were created by the literary works of Lorka in the 18th century enchanted the minds of the Negroes in

America. It is from them that the Negro Literature at the initial stages, evolved as ‘Slave Narratives’. It is a form of literature that has become popular among all Dalit classes and factions in the world.

Ambedkar and Marx share many common spaces. Both were driven by the same goal of reaching the society exploitation. Both had a firm commitment to uplift the most oppressed people and saw them in the vanguard role for bringing about the revolutionary change for the overall progress of mankind. Marx arrived at his formulation through a scientific study of history and found that in the era of Capitalism the working class could be the

vanguard of the socialist revolution. Ambedkar did not see the working class in

India any probability of its emergence until the castes were annihilated. He, therefore, saw the necessity of launching the anti-caste movement with its worst victims-the untouchables in the vanguard role.

The caste system has also been criticized by many Indian social reformers like, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, Jyothi Thass, Sree Narayana Guru and Ayyankali. Among them Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Jyothi Thass argued that the lower caste people were the original inhabitations of India, and were conquered in the ancient past by the Brahman invaders. Mahatma Gandhi coined the term Harijan a euphemistic word for the untouchable, literally meaning son of God. Ambedkar pioneered the Dalit Buddhist movement in

India, and asked his followers to leave Hinduism, and convert themselves to

Bhuddhism. Periyar Ramasamy, a Tamil rationalist, fought against the caste practice of the Brahmins and was a prominent activist and social reformer.

The reason for the difference in class relations between the Western and the Asian countries basically hates on the economic modernization attempted on between them. But, as Antonio Gramsci suggests, the pre-capitalist ideological hegemony will not be destroyed simply because of industrialization

or capitalist development. It is because of the lessons he learned from the

Italian experience that Gramsci, in his prison house, subjected his analysis to the ideological milieu of the countries that had achieved capitalist development. Since at least the 18th century itself, modern industrial firms had started collectivizing the labourers. Dr.Ambedkar, in his Mahad speech explains, especially, the June 17, 1978 Declaration, after the French

Revolution and confirms that. He emphasizes in his speech that all human beings are equal by birth and it is the primary obligation of politics to retain their birth rights.16

Ambedhkar says that the removal of untouchability alone would be of no use and that it will only convert us from early ¿£dras to ¿£dras. Hence for the eradication of caste, casteless marriages are inevitable. “Untouchability” will end as soon as social taboos are removed and mixed dining is possible.

But Ambedkar observes that this change does not produce the desired effect against untouchability. Release from these two restrictions will, at the most, remove untouchability as it appears outside the home; but it will leave the

16 Malayalam Literary Survey, Kerala Sahitya Academy, July-December, 2009, p.160.

untouchability at home untouched. Ambedhakar wishes that India be converted into a casteless society.17

The emerging critical writers have to realize the importance of Dalit bahujan solidarity, a broader liberating alliance of the people subjected and exploited by Hindu colonization for centuries. They must acknowledge and emphasise the fact that only such an emancipating alliance of the outcastes, women and non-elite minorities in India can effectively initiate social change, sustain democracy and resist cultural nationalism and facism in India in the

21thentury. The challengers are complex and plural and so need to be the countering critical democratic agents. This is a serious and strategic task ahead for the new Dalit critical writers.

Dalit literature is the expression of the identification of own experiences of the dalits. As Franz Fanon, who gave theoretical support to Black

Aesthetics with his own experiential evidence, observes that Dalit Aesthetics is the new voice that emerges from the realization among the vanquished. If their pains and expectations, dreams and truths are to be articulated the world of

17 Ibid. p.16.

letters, abandoning the poisoned bread, has to offer them not only the sky and the earth but work too.18

The Dalit religious experience fundamentally differs from that of the

Br¡hmins. The cultural, economic and political ethos of Dalit gods and goddesses are, according to Kancha Ilaiah, different from the Hindu hegemonic deities. Dalit bahujan goddesses and gods are culturally rooted in various myths of production, protection and procreation. They do not distinguish between one section of society and the other as the Hindu gods and goddesses do. Rituals are simple and do not involve any economic waste.

There is no distance between Dalit bahujan deities and the people as they can directly get related to them without any priestly mediation. Dalit bahujan’s religious rituals are simple, the language is intelligible to all, and there are no slokas or mantras used.

The Dalit bahujan’s tradition of gods and goddesses is diagonally opposite to the Brahmanical tradition. In opposition to the dominant patriarchal gods, subordinated castes deities are predominantly female. Their traditional deities are localized and community centric ,as against the Hindu deities who

18 Ibid. p.16.

are nationalized through classics like the R¡m¡ya¸a and the Mah¡bh¡rata.

Thus, the Dalit have built up a parallel mythology of gods and goddesses to counter the oppressor’s tradition and mythology.

Saran Kumar Limbale, Marathi writer and an icon of Dalit Literature, establishes the Dalit’s subalternity not in a colonial structure, but in the caste based social, cultural and economic structure of Hindu society. He states that the upper caste Hindu society was not content with avoiding the Dalit in its literature. It also makes sure that the Dalits can not speak in the tongue of the upper caste. Having determined that the Dalits are impure and polluted, it is legislated that they are not to learn or read Sanskrit, the language of the gods.19

Dalit literature is marked by a wholesale rejection of the tradition, the aesthetics, the language and the concerns of a Brahmanical literature that are carried within the signs of the caste-based social and cultural order.

Limbale seems to suggest that each Dalit person’s life partakes of the lives of all Dalits. Dalit poets use a similar strategy when they recuperate mythic figures such as áaÆbuka, Ekalavya, R¡va¸a, and á£rpa¸aka from the

Hindu religious literature, and use them in portraying contemporary Dalit

19 Sharan Kumar Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature, Alok Mukherjee (Ed), Orient Longman, Delhi, 2004, p.4

experience. By thus communicating the continuity of Dalit experience through time and history, they make the point that the distinct and unique Dalit experience has existed for a long time, and is not confined only to the quotidian reality of day-to-day existence in the present. This

‘representationality’, to use another of Limbale’s term, makes the mimetic world of the Dalit world of Dalit literature figurative.20

Dalit Literature is the uprising of the written word against the millennia- old social injustice manifesting itself as brutalities committed on the Dalits all over the country. It expresses the pains and pangs of the Dalit existence. It is lived reality of crores of people living on the margins of life in India; it verbalizes the suppressed anger and the wounded pride of those existing outside the caste identities.

The so-called mainstream literature is the product of the imagination of upper caste writers about middle-class issues, but Dalit Literature is based on the lived experience of the writer; and it is aimed at removing social injustice by reflecting the harsh realities of Dalit life.

20 Ibid. p.12

Subaltern Women

The Subalternity and the backward state of affairs of the female class is as much as old as the cultural concept of men. The woman class are ordained to suffer backwardness or inferiors or subalternity in the society where as the man is given the right dominance. The sufferings of women under the male dominance are equivalent to those of subalterns who were kept aloof in the arena of upper class dominance.

It is Frederick Engels who studied and analyzed, for the first time, the backward state of affairs and tortured stage of women scientifically and materialistically. In his literary work named The Origin of the Family, Private property and the State, he describes that the division of labour for the first time was between man and woman and because of that the antagonism of classes first originated among men and women and first class exploitation was made in relation to the procedure of the human race through the exploration of the females by the males.

Along with the assumption of the family control by men, the station of women deteriorated and were kept apart and considered by men as an

instrument for sexual gratification and procreation alone. The subaltern system with slavery got merged into the structure of the modern family21.

To establish the paternity of the child and to establish and to fix the chastity of women, they were placed within the control of men. Even if a woman was killed by a man nobody had the right or power to question it.

The gender based socialization of the society later got strengthened and grew by the religious practices and the caste system which were in prevalence.

Here the freedom and the right to think critically, and the right to express the views and ideas without fear were not promoted. Instead the humanitarian goodness and benefits hidden among the women’s were oppressed and suppressed. The ability and contribution of the women were not given any consideration. The these circumstances, as measure to redress the said problem, the promotion of gender entity by the women class itself will be beneficial.22 Women were degraded and deteriorated sexually. The institutions like family, religion, culture and the administrative machinery itself, all have kept and placed the women in the lower strata. The Women argued against this kind of social circumstance and wanted the consideration of

21 Fedric Angels, The Orgin of the Famliy, Private property and the State, p. 90. 22 Julia Leslee and marry M.C Gee (Ed.,) Invented Identities, p.25.

man and women as equal; and if they are equals the unlawful acts and atrocities committed by men against women should be prevented.

Women belonging to the subaltern class were subjected to face more ill- treatment and harassment. Today the women have become the victims of sexual harassment and slavery on the basis of community structures and exploitations. In the name of politics and communal rights many women were forced to face harassment and exploitation. Among them the majority belongs to the subaltern class. To amass wealth to grab power and for the fulfillment of selfish objectives, the women have became mere instruments in the society. Through this heinous and cruel hunting the self identity and entity have been lost. In the places where the men are placed in the pivotal position the women are kept separated. This is a pointer to the realization among women that there is no difference between themselves and the subalterns.

Here, the term ‘women’ means ‘Dalit Sabalterns’. In the existing circumstances both the societies and the women partialised. It is this reason alone that the term was equalized or treated alike. Besides the above type of exploration and harassment take place both in the upper class community as

well as in lower class community. The case is not different in one’s own family and society.

Kancha Ilayya opines that the Dalit backward class organizations have included the problems faced by the women in their agenda. The movements led by Ambedkar, Periyar, Jyotirao Phoole etc.. were those by men, but female participation were equally significant in such actions. They started rebellion against the attitude of keeping off the untouchables from the schools belonging to the upper class girls. Savithri Bai took leadership in the case.

At a later stage Periyar got interested in the organizational activities with his wife.

Ambedkar tried to administer the equality and freedom of women through the process of legislation. The leadership put forward a new argument regarding the women empowerment but these did enable the Dalit backward organizations representing Dalit backward classes to have any remarkable improvement initially.

There are two types of male dominance in existence. The upper class male dominance and the Dalit bahujan male dominance. The Brahmin women’s organizations basically stood against this drive- against the upper

class male dominance and the Dalit bahujan male dominance, to a certain extend, and to a small limits. This trend has given rights to a democratic form of relations. Even then the males were having the dominance and the rights over the family. Though the sexuality of women were controlled, but only to a small extend the equality of women in the procreation process gave some more equality and freedom to the women. Only by destroying and demolishing the male dominance we can handle the problems and troubles faced by women. As far as a Dalit women is concerned, the meaning of the term

‘freedom’ is of great value. She has to be relieved of or freed from the black and white colored men. She is left alone from all places. She is subjected to the cruelty that doesn’t permits her to live. She is a victim of sexual harassment and exploitation. She ought to fight and win in the life. Therefore, the literary works Negro women in American literature echoes strongly against all the unfair circumstances. Struggle and resistance for easing their life get a remarkable place in them.

In the present day world to find out and scrutinize the various oppressed clan cultures in the general Indian Culture, to absorb the scattered cultural

realities and to make them build history are necessary steps in the process of subaltern entity investigation

The concept of subalternity became a subject matter of discussion in the

Indian Literary science in the 2nd half of the 20th century and has gained much momentum now. It was formed by problemising the established subaltern representations in the science of aesthetics. Majority of people stood outside the arena which was formulated and designed by the persons in the mainstream society. When we study the community expelled from the society of the past and present, we can see that such an attempt was made to reconstruct the established assumptions on the literature. It is very much relevant in the present context how the literature looked the society which is termed and labeled as subaltern. It has been a part of the criticism and analysis of the recognized history. The new literary forms include the possibilities of defence as well as liberation of this section. But they have been formulated within the male dominance and a centralized concept, which is has a control over the literary sphere, came into prominence.

The subalterns of the present world were a community which was kept apart from the social, economical, culture value assumptions. The literary

works done by the subalterns or the literary works which were categorized as the subaltern became the subject matter that does not necessarily represent the

Subaltern literary assumptions. The subaltern literature took shape by negating the established literary assumption which was molded by the upper class visions and by materializing the historical and cultural standing of the subalterns in the current social structure.