EVERYTHING'S IN THE SURNAME: POWER POLITICS AND IDENTITY IN OMPRAKASH VALMIKI’S JOOTHAN AND YASHICA DUTT’S COMING OUT AS DALIT: A MEMOIR

Bacon rightly said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Directly proportional to power is identity. The ones in power have all the rights and authority to crush others who are naïve to the ways of the world. In the Indian context, centuries ago when the caste system was established as a dominant form of wielding power, the Shudras who were forced to exist on the margins bore the brunt of it and regrettably continue to be at the receiving end. Now that the caste system has got assimilated in the societal structure and operates in various ways, the Dalits, erstwhile Shudras, are still strategically kept at a safe distance from the savarna society by employing tried and tested tools viz religion, culture, and tradition. It results in minimizing efforts to dismantle the power machinery and also systematic erasure of identity and representation. The texts chosen for analysis in the present paper Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir highlight how the power politics undercuts identity politics and vice versa. The works are chosen from two distant time frames, gender locations and social standing of the authors in order to underline the interconnectedness of power and identity at multiple levels and the modus operandi of Dalits to counter the jeopardy.