Interrogating my Chandal life : an autobiography of a Dalit / Manoranjan Byapari ; translated and edited by Sipra Mukherjee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Byāpārī, Manorañjana, author.

Contributor:

Mukherjee, Sipra, translator, editor.

Standardized Title:

Itibr̥tte caṇḍāla jībana. English

Language:

Bengali

English

Subjects (All):

Byāpārī, Manorañjana.

Authors, Bengali--Biography.

Authors, Bengali.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxii, 356 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New Delhi, India : SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd ; Thousand Oaks, California : SAGE Publications Inc., 2018.

Summary:

If you insist that you do not know me, let me explain myself ... you will feel, why, yes, I do know this person. I've seen this man. With these words, Manoranjan Byapari points to the inescapable roles all of us play in an unequal society. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit is the translation of his remarkable memoir Itibritte Chandal Jivan. It talks about his traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, facing persistent want--an experience that would dominate his life. The book charts his futile flight from home to escape hunger, in search of work as a teenager around the country, only to face further exploitation. In Kolkata in the 1970s, as a young man, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement and took part in gang warfare. His world changed dramatically when he was taught the alphabet in prison at the age of 24--it drew him into a new, enticing world of books. After prison, he worked as a rickshaw-wallah and one day the writer Mahasweta Devi happened to be his passenger. It was she who led him to his first publication. Today, as Sipra Mukherjee points out, 'issues of poverty, hunger and violence have exploded the cautiously sewn boundaries of the more affluent world', rendering archaic the comfortable distances between them. Despite 'Chandal' explicitly referring to a Dalit caste, this narrative weaves in and out of the margins.

Contents:

East Bengal

Dandakaranya Rehabilitation Project, food riots and Calcutta

I run away from home

My lone travels across east and north India

On the road for five years

Return to Kolkata

My entry into the Naxal movement

To Dandakaranya and back to a changed Kolkata

Life on and around the railway station

A bomb explodes in Bardhhaman

Into jail and into the world of letters

A rickshaw-puller's meeting with Mahasweta Devi

A girl from the past

Marichjhapi

Dandakaranya

Chhatisgarh, Mukti Morcha and Shankar Guha Neogi

After Shankar Guha Neogi.

Notes:

Includes index.

Hindu Prize - Non-Fiction, Winner, 2018

ISBN:

9789381345139

9381345139

OCLC:

1013499748

Publisher Number:

99977608255