A powerful lament of love, loss and Dalit struggle

Kalyani Thakur Charal's Poems of Chandalini emerges as a powerful testament to the life of a Dalit woman whose poetic voice reverberates with the struggles of caste, gender and class.

- ANURIMA CHANDA

Translated by Zinia Mitra and Jaydeep Sarangi, this collection offers readers a window into the raw, visceral experiences of Thakur Charal, who writes not only from personal pain but as a representative voice of a silenced and oppressed community.

Does every form of activism need to be loud? Charal's poetic activism diverges from the overt, demonstrative modes often associated with protest poetry. Her approach is marked by subtlety, yet it retains a profound impact, focusing instead on the ordinary, quotidian realities that reveal the entrenched cycles of Dalit oppression. Through her vivid portrayals of repetitive daily activities—such as fishing for Titphuti and Chadra, grazing cattle, smearing courtyards with cow dung, lighting the clay stove, chopping wood or adorning one's hair—Charal highlights the seemingly benign routines that form the fabric of marginalized Dalit lives.

However, these activities, while appearing innocuous, are laden with layers of caste-based violence and socio-economic disparities. For many Dalits, access to such simple tasks remains fraught with tension and systemic discrimination even today. Instances of caste-based atrocities persist, reflecting this harsh reality: Dalits continue to face violence for drawing water from wells designated for upper castes, as the division of river water also enforces a hierarchy, with the upstream reserved for higher castes and the downstream for lower castes. Just a few years back in Morena, Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit woman was fined exorbitantly simply for feeding a dog owned by an upper-caste family, who believed she had "polluted" their pet. These seemingly everyday activities thus become sites of conflict, where entrenched caste prejudices manifest in violent and discriminatory practices.