ABSTRACT
Dalit literature in Gujarat has marked itself away from the mainstream in ways that have come to challenge aesthetic conventions of established writing. It has developed in response to mainstream challenges on the aesthetic front and has grown out of its internal demand for finding formal and generic properties suitable for the depiction of the social in Gujarat. In the last forty years, its trajectory bears witness to many creative innovations, formal as well as material.
My concern in the chapter is to locate, in the aesthetic concerns of the evolving Gujarati Dalit short story form, the radical articulation of an aesthetics that is uncompromisingly committed to the social. Through a reading of the short stories ‘Rakhopana Saap’ (‘Guardian Snake’) by Arvind Vegda and ‘Haanf’ (‘Breathlessness’) by Praveen Gadhvi, the chapter explores the transactions around the ideas of sex, caste and untouchability. In reading the continuity of sexual exploitation of Dalit women as a narrative concern in Dalit writing, the attempt is to see if this depiction of women’s sexual life has brought into the short story form properties which would not just allow for readings around patriarchy and power but also around aesthetics and formal innovation.
