ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the engagement of Punjabi Dalit poets with understanding and getting to know about a wider reality. The intellectual poet discussed in this chapter, Daya Singh Arif, composed his first book of poetry in 1914 when he was twenty, and all his four works of poetry by 1921, by which time he had turned into the most popular poet of modern Punjab. On a comparative scale of Dalit literatures in other languages of the subcontinent, the achievement of Punjabi Dalit intellectual poets seems phenomenal. In the history of the 'coverage' of Daya Singh and his works in the seventy years of the historiography of Punjabi literature, there is clear evidence of a selective 'silence', neglect, and above all, exclusion. Being a Dalit becomes sufficient reason to be excluded from the charmed circle of high caste writers and historians.
