ABSTRACT
This introduction presents the context for the emergence of this volume out of the series of events organised by the AHRC-funded research network ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’. It also makes a case for the necessity of new voices in the developing field of Dalit studies, in particular Dalit literary studies, and of new directions in research. This chapter argues that this volume has gone a long way in providing both but also that there is still much that needs to be done to firmly establish Dalit literature and other Dalit art forms as an international field of studies, one that promises to re-evaluate the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Dalit literature shows how issues pertaining to translation and gender, as well as literary genre and other traditional categories, constantly need to be revised and challenged, in the subcontinent as in the West.
