Resistance: Dalit Poems

These poems have been written from the perspective of reclaiming the language denied to Dalits by brahminical society. The collection consists of poems such as 'earth, water, fire, air, thunder, force, time, shadow, and resistance.' These categories are elemental, and so is the Dalit identity. The Dalit identity is in harmony with the elements of life, unlike the brahmins, who hierarchize and stratify human and non-human categories into divisions of pure and impure, and the touchable and untouchable. Resistance is the theme of all the poems, requiring the Dalit to articulate it even in the situation of absolute annihilation.