Countering the Hegemony: A Study of Sharankumar Limbale’s The Outcaste

Abstract

 The ‘mainstream’ culture in India evolved around Savarna discourses nourished by the caste ideology. Caste ideologies were successfully manipulated to establish Brahminic hegemony and dalit voices were relegated as the ‘other’. Sharankumar Limbale’s autobiography The Outcaste critiques the hegemonic caste system that legitimizes exploitations of the Mahars of Maharashtra. It records the author’s assertion from an illegitimate child to an established writer with dalit consciousnesses. This article, in the light of Gramscian thoughts, focuses on Limblae’s registration of protest and projection of alternative socio-cultural life of the Mahars as dalit cultural strategy of resistance and subversion of the ‘mainstream’ culture.