Dalit and the City: Migration, Modernity, and Fragmented Subjectivity in the Works of Ajay Navaria

Abstract

Contemporary Hindi Dalit literature has expanded beyond narratives of caste oppression rooted in rural spaces to interrogate the complex realities of urban modernity, migration, anonymity, and capitalist alienation. This paper examines the representation of the modern Dalit subject in the writings of Ajay Navaria. Through a close reading of selected stories from Unclaimed Terrain and references to Udhar Ke Log, the study argues that Navaria departs from the conventional collective framework of Dalit resistance literature by foregrounding fragmented individuality, psychological estrangement, and the commodification of relationships within capitalist urban spaces. His fiction reveals how caste discrimination persists even within supposedly democratic and anonymous metropolitan environments.

Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Anupama Rao and Toral Jatin Gajarawala, this paper explores how Navaria’s narratives interrogate identity politics, modernity, and social mobility. The urban Dalit subject in Navaria’s fiction is neither wholly emancipated nor entirely victimized; instead, the subject occupies a precarious position shaped by mobility, aspiration, alienation, and internal contradictions. The paper ultimately contends that Navaria redefines Dalit aesthetics by shifting attention from collective assertion toward the fragmented and psychologically complex realities of Dalit existence in neoliberal India.