Why I am not you? A Comparative Study of Dalit and Black Literature and Theory

Abstract

Keeping in mind what Aimé Césaire said on the Black problem in Discours sur le Colonialism-“I am talking of millions of men who have been skilfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement”, we can very much apply
the same statement to describe the dalit condition in India. The dalits have always been considered something inferior, something embarrassing on the face of the Indian cultural and social system which is similar to the case of the Black Africans who inhabit different whiterace dominated part of the world. Irrespective of their black skins, they try to put on the white mask and ultimately develop a psychosis which begins a discourse; it is the duty of the black man to follow the white man in life and character. Although the black-white relationship has its differences from the dalit-hindu or the dalit-Indian relationship, it correlates with the pains
and the discriminations that both had and is suffering to establish their right of being a human being.