Baburao Bagul: The Marathi writer who redefined Dalit storytelling

By Vikas Meshram 

Baburao Bagul was a distinguished Marathi writer from Maharashtra. He was a pioneering figure in Dalit literature in Marathi and played an extraordinarily significant role in Indian short fiction towards the end of the twentieth century — a period that witnessed the arrival of Dalit writers who brought with them lived experiences of radical rupture with the oppressive practices of the past.

Baburao Ramji Bagul was born in 1930 in Nashik. After completing his higher education, he worked in various occupations essential to his livelihood until 1968. During this period, he published several short story collections that began drawing the attention of Marathi readers. Finally, in 1963, his first collection of stories, built around the concept of “Jevha Mi Jat Chorli” (“When I Concealed My Caste”), stirred the world of Marathi literature with its raw and powerful portrayal of a brutalised society. This work gave tremendous momentum to the emerging Dalit literature in Marathi, and today it is regarded by numerous critics as a towering landmark of Dalit writing. It was later adapted into a film by actor-director Vinay Apte.

His collection of Dalit poetry, “Aakar,” published in 1967, followed and achieved immediate visibility. But it was his second major work of fiction, “Maran Swast Hot Ahe” (“Death is Getting Cheaper”), published in 1969, that firmly established him as one of the most important Dalit voices of his generation. This work is now considered a milestone of Dalit writing in India. In 1970, the Government of Maharashtra honoured him with the prestigious Harinarayan Apte Award.

After 1968, he became a full-time literary writer and continued to illuminate, through his pen, the lives of the marginalised Dalit people of Maharashtra. His fictional writing produced graphic, searing accounts of the lives of people belonging to that class. The ideas of Karl Marx, Jyotiba Phule and B. R. Ambedkar left a deep and lasting impression on Bagul’s mind and writing. In 1972, he emerged as a significant revolutionary thinker of the Dalit movement and, in the same year, became widely known as one of the foremost intellectuals behind the manifesto of the Dalit Panthers. That same year, he also presided over the Dalit Literature Conference held at Mahad. Over the years, his stories inspired future generations of Dalit writers to give creative, autobiographical expression to their own lived experiences.

He passed away on 26 March 2008 in Nashik, leaving behind his wife, two sons and two daughters. Subsequently, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University instituted the “Baburao Bagul Gaurav Puraskar” in recognition of his invaluable contribution to Marathi literature. This award is presented every year to an emerging short story writer for an outstanding Marathi short story collection.

“Jevha Mi Jat Chorli” (1963), “Maran Swast Hot Ahe” (1969), “Dalit Sahitya Aajche Krantivigyan,” and “Ambedkar Bharat” stand as his principal literary contributions.

Baburao Bagul, one of the foremost writers of Marathi Dalit literature, portrayed with extraordinary intensity in his short story “Aai” (“Mother”) the suffering endured by a Dalit widow. Bagul cast a sharp light on the dual discrimination faced by Dalit women along the axes of gender and caste, thereby unravelling before the reader the true lived experiences of Dalit society. This writer, whose work is suffused with a sense of pain and loss, places before the reader some profoundly important questions: Is the experience of motherhood truly universal? Why is a distinction made in motherhood on the basis of caste? Is the voice of the subaltern woman ever heard? And if it is, can liberation ever be possible for her?

Against the complex backdrop of gender, violence and caste, Bagul’s story centres on the life of an “extraordinary” mother — Anamika — and her son Pandu. Pandu’s father has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and, as a consequence, the entire economic burden of the family is likely to fall on Pandu’s mother alone. Under the influence of alcohol, Pandu’s father subjects his wife to severe physical and emotional abuse.

As a result, attempts are made to oppose the mother and to render her “unnatural” in the eyes of society. This reflects the deeply disturbed patriarchal mentality of Pandu’s father, who believes he has absolute ownership over “his” woman’s body. Conquering a woman’s body, exercising control over it, and keeping her confined within prescribed limits is presented by this patriarchal order as a means of bestowing upon women their so-called golden privilege.

Pandu’s teacher is composing a poem on motherhood in which the mother is described as “Vatsalya Sindhu” — the river of a mother’s love. This reflects the idealised and traditional notion of motherhood constructed by Brahminical society for women — a notion wherein the measure of a mother’s goodness is determined by her love for her children, her sacrifice, and her capacity to dedicate herself entirely to the private sphere of family life. Pandu tries to fit his own mother into this ideal image of motherhood, but his thoughts are shattered when some upper-caste boys mock his mother, saying: “Don’t touch Pandu, his mother sleeps with Muktasamrat” — meaning, a pimp.

This reveals how the notions of untouchability and impurity remain firmly attached to the identity of the Dalit individual, further inflaming the upper-caste mentality. Moreover, since Pandu’s mother is a Dalit woman, the degree of persecution she faces is doubled. Why is it so difficult for a widowed mother to step out in pursuit of her own livelihood and yet remain “pure” in the eyes of society?

After the death of Pandu’s father, his mother had no choice but to enter the public sphere in order to survive. Yet that very act denied her the permission to remain within the private sphere of her home and, most crucially, to raise her own child. Does this mean that Pandu’s mother is a “bad” mother? No. The truth is that the cultural representation of women as mothers is so rigidly standardised that the different, real-life experiences of motherhood begin to appear as contradictions within that very ideal.

The writer also sheds light on the constant neglect and discrimination faced by Dalit children at the hands of upper-caste children, even within the walls of a school — a space that leaves them with no room to understand the worth and meaning of their own identities and experiences. It is only after upper-caste boys call Pandu’s mother a prostitute that Pandu himself begins to search for his own identity. Trapped in the web of patriarchy and caste discrimination, Pandu’s mother’s sacrifices are all in the hope of securing a better life for her son. Caught in the cycle of perpetual oppression — by society and by members of her own family alike — liberation for Dalit women remains extraordinarily difficult to attain.

At the social level, Bagul’s story illuminates the exploitation of Dalit widows by upper-caste men. In their eyes, Dalit widows are seen as weak and, by virtue of their widowhood, as sexually “available.” Viewing them as mere objects of sexual desire, upper-caste men exploit them to satisfy their own carnal appetites. Owing to the combined and entrenched political control of the upper castes, any resistance mounted by the lower castes is rendered powerless. As a consequence, countless incidents of violence and sexual exploitation go unreported and unacknowledged.

Bagul’s story attempts to blur the line between the personal and the political. When the realities of political inequality and oppression are embedded in the language of everyday life — seen through the eyes of those who face it daily — the reader is drawn profoundly close to that way of living. It is through this remarkable body of work that Baburao Bagul carried Marathi literature onto the global stage.