Dalit Literature and / in Translation
An international conference at the British Centre for Literary Translation,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
29-30 June 2015
List of bios
Payal Agarwal is Assistant Professor in English Studies in Delhi University, India. Her primary areas of
research interests include translation studies, film studies, theatre studies, Dalit literature, and
Renaissance literature. She has translated and published a number of short stories and poems from
Hindi to English. Payal completed her graduate and post-graduate studies from the University of
Delhi and her MPhil dissertation in film studies from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. She
is currently in the process of translating a Dalit text from Hindi to English. In the past, Payal was
associated with an activist theatre group in New Delhi, India where she acted on proscenium stage
and also conducted theatre workshops with women and children in the slums and schools in
different parts of the country.
agarwalpayall@gmail.com
Faustina Soosai Raj, whose pen name is Bama, is a Dalit writer born in 1957 at Puthupatty, Tamil
Nadu, India. Fighting impossible odds, she completed her school and college education and was
trained as a teacher, and now she imparts value based learning, nurturing the innate curiosity, selfesteem, social consciousness and social skills of children from the vulnerable sections of society.
Besides KARUKKU (1992), her first novel, she has published SANGATHI (1994), KISUMBUKKARAN
(1996), VANMAM (2002), ORU THATHAVUM ERUMAYUM (2004), KONDATTAM (2005), and
MANUSHI (2011) in Tamil.
In her novels and short stories and the several articles that she has written, she focusses on
themes related to resistance and rebellion against caste domination, social exclusion and
discrimination. Her works have been translated into English, French, Telugu, Kannada and
Malayalam. Bama's significant contribution is that through the act of writing, she not only
transgresses caste and patriarchal boundaries, but also transcends the conventional exclusions of
language and genre.
Bama who spent some years in a convent as a nun, is the most celebrated contemporary Dalit
woman writer. She has been at the forefront of Dalit literary activism and has given Dalit aesthetics a
visibility it had previously lacked in the literary campus of India. In 2001, the English translation of
KARUKKU, (translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom) won the Cross Word Award establishing as a distinct
voice in Dalit literature.
Laura Brueck is Associate Professor of Hindi Literature at Northwestern University, USA. Her most
recent book, Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Contemporary Dalit Literature
(Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the literary politics of the contemporary Hindi Dalit
literary sphere and the aesthetics of the Hindi Dalit short story. She has also published a collection of
English translations of Ajay Navaria’s Hindi short stories titled Unclaimed Terrain: Stories by Ajay
Navaria (Navayana, 2012). Forthcoming projects include a translated anthology, collaboratively
produced with Christi Merrill (University of Michigan), of Hindi Dalit literary texts from a variety of
modern and contemporary writers. Brueck also harbors an interest in Indian “pulp” fiction,
particularly the genre of detective fiction and crime narratives.
laura.brueck@northwestern.edu
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Jayan K. Cherian Born in Kerala, India, graduated with honors from Hunter College, BA in Film and
Creative Writing and an MFA from The City College of New York in filmmaking. Papilio Buddha (2013)
is his debut feature film and he made several experimental documentaries and narrative shorts such
as: Shape of the Shapeless (2010), Love in the Time of Foreclosure (2009), Hidden Things (2009), Soul
of Solomon (2008), Capturing the Signs of God (2008), Holy Mass (2007), Tree of Life (2007),
Simulacra the Reality of the Unreal (2007), The Inner Silence of the Tumult (2007), Hid-entity (2007),
and Tandava the Dance of Dissolution (2006). His films were screened at Berlin International Film
Festival, BFI London Lesbian Gay Film Festival, Montreal World Film festival and other major festivals
around the globe. Won several awards such as: Kerala State Film Special Jury Award for best
direction, Kerala Film critics Association Award for Best debut Director. Silver Conch award at
Mumbai International Documentary Film (MIFF), Silver Jury prize in San Francisco Shorts, Directors’
Choice Award in Black Maria Film Festival and Honorable Mentions at Athens International Film and
Video Festival. He has also published four award-winning volumes of poetry.
jayankc@aol.com
Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy, a well-known Kannada poet hails from Mudnakudu village in
Chamarajanagar District of Karnataka S. India. He has two post graduate degrees viz., M.Com. and
M.A., with a D.Lit. in Social Sciences. He was a Finance Executive by profession and recently retired
as Director (Finance) from Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation. Poetry is his passion but
he worked in other genres of literature as well, besides having a wide range of interests in culture,
theatre, cinema and social work. He has brought out 25 books so far which include 6 collections of
poetry, 4 of essays, 3 plays and a collection of short stories. A prominent dalit voice, he has
established a niche for himself through his empirical imaging in mellowed tone. His works have
been translated into other Indian vernaculars and widely published. Translations of the selected
poems in English have been published in the literary journals like Indian Literature, The New Quest,
Little Magazine and e-magazine Muse India (India). Translations have also been published in literary
Magazines abroad (in Spanish Arquitrave (Columbia) and Hebrew in Helicon (Israel) in German
Driesch Verlag (Austria) and so on. He has attended many International Poetry Conferences and
extensively travelled. His poetry in Spanish translated by Rowena Hill ‘Poemas: Mudnakudu
Chinnaswamy’ has been published by the Cultural Department of Venezuelan Govt. (CONAC) in 2004
under ‘World Poetry Series’. He is acclaimed to be the first poet from kannada lore to get published
with an anthology in Spanish. He has directed two plays for theater groups one being ‘Bahurupi’ for
the National Repertoire, Rangayana, Mysore. He has been associated in production of 2 feature
films, one of which won gold medal from GOK. Besides he has acted in a documentary ‘maayaa loka’.
He has been felicitated in and outside the country and graced with many awards including Karnataka
Sahitya Academy Award in 2009 and Karnataka State Award in2014 for life time achievement.
mudnakudu@gmail.com
Kalyan Das teaches English literature and cultural studies at Presidency University, Kolkata, India. At
Presidency he has been academically engaged with Subaltern related issues. His primary research
area revolves around Dalit literature and Dalit historiography in contemporary West Bengal. His
research also focuses on how the Subaltern Studies discourse has dealt with literature in their
pursuit to create an alternative historiography. While considering both its contributions and
limitations in terms of history and historiography, he has tried to look into various dalit narratives
and dalit literature as an interdisciplinary area of research. His other research interests include
postcolonial studies, New Literatures and theories of Nationalism, race, caste and sexuality.
Kkdas87@gmail.com
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Asis De is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature in the Department of English,
Mahishadal Raj College (Govt. Sponsored Post Grad College), Mahishadal, West Bengal, India. His M.
Phil dissertation was on the search for home and identity in V.S. Naipaul’s fiction. His PhD
dissertation (recently submitted in Jadavpur University, Kolkata) concentrates on the study of
Identity negotiation in newer/ diasporic cultural spaces with particular reference to the fiction of
Amitav Ghosh and Ben Okri. In a number of publications (Orient Blackswan and Atlantic mainly) and
conference presentations in India and in Europe (Belgium, Germany and England), he has worked on
the issue of cultural identity and transnationalism in Asian, Caribbean and African fictional
narratives. Presently his research interest also includes Indian Dalit and Tribal literatures in
translation. He also teaches Anglophone Postcolonial Literatures, Cultural Studies and Diasporic
Literatures in two Universities in India as Guest Faculty. He is a member of some eminent research
organizations like Postcolonial Studies Association (UK), GAPS (Germany), EACLALS and IACLALS.
ademrc@gmail.com
Mohan Dharavath graduated in Life Sciences from Nizam College (Osmania University). He did his
post-graduation in English from EFL University, Hyderabad, where he is currently close to submitting
his doctoral thesis. His research focuses on the Images of Adivasi in Indian Writing and looks at
representations of tribals in Indian literature. His areas of interest are Adivasi and Dalit Studies, Folk
Literature, Post-colonial Studies and Translation Studies. In 2011, he was in University of Dresden,
Germany for six months on a DAAD fellowship to study different levels of researches of the IndoEuropean Tribes. Apart from several international conferences in various universities in India, he has
also presented papers at the Cambridge University, England and Universidad de Granada, Spain. In
Cambridge, he participated in an oral narratives project organized by the World Oral Literature
Project. His writings have been published in multiple anthologies and journals, including Routledge,
The Commonwealth Review, etc.
mohandharavath@gmail.com
Joyjit Ghosh is Assistant Professor of English Literature in the Department of English, Vidyasagar
University, Midnapore, West Bengal, India. Both his M.Phil and PhD dissertations were on the works
of D.H.Lawrence. His book on the Letters of D.H. Lawrence, published by Authors Press is widely
acclaimed. Presently he is working on a UGC research project on the works of Rabindranath Tagore.
He is also a well known translator of Bengali (Bangla) Dalit poetry, whose translations have been
published by Muse India. He has presented a paper on Lawrence's letters in an international
conference in Paris last April. Many of his research papers and translated poems (originally written
by Bengali Dalit poets) have been published by Orient Blackswan and Atlantic publishers.
pathu_ghosh@yahoo.co.in
Rowena Hill was born in England in 1938, and went to school in New Zealand. She attended
universities in New Zealand, Italy and India (University of Mysore). She taught English Literature at
the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, where she has lived for forty years. She has
published six books of poems in Spanish, as well as poems, essays and translations in periodicals in
Venezuela, Colombia, India and USA, and lately on the internet. She has recently translated into
English some of Venezuela’s best known poets. Her translations from Kannada include Naming the
Nameless, metaphysical poems from ancient Kannada, Mysore, 1983, and the Spanish version,
Nombres de lo Innombrable, Caracas, 1993; Poemas de Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy (selected poems
of the dalit poet Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy, in Spanish), CONAC, Venezuelan Ministry of Culture,
2005; Flores de tierra dura, women poets of South India, Mérida, Venezuela, 2014.
rowenahil@gmail.com
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Stephanie Kreiner is a research assistant at the Department for Anglophone Literatures and Literary
Translation at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. She holds a B.A. in English and Communication
and Media Studies as well as a M.A. in Literary Translation for the languages English, Spanish and
German. Both degrees have been awarded by the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. During her
studies she spent a semester at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. In cooperation with the
Austrian PEN-Club she has edited Aus dem Zwielicht – Vierzehn Einblicke in das Leben von
Unberührbaren (2015), the German translation of an anthology of short stories by Dalit author
Harish Mangalam. She has translated Harish Mangalam’s preface and written an afterword to this
anthology about the concept of untouchability. Stephanie Kreiner freelances as an editor,
proofreader and manuscript reviewer for several publishers. Her current research interests are
intertextuality, textuality, translation theories and Dalit literature.
kreiner@phil.hhu.de
Parmod Kumar is presently Assistant Professor in the Faculty of English at Indira Gandhi National
Open University and Coordinating a Masters level elective course on World Literatures in English
Translation. He has done his doctoral research on the domestication and insurrection of
marginalized voices in Indian English Literature. He also edits an e-journal Sangharsh which puts to
center all academic and social issues related with Dalit Discourse. The presenter feels that only a
dalit literary criticism can bring about a systematic growth of literary criticism and the current paper
is a step in that direction. He has been a proud recipient of Australia India Council Fellowship and
has worked extensively on the perspectives in indigenity in India and Australia. He has published
three books also.
parmod.mehra@gmail.com
Sharankumar Limbale is a Professor and Director in School of Humanities and Social Science of
Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik. He is the Author of Movement. He is
known as an activist writer. On his credit are 50 books and 14 awards for his literary contribution as
well as social work. His autobiography ‘Akkarmashi; The Outcaste’ is published by Oxford University
Press in English. His book on criticism ‘Towards on Esthetics of Dalit Literature’ is published by Orient
Blackswan, which is included in many university syllabuses. There are 8 Ph.D. and 23 M.Phil Degrees
awarded on Sharankumar Limbale’s Literature. Sharankumar Limbale’s many books are translated in
Indian regional languages and in English. He is delivered speeches in 11 International Seminars and
42 National Seminars as an invitee. His novel ‘Hindu’ is available in English by Samya Publication,
Kolkata. His short stories collection is forth coming book in English by Orient Blackswan.
sharankumarlimbale@gamil.com
Christi A. Merrill is an associate professor of South Asian Literature and Postcolonial Theory at the
University of Michigan, and author of Riddles of Belonging: India in Translation and other Tales of
Possession. Her translations of the stories of Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha, Chouboli and Other
Stories, co-published by Katha (New Delhi) and Fordham University Press (New York) won the 2012
A.K. Ramanujan Award. In her current book project, Genres of Real Life: Mediating Stories of
Injustice Across Languages she interrogates the category of the ‘literary’ as it is applied when
mediating the truth claims of first-person narratives in Hindi. She has spent the 2013-14 school year
doing research for this project on a Senior Fellowship through the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies, and has recently published several articles
on the subject, including on Dalit feminist writer Kausalya Baisantry for World Literature Today.
merrillc@umich.edu
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T. Sai Chandra Mouli, an academic, is a poet, translator, and critic. He was a Visiting Fellow at
Nagaland University, Kohima. He is a Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society, Great Britain and Ireland. His
publications include seventeen anthologies of literary criticism, two books of poetry in English
besides a Telugu play translated into English, Black Lotus: Telugu Dalit Women’s Poetry, Dynamics of
Translation: An Indian Perspective and Perspectives on Twenty First Century Literary Criticism. He
completed translation assignments for institutions of higher learning. His translation work of Telugu
poetry and fiction into English is extensively published. He made panel presentations in International
Conferences in China, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia. He is the Chief Editor of VIRTUOSO, a
Refereed Transnational Bi-annual Journal of Language and Literature in English published from
Hyderabad, India. His areas of interest include Translation Studies, Multiculturalism, Subaltern
Studies, Eco-criticism, Comparative Studies, IWE and ELT.
tscmouli@hotmail.com
Alok Mukherjee is the translator from the Marathi of Sharankumar Limbale’s Towards an Aesthetic
of Dalit Literature (2004) and the author of This Gift of English: English Education and the Formation
of Alternative Hegemonies in India (2009). He is currently completing work on a translation of
Ramnath Chavan’s play, Shakshipuram, while gathering materials for an anthology of Dalit stories
published in the past 25 years. Mukherjee has taught South Asian cultures and languages at York
University, Toronto, Canada. He is a human rights activist, trainer and educator.
a_mukherjee@sympatico.ca
Arun Mukherjee did her graduate work in English at the University of Saugar, India and came to
Canada as a Commonwealth Scholar in 1971 to do a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. Her current
teaching interests are South Asian and Minority Canadian literatures. She is the author of The Gospel
of Wealth in the American Novel: The Rhetoric of Dreiser and His Contemporaries (Rutledge Revivals,
2014; first published by Croom Helm 1987), Towards an Aesthetic of Opposition: Essays on
Literature, Criticism and Cultural Imperialism (Williams-Wallace: 1988), Oppositional Aesthetics:
Readings from a Hyphenated Space (TSAR: 1995), and Postcolonialism: My Living (TSAR: 1998). She
has edited and written the Introduction of Sharing Our Experience (Canadian Advisory Council on the
Status of Women: 1993), an anthology of autobiographical writings by aboriginal women and
women of colour. She is a member of York Stories Editorial Collective which edited York Stories:
Women in Higher Education (TSAR: 2000). Her translation of Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki's
autobiography Joothan: A Dalit's Life (Samya: Kolkata & Columbia U Press: 2003) won the New India
Foundation Prize for “the finest book published in India during 2002-2003.” Her translation of Dalit
writer Sharankumar Limbale's novel Hindu was published in 2010 (Samya Publications: Kolkata). As
someone who became a refugee as a one year old when India was partitioned in 1947, she has a
deep investment in working for human rights and justice.
amukherj@yorku.ca
Sipra Mukherjee is Associate Professor of English, West Bengal State University and currently
Visiting Fellow (DSA) at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. Her research areas
are religion, caste and identity in South Asia, small religious sects, folklore, and twentieth century
Indian and European literature. Sipra’s publications include Calcutta Mosaic: The Minority
Communities of Calcutta, a Special Issue on ‘Religion and Language’ of International Journal of
Sociology of Language, and articles on religious conversion, Ramakrishna Mission, Bengali Muslims,
the Matua and Sahebdhani faiths and others. Her present research is on the demographic roots of
folklore.
mukherjeesipra@gmail.com
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Maya Pandit Narkar is a professor at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and
combines three disciplines in her academic and cultural work spread over 35 years. A Translation
Studies scholar, she worked on the nineteenth century Marathi translations for her doctoral thesis
and has produced more than 16 major works of translation from Marathi in to English and some
from English into Marathi. As a Feminist Studies scholar, she has published extensively on women’s
writing and produced a documentary film Voices from the Margins on Marathi dalit women writers.
She was a Charles Wallace scholar at University of East Anglia. As an activist in women’s movement
and experimental and street theatre, she worked extensively on issues of women, caste and class
oppression. As an ELT scholar she has published many books on communicative English and teacher
development programmes. Her publications include Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and Adventures with
Grammar apart from many research papers in books and journals. She has participated in many
international conferences and workshops in several countries.
mayapandit@gmail.com
Urmila Pawar was born in the small village in Ratnagiri as the youngest child of a Dalit family. She
learned early in life the meaning of her subordination as a woman and as a Dalit. A prolific writer,
her ten books published include three Short Story Collections; selected stories were translated into
English as Mother Wit by Prof. Veena Deo of Hamline University USA. She has won many prestigious
prizes for her sensitive exploration of the lives of Dalit women in India. Her Autobiography Aydaan is
a part of Syllabus of the University of Columbia (USA) from 2009 and was translated into English,
Hindi and Kannada. Recently AAYDAN has been adapted for a Marathi play by legendry Marathi play
director Sushma Deshpande and is also in the process of being adapted in Hindi and English as well.
“AAYDAN” is still continues to touch the heart of all lovers of Marathi literature.
Pawar.urmila@yahoo.com
Julia Perczel had worked at Navayana, the New Delhi based publishing house that brought out Ajay
Navaria’s Unclaimed Terrain among other volumes of dalit literature and on caste from an anti caste
perspective. She holds a BA from SOAS in Hindi and Development studies and an MA in Sociology
and Anthropology from Central European University, Budapest. Having written her MA thesis on
Navaria’s writing that emerges from the urban context of the New Delhi metropolis, she is eager to
get more closely and ethnographically acquainted with the urban dalit living. The focus of this
research will be the relationship between inter-jati difference making between different dalit castes
and their voting practices—a particularly acute question in light of the result of the recent general
elections. Currently she is enrolled in her second MA—Intensive South Asian Studies two-year—at
SOAS, which provides the space, time and institutional support to complete this research.
pupillala@gmail.com
Mamta Sagar is a Kannada poet, playwright, translator and academic. She has five collections of
poems, four plays, an anthology of column writing, a collection of critical essays on gender,
language, literature and culture and a book on Slovenian-Kannada Literature Interactions to her
credit. Her creative works and critical writings are published in anthologies and journals in India and
abroad. Her poetry and plays are included within the educational textbooks of Jain University
and Mahatma Gandhi University, India and the Cambridge University Press, UK. She has conducted
theatre and poetry workshops culminating with readings and productions for women, children and
people from marginalised communities. Her poems are composed with music by known musicians
and used in Kannada cinemas. AUROPILIS invited her as Poet in Residence to Belgrade, Serbia in
2012. She is now visiting the UK on CWIT Translation Fellowship at UEA, Norwich. Mamta teaches at
the Centre for Kannada Studies, Bangalore University, India.
mamtasagar@gmail.com
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Jaydeep Sarangi is a leading scholar, poet and critic on marginal literatures and Indian Writing in
English with twenty-nine books and hundred research articles. Widely anthologised and reviewed as
a poet, and translator Dr Sarangi has delivered talks on translation studies in several countries and
conducted workshops. He has translated Bengali dalit poems/stories into English as well as edited a
number of anthologies of translations of Bengali Dalit writings. He has been collaborating with Stree
Samya for translation of Bengali dalit autobiographies. Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi is Associate Professor in
English, Dept. of English at Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College (Calcutta University).
jaydeepsarangi@gmail.com
Shoma Sen is currently teaching at the Department of English, Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj
University, Nagpur, India as an Associate Professor. Her areas of interest are Feminism, Gender
Studies and Human Rights. She has published research papers and spoken at various platforms on
related issues. She was invited as the Keynote speakers by Asia Pacific Research Network for an
International Seminar, “Women Resisting Crisis and War” at Philippines in 2010. She read a paper on
“Women, Development and Displacement at a National Seminar organized by the Forum for
Inclusive Growth, New Delhi, October 10, 2010, on “Subaltern Women’s Writing” at International
Conference in Mumbai in October 2012 and on “Neo-Imperialism in Selected essays of Arundhati
Roy” at an International conference at EFLU, Hyderabad in Jan 2013. Shoma has also participated in
civil society investigations on violations of human rights and in people’s tribunals. She has edited a
magazine in English and Hindi related to the women’s movement in India.
shomasen@hotmail.com
Shobha Padmakar Shinde is currently the Director, School of Language Studies and Research Centre,
North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon. With a rich experience of teaching and research extending
over a period of thirty years, she has won a national award for teaching excellence in English. She
has published more than thirty research articles in national and international conferences in India
and abroad. She has recently completed a major research project of the UGC on Indian Feminism
and was actively involved in three Ford Foundation Project. Her interests range from Gender Studies,
Critical Theories, Dalit Literature. She holds additional charge as the Head, Women’s Studies Centre
at North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon. She has published four books related to theories and
literary studies.
shobha8@gmail.com
Navnath Baliram Sonwane (Ph. D doing in Comparative Literature, In School for Language,
Literature& Cultural Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India) has been Researcher
in center for Comparative Literature at Central University of Gujarat since July 2011 to present day.
He is doing Ph. D in entitled, A Comparative and Translation Study of Selected Ambedkarist
Autobiographies: Trauma to Dignity. He submitted his dissertation for partial degree award for
Master of Philosophy in Comparative Literature, on topic entitled, Ambedkarist Autobiographies a
Comparative Study of Shrankumar Limbales’ The Outcaste & Arvinda Malagatti’s Government
Brahmana. Another Master of Philosophy in English literature awarded by Alagappa University at
Karaikudi in Tamilnadu entitled, A Thematic Study of Girish Karnad’s Naga- Mandala in 2009 and he
has published articles on Translation and Dalit Literature in journals. He has presented at National
and International seminars papers on the topic of Ambedkarist and Dalit studies. He presented a
paper in International conference on the topic, Ambedkarist, Dalit Autobiographies a National
Discourses and Identity, organized by Indira Gandhi national Open University, New Delhi, 22 -23th
February 2013. His research interest is Ambedkarist and Dalit studies and literature in Indian nation.
nbs.sonwane7@gmail.com
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