Hindi Dalit Literature in the United Provinces: Swami Acchutanand and Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu, 1900-1930

The book will focus upon the growth of a Hindi Dalit literary culture at its formative stage in the 1920s and the 1930s, and the significant role played by Swami Acchutanand and Chandrikaprasad Jigyasu, in this process. The book introduces the Dalit public sphere in the United Provinces in the early decades of the twentieth century. It tracks the growth and the development of a Dalit print culture in the United Provinces during the 1920s and the 1930s. The book centres on the figures of Swami Acchutanand and Chandrikaprasad Jigyasu, anti-caste intellectuals, and the most eminent figures in the Hindi Dalit world of letters during that era.
The purpose of the proposed book is to rescue Swami Acchutanand and Chandrikaprasad Jigyasu from undeserved obscurity and accords to them the importance that they merit in any chronicle of the Dalit cultural movement in North India.

Tapan Basu is with the Department of English, University of Delhi, India