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31 Quoted in Regina Jennings, "Poetry of the Black Panther Party: Metaphors of Militancy", Journal of Black Studies, Vol 29, No 1, Septem- ber 1998, pp 106-29. The relationship between dalit and African-American literature is dis- cussed by several critics, including Limbale, pp 82-102.
32 According to Manan Desai, dalit critic M N Wankhade wrote essays on Black litera- ture in his journal Asmitadarsh, a journal that became an important forum for dalit writers from 1967 onwards. In 1971, he published a short essay that had partial translations of art- ists associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-1970s, including Gil Scott-Heron and Don Lee (Haki Madhubuti). These essays often called on dalit (sometimes he uses the term Ba- hujansamaj) writers to invoke the "vidrohi" language of the Black Arts Movement. Desai writes: "In the years that followed, as Dalit lit- erature exploded in the state of Maharashtra and later across the entire country in Hindi, Gu- jarati, Kannada, Punjabi, and Tamil, so too did its allusions to African American literary histo- ry. References to writers like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin and places like Harlem began to turn up in Marathi Dalit poems. Soon thereaf- ter, Black iconography crossed over into the po- litical sphere when the Dalit Panther mobilised lower-caste youth in symbolic street protests and political rallies throughout the Maharash- tra" (Desai, "Caste in Black and White").
33 Namdeo Dhasal, "Leaving the House", trans- lated by Jayant Karve and Eleanor Zelliot, An Anthology of Dalit Literature, p 51. For the inter- action between dalit poets and African-American poetry at this time, see Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature.
34 Dilip Chitre, "Namdeo's Mumbai" in Namdeo Dhasal, Poet of the Underworld trans Dilip Chitre (Chennai: Navayana Publishing), 2007, p 158. Elsewhere Chitre writes:
To understand Dhasal's poetry's raw power, it's helpful to think in terms of the initially convulsive effect the black blues had on US 'good taste' and how there was much white orating against the blues' alleged vileness. Only very tardily did the white status quo admit that what it had mocked as a back- ward music that possessed no value was in fact (along with the jazz that grew from it) the US' single-most important musical con- tribution to world culture. So much for what the powers that be knew about creativity. Similarly, Dhasal's liberation of Dalit slang and experience from the gutter into the 'dec- orous house of poetry' turned that residence into one filled with more anarchy and insur- rectionary creativity than most of its previ- ous tenants could stand. ...
35 I am indebted to Chitre's remarks in various sections of Namdeo Dhasal, Poet of the under- world trans Dilip Chitre (Chennai: Navayana Publishing), 2007 and elsewhere.
36 Poet of the Underworld, p 34.
37 Most of this translation is Dilip Chitre's in Poet of the Underworld, p 10. The last sentence is taken from Eleanor Zelliot, "Dalit - New Cul- tural Context for an Old Marathi Word" in Clarence Maloney (ed.), Language and Civilisa- tion Change in South Asia, pp 77-97 at p 85.
38 Sanjay Paswan, Encyclopaedia of Dalits in India: Literature, p 22.
39 Salish Kalsekar and Pradnya Lokhande, "Nam- deva Dhasslanshi Mukta Samvada" (Free- wheeling interview with Namdeo Dhasal), in "Anushtubh: Namdeva Dhasala Viseshanka" Vol 21, No 1, July-August 1997, pp 47-74. I am indebted to Juned Shaikh for this reference.
40 Chitre, "Namdeo's Mumbai", p 158.
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