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41 "Street Fight Poet", conversation with Dilip Chitre, S Anand and Shyama Haldar, Tehelka, 2 June 2007, accessed at http://www.tehelka.com/sto- ry _main30.asp?filename=hub020607Street_ fight.asp on 27 March 2012. Emphasis added.
42 Sudhanva Deshpande, Review of Chitre, Poet of the Underworld, Frontline, 12: 14, 14-27 July 2007, http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2414/ stories/20070727000107200.htm
43 Shanta Gokhale points out that Tendulkar offered various arguments in defence of his portrayal of Arun, arguing that "in giving as much space as was required to delve into Nath's character, there simply wasn't sufficient space to devote to nuancing Athavale's character.... At one point he admitted that he didn't know more than a couple of dalits personally. That was nearer to the truth. Then the dalit argu- ment was why write about something you don't know? To which Tendulkar replied by saying a writer needn't personally know the people and places he writes about. The dalit argument seemed to suggest to him that only dalits could write about dalits because only they knew themselves. This was a solipsistic argument that couldn't hold water. But this was not what the dalits meant. There are ways and ways of knowing people. Tendulkar had never met Sakahram Binder or anybody like him. But in imagining him into being, Tendulkar managed to create a full-blooded character with shades of grey. So clearly, Arun Athavale was not ac- corded that kind of personal interest by the writer" (personal communication).
44 "Namdeo on Namdeo", p 166.
45 Shaikh's autobiography Mala Udhvasta Whaychay (I Want to Get Ruined/I Want to Smash Myself ) conveys this experience.
46 V S Naipaul's narrative, albeit inflected with his own sense of distance and superiority to what he witnesses, remains both evocative and moving; India, A Million Mutinies Now (London: Minerva), 1991, pp 95-119.
47 Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry, edited and translated by Sachin Ketkar (Mumbai: Poetrywala Publications), 2005, p 81.
48 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press), 1967, p 63.
49 Of course, several Black Panthers such as Eldridge Cleaver and Amiri Baraka suggested sexual violence as a viable form of insurrec- tion, but to the best of my knowledge this was not a feature of Dalit Panther writings.
50 "A Testament", Indian Literature, No 147, January- February 1992, quoted Tendulkar Omnibus, p 15.
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