Discourse of Difference and Merit: Manu Joseph’s Serious Men and Amitabh’s “Janmakhoon!”

The chapter analyzes how Dalit Ayyan Mani is devalued in Manu Joseph’s Serious Men through his ironic portrayal in relation to intellect and aspirations drawing on Edward Said’s critical intervention of Orientalism. Saidian understandings about representations of the Orient (Muslim) Other and how Euro-centric knowledge contributes to the creation of stereotypes of the Orient as negative and distinct from the West chart out the conceptual tools of the chapter. This perspective is further developed with Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiotic theory of ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ to explore the transactional relationship between the Dalit and the upper caste character, and the processes of stereotyping and difference. The chapter focuses on how the narrative portrays Ayyan as empowered to a certain extent, but his empowerment is misrepresented by basing it on unethical practices, especially vis-a-vis the principled upper caste Arvind Acharya. It analyzes how the narrative entrenches the caste bias by representing Ayyan Mani as deficient and the upper caste counterpart as proficient reasserting the insignificance of Dalit characters, and thus constituting difference between two castes. The chapter then scrutinizes such inadequacies in the representations of Dalit identity comparing it with the Marathi short story by Amitabh “Janmakhoon!” (Birth-mark) to point out how difference in relation to merit and efficiency is constituted and thereby a critique of caste is facilitated.