The Dalit Autobiography as a Critical Genre: Situating Ambedkar’s Waiting for a Visa Among Marathi Dalit Autobiographical Writings

The sub-genre of Dalit Autobiographies has been an integral cornerstone of the genre of Dalit Literature since its inception. It has been noted that the conception of the genre has been aligned with that of the New Dalit Movement in Maharashtra in the 1970s, which included organisations like the Dalit Panthers, founded by Dalit literary figures of the time (Kumar in Dalit Personal Narratives: Reading Caste, Nation and Identity. Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2010, p. 145). Many works that emerged from this period have been autobiographical and termed by the authors as ‘self-stories’ or ‘self-reportings’.