Voice of the Hunted: Dalit Rap, Cultural Silence, and the Malayali Imaginary

This paper examines the raps of new-generation Malayalam Dalit rapper Vedan as an assertion of Dalit resistance, memory, and political agency in contemporary Kerala. His songs Voice of the Voiceless, Bhoomi Njan Vazhunna Idam, Urangatte, Theruvinte Mon, Karma, and Vaa confront the caste-neutral discourse in the state. By rejecting tokenism, his lyrics emphasise both personal and collective memory, voices the repressed and transforming individual pain into collective resistance. Through a close reading of selected raps, the paper argues that Vedan’s music marks a significant shift in Kerala’s cultural politics, which has historically denied space to the marginalised and the Dalit voices. His works are grounded in lived experience and refuses inclusion into dominant narratives. By rejecting the aesthetically refined and sanskritised language of mainstream music, his songs reshape the contours of public discourse and challenge the upper-caste control of cultural production in Kerala.