Introduction

Madan Veera (b. 1962) is one of the twenty-first century successors of the radical Punjabi literary movement in poetry that emerged with the writings of revolutionary poets like Pash (1950–88), Lal Singh Dil (1943–2007), Sant Ram Udasi (1939–86) and others who were the leading lights of the Naxalite movement of the seventies of the 20 th century. Politically the Naxalite movement in Punjab was a failure and was quickly crushed but it gave rise to radical changes in the subject matter and form of Punjabi literature, especially poetry. Punjabi Dalit literature is one such expression of that radicalizing movement, but with one difference. The Naxalite movement was enkindled by the rise of Marxist-Leninist or Maoist ideology (in India in West Bengal first) which envisioned a classless society free from all kinds of oppression. Dalit poets like Lal Singh Dil and Sant Ram Udasi joined the movement in the hope that the revolution would also lead to the end of caste oppression. The movement provided them the opportunity to openly talk of caste discrimination and oppression but in the overarching vision of a communist revolution. The postNaxalite Dalit writers move out of the progressive and Marxist frameworks and are distinctively Dalit-centric and they write about what it means to be a Dalit in a society dominated by the Savarna castes whether upper, middle, or lower middle class. They posit caste against class as a separate category in contrast to their predecessors who believed that end of class divisions would automatically lead to elimination of caste in a classless society. As a result, Dalit literature has now secured its own distinctive place in the Punjabi literature. A body of Dalit literature—fiction, poetry, biography, autobiography, literary criticism, poetics—is beginning to impact the Punjabi literary world. I believe, as in the rest of India, it is now not easy for the so-called mainstream writers in Punjabi to ignore or bypass the issues affecting the Dalits and all marginalized peoples. Madan Veera’s poetry certainly creates that hope.