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Don’t Want Caste
‘Why did the kanikonna blossom? It shouldn’t have, knowing that no one would pay it heed anyway.’ This anthology answers the question raised by a voice within it.
Selected from seven decades of dalit writing in Malayalam and presented in new translations by Abhirami Girija Sriram and N. Ravi Shanker, these twenty-three stories, farcical and magical, terse and baroque, domestic and picaresque, reveal that the disregarded laburnum in the forest has blazed with beauty all these years, and we should be the poorer for neglecting it.
‘When caste becomes your nickname, when it makes you an object of derision, and pervades your life as if it were omnipresent, as people say god is, there are embers in your heart that remain alive through a lifetime. These stories are about those undying embers, and about caste as a painful experience. There is no other way to understand, denounce and disapprove of caste’—Ambai
Selected from seven decades of dalit writing in Malayalam and presented in new translations by Abhirami Girija Sriram and N. Ravi Shanker, these twenty-three stories, farcical and magical, terse and baroque, domestic and picaresque, reveal that the disregarded laburnum in the forest has blazed with beauty all these years, and we should be the poorer for neglecting it.
‘When caste becomes your nickname, when it makes you an object of derision, and pervades your life as if it were omnipresent, as people say god is, there are embers in your heart that remain alive through a lifetime. These stories are about those undying embers, and about caste as a painful experience. There is no other way to understand, denounce and disapprove of caste’—Ambai
- GenresFictionShort Stories
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 19, 2022
This collection of short stories hits hard and as it should. We need to with our privilege open our eyes and see the world around us for what it is. For the injustice, for the hate, for the discrimination, and for the fear that some people live with – the marginalized whose rights have been encroached on, and those whose lives are a constant struggle.
Don’t Want Caste, a collection of stories by Dalit writers is a mix of truth, some truth told through the lens of magical realism, and some told plain and simply.
These stories have been selected from seven decades of Dalit writing in Malayalam - from the 1950s to the 2010s. There are 23 stories in all, each very different and just the same – telling us about the atrocities of caste discrimination and what it does to functioning societies or how it is an integral part of it, unfortunately so.
The stories explore the meaning and consequences of what it is to be a Dalit – of what it is to belong and not belong – of how then the unreal is used to talk about the real. The real that is so traumatic that it needs the assistance of magic to speak of.
“The Downfall of a Demon” (1964) is one story that captivated me the most. It is simple, unique and yet says all that it wants to about the world we live in. “The World of Rabbits” (2006) is about a young Dalit boy who discovers a change of emotions among his parents towards rabbits and what happens thereof.
There are stories of men, women, and children running away from their caste – wanting to disown it and trying very hard to get away. There are stories of men, women, and children embracing who they are and what they are – and fighting throughout in their own manner to claim all of it.
“The Serpent Lover” is a story of two lovers Ganesan and Sarojam who make a tragic discovery about their past and have to work around it. There is the issue of shame, hope, and also the angle of memory that doesn’t let go because how you are constantly made to show your place in the society.
Please read it. The translations of Abhirami and Ravi are succinct, on point, and let the stories speak for themselves. The writers – twenty-three of them have done a magnificent job of displaying every emotion on these pages. Don’t Want Caste is one of the books that I recommend to everyone in the country to understand the nuances of what is often thought doesn’t exist, but it does, and it is in your face most of the time. Please don’t choose to hide behind ignorance.
Don’t Want Caste, a collection of stories by Dalit writers is a mix of truth, some truth told through the lens of magical realism, and some told plain and simply.
These stories have been selected from seven decades of Dalit writing in Malayalam - from the 1950s to the 2010s. There are 23 stories in all, each very different and just the same – telling us about the atrocities of caste discrimination and what it does to functioning societies or how it is an integral part of it, unfortunately so.
The stories explore the meaning and consequences of what it is to be a Dalit – of what it is to belong and not belong – of how then the unreal is used to talk about the real. The real that is so traumatic that it needs the assistance of magic to speak of.
“The Downfall of a Demon” (1964) is one story that captivated me the most. It is simple, unique and yet says all that it wants to about the world we live in. “The World of Rabbits” (2006) is about a young Dalit boy who discovers a change of emotions among his parents towards rabbits and what happens thereof.
There are stories of men, women, and children running away from their caste – wanting to disown it and trying very hard to get away. There are stories of men, women, and children embracing who they are and what they are – and fighting throughout in their own manner to claim all of it.
“The Serpent Lover” is a story of two lovers Ganesan and Sarojam who make a tragic discovery about their past and have to work around it. There is the issue of shame, hope, and also the angle of memory that doesn’t let go because how you are constantly made to show your place in the society.
Please read it. The translations of Abhirami and Ravi are succinct, on point, and let the stories speak for themselves. The writers – twenty-three of them have done a magnificent job of displaying every emotion on these pages. Don’t Want Caste is one of the books that I recommend to everyone in the country to understand the nuances of what is often thought doesn’t exist, but it does, and it is in your face most of the time. Please don’t choose to hide behind ignorance.
April 8, 2022
"The human lives that traditional Malayalam writing and reading pushed to the edges of society, choosing to alienate or assimilate them, whether in a derogatory manner or with generosity, come to light in these stories. These interventions in literature are a reflection of how dalit social life developed on its own without languishing in the backyards of savarna generosity."
// Introduction - M R Renukumar (tr. Ravi Shanker)
As expected from a Navayana title, this was an intense, brilliant anthology of translated stories charting the range of Dalit experiences in Kerala. No matter how much these protagonists try to disavow, ignore, or fight against it, the shadow of caste identity and discrimination looms over the narratives menacingly. Still, even though the stories are grounded in visceral social realism, reflecting the lived realities of caste, they don't solely privilege suffering. A lot of them engage with stylistic devices that elevate them. It goes without saying, there's a strong sense of place.
The anthology is overpoweringly dominated by men and there are only a few women writers, a fact Renukumar readily acknowledges early on, flagging how Dalit women are doubly effaced. I liked all the stories but some more than others. "The world of rabbits" by P. A. Uthaman was the best. "Seedling" by Rekha Raj, "The downfall of a demon" by D Rajan, "The Serpent Lover" by A. Santhakumar, "Mea culpa" by Raju K Vasu, and "Karthik Immanuel's spiritual musings" by Prince Aymanam were great. I'm impressed by how translations retained the texture and tenor of the originals.
June 23, 2021
The book is a mesmerising anthology of short stories written by Dalit writers in Malayalam. The stories in the collection range from publication in 1960s to 2010s. I haven’t yet finished reading all the twenty three stories in the book but I have read more than half of them. The stories recount the ordinary lives of Dalit individuals and community comprising themes of magic realism with a touch of picaresque and domestic fiction. They explore the meanings and the consequences of what being Dalit is like. ‘The downfall of a demon’ (1964) is one story that I really liked for its rich themes and language that had me captivated from the first sentence. It is a story of this village clairvoyant who is writhing in pain as the author charts out his ruthless life that ends in that particular moment of agony. The other story I really liked was ‘The world of rabbits’ (2006). It was a story of a young Dalit boy discovering a curious change of emotions among his parents toward rabbits who turn from victims to villains until their world begin merging with his. ‘Chiruthakkunna’ (1999) was another story that had me riddled with tears and anger reading the story of Ravi running away from home to escape who his Dalit-ness. These stories are not simply tales of suffering, rather, they are an outcry, a collective angst against the generations of pain and trauma millions of people have suffered in the name of morality and history. I hope if you have chanced upon this post and haven’t read these stories, you read because I, myself, chanced upon this on @shristimaitra’s post and got myself a copy instantly. I am looking forward to discovering more works by some of the writers I really liked from the anthology.
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December 14, 2023short story collections... better left unrated lol... some of these were gr8 some were ?
but generally ye mallus loooove patting themselves on the back for being the Most Progressive Indians huh.. ennal pinne jaathi venda, no? 🤪🤪🤪
but generally ye mallus loooove patting themselves on the back for being the Most Progressive Indians huh.. ennal pinne jaathi venda, no? 🤪🤪🤪
April 27, 2022
M R Renukumar’s introduction is great preparation for this dive into Malayalam Dalit literature. While this collection like all Dalit literature is ‘inseparably linked to the caste system, which is the basic characteristic of the Indian social milieu’, it ‘maintains a clear and fundamental distinctness from dalit literature in other languages’. This is because ‘Direct caste experiences and their depictions are markedly less severe’ in Kerala. So, ‘dalit writers in Malayalam have had to seek means different from their peers in other languages to identify—through their work—the caste violence implicit in the Malayali public outlook’.
The introduction is a great historical and social context that helped considerably as I attempted to digest this anthology that ranges from the simple (‘In the Fresh Rain’) to the seemingly absurd (‘Slipperiness’ or ‘The Angler’s Gospel’ or ‘A Heroine and Another Woman’). There were tales in here that I couldn’t fathom but almost all of them have memorable bits. For instance, in ‘Slipperiness’, I liked the agency of Sasikala, the character who runs away from her narrator and the woman who voices her desires.
There were stories that brought Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi to mind (‘Chiruthakunnu’ and ‘Mea Culpa’), where institutions of learning offer Dalits constant reminders, jocular and otherwise, of their status. ‘Mea Culpa’ in that sense is hard hitting although it’s so simple a tale: Raju K Vasu uses the metaphor of shit splattering the protagonist’s face when his peers—whom he considered friends—remind him of his place in no uncertain terms. It brings up the image of shit being carried by manual scavengers on their heads and in porous baskets, as depicted in Sujatha Gidla’s ‘Ants Among Elephants’ and Savitribai Phule having cow dung hurled at her for working to educate Dalit girls.
Some themes recur in these stories: Dalit individuals are forced to choose a better life at the cost of families and communities (‘Chiruthakunnu’, ‘Kochalimuthukki’s Grandson’)—a part of their identities has to be wiped out if they want to leave poverty behind but the void remains. Similarly, conversion while it seems to offer social betterment (although in ‘Father, here, keep your venthinga’, Devassy discovers this is a cruel sham) there is a yearning for the rituals and way of life left behind (‘Nostalgia’).
I think ‘The Serpent Lover’ is the saddest tale of the collection. I also liked Rekha Raj’s ‘Seedling’, which is a powerful imagining of the desire for the landless to own land that he can farm, a desire so powerful that it brings ghostly ancestors to his aid. The story that lends the collection its title ‘In that case, don’t want caste’ is a simple half-page comment on the bureaucracy that makes the caste benefits that we crib about impotent for so many who need it.
I really liked the collection although the female contributors were too few, as Renukumar himself notes. The translations by Abhirami Girija Sriram and Ravi Shanker are brilliant, I think. They seem to retain the atmosphere and the speech of the land of my parents and all in the only language I can understand well enough.
I had hoped to read at least two more books for Dalit History Month but this is all I managed. But it was an enlightening and engaging read, so I am grateful.
The introduction is a great historical and social context that helped considerably as I attempted to digest this anthology that ranges from the simple (‘In the Fresh Rain’) to the seemingly absurd (‘Slipperiness’ or ‘The Angler’s Gospel’ or ‘A Heroine and Another Woman’). There were tales in here that I couldn’t fathom but almost all of them have memorable bits. For instance, in ‘Slipperiness’, I liked the agency of Sasikala, the character who runs away from her narrator and the woman who voices her desires.
There were stories that brought Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi to mind (‘Chiruthakunnu’ and ‘Mea Culpa’), where institutions of learning offer Dalits constant reminders, jocular and otherwise, of their status. ‘Mea Culpa’ in that sense is hard hitting although it’s so simple a tale: Raju K Vasu uses the metaphor of shit splattering the protagonist’s face when his peers—whom he considered friends—remind him of his place in no uncertain terms. It brings up the image of shit being carried by manual scavengers on their heads and in porous baskets, as depicted in Sujatha Gidla’s ‘Ants Among Elephants’ and Savitribai Phule having cow dung hurled at her for working to educate Dalit girls.
Some themes recur in these stories: Dalit individuals are forced to choose a better life at the cost of families and communities (‘Chiruthakunnu’, ‘Kochalimuthukki’s Grandson’)—a part of their identities has to be wiped out if they want to leave poverty behind but the void remains. Similarly, conversion while it seems to offer social betterment (although in ‘Father, here, keep your venthinga’, Devassy discovers this is a cruel sham) there is a yearning for the rituals and way of life left behind (‘Nostalgia’).
I think ‘The Serpent Lover’ is the saddest tale of the collection. I also liked Rekha Raj’s ‘Seedling’, which is a powerful imagining of the desire for the landless to own land that he can farm, a desire so powerful that it brings ghostly ancestors to his aid. The story that lends the collection its title ‘In that case, don’t want caste’ is a simple half-page comment on the bureaucracy that makes the caste benefits that we crib about impotent for so many who need it.
I really liked the collection although the female contributors were too few, as Renukumar himself notes. The translations by Abhirami Girija Sriram and Ravi Shanker are brilliant, I think. They seem to retain the atmosphere and the speech of the land of my parents and all in the only language I can understand well enough.
I had hoped to read at least two more books for Dalit History Month but this is all I managed. But it was an enlightening and engaging read, so I am grateful.
May 26, 2021
Stories with quintessential malayalam lit flavour, combining magical realism, social realism, irony and pathos. Some stories might be lost in translation but there are others which are engaging and original!
September 5, 2025
Hard hitting.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews