Community of the Marginalized in Laxman Gaikwad’s The Branded (Uchalya)

Abstract

The paper analyses how Uchalya is the only community in the world branded as inherent criminals by birth. Denied of all decent and lawful means of livelihood the only alternative left to them is to exist by thieving, lifting and pick pocketing. It bring people round to the view that the people of these tribes are human beings and are in need of a helping hand from all to bring them into the mainstream of social life. This is the story of the life of a nomadic tribe. Uchalya belongs to a body of Marathi writing that constantly seeks to express an alternate poetics and politics of identity in order to create a new social order. It is an attempt of a sensitive mind to pen what it has felt and experienced.

Literature dealing with and depicting the life of weaker sections especially tribals of the society invariably assumes the form of protest on the writer’s part against the process and phenomena of degradation. The tribal people had been a self-reliant, reasonably happy and prosperous group of communities. If one looks at the history of each tribal community, one will find that the people of each tribal community was condemned to remain outside, as alienated, uninvolved, illiterate and poor. The aim of Laxman Gaikwad to write this autobiography is to share his experiences as a Dalit and to describe the sufferings of the Denotified tribes. He gives an account that how the people of his Tribe is exploited at every place and they had to face insult as they belonged to Dalit families.