The Unheard Word: A Dalit Publishing Company's Struggle For Survival In Maharashtra

I founded the Panther’s Paw Publication in 2016, a year after I got my Master’s degree from TISS, Mumbai. At that point, I neither had money, nor publishing capital in terms of working knowledge. Besides, it is a rare equivalent to madness if a first-generation learner is determined to be a publisher in India, where people are spending less and less money on books, and where there is absolut­ely no guarantee to survive financially or supp­ort from cultu­ral bodies. But back then, to pur­sue publishing, I knew I had only one thing. I had people who understood why I wanted to do it. Living for three years in Mumbai, I have found a few people from the anti-caste movement who are book fanatics in their own ways. My str­ength as a publisher also comes from liste­n­ing to their life stories, in which their literary pursuits challenged their material needs and necessities. Their conviction in books also ceme­n­ted my jou­r­ney with books. No one dreams of becoming a publis­her. One is brought into it. So, what brings a Dal­it person to English-language publishing?

A Dalit person can be killed for anything and everything under the sky in Ind­ia: be it for riding a horse at a wedding, keeping a moustache, drinking water, loving someone not from his caste or having a ringtone of a song that celebrates the legacy of Ambedkar. A Dalit person can be killed for exercising common sen­se in a caste society. For a Dalit person to journey into the world of words, writing them, pub­l­ishing them, and circulating them in caste society is a major event that comes at a price, risk and danger. To be able to write, publish and circulate his stories, histories, songs, etc., a Dalit person has to come to terms with his own fear and choose between fear and fight (against caste) with his only weapon, books.

So, what is a Dalit person doing publishing books in English? I often ask myself this quest­ion and the answer is complicated but worth exploring. I find this experiential commonality of my community relevant to what I do because it involves the stories and histories of my people, and once you are engaged with intellectual production in relation to the struggle, history, and achievements of your community, you are alre­ady in a position of being responsible for the fut­ure generation and how they will per­ceive your past and their history.

But why would an oppressor (majoritarian caste communities in India) read the words of the oppressed? And if so, would they promote it? Mostly they do not because it jeopardises their interests in social, cultural, and intellectual domains and spoils their relationship with their kith and kin. In these six years as a publisher, the number of people who buy our books has increased, but there is zero per cent discussion over the books I had published among people who are at the helm of circulation and promotion of culture. They buy our books and read them. But these books are not discussed. It mea­ns that the assertion of the existence of books I have published is absent. Also, beauty and pleasure are not associated with Dalit literature. Rat­her, the aesthetic principles on which it is bas­ed—justice and freedom, among other things—are rarely desired or practiced in caste society, as these are based and fed on an ‘ascending scale of revere­nce and descending scale of contempt’, as Amb­e­d­kar had said while defining the nature of caste society.

In 2016, I met J.V. Pawar, a founding member of the Dalit Panthers, in Mumbai. He gifted me five volumes of his works in Marathi, which were  all on the Ambedkarite movement after Ambe­d­kar’s death. I finished reading the first book in a hurry. It made me see the roots of what had gone wrong with us after Ambedkar passed away. I have been fascinated with English ever since I began to feel that because of it, I could understand the world in richer ways. So I decided to tell my story to the world in this language. Som­e­where around October that year, the book, Ambedkarite Movement after Ambedkar, was launched, and Panther’s Paw Publication came into existence. Why did I mention this process of publishing a book in translation? Let me put it succinctly. Dalits live at the periphery of society. They are also at the periphery of the domain of literary discourse in India. Narratives of the Dalit community—essentially, critiques of popular or Brahminical narratives—are written in various languages in India. It also means that the impact of their stories is restricted to the linguistic reg­ion in whose language it has been written. No matter how powerful a Telugu story is, its impact would be limited to a Telugu-speaking sta­te if it is not translated across various langu­a­ges. Hence, Dalit literature is hardly censored—not because it doesn’t offend Brahminical sen­sibilities—but because it is kept within the boundaries of a particular linguistic state and prohibited from entering the national imagination. Even at the beginning of my journey as a publisher, I realised the potential of translation as a cultural process and linguistic act. Of cou­rse, we see mention of Dalit literature here and there, but it is hardly ever capable of creating a stir at the national level.

Another reason why Dalit literature has ceased to provoke censorship is that it has become self-centred, posing internal criti­ques rather than problematising the oppressors. So, if a Savarna reads a story about the struggle of a Dalit person without feeling the need to intros­p­­ect about his own role in the chain of this opp­r­e­ssion, he will never feel the need for its censor­­ship. We censor something that challenges our interests and our existence. Of course, there are readers who strongly believe in the need for stories that make them aware of their own faults, but they are the exception. They do not make the norm. Also, the crucial question that needs to be asked is: do people in India read literature out of habit, and if so, how many? I begin to feel disapp­ointed when I find the answer to this question.

Let me touch upon the noteworthy, yet bleak developments in Dalit literature, before I go any further. Dalits across languages and linguistic states have been publishing for decades. But this does not mean that they have social capital in this field. Publishing houses founded by Dalits in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karn­a­t­aka, Punjab, and Gujarat, have existed for several decades now, mostly run by those who are part of the larger Dalit movement. And they often perceive their publishing efforts in the light of the vision provided by the anti-caste movement. It is an undeniable fact that publishing is imperative for the Dalit community to keep their existence alive. It is because popular literature and culture is in total denial of their version of the wor­ld. A large part of publishing involves distribution and creating a discourse out of it. Dalit literature does not seem to have a great future in this domain, although in terms of content, its future appears bright.

Publication of a book does not mean that it will change our way of thinking, unless it is distribu­ted on a large scale. For instance, I printed 1,000 copies of Ambedkarite Movement after Ambedkar (Rs 399), and it took me six years to sell 900 copies. To put it differently, I sold 2.5 books per day. The first five copies of the book, which I had put up at a bookstore called People’s Book House, managed by communists in Mumbai, took six months to pay against their sale, and they took 40 per cent commission on it.

But back then, I really had no other means to sell my books. Besi­des, Dalit literature is not a popular choice. This book has never been reviewed or discussed, at least not to my knowledge as a publisher or that of its translator. Neither within the Dalit comm­unity, nor even among academics—where I had expe­c­ted it to find some traction. As the years passed, I realised that reading as a habit has been vanishing fast across classes and castes—a dangerous sign for a publisher like me, who publishes literature that is in its embryonic stages in the English language in India.

Dalit as a community are divided by lang­u­age and the geopolitics of linguistic states. It makes their experiences different from each other in many aspects of life, although in the eyes of caste society across India, they are seen as unwanted. Dalits are part of Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Buddhism in India. They chose conversion to get out of the stigma of being called untouchables.

Yet, today if a Dalit from these minority communities writes a story about his or her life, (s)he can’t avoid mentioning the fact that the monster of caste still follows him/her. Society treats him as a Dalit, irrespect­ive of his religious faith. It speaks volumes abo­ut his struggle against caste and society that foll­ows caste norms and not against his religion, that he chose to find liberation from untouchab­ility and Brahminical society. So, in the stories of Dalits across different religious faiths, we find struggle against upper caste people much more prominent than their struggle against any God.

Panther’s Paw Publication came into existence in 2016. By 2022, I have managed to publish 14 books of poetry, biography, history, fiction and non-fiction. That means I’ve published 2.3 books a year. These books were mostly stories written from the perspective of a person who wanted to visibilise their narrative, rather than from a need to critically analyse his oppression in national culture.

In fact, for writers at Panther’s Paw, there is no national culture. They have arrived at a position where they can examine their roots in their uniqueness, rather than see them in relation to the meta-narratives set by Bra­h­minical castes and culture. Even publishing 2.3 books a year was not an easy task, given the circumstances in which I had to spend most of my energy in my struggle to survive in Mumbai, to write, to deal with lack of resources and to find sympathisers to help me fulfil my vision. Yet, I decided to walk slowly but steadily, without letting discouragement hamper my journey. So, by 2020, while I was still in Mumbai, I managed to publish six books and sold less than 200 copies of them all together. March 2020 came as a shock. I had to vacate my hostel and leave many of my books behind, as it was not easy to carry hundreds of books I had printed along with those in my personal collection. I returned to my home in Nagpur.

Losing connection with the world for a few months gave me the space to think about how to carry forward my journey. By July 2022, I began to use social media to spread the word about my books. The lockdown made the people’s engagement with social media deeper, as it was the only way to remain connected. I began to get good respon­ses and some even showed interest in buying the books. You do not know which caste, class or community a person belongs to on social media, unless they assert their identity. For a publisher, it does not matter who is buying the book. Those who bought books by Panther’s Paw started sharing them in their stories, and a few in their posts as well. In such people, I found a regular readership. I began to use social media to announce new books and sell them. I have also received some orders from outside the country, which I successfully delivered.

In 2020-21, when Covid-19 was at its peak, people were regularly buying books. People read more when they are isolated, or in search of some meaning for their grim situation. But as soon as 2022 began, and people began to return to their normal lives outside their homes, book sales went on a downward slide. The circumsta­nces under which I publish books have improved a bit, but people are buying fewer and fewer boo­ks. Even the people who were promoting our books on social media, suddenly vanished.

How­ever, as a publisher, it is important for me to keep publishing books even in such bleak times, though it is equally important for me to sell, circulate and create a discourse around them. In the absence of a regular distribution mechan­ism, it is extremely difficult to distribute and sell our books. But I need to find ways to do it. When I began my journey, I did not have sympathisers to encourage me. Today, I have a few. I think over the years, Dal­it literature has survi­ved because it has continued to publish books no matter how many people read them. And I bel­ong to that legacy created by my people who knew in their guts that a book does not die without finding a reader. And when a book finds a reader, it does not die.

(This appeared in the print edition as "The Unheard Word")

(Views expressed are personal)

Yogesh Maitreya is a poet, translator, and publisher of Panther’s Paw Publication