Dalit literature is not just of the present, it is a literature of the future, one that forges it, rather than one that simply recounts the past, though its future emanates from its recounting and rebuttal of the past. Its politics informs its aesthetics, its aesthetics part of its politics. It shows us how languages, indigenous state languages that people have given up their lives for, languages that gained states opposing various other linguistic hegemonies themselves are part of the oppressive structure. Thus, when Dalits 'write back', and write for themselves, and write themselves into the national space, they have to first fight the various languages that are given to them, they have to expose how the languages perform, force, their marginalisation. Dalit literature is thus complex and rewards close scrutiny and analysis.

This volume tries to bring together different readings of Dalit literature. The selected essays, written over a period of a decade and a half of the 21st century, look at various issues - whether discrimination akin to that of the Dalits exists in other countries, how Dalits have been represented in English literature, how they have represented themselves in various literatures, theorising about Daliit writing, the problematics of translation, the wretched issue of caste based discrimination regardless of religion, the question of gender, and most persistently about language and power.