Abstract

The present paper entitled ‘Question of Land and Dalit Oppression in Rural Punjab: A Study of Balbir Madhopuri’s Against the Night’ studies Balbir Madhopuri’s autobiography, Against the Night (Originally written in Punjabi) which narrates a dalit’s angst of deprivation, social exclusion, and humiliation, as well as of resistance, achievement and hope. The paper will explore how the subjective narrative of a dalit writer tends to universalize the caste based experience of his community. It will shed light on the plight of dalits in Punjab. Against the Night is set in the village of Madhopur in Punjab, it traces the social history of the dalit ‘Chamars’ to which the writer belongs. Balbir Madhopuri was born in 1955 in the small village of Madhopur (Jalandhar), Punjab. In his childhood he used to work with his family as an agricultural labourer. But Madhopuri soon moved out of it and earned a degree in Masters of Arts in Punjabi. Thus he became a civil servant with government of India and fulfilled the dream of his childhood: I thought of my Bua’s son who was a government officer in Delhi…and also my mother’s brother who was a district collector… should I remain uneducated? Should I continue to do what the rest of my community was doing? Should I work and slave for others so that they could live in luxury? No! (Madhopuri105)