Abstract
The present study examines the concept of autoethnography in a Bengali Dalit autobiography. Dalit autobiographies are distinct from the mainstream autobiographies; Dalit self-narratives often become alternative historiographies which draw out the suppressed voices of history surrounding the self and the society. This very particularity makes the autobiography an ‘autoethnography’– a term which connotes a simultaneous representative tale or ‘graphy’ of ‘auto’ (self) and ‘ethno’ (culture). The study embarks on Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal (2015) by the Bengali Dalit author Manohar Mouli Biswas, translated and edited by Jaydeep Sarangi and Angana Dutta. Apart from being a bildungsroman, Biswas’ auto-narrative frequently ventures to the cultural and social spheres of the Bengali Namasudra Chandal community which Biswas belongs to. Biswas also provides occasional allusions to the surrounding historical and literary events and the intertwining personal and collective memory of the suffering and surviving in a casteist and partitioned Bengal. Through a minute study of Surviving in My World, the article tends to validate the concept of autoethnography by substantiating examples from the text, how the autobiography of a Bengali Dalit appropriates the term in its presentation and whether the simultaneous monologic and polyphonic narratorial voices cause any meddling in the authenticity of narrative representation.
