: बाबुराव बागूल) (1930–2008) was a Marathi

Marathi people

The Marathi people or Maharashtrians are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, that inhabit the Maharashtra region and state of western India. Their language Marathi is part of the southern group of Indo-Aryan languages...

 writer from Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

; a pioneering of Dalit literature

Dalit literature

Dalit Literature, literature about the Dalits, the oppressed class under Indian caste system forms an important and distinct part of Indian literature...

 in Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 and an important figure in the Indian short story during late 20th century, when it experienced a radical departure from the past, with the advent of Dalit

Dalit

Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...

 writers such as him.

He most known for his works such as, "Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli" (1963), " Maran Swasta Hot Ahe" (1969), "Dalit Sahitya Ajache Kranti Vigyan", "Sud" (1970), and "Ambedkar Bharat".

Biography

Baburao Ramaji Bagul was born in Nashik in 1930. After high school education, he did various manual jobs until 1968. While doing so, he published several stories in magazines, which started getting attention from Marathi readers. Eventually in 1963, came his first collection of stories, Jevha Mi Jat Chorali (जेव्हा मी जात चोरली) (When I had Concealed My Caste), it created a stir in Marathi literature

Marathi literature

Marathi literature is the body of literature of Marathi, a Sanskrit-derived language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra and written in the Devanagari script.-Early Marathi Literature :...

 with its passionate depiction of a crude society and thus brought in new momentum to Dalit literature in Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

; today it is seen by many critics as the epic of the Dalits, and was later made into a film by actor-director Vinay Apte.

He followed it up with a collection of Dalit poems, Akar (Shape) (1967), which gave immediate visibility, but it was his second collection of short stories Maran Swasta Hot Ahe (Death is Getting Cheaper) (1969), which cemented his position as an important Dalit voice of his generation. The collection is now considered an important landmark in Dalit writing in India and in 1970 he was awarded the 'Harinarayan Apte Award' by the Government of Maharashtra.

After 1968, he became a full-time writer of literature which continued to deal with the lives of marginalized Dalit

Dalit

Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...

 people in Maharashtra. His fictional writing gave graphic accounts of the lives of that class of people. The thoughts of Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

, Jyotiba Phule, and Babasaheb Ambedkar had an influence on Babul's mind. He soon became an important radical thinker of the Dalit

Dalit

Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...

 movement, and published a major ideologue of the Dalit Panther, Manifesto of Dalit Panther, in 1972. In the same year he presided over the 'Dalit Literary Conference' held at Mahad. Over the years his stories taught future Dalit writers to give creative rendition to their autobiographical narratives.

He died on March 26, 2008 at Nashik, and was survived by his wife, two sons, two daughters.

Subsequently, the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University

Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University

The Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University was established in July 1989 by Act XX- of the Maharashtra State Legislature, named after Yashwantrao Chavan, Maharashtra’s great political leader and builder of modern Maharashtra. It is the fifth Open University in India...

 instituted the 'Baburao Bagul Gaurav Puraskar' award in recognition of his contributions to Marathi literature, to be given annually to the maiden story writing productions of a budding short-story writer.

Works

• Jevha Mi Jat Chorali (जेव्हा मी जात चोरली) (1963)
• "Maran Swasta Hot Ahe (मरण स्वस्त होत आहे) (1969)
• Sud (सूद) (1970)
• "Dalit Sahitya Ajache Kranti Wignyan (दलित साहित्य आजचे क्रांतिविज्ञान)
• Ambedkar Bharat (आंबेडकर भारत)

Translation

• Death is Getting Cheaper - Another India: an anthology of contemporary Indian fiction and poetry, editors, Nissim Ezekiel, Meenakshi Mukherjee. Penguin Books, 1990. Page 103.
• Mother - Indian short stories, 1900-2000, by E.V. Ramakrishnan, I. V Ramakrishnan. Sahitya Akademi, 2005. Page 217.

Further reading

• Homeless in my land: translations from modern Marathi Dalit short stories, Editor Arjuna Dangale. Disha Books, 1992. ISBN 0863112862. pp 217.
• You who have Made the Mistake Poisoned bread: translations from modern Marathi Dalit literature, Editor Arjuna Dangale, Orient Blackswan, 1992. ISBN 0863112544. Page 70.

External links

• An interview with Baburao Bagul