Daniel Selvaraj or D. Selvaraj (born 1935) is a Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 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...

 writer from Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

, 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...

. He is the author of a number of novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s, short stories

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

, and plays in Tamil. He is a lawyer by profession and is involved in various Communist and left leaning writers' organisations like Democratic Writers Association India and the Progressive writers association of Tamil Nadu (TNPWA). He is currently Vice President and executive committee member of the TNPWA.. He is also a former member of the Sahitya Akademi

Sahitya Akademi

The Sahitya Akademi ', India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India...

.

Biography

Selvaraj was born in 1935 in Mavadi, Tirunelveli district

Tirunelveli

Tirunelveli , also known as Nellai , and historically as Tinnevelly, is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the headquarters of the Tirunelveli District and the sixth biggest city in Tamil Nadu...

, Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

. His parents were plantation labourers who worked in the Kannan Devan tea plantations at the Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

- Tamil Nadu border. He obtained his B.A degree in Tirunelveli and his law degree in Madras. He published his first short story in Janasakthi, the official magazine of Communist Party of India

Communist Party of India

The Communist Party of India is a national political party in India. In the Indian communist movement, there are different views on exactly when the Indian communist party was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by CPI is 26 December 1925...

 (CPI). During 1954-56, he also published regularly in the progressive literary magazine Shanthi run by T. M. Chidambara Ragunathan

T. M. Chidambara Ragunathan

T. M. Chidambara Ragunathan , was a Tamil, writer, translator, journalist and literary critic from Tamil Nadu, India. He is also known as T. M. C. Ragunathan, Tho. Mu. Si. Ragunathan or by his Tamil initials as Tho. Mu. Si.-Biography:...

. As a writer he was influenced by the Communist ideals of P. Jeevanandham and became a member of the TNPWA. His short stories and novels appeared regularly in literary magazines like Neethi, Semmalar, Kannadasan and Thamarai. His first noted work was the novel Malarum Sarugum (1967) written on the background of the peasant agitation in the Tirunelveli district. It is considered to be the first Dalit novel written in Tamil. He followed it with Theneer (1973) which was about the plight of the tea plantation workers. He has written a number of plays, the most notable of which is yugasangamam (1968). Yugasangamam was awarded the best play award by Tamil Nadu Government's literary association and is currently a part of the curriculum at the Tamil studies department, Delhi University. He currently lives in Dindigul

Dindigul

Dindigul is a town and municipality in the Tamil Nadu state of southern India. The name Dindigul comes from the Portmanteau of “Thindu” meaning pillow and “kal” meaning Rock and refers to the bare hill dominating the city’s both land and skyscape...

.

See also

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...