The Brahmin's Voice and the Dalit's Silence: An Ambedkarite Reading of Rabindranath Tagore's Punishment

This article rereads Rabindranath Tagore’s short story Punishment through the dual lenses of Ambedkarite social philosophy and Dalit literary criticism. Tagore, a universal humanist, unconsciously reproduces a text that is structured by caste hierarchies. A social allegory of Brahmanical hegemony, Dalit servitude, and patriarchal displacement is clearly evident in this story of two Dalit brothers, Dukhiram and Chidam, their wives, Radha and Chandra, and the Brahmin Ramlochan. This article argues using the Ambedkarite theoretical lens on caste that the text is evidence of dramatization of psychic and moral disintegration of Dalit lives under caste oppression, imposition of sacrificial role on Dalit women, and the author’s own conscious/unconscious upper-caste perspective that anesthetizes rather than annihilates structural caste violence.