Dalits and the Empire in Sharankumar Limbale’s <i>Sanatan</i> (2018)

Sharankumar Limbale’s Sanatan intervenes in the debate about alternative history and its relationship with Dalit agential subjectivity that came to fore after Anand Teltumbde published his 2nd January 2018 article in The Wire. While Teltumbde argued that the myth of Dalit valor during the Bhima Koregaon battle between the British Army and the Peshwai has far exceeded its political value, others such as Badri Narayan, Saroj Giri, and Gaurav Somwanshi have argued for the necessity of alternative history to create Dalit subjectivity in the present. Sanatan builds on both the arguments, placing emphasis on the need for historical accuracy and contextualization while representing Dalits as agential and mobile actors within the socio-political paradigm of the British Empire in flux. The novel shows that Dalit agency is historically contingent, ontologically limited and contained, and yet constitutive of liberatory and transformative potential.