Caste

Pandemics and epidemics have repeatedly disrupted human societies, producing profound consequences for social, political, economic, and cultural life. Literature has documented these disruptions while also transforming experiences of disease, fear, migration, isolation, and social change into powerful narratives and metaphors. This article examines the representation of epidemics and pandemics in Indian and South Asian literature, with particular attention to Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Srikanto, Intizar Husain’s Basti, and Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Rebati. Drawing on the concept of the chronotope, the discussion explores how disease outbreaks create moments of disruption that expose existing social divisions while also creating possibilities for transformation. The narratives demonstrate how epidemics intersect with religion, caste, class, gender, migration, patriarchy, and communal relations. In Basti, plague and migration challenge established assumptions concerning religious identity, while Srikanto presents quarantine as a temporary space in which conventional social boundaries are weakened and humanitarian values gain prominence. Similarly, Rebati uses cholera as a metaphor for social resistance to women's education and the persistence of patriarchal beliefs. The article argues that literary representations of epidemics function as cultural records of historical crises and reveal the ways societies respond to uncertainty and disruption. The experience of COVID 19 has further reinforced the relevance of such literary perspectives, demonstrating how disease outbreaks can generate lasting changes in social, cultural, political, and economic life.

Understanding Caste in the historical perspective can be broadly analysed as division of people on the basis of their ethnic and economic skill-based divisions. This leads us to develop a deeper understanding of the need for creating caste divisions, that could not sustain their original roots and gradually developed to make these divisions as permanent categorisation based on the birth of an individual into a particular caste. This research will analyse various perspectives that allowed an understanding of various discourses born out of narratives that open this discourse further and create an opportunity to build neo-dalit perspectives towards Dalit identities. Dalit narratives are strong arguments that emphasise the need for bringing these narratives in to mainstream literary canon. Reading Ambedkar to Yagati Chinna Rao to Bama in detail, this paper will build a discussion around Dalit identities from a critical perspective.