Shantabai Kamble
Shantabai Krushnaji Kamble (born 1 March 1923) is an Indian Marathi writer and Dalit activist. She wrote the first female Dalit autobiography. Biography. Early age. Shantabai Krushnaji Kamble was born in a Mahar Dalit family on 1 March 1923. Her birthplace was Mahud which is located in Solapur. She was from a poor family. The social and economic status of her community was quite low. Educational struggle. In India, the traditional attitude towards those belonging to the below poverty level can be summed up as: "Education is not their cup of tea." So education was prohibited for the  members of her community. Even worse, she was female and girls did not go to school in those days. But her parents decided to send her to school because of her extraordinary talent. It is also known through her autobiographical extract "Naja Goes to School- and Doesn't" that she was awarded with three rupees scholarship "a month for paper, ink and notebooks and so on." According to a newspaper article, "As an untouchable, she [was] not allowed to enter the class-room and has to go through the humiliating experience of sitting outside the class and imbibing whatever she  could." Her autobiography "Majhya Jalmachi Chittarkatha". Shantabai Kamble's autobiography "Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha" translated as "The Kaleidoscope Story of My Life" was published as a complete book in 1986. First presented to reading audience in "Purva Magazine" in 1983. Later it was tele-serialzed for the viewers as Najuka on the Mumbai Doordarshan in 1990 and further translated into French and English. Kamble started writing her Chittarkatha post her retirement as a teacher. It is considered the first autobiographical narrative by a Dalit woman writer. This book is included in the University of Mumbai's syllabus. Chiefly the book raises  the issue of two-fold marginalisation and oppression one, faced by the Dalit group at the hands of 'Upper Caste' and secondly gendered discrimination towards women through their male patriarchal peers. In this context she portrays her struggle as a Dalit women writer. In the dedication to her book she writes, "To my Aaye-Appa [mother and father] who worked the entire day in the hot glaring sun, hungry and without water, and through the drudgery of labour, with hunger pinching their stomach, educated me and brought me from darkness into light." Contributor Arjuna Ḍāṅgaḷe Edition: reprint