Reification of Collective Victimhood: Dalit Narratives, Social Repositioning and Transformation

Abstract

Contrary to the passivity embedded in the term ‘victim’, collective victimhood experienced by the Dalits is highly active and agentic. Dalits negotiate the meaning of collective victimhood in various creative expressions where they project their lived experiences of ‘being’ and reify them at the collective level thus generating a radical shift in the very meaning of their state of being the victims by communicating a sense of resistance. This transition in the meaning of ‘being’ is facilitated by the process of ‘becoming’, which is explained here as social repositioning of the identity that involves recognising, deconstructing and reinterpreting the sense of imposed victimhood. Recognition of anguish and its projection in the form of collective resistance reconstructs Dalits’ victimhood and transforms their everyday experiences of being suppressed and oppressed into a form of political assertion. This article presents negotiations of meaning of Dalit (collective) victimhood, its reification through the varied creative expressions and the role of symbolic resources in birthing stability to the basic construct. It also discusses how the reified victimhood of Dalits acts as a ‘vehicle of emancipation’ for their harried members and as a tool to generate a collective identity that’s agentic, forceful and transformative.