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Autobiography has been a popular genre of Dalit Literature. It places an authenticity of experiences of Dalits in the Indian Orthodox Hindu Caste System. Siddalingaiah is one of India's foremost Dalit writers. Born in Magadi in southern Karnataka, he studied in a village school and went to Bangalore to acquire M.A., and Ph.D degrees. His autobiographic novel Ooru Keri accounts how the author got self-empowerment from the low socio-economic status and protested against injustice and affirmed Dalit self-respect through his writings.
Indian Dalits have been living in a social order that is extremely cruel and inhuman. Although untouchability was legally abolished in the constitution of the newly independent India in 1949, Dalits continue to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Given this reality, Dalit narratives and autobiographies may still provide the best sources for understanding the marginalized Dalits. Omprakash Valmiki said, "Dalit life is excruciatingly painful, charred by experiences which do not manage to find room in literary creations" (xiii). Dalit writings dramatically reveal Dalits' identity and provide painful insights into the maafa experience of Dalits in India. In this connection, Omprakash Valmiki (Uttar Pradesh), Balbir Madhopuri (Gujarat), Vasant Moon (Maharashra), K.A. Gunasekaran (Tamil Nadu), Kalyan Rao (Andhra Pradesh) and Siddalingaiah (Karnataka) are a few popular writers who create literature on Dalit and Tribal socio-economics.
Siddalingaiah is a passionate narrator of the sufferings inflicted in divergent ways by the caste supremacy. His autobiography Ooru Keri portrays his life-long-struggles, atrocities, poverty, and treacheries of the Indian caste system. Magadi, Ramanagar district in Karnataka, is the birth place of Siddalingaiah whose childhood was submerged in poverty. His family belongs to farm labourers and gets low-income, sometimes nothing. In spite of his abject poverty, Siddalingaiah attended a free night-school. He began to realize self-respect and dignity from his teachers at the school. As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar globalised the plight of untouchables by his educational knowledge, the author also earned self-empowerment through education, but going to day-school was a matter of social, political and economic privilege during his childhood. For instance, Dalit students, including the author, had not been allowed to sit along with upper caste students in the class room.
Siddalingaiah grew up like any other Dalit boy - humiliated and unable to comprehend...