Paper short abstract:

The paper attempts to place magazines run by Dalits, the 'ex-untouchables', within Malayalam journalism, a modern vernacular cultural space where the nationalist articulations of a Malayalam speaking community find political expression in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala.

Paper long abstract:

The print journalism provided the newly imagined cultural space for modern articulations. For Dalits, the 'ex-untouchable' community who were kept out of power and knowledge due to their lowly caste status, the print envisioned a larger universal of an ethical society and power. The Dalit magazines mark the differing modalities of these political engagements within the space of Malayalam journalism. The paper proposes to tread through the historical trajectory of Dalit magazines and suggests the modalities through which the idea of modern is negotiated. The magazines Sadhujanaparipalini and Velakkaran debated the modern imaginations of Kerala as region with Dalit as the radically transformatory force- the former, at the early 20th century moment of Renaissance and the latter, at the formative moment of the region in the 1950s. This was later transformed through the SEEDIAN moment in the post-emergency period, which shows the shift from Marxist to an Ambedkarite politics with Soochakam in 2001. Dalits articulate the idea of being modern and Malayali through these representational print moments.