Between Globalization and Localization: Aesthetic Manifestation of Globality, Reflexivity and Social Change in Daya Pawar’s Baluta (2015)

Abstract

Daya Pawar posthumously clearly establishes his human personality, laying bare to readers of his work, both his scars and warts, his pride and shame. Through his story Baluta, considered his autobiography and recently translated to English by Jerry Pinto, he gives us a chance to reclaim our own humanity. In a society where castes play a big role in determining both the present and the future of a person, social change is the only way to ensure equity and fairness to those regarded as the lower caste members, a group to which Daya Pawar himself belonged. The text Baluta  thus comes in handy to both bring out the woes of the dalits, and their importance on the flipside in the society, which the members of the upper caste blatantly refuse to acknowledge, but left alone, cannot perform these roles that are considered filthy. These Dalits are born into savagery, hence they are compelled to live within this cocoon, with minimum chances of ever changing this situation. Baluta, however, as stated by Pawar is just but a tip of the iceberg, hence there is still more to be deciphered concerning the plight of the lower caste members in India. This paper entails an analysis of Baluta, in terms of how globality, reflexivity and social change have been reflected, with these three concepts oscillating between globalization and localization.