The Pamba river moves as its many droplets touch the lands they pass. It doesn’t stop. As the river completes its journey, it carries some from one bank to the other, holds some in its coolness. But at times, the river tricks too. It hides large rocks, and deep holes beneath the surface. The consequence? People slip and are taken away into the gushing water.
The villagers residing on the bank of Pamba had a different story of the river. A powerful man who once created nuisance for the community was drowned there by the people. As he went under, he dragged 40 others with him. The river now holds 41 ghosts, and they pull the living down.
Aleena, a Dalit poet and Ambedkarite feminist from Kerala, told this story at Muthamizh Peravai on Saturday, during the Verchol Dalit Literature Festival 2026, held as part of the fifth edition of Vaanam Art Festival organised by Neelam Cultural Centre. “People found the idea of a group conspiring against someone scarier than the danger of the river itself. These magical explanations reveal what people fear, what they value, and what they consider important,” she said.
The session, moderated by writer and translator Reena Shalini, brought together Aleena and writer Vinil Paul for a conversation on Dalit history and fiction.
An evening of stories
Reena opened by reading a Tamil translation of a poem from Aleena’s collection of 91 poems, Silk Route, which received recognition from the Kerala Sahitya Akademi. The poem follows a woman who cannot attend a wedding because she has no proper sari, and the ghost of her absence haunts the celebration like silk draped over grief.
The conversation turned quickly to what fiction is permitted to do. Aleena observed that Dalit writers face a persistent demand for realism, even in their imaginative work. “People ask which real incident a character refers to,” she said. “That is why Dalit autobiographies are celebrated more than fiction. Reality itself is seen as powerful.” Meanwhile, she argued, dominant groups treat their own stories as history worth protecting, sometimes above human rights. She pointed to the Ram temple dispute and the founding of Israel as examples of fictional or mythological narratives used to legitimise displacement and violence. “To place stories above human rights is privilege,” she said.
On the question of emotional range in Dalit writing, Aleena shared, “Life is a mix of generational trauma and inherited pleasures.” She described pressure from audiences who expect Dalit writers to write only about suffering, and pushed back against it. “There is celebration, happiness, hope, small joys and big joys. People still do not believe we experience the full range of emotions.”
Vinil, whose book Adimakeralathinte Adrishyacharithram examines the history of slavery in Kerala, turned to structural power. He cited Dr BR Ambedkar’s warning that India risked becoming an oligarchy and named Kerala as its clearest example. Two communities, Nairs and Syrian Christians, dominate the state’s political parties, media, cinema, and educational institutions, he said. “For almost 35 of Kerala’s 69 years of governance, the chief ministers have come from the Nair community.” Reservation functions as a token gesture in most institutions. Even KR Narayanan, who studied at the London School of Economics and became the President of India, faced caste barriers when he returned to Kerala.
On Malayalam cinema’s celebrated recent run, Aleena offered little applause. “It is not democratic in terms of capital,” she said. “People who control the industry extract stories from marginalised communities, profit from them, and do not share that capital with the communities those stories come from.” She highlighted the film Lokha: Chapter 1 featuring Adivasi characters as examples of surface representation without genuine understanding. “I have always felt a lot of hypocrisy in Malayalam filmmakers when they deal with marginalised stories,” she noted.
What the afternoon made clear is that the fight is not only over who tells the stories, but over who profits from them. When Aleena had arrived at the festival, she said she felt something rare. “Usually, I feel like I am given a chair in a place where I do not belong. This is the first time I feel like I belong to the entire space.” Vaanam Art Festival was a space Dalits had built for themselves, and that, as Aleena made clear, makes all the difference.