Golpitha

Golpitha (1972) is the first poetry collection of Namdeo Dhasal, one of the founders of the Dalit Panther organization. Dhasal is one of the most revolutionary, radical and powerful poets of the Marathi literary world. The poetry in this anthology is extremely political and draws on the locale of Golpitha, a district in Mumbai that is sometimes perceived as the hub of prostitution, gangster wars, and a place where everything criminal, nefarious, exploitative and inhuman finds a place. Though not the first Dalit Marathi poet, his poetry was radical in several ways. Here is a specific poem Man You Should Explode. The verse is a melange of "Bambiya" Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu. This poem has been translated by Dilip Chitre. Not shying away from explicit language, Dhasal describes a landscape that was rife with casteist and sexist violence of the every day existence of the inhabitants Golpitha. Written in the imperative, the poem asks the reader to engage in acts of destruction, albeit concluding with a call to preserve the tender hymn of humanity - "man should sing only the song of man."