Analysis Of Omprakash Balmiki

The present paper deals with the plight of lower caste people so called Chuhras whose touch were considered to be polluting or contaminated. However the paper narrates many incidents related to Omprakash Balmiki lived in Birla Village, Muzaffarnagar District, but it shows or reflects how people of high class humiliated the low class people. Life of lower class people was made captivated, heinous and hell like due to inhuman behavior of the people higher in hierarchical order to the people lower in rank. Untouchables were not allowed to demand for any wages instead they were provided leftover food (Joothan) as a gift to content. There were different barriers before them at every step. There was no hope, no joy in their lives. To humiliate
He narrates an incident of his life when at one occasion on the marriage of Sukhdev’s daughter, he did not give sweets on the request of Balmiki’s mother for her children, his mother threw all pattls before Sukhdev and from that day, she left collecting Joothan. To a father, his son, his life, is self pride . The same thing happened to Balmiki’s father. As he saw Balmiki sweeping in school assigned by the teacher instead of studding, his pitaji left self control, and got angry to master sahib. What Balmiki felt or experienced was written in words is really heart rendering. It can make even a stony heart person to shed tears listening or reading the plight full condition of untouchables how bitterly and inhumanly they were treated by upper caste Tyagys Balmiki maintains that untouchables are not lacking in reasoning narrating a story of Dronacharya an Ashwathana told by Master Sahib to the students in his school days.

Key words : i) Untouchables – people considered lowest in cast hierarchy , ii) Predicament - woe full plight , iii) Appraisal – an expert estimation of quality, quantity and other characteristics , iv) Contaminated – corrupted by contact , v) Joothan – left over food , vi) Humiliated – brought low in status , vii) Plight – miserable condition , viii) Rendering – the act of interpreting something
“My great grandfather’s name was Zaharia. He had two sons. The elder son’s name was Budha, but everybody called him Budhu . The younger one was called Kundan, Budha also had two sons; the elder was Sugan Chand, and the younger one, my father was Chotan Lal…. Chotan Lal had two sons and two daughters. The younger daughter; somti…. Sukbir was the eldest sons. After him came Jagdish…. Younger to him was Jasbir, then came Janesar and then Omprakash, this is me the younger among the brothers. My sister Maya was younger than me. Kundan had three sons; Molhar , Solhar and Shyamal . He had two daughters. The elder one was named Choti and the younger one was called Syamo” (Joothan, 24-25).
Omprakash Balmiki has been very courageous. He does not hide his identity. “This surname does not lift him up from his childhood and the attendant untouchability” (Joothan, xxi). His father whom he called Pitaji was also pride of his son as he put a mark of identity- ‘Balmiki’ as a title of his name. “Balmiki’s father finds out that his son had to use Balmiki as his surname, a sign of his self-pride”