Love After Babel & Other Poems

Love after Babel is a brilliant new poetry collection by Dalit poet Chandramohan S, a highly charged political treatise. Chandramohan’s position as a Dalit writer illuminates his treatment of caste-based oppression, while also creating a sense of radical solidarity between various marginalized identities in contemporary Indian society through his focus on other forms of oppression, namely on experiences of Islamophobia, gender based violence and racism. It is an active political tool to counter multiple forms of oppression in India and across the world.

Love after Babel is a brilliant new poetry collection by Dalit poet Chandramohan S, a highly charged political treatise. Chandramohan’s position as a Dalit writer illuminates his treatment of caste-based oppression, while also creating a sense of radical solidarity between various marginalized identities in contemporary Indian society through his focus on other forms of oppression, namely on experiences of Islamophobia, gender based violence and racism. It is an active political tool to counter multiple forms of oppression in India and across the world.

Introduction: Orienting Dalitality-Suraj Yengde
Part I. CALL ME ISHMAIL TONIGHT
Thirteen ways of looking at a black burkini / Thirteen ways of looking at a black beard / Before your interrogation / When cops come to frisk you
Part II. NAME ME A WORD
Killing the shambuka / Priest craft / Kiss of love / Love in the time of CCTV / Namdeo Dhasal’s letter to a young poet / Beef poem / The immigrant word / Land for the tiller / The other / Why do I write poetry? / License to kill / Why loiter? / The life and times of Jesus / The rape and murder of a tribal / Glass ceiling: A new language /
Portrait of the poet as a young woman / Make in India / History / Kerala Dalit Panther / Nangeli / The earth / A local train conversation (1) / A local train conversation (2) / Plus-sized poem / Draupadi's wedlock(s) / Grapes of wrath / My psychological lynching / Life has to go on / Elegy for the slain bloggers
Part III. LEARNING FROM THE PANTHERS
Learning from the Panthers
Part IV. LOVE after BABEL
21 Poems
Accident at a river
Afterword— Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya
About the author