He was a member of the executive board and convenor of Marathi Advisory Board of Sahitya Akademi and president of All India Denotified and Nomadic Tribes, and Member of Sahitya and Sanskriti Mandal. Recipient of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award for Uchalya in 1988, Gaikwad has also won several other awards and honours that include Sahitya Ratna, Anna Bahu Sathe Puraskar (2000), SAARC Literary Award (2001), Gunther Sontheimer Memorial Award (2005) and Maharastra Gourav Puraskar. So, they thrive on theft, looting and and pick pocketing.īesides his tryst with the literary world, Gaikwad has also been working for the upliftment of Denotified and Nomadic tribes and also towards achieving a separate commission for the welfare of these communities.

As the law considers them to be born criminals the Uchalyas are deprived of respectable means of livelihood. In doing so he resists the oppressive structures that brand the Uchalyas socially and legally. As an Uchalya, Gaikwad narrates the plight of his community. Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award for 1988, the book is an English translation of Laxman Gaikwad's Uchalya, published in 1987).

This paper attempts to explore the text to critique the plight of Uchalya community, what are the possible causes behind their stigmatization and re-stigmatization as habitual offenders, and violation of their basic fundamental rights and human rights.Well-known Marathi writer and social activist Laxman Gaikwad's literary career commenced with his first Marathi novel Uchalya (The Branded:), a powerful social documentation of the atrocities and agonies endured by the Uchalyas, a tribe branded as criminals by the British. They were literally liberated on 31 August 1952 that is being now celebrated by them as their liberation day (Vimukti Divas).

However, after a long wait post-independence the government of India re-branded these castes and tribes under a new tag that is Habitual Offenders Act, 1952. During the British Raj after the mutiny of 1857 around 237 castes and tribes were branded as criminal by birth according to the Criminal Tribes Act, 1931. Though India gained a new identity after the independence this community could get out of the clutches of criminal branding till recently. These nomads are branded as criminal tribes by the then colonial masters. This tribe is present in many parts of India known with different names. The auto-narrative by Laxman Gaikwad, The Branded discusses innumerable socio-economic, political and cultural issues of the nomadic tribe Uchalya from the State of Maharashtra.

The Branded by Laxman Gaikwad