Heera Dom was a

Bhojpuri Bhojpuri (;Bhojpuri entry, Oxford Dictionaries
, Oxford U ...

poet who contributed to Dalit Literature. He is credited with creating the first poem about the Dalits. The poem was Acchut Kee Shiqayat, which was printed in the "Saraswati" published in

Allahabad Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administrat ...

in 1914.

Life

He was a Dalit poet from the ''Domra'' or ''Dom'' caste which is one of the lowest ranked castes in

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

caste system. He was born in 1885 in

Danapur Danapur is a Indian satellite town and one of the 6 sub-divisions (Tehsil) in Patna district of Bihar state.Varanasi Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic t ...

"Acchut Kee Shiqayat"

"Acchut ki Shiqayat" (

Bhojpuri Bhojpuri (;Bhojpuri entry, Oxford Dictionaries
, Oxford U ...

: 𑂃𑂓𑂳𑂞 𑂍𑂵 𑂮𑂱𑂍𑂰𑂉𑂞;

IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...

: achūt kī śikayat; transl. ''The compliant of an Untouchable'') is written in

Bhojpuri Bhojpuri (;Bhojpuri entry, Oxford Dictionaries
, Oxford U ...

. It was published in the

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

magazine

Saraswati Saraswati ( sa, सरस्वती, ) is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, speech, wisdom, and learning. She is one of the Tridevi, along with the goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati. The earliest known mention of Saraswati as a go ...

in 1914 from

. In this poem, Dom has expressed the trauma of his

Dom Dom or DOM may refer to: People and fictional characters * Dom (given name), including fictional characters * Dom (surname) * Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto * Dom people, an et ...

community in literary form. The first and second stanza of the poem are as follows:

References

1885 births Year of death missing Bhojpuri-language writers Dalit people Indian male poets {{Asia-poet-stub