Sahdev Luhar teaches at the Department of English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Kundhela, Vadodara. He is credited with four books and several research articles. His areas of interest are narrative studies, translation studies, folklore studies, and contemporary Indian English.
EDUCATION
I have a PhD degree in English
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Literature and Literary Theory, Arts and Humanities, Classics, Conservation
3
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
Destroying and Recreating Myths: A Subversive Response to Caste Ideology Sahdevsinh Ratansinh Luhar, Dushyant Nimavat Contemporary Voice of Dalit, 2025 Centred on a famous canonical Hindi fiction by Munshi Premchand (1880–1936), Godān (1936), which means ‘a gift of a cow’ and on contemporary Dalit fiction by Roop Narain Sonkar, Sūardān (2010), which means ‘a gift of a pig’, the present article discusses how the hegemonic Indian myths are destroyed and recreated as a subversive response to caste ideology. Godān, which can have a parallel to a popular Hindu myth of a ritual of gifting a cow which, as it is believed, guarantees moka (salvation) after mtyu (death), is condemned by Sūardān, which, in its turn, backs its assault by presenting a parallel myth of pig. Thus, the present article illustrates how the canonical literary texts are revisionized and re-appropriated by the vidrh writers using adaption techniques similar to the postcolonial strategies of ‘writing back’.
Translating the oral tradition of community literature A case study Sahdev Luhar, Dushyant Nimavat Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 2020 Community literature, here, refers to a body of oral literatures by the diverse ethnic groups of India that speak thousands of indigenous languages. Many less explored indigenous groups with living oral traditions are found in India but their orality is not yet documented. In our attempts to find such cultural groups, we came across many cultural groups that are being ignored because of their small population, lack of political backup, lack of governmental upliftment policies, socio-economic conditions, or lifestyle. The cultural groups that are being referred to here are not the communities that live in tribal or forest areas but they are groups of people that live among us in our cities or villages. These groups mainly consist of migrating populations whose members wander here and there to earn their livelihood. These are the cursed communities in the sense that they have been ignored by all – by the government itself and also by the dominant cultural groups. In this paper, we try to record our own experiences and the difficulties that we faced while translating the oral tradition of such a cultural group – the Gādaliyā Luhār community. This paper also tries to show how translation is a two-tier (or a three-tier) process in countries such as India where the majority of marginalised cultural groups speak indigenous languages or dialects.
Cultural Memory and Gādaliyā Luhār Identity in Gujarat Sahdev Luhar, Dushyant Nimavat South Asia Research, 2020 Focused on the cultural memory of the Gādaliya Luhār community in Gujarat, this article discusses ways in which oral traditions and cultural memory among nomadic groups in India shape the identity of a community under the challenge of cultural amnesia. The Gādaliyā Luhārs claim Rājpūt status and close association with the kings of the Mewar region of Rajasthan, but experienced double cultural amnesia, first under the Mughals and later in the British Empire, which affected their identity. The article seeks to assess the authenticity of the community’s assertions of cultural memory in the light of some historical documents and asks to what extent cultural memory through oral narratives can be taken as valid evidence for understanding the cultural identity of a specific community.
