Suresh Kumar is Assistant Professor of English at Government Sanskrit College, Tungesh in Shimla. He is the author of Exploring the Margins: Caste, Class and Gender Identity and has contributed to several Journals and edited volumes. His areas of Interest include Dalit, tribal and postcolonial literatures, women's autobiographies, folklore, and cultural studies.
DALIT WOMEN CONSTITUTE the lowest segment of Indian society. Educationally backward and economically ill- equipped, Dalit women are spurned in religion-cultural spheres and are frequently persecuted on account of their caste, class and gender. They are subjected to humiliation, physical violence, sexual assaults and relentless violation of their human rights by dominant socio-economic and patriarchal forces. Despite numerous legal and constitutional provisions, Dalit women are still denied voice, will and agency and they are coerced to live under subhuman conditions. This book foregrounds Dalit women's issues as addressed in their writings selected for analysis and surveys their voices as articulated in them. It probes Dalit women's views and understanding of caste, class and gender and analyses their responses and strategies to counter them and eventually emancipate themselves. It also traces the evolution of Dalit women's social, political and literary voices and highlights the changes that they underwent in terms of nature, form, purpose and manner of articulation over the years in the given formats. The writers I have selected for critical engagement in the book come from diverse social, economic, political, geographical, cultural and educational backgrounds and they offer diverse views of caste and present different responses, stratagems and Replacement models. They also employ different narrative strategies, diverse forms of characterization, themes, images and symbols. Despite these obvious differences, Dalit women writers under focus share certain commonalities in terms of their understanding, articulation and handling of caste, class and gender issues. They offer an authentic glimpse into the lived experiences of countless Indian Dalit women, showcase their distress, exhume the patterns of their sufferings and voice their sustained and systematic protest against them. They forge a cogent critical stance to negotiate with hegemonic forces and give rise to a chorus of voices that problematizes existing power structures, relations and strives to initiate a just and egalitarian system in which they can have a viable space and can live with dignity and autonomy. The book examines the significance of Dalit women's literary voices and highlights the changes that they have managed to bring about in the existing unjust socio-political, economic and political systems. It offers suggestions on significant contemporary debates and issues such as caste-based reservation, violence and the mounting religio-cultural chauvinism.
DALIT WOMEN WERE long relegated to the absolute bottom of social hierarchies and subjected to social, political, cultural and religious prohibitions, restrictions and oppressions, this, along with patriarchal domination often degraded them to subhuman levels and compelled them to live in wretched poverty, misery and deprivation. Conventional Indian social and cultural codes, as they evolved over the centuries, left little space for women's autonomy and independent existence; particularly, they allowed Dalit women very little access to education, property and even basic human dignity. Further, practices such as the deradasi, murali, jogini, nagarvadhu and thira also led to the sexual exploitation of Dalit women through prostitution sanctioned in the name of tradition and religion. Dalit women had to suffer frequent human rights violations. Indian women have often been thwarted from asserting their autonomy by a visceral gender bias in society. Dalit women too, apart from caste and class-based discrimination, have been the targets of patriarchy within Dalit households and society. The patriarchal oppression of Dalit women damaged their personhood and emotional well-being and also affected their social, political and economic life by keeping them at the bottom of the private and public space. This perpetual subjugation and alienation imposed a silence on Dalit women and suppressed their voices through hostile socio-cultural structures for centuries until recently when their voices began to be raised and heard.
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