Journal of International Women's Studies
Volume 22
Issue 10 Casteing Gender: Intersectional
Oppression of Dalit women
Article 9
October 2021
Dalit Women in History: Struggles, Voices, and Counterpublics
Tarushikha Sarvesh
Rama Shanker Singh
Tehzeeb Alam
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Sarvesh, Tarushikha; Shanker Singh, Rama; and Alam, Tehzeeb (2021). Dalit Women in History: Struggles,
Voices, and Counterpublics. Journal of International Women's Studies, 22(10), 91-105.
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Dalit Women in History: Struggles, Voices, and Counterpublics
By Tarushikha Sarvesh 1, Rama Shanker Singh 2, Tehzeeb Alam 3
Abstract
History is a projection of realities from the historian's lens and parameters. The popularity
and acceptance of historical accounts depend much on hegemonic structures and knowledge. The
Dalit community was marginalized within the Indian economic, social, and political
historiography. Gradually, with the rise of Dalit consciousness, men—the better-positioned gender
of the community—tried to express their vulnerabilities from a masculinist perspective. The
literature written also projected women only as extensions of male protagonists. Though the
traumas Dalit women have faced due to intersectional realities are separate from that of men, they
could not find a place in early literature as complete entities, entitled to be acknowledged as such.
The trade union movements also sidelined the issues of Dalit women laborers. To date, issues of
Dalit women's property rights, longevity, education, and empowerment are largely androcentric,
as the state’s schemes and policies are majorly heteronormative and male centric. The reason why
we need to keep invoking the past and history is to assert that the present condition of Dalit women
has its roots in the past and their issues and voices continue to remain on the margins despite the
rich social experiences they carry and represent.
Keywords: Dalit women, Counterpublic, History, Voices, Democracy, India
Introduction
History is a projection of realities from the historians' lens and parameters. The popularity
and acceptance of historical accounts depend much on hegemonic structures and knowledge. The
Dalit community was marginalized within the mainstream Indian economic, social, and political
history. Gradually, with the rise of Dalit consciousness, the better-positioned gender (men) of the
community tried to express its vulnerabilities from a masculinist perspective. The literature that
was being written, could merely project women as extensions of male protagonists. Even though
the trauma that Dalit women went through for bearing intersectional realities were different from
that of men, they could not find a place as complete entities in themselves in early literature on
caste. The trade union movements also missed acknowledging the issues of Dalit women laborers
as unique. To this day, the issues of Dalit women's property rights, longevity, education, and
empowerment are largely androcentric, as the state's schemes and policies are majorly
heteronormative and male centric. The objective of the paper is to invoke this history, to reiterate
the assertion that the present condition of Dalit women has its roots in the past while their issues
and voices continue to remain on the margins to this day despite the social experiences they carry
and represent. The reality of most Dalit women has not changed much even in the urban areas.
1
Tarushikha Sarvesh is Assistant Professor at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Aligarh Muslim University
Ramashanker Singh is Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla
3
Tehzeeb Alam is a Doctoral Candidate at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Aligarh Muslim University
2
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Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 22, No. 10 October 2021
Due to the dependence on the Jajmani 4 relations that existed in the past, in rural India, the condition
of the poorest women who belong to the Dalit community didn’t change very much. Their
dependence on the patrons pushes them into traps of exploitation for job security or some form of
financial security (Sarvesh, 2017). This vicious circle of dependence keeps them powerless and
robs their agency as decision-makers even for their individual lives.
This paper aims to highlight the continuous marginalization of Dalit women’s narratives
as well as the sanctioned ignorance (Martin, 2013) of their lived realities in historical trends and
patterns, which continue to largely define their everyday lives in contemporary times. Scholarship
concerning the past might seem self-evident but must be considered in all their complexities when
the question of history arises: "What we know about the past is dependent upon the questions
historians have asked and how they have answered them. What has been the focus of their interest"
(Rose, 2010, 1). What needs to be understood is that women, in general, have been ignored in
mainstream history and that is why the issue of difference among women and the intersections
they bear have been marginalized and unrepresented in the knowledge production of the past,
which we understand as history. Many believe that women have been neglected as historical
subjects because history has been framed "almost singularly about the exercise and transmission
of power in the realms of politics and economics, arenas in which the actors were men" (Rose,
2010, 4). Since history is always seen as the exercise and transmission of power, the hitherto
powerless communities could not even find mention in the historical processes. In the European
and North American context, women—and especially Black women—were ignored, similarly in
the Indian context, among the 'Dalits' – the most marginalized community and the lowest in the
hierarchical order of the Indian caste system—Dalit women experienced the extreme forms of
exclusion in the historical processes. Even within the Dalit community, Dalit women's voices in
the transitional processes of the society went unheard and undocumented, and this has been seen
as 'sanctioned ignorance' (Nair, 2008, 60) of the mainstream academia and history. It would not be
wrong to say that Dalit women's histories were subsumed under one broad historical narrative of
either power transitions over the period or under the nationalist history as the mainstay of the
colonial period. It is believed that even in early post-independence Indian feminism, there was
blindness to caste, but the emergence of Dalit counterpublics are also evidenced in history which
have challenged the historical orthodoxies that have kept caste out of the public sphere and
rendered it as merely a social and not a political issue (Rege, 2006; Nair, 2008). These Dalit
counterpublics had emerged in the form of Satyashodhak Samaj , non-Brahmin and the
Ambedkarite Movement.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in the context of "rearranging desires,"
explains the emptiness in the idea of reforms that happen to be unevenly distributed across the
caste divide in India, one such reform being widow remarriage. For a Dalit intellectual and
particularly a Dalit woman, such a reform story would have no appeal as widow remarriage has
been customary among Dalits (Spivak, 2006, 1). Movements like widow remarriage that are
considered as reform movements impacting the society and women at large were in a real sense
reform movements specifically for caste Hindu women in 19th Century Bengal. The ways in which
these movements are projected and taught insinuate how history is embedded in caste-class
categories and formations.
4
In accordance with the ritual status and the distance between the service castes and the Jajman castes (patron castes)
in the social structure, the latter exercised political and economic control over the former and it varied from region to
region as all the service castes were not considered Kamins universally in the Jajman-Kamin dyad. Usually, Dalit
castes, the lowest in the order of caste structure, were referred to as Kamins in the Jajman-Kamin dyad (Rao, 1961).
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Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 22, No. 1 February 2021
The aforementioned concerns and gaps call for news methods to arrive at a fuller and richer
account of the past. Janaki Nair points out that Indian histories have started uncovering new
archives and that there has been a lateral spread of the historical methods ranging from field studies
to developmental economics (2008). It can be said that the silence of the archives regarding Dalit
women’s voices has led to their historical misrepresentation and the construction of a site of
‘difference in Derridarian sense, understood as the “gap between object of perception and the
meanings these have as symbols or representations” (Stanley and Wise, 1983).
Since historical accounts have been narratives and factual details of the voices of particular
sections—especially the dominant sections—it is believed that feminist historical accounts of the
past must give way to an awareness that these are accounts, historiographies, present-day
constructions, and not slices of the past itself (Stanley and Wise, 1983, 218). This understanding
tells us that plausible counterfactual claims are always possible; therefore, on the one hand, the
preoccupation and the intellectual concerns of the historians and the litterateurs have to be put
through incisive scrutiny. On the other hand, historiographies exploring the marginal voices and
the historical accounts silencing their voices need to be deconstructed and retold to understand the
position and conditions of those voices in the present society.
To address the subject of Dalit women's voices from a historical perspective, one needs to
understand various meanings of the word 'voice'; this would give us a better sense of the word
'Dalit'. Only then would the question of 'Dalit women's voice' become clear. Webster's dictionary
describes voice as the sound or sounds articulated by the mouth of living creatures. It further adds
the meaning of voice as the right to express an opinion or choice (Webster's 1971, 1111). Voice is
understood as a set of assertions and rights of an individual. Having a voice makes people feel not
only alive but free and capable of responding to others. This also implies that counter-voices exist.
This reciprocity matters in a society dominated by a few castes and cultural and gender categories.
In this regard, various aspects of voice and visibility have been described by thinkers like Nick
Couldry, Judith Butler, and others. The two paragraphs below summarise some of their thoughts
regarding 'voice'.
Voice is one word for the capacity to be able to give an account of oneself and one's
place in the world. But simply having a voice is never enough: the important thing
is that one needs to know that his or her voice matters (Couldry 2010). The manner
in which things are organized ignores the importance of voice and keeps our
consciousness of voice at bay. The status of voice as achieved in politics depends,
then, on becoming ‘visible’, not in the sense of being physically seen but in the
sense of being regarded as relevant to the distribution of speaking opportunities
(Couldry, 2010, 107). The idea of 'materialization' as posited by Judith Butler helps
understand how the processes and structures allow some types of voice to emerge
and others not (Butler, 1990; 2005).
In the context of Indian society, there are structures and processes which have
proved to be disobliging towards certain groups and their voice—like the Dalits.
Within the Dalits, the further invisibility of the Dalit women's voices prohibits the
process of justice from taking its full course. It is very important to understand that
the issue of caste and the issue of gender are not competing with one another for
importance, rather they are very much intermingled within the larger reality of
justice, as one is not above the other. (Turner, 2014)
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A community gets pushed to the margins through a long, continuous process. Within the
community, women further get marginalized due to the ubiquitous nature of patriarchy. A
marginalized group's voice mostly goes unheard, and it often also goes unexpressed. The
marginalization of a community creates double marginalization for women. The oppression is
doubled when it comes to Dalit women. This kind of multiple marginalities is comprehended with
the help of approaches like intersectionality. Intersectionality was coined by Kimberley Crenshaw
when it came to highlighting the marginality and oppression of Black women. The levels of social
justice in any society can be figured only by taking into consideration the most marginal of the
society. Tracing the Dalit women’s voice in the history of Indian society does not only do the task
of giving them some visibility, but it also helps in tracking the pattern and processes of social
change within the society from below.
To understand the plight of Dalit women and the need for recognizing their voice, it is
important to first understand the overarching term Dalit. The term Dalit is explained by many
thinkers and writers based on the idea of oppression. Professor of Marathi from Aurangabad Dr.
Gangadhar Pantawane, the founder-editor of Asmitadarshan (mirror of identity), defines Dalit in
the following manner: "Dalit is not a caste. He is a man exploited by the social and economic
traditions of the country. He does not believe in God, rebirth, soul, and holy books teaching
separation, fate, and heaven because they have made him a slave. He does believe in humanism.
Dalit is a symbol of change and revolution" (Zelliot, 1978).
It is believed that Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, during his years as a student at
Columbia University from 1913 to 1916. became aware of the consciousness and assertion of
Black people in America. It gave him the base of developing a strategy for fighting against caste
discrimination in India (Kapoor, 2004). Suyamariathai Iyyakkam (Self-Respect Movement),
which was launched by Periyar E. V. Ramasamy Naicker 5 had documented the voices of Dalit
women, but there is criticism by scholars that these voices have been left out in the study of
historical movements. The feminist movement has been considered mostly the prerogative of
upper-caste women (Turner, 2014). Periyar recognized the issue of Indian women’s rights in
connection to what he had been learning about feminist movements in Europe in the late 1920s,
which became a significant part of his Self-Respect Movement (Khilnani, 2016, 389).
The studies and writings on the Self-Respect Movement were mostly silent on the
consistent struggle of the movement against women’s oppression and “its attempt to dismantle the
ubiquitous structure of the patriarchy in Tamil society” (Anandhi, 1991, 24). N. Ram and Arulalan
have briefly thrown light on this aspect of the movement, other researcher’s silence is “significant
because the question of women’s emancipation was one of the central themes in the political
agenda of the Self Respect Movement, especially during its early phase” (Anandhi, 1991, 24).
Self-Respect marriages (i.e., marriages free from rituals) were one of the highlights of the SelfRespect Movement. In 1930, a women's conference was also held within the ambiance of the
Second Provincial Self Respect Conference at Erode. Appeals for action were made to the
5
Periyar, like Phule and Ambedkar, was a man of remarkable insight, keen sympathy, endowed with a great and
original imagination. He was deeply sensitive to the nature of ignorance, suffering, and injustice in his society and
brought to people’s understanding a robust critical vision that helped them evolve universal categories of
understanding, analysis, and action. Through a creative deployment of these categories, such persons were able to
identify the extent of hurt, oppression, and injustice in caste society as well as challenge its existence. People like
Periyar, Phule, and Ambedkar shook the Hindu social order to its very roots and, to use Periyar's favorite figure of
speech, stood it on its head (Geetha and Rajadurai, 1998, 17).
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magistrates to identify the temples that encouraged the Devadasi system 6. And the fight against
this reprehensible practice is still on. Geetha (2021) unravels the inherent caste hierarchy and the
differential social positioning of the Devadasis drawn from the non-Brahmin and Scheduled castes.
Dalit Devadasis have been excluded from the liberation process initiated by both the anti-Devadasi
movement and the Dalit liberation movement.
Major Dalit Women Voices and Issues in the History of India
Where there have been cracks in systems of oppression, Dalit women, as with other
oppressed groups, have spoken of their struggles and cries for justice in their narrations for
centuries (Irudayam S.J. et al 2011). A student of social sciences must be perceptible to such
voices. So, here we are going to discuss the voices of Dalit women within the history of South
Asia. The word ‘Dalit’ carries some interchangeable meanings. The earliest surviving text in which
there is a mention of the division of society into four varnas—Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and
Sudra—is Rigveda. In the historical process of categorization, the Sudras are also known as Dalits,
untouchables, and Scheduled castes (Singh 2015). There was no separate category for women
within the four varna, but women were considered less privileged. In the rituals of everyday life
of educated people, Sudra women were always discarded. The idea of purity and the punishment
for touching a Dalit woman was prevalent in society. A dvija (twice-born) 7 was never supposed to
see or be in the presence of a Sudra woman. If one sees a Sudra woman, one must suspend his
Vedic recitations 8 (Olivelle 1999, 18; 173-74; 250). Thus, history becomes more discriminatory
for a Dalit woman and it excludes her.
In Rigveda, many women recited hymns and took care of the agricultural fields of their
fathers. They went to wars and lost their limbs. They were also busy making baskets, dyeing, and
grinding but there was not much space for women’s voices. So, the question of the voice of Dalit
women was unimaginable in this scenario. The later Vedic texts present contradictions. Shatapatha
Brahman (5.2.1.10) states that the wife is half her husband and completes him. On the other side
of these texts, there are stigmas of pollutions by menstrual blood (Singh 2009, 205). A woman in
the menstruation period was prohibited from participating in yajnas, and students were warned
against the recitation of Vedic hymns for a menstruating woman (Olivelle 1999, 18). Thus the
body of a woman became a tool of exclusion. We argue that this notion of impure women’s bodies
promulgated the sense of untouchability in India. Such stigmas were doubly discriminatory for
Dalit women. The Atharvaveda depicts Sudra women as lascivious creatures. It says, "Go fever,
to the Mujavans, or, farther, to the Bahlikas. Seek a lascivious Sūdra girl and seem to shake her
through and through” (Book v, Hymn xxii, 7).
The Upanisadic age was the age of knowledge. Women were speaking up. We can hear
Maitreyi in Brihadaranyak Upanisad who argues with her husband sage Yajnavalkya (Olivelle
1996, 28-33). Deep down in the Ganga plains, some men were giving messages of kindness and
6
The word Devadasi is a very complex term in the cultural history of pre-modern and modern India. Generally, they
were women primarily from the lowest Dalit castes considered to be married to the lord of the temples or the ones
who served God. The practice was prevalent in the premises of the great temples of India. In modern times there is an
act of parliament abolishing the Devadasi system, but there are reports on its existence in some places even today.
7
The upper castes which have the initiation ceremony (upanayana)—regarded as second birth or spiritual birth—are
known as Dvijas. This is done through an initiation ceremony in which males wear a sacred thread (Manilal Bose,
1990).
8
The oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several recitations or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras; these are
considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence.
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compassion to the downtrodden in the sixth century B.C. These were promulgators of heterodox
sects. These sects gave space and a comparatively progressive environment to women, Sudras,
and other less privileged communities. Mahavira and Buddha taught equality and compassion for
every human being. Makkhali Gosāla admired Sudra women, a doubly excluded category in Indian
society. It was Hālāhalā who gave her patronage to Gosāla (Basham, 2009, 51) while other teachers
were being greeted and patronized by kings. The six predecessors of Gosāla are reported to have
lived and taught at caityas outside various cities of the Ganges basin (Basham, 2009, 33). The
name of Hālāhalā as patron of Gosāla is not merely a fact of early India but it denotes the right of
the salvation of Dalit women by their own choice. This choice became more visible in the poems
of Therigatha.
Therigatha is a collection of poems by Buddhist Bhikkhunis (Buddhist Nuns) bound
together by shared experiences and relationships of care and intimacy with each other, as is
expressed in verse from one of Rohini’s poems. She says:
Those who have gone forth
Are from various families and form various regions
And still they are friendly with each other
The world of the ordained women in the Therigatha is one of sexual equality, in stark
contrast to the social inequalities between men and women in lay life. It is a keen insistence on the
possibility of freedom for women as well as for men (Hallisey, 2015, xxix). A close reading of this
first feminist text of India can give a glimpse of the inner aspirations of women from lower strata.
A vessa (prostitute) was never considered a normal human being, but a polluted one. Buddha and
his sect gave not only some social and cultural meaning by accepting them in the fold of Buddhism,
but it also offered them a chance to express themselves.
By then I had enough
Of what my body brought
And wearied I turned away
May I not be reborn again and again
In endless and inevitable births.
(Hallisey, 2015, 23)
When we say that a woman has her voice, what does it mean? A voice that wants to
cultivate a state of mind filled with freedom:
I cultivated a state of mind
that depends on nothing else and cannot be measured,
I became focused, collected.
I am free, and I will always be completely free.
(Hallisey, 2015, 63)
Bhakti Movement 9 (Lorenzen, 1995) has been explored from various perspectives (O’
Hanlon and Washbrook, 2011) but here we look into it from women's perspectives. Although the
9
The Bhakti Movement was a pervasive cultural movement that appeared in various forms of cultural expression
including religion, philosophy, language, art, and literature (Pandey and Tyagi, 200, 129). It was a pan-Indian uprising
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Bhakti Movement was dominated by men, it included women as its prominent members. Dalit
women also had a role to play in it. In an insightful study on the Bhakti movement from 6th century
to 17th century A.D., Vijaya Ramaswami has underlined the social background of women saints in
South India (Ramaswami, 1997, 448-53). There were women from Sudra varna—from Mahars
(untouchable), carpenters, spinners, Chandalas, Vellala, hawkers, Paraiya, and Mali communities.
Ramaswami highlights that out of 75 women saints, 41 percent of women saints belong to the
untouchable and artisan class. She explains that Sudra women were more emancipated and equal
to their male partners than upper-caste women. They were dependent on their husbands, fathers,
or sons, while one could see women saints from lower social orders engaged in selling flowers,
cleaning houses, and other household works. The Vachanas (poems) of Rammavve describe the
profession of weaving and questions of salvation (Ramaswami1997: 466). Their labor and crafts
provided them a say in everyday life and in a spiritual matter of a community. In a Brahmanical
social framework, both women and low castes were denied the path of salvation. Dalit women
suffered dual deprivation, but some Dalit women raised their voices. Gangamma, a sex worker,
was one of them. She managed to create a sacred space for herself (Ramaswami, 1996, 27). In premodern India, these women saints not only criticized Brahmanical social order but also put forward
their vision for a just society. Poetess Kallavve attacked the façade of purity maintained by upper
cates:
They (the Brahmins) still regard
Madigas as untouchable.
They (the Brahmins) will go
The Nayaka Naraka (hell of hells).
(Ramaswami, 1996, 56-57)
Reread the above lines. The poetess is not asserting herself merely from the standpoint of
a woman but, rather she is strongly holding her ground as an active participant in the struggle
against caste discrimination and social injustice.
Dalit Women’s Voices in Modern India
The project of modernity was also seen as a project of liberation for women. The advent of
modern education during the colonial period created a class that was very sympathetic towards the
discrimination of women within the caste society. The first half of the 19th century of colonial
India abolished some heinous practices against women i.e. sati 10, child marriage, polygamy, and
also some laws for widows. Some scholars say that reforms created by the British were meant for
imposing Victorian worldview on Indian subjects. The beneficiaries of these rules were the women
from the upper strata of society. At the other end of the battle of emancipation, some Dalit women
were fighting in unequal battles with British rule in India. Dalits were absent in the pages of the
conventional mainstream historiography.
of a people's culture against feudalism, which had its roots in some significant processes of change in the 11th and
12th centuries when various castes came into being and regional languages and their literature evolved (Pandey and
Tyagi, 2001, 129).
10
Sati was the practice of burning widows in India or of widows burning themselves “(the expression, originally
denoting a faithful wife, says in its modern use nothing about the agent, and thus nothing about the voluntary or
involuntary character of the act) on the funeral pyres of their husbands’ bodies” (Fisch, 2005, 293).
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The first great uprising against British rule was the revolt of 1857. It played a great role in
the making of modern consciousness in India. From the very end of the revolt till the opening of
the 21st century various groups have claimed the legacy of the revolt. The last entrants were Dalits.
Now Dalits are recovering their history and voices. These groups are also highlighting the role of
their 'women heroes'. In search of icons and symbols, Dalits are seeing Jhalkaribai and Udadevi as
their heroes who are no less than any upper-caste hero in history (Narayan, 2006, 112-49).
Jhalkaribai was a woman of Kori cast, and Udadevi was from Pasi. Both Kori and Pasi are
untouchables in the Hindu social order and are categorized as Scheduled castes in modern India.
Jhalkaribai is associated with ‘Rani Laxmibai’ of Jhansi 11. She fought along with Rani of Jhansi
but could not get her due share in historical writings. Now Dalits are considering Jhalkaribai a
prominent fighter of 1857. In this process, they are infusing emancipations of Dalit voices within
the national history.
After the revolt of 1857, the new education system, press, and social movement accelerated
the process of women's visibility in public domains. Despite some limitations, the social
movements enabled some women to carve a niche for themselves and work towards women's
emancipation and liberation. Women like Pandita Ramabia and Tarabai Shinde tried to bring to
the fore the condition of women in the caste society. They did not focus on women’s condition in
terms of different caste realities prevalent within the Indian society. Pandita Ramabai refused to
remain a Hindu and delineated how the “Sanskritic core of Hinduism was irrevocably and
essentially anti-women. In her conversion testimony, Pandita Ramabai had put the women of high
caste and low caste within a single class, in explaining discriminatory notions against them
(Omvedt, 2006, 26- 27).
Clubbing all the women's voices indiscriminately left the Dalit women's voices buried
beneath the mounds of hierarchical and patriarchal intersections of Indian society. The three-fold
discrimination of caste, class, and patriarchy faced by Dalit women could not be addressed by
bringing the Dalit women's voice within the fold of women's universal voice. Various Dalit women
writers have tried to rethink and re-read historical movements like the Telangana Movement, the
Ambedkarite Movement, and the Self-Respect Movement to bring out the Dalit women's voices
and their peculiarity within the realm of social justice. These voices are brought out with the help
of Dalit women's testimonial literature that give first-person accounts of discrimination and
exploitation. Dalit women's voices are also brought out by looking into their participation in
various rights movements.
During the nationalist struggle for freedom, every section of the society attempted to
combine social and political liberation. Women were seeking a role in making the environment
progressive: a conference of the Progressive Women's Association was held in Madras in 1938. It
was in this conference, that the title Periyar was bestowed on E. V. Ramasamy for his efforts
against caste patriarchy. The case histories of a few women activists who participated in the
movement and national struggles bring out how such movements provided the space for Dalit
women to transform their lives and have a voice of their own. One such voice was Moovalur
Ramamirtham Ammaiyar, who belonged to the caste from which Devadasis were drawn. She
narrated her story in Kudi Arasu magazine in 1925 (Anandhi, 1991, 34). Though she belonged to
11
Vrindavanlal Varma's novel in 1946 first evoked Jhalkari textually as a loyal companion of Rani Laxmibai, one
who dutifully served her queen by putting her own life in danger (Deshpande, 2009, 875). He, also tapped into existing
local memories of Lakshmibai's dramatic escape, some of which included Jhalkari’s story. Jhalkari's exploits were
popular among the Kori community and her caste status and dialect formed part of the Bundelkhandi social and
linguistic landscape (Deshpande, 2009, 875).
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the caste from which Devadasis were drawn her family, in particular, had been a traditional nonDevadasi family. She was forced into devadasi customs to fetch money for the family through this
profession. Later, she realized the exploitation of the low-caste women through the Devadasi
custom. She walked out of this system and married a musician called Suyambu Pillai.
Ramamirthan Ammaiyar began her political career in the Indian National Congress but left it to
join the Self-Respect Movement in the mid-1920s. She published a voluminous novel in Tamil in
1936 on Devadasis and also wrote the fictional series Damayanthi in Dravida Nadu in 1945.
Among the Dalit voices that have made themselves heard in history, Savitribai Phule is
very prominent. Savitribai was the first low-caste woman to have stressed the importance of
education and English through her poems. She, along with her husband Jotiba Phule, raised the
issues of Dalit women in particular and women in general. She wrote poems that became
recognized in the British Empire. Savitribai's collection of poems came out in 1854 and is entitled,
"Kavyaphule”. Savitribai Phule started schools exclusively for Sudra and Dalit women. Savitribai,
along with Jyotirao Phule, did the historical work of building a holistic and integrated
revolutionary cultural, social, and educational movement of women-Shudra and Ati Shudras of the
country. This work is the beginning of a new epoch in the history of Hindu culture, wrote an
anonymous journalist while reporting on their work in The Poona Observer and Deccan Weekly
(Narake, 2009, 9):
Savitribai had taken teacher’s training at Ms. Farar’s Institution at Ahmednagar and
in the Normal School of Ms. Mitchell in Pune. If these documents are to be given
consideration, Savitribai Phule may well have been the first Indian woman teacher
and headmistress. Her stepping across the threshold of the home to teach marks the
beginning of public life of the modern Indian woman. In an interview given to
Dynanodaya on 15 September 1853, Jyotirao said, "Those who are concerned with
the happiness and welfare of this country should definitely pay attention to the
condition of women and make every effort to impart knowledge to them if they
want the country to progress. With this thought, I started school for girls first. But
my caste brethren did not like that I was educating girls and my father threw us out
of the house. Nobody was ready to give space for the school nor did we have money
to build it. People were not willing to send their children to school but Lahuji Ragh
Raut Mang and Ranba Mahar convinced their caste brethren about the benefits of
getting educated”. (Narake, 2009, 10)
E.V.R. Nagammaiar, the wife of E.V. Ramaswami, was a member of the All-India
Congress Committee. When Ramaswami got arrested under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure
Code for violating prohibitory orders, Nagammaiar not only organized a group of women and
protested against the order, but also raised public consciousness by carrying on propaganda
through the streets of Travancore to fight for the rights of non-Brahmins to walk the streets where
Brahmins lived (Geetha and Rajadurai, 1998). This had reflections of Black feminism in the USA.
Women’s participation in Ambedkarite Movement was brought out by Marathi Dalit
writers Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon. They wrote Aamhihi Itihaas Ghadwala: Ambedkari
Chalvalitil Streeyancha Sahabhag. Urmila Pawar not only contributed towards making the Dalit
women visible in the Ambedkarite Movement but also through her research and testimonies
brought out the grim reality of the missing voices in the archival material. This tells us how
important it is to do the ethnographic study of the archives and look into archival silences. She
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also highlighted the conspicuous absence of Dalit women's voices and the missing
acknowledgment of Dalit women’s participation in the available literature. The Dalit movement
was given an overall male identity as only male voices and male Dalit leaders were celebrated in
history and Dalit literature.
Dalit women's presence, voices, and narratives, as part of the Indian society and as part of
various historical movements, largely went unnoticed or undocumented. Sharmila Rege states that
such books as that of Urmila Pawar, which looked into the contributions made by women in the
Ambedkarite Movement, challenged the assumed male identity of the collective subject of the
Dalit movement (Rege, 2006).
Literature has always been a vehicle to usher a just and humane society. It questions the
subjugation and dehumanization of a large section of humankind. Here we can take of the writings
of some Dalit female writers like Bama and Sivakami who portray the oppression of Dalit women
and subvert male dominance in their works (Nayar 2011, 365-80). Bama’s Karukku (1992) goes
beyond the genre of a typical autobiographical novel. M.S.S. Pandian (1998) argued that Bama
verbalizes her own life story, depletes the autobiographical "I", which he calls an "outcome of
bourgeois individualism", and "displaces it with the collectivity of the Dalit community". This way
her story becomes a story of community where the traumatic experience of an individual converts
itself into a collective biography. What happened to Bama could easily have happened to any other
Dalit woman of her village. She had the opportunity to tell something that others in her community
did not dare to voice. Bama, therefore, instead of promoting her voice, functions as a site for the
crisscrossing of multiple voices from within her community.
Bama avoids naming individuals in her story. The act of naming is considered an exercise
of power, and she deliberately chooses not to name her village, the priests, schools and colleges,
the nunnery, the Dalit headman, etc. This conscious omission of distinctiveness showcases this
message (Armstrong, 2010). This becomes a universal story of Dalit women, and the writer creates
a sisterhood with the reader. Armstrong points out that Bama's text is marked by an absence of
adherence to grammatical rules. She conveys a sense of remorse and guilt when she talks about
the material benefits she had enjoyed, an elusive dream for others in her community. Bama unfolds
her growing-up story in episodes, and throughout she displays indomitable courage, conquering
the dominant forces (Armstrong, 2010). In a critical study of literary texts written by some Dalit
activists and writers, Dalit male writers selectively excluded women’s voices and brought forth
their view on behalf of Dalit women (Rege, 2006). Dalit male writers have ignored Dalit women's
own narratives of pain and instead portrayed their own understanding of it (Sunder Rajan, 1993),
and have mentioned the traditional problem of the rape of Dalit women as part of atrocities in
general on the Dalit community by upper-caste people. Most of the short stories by male Dalit
writers portray the male Dalit protagonist as the sufferer throughout the narrative, one who finally
seeks emotional and political reawakening as a Dalit (Brueck, 2014, 162).
The autobiography of Kaushalya Baisantri tells the inner world of a Dalit woman who is
twice-excluded and jeopardized by male dominance and imposed the demerit of being a Dalit
woman. Her autobiography Dohra Abhishap (doubly cursed) was the first autobiography of a
woman in the Hindi language. She was a Marathi Dalit activist and has a legacy of the Marathi
Dalit movement. Her biography offers a greater world view of a Dalit woman. It analyses not only
caste oppression but also the domestic violence suffered by Dalit women. Here, caste becomes
secondary and patriarchy dominates the everyday life of a Dalit woman (Merrill, 2014). Dalit
women's autobiographies are comprehended as narratives of collective experience for which
Sharmila Rege chooses the term “testimonios” (Rege, 2006), often used to assert the Dalit
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women’s subjectivity in subordination to the authority of her community (Nair, 2008, 63). Dalit
women’s autobiographies are also seen as autoethnographies 12 (Periasamy, 2012; Haider, 2015
Sharma, 2021). Carolyn Ellis, an established auto ethnographer, defines autoethnography as
“research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural,
social and political” (Ellis, 2004). Sharma (2021) emphasizes that narratives of Dalit women are
autoethnographies, cultural biographies, and social accounts of experiences of a muted group,
realities that have not been revealed before, and the collective voice of Dalit women writers is a
literary practice of Dalit Feminist Standpoint.
The 1990s were when, almost all of a sudden, many Dalit women's organizations sprung
up: one of the most important ones was the National Federation of Dalit Women (NFDW), founded
in 1995 by a Dalit activist called Ruth Manorama. NFDW brought to the limelight the state's
inability to protect the human rights of Dalit women (Subramaniam, 2006). At the UN World
Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, NFDW even demanded that
caste discrimination be declared a form of racism. There were also a few other organizations: All
India Dalit Women's Forum, which came up in 1996; an organization for Dalit Christian women
came up in 1997. The focus of these organizations was Dalit women, and it led to a debate on
plurality vs. unity in the context of women's movements (Subramaniam, 2006).
India adopted her Constitution on 26 January 1950 and provided a universal franchise to
her citizens. This was the first step towards a political just society. The upper strata of the society
dominated the initial decades of free India. The scene changed after some peripheral groups
entered into electoral politics. The peripheral groups included the groups that were kept at the
margins of the society like the lower and middle caste groups. By the late 1970s, there was
increased participation of politicians from the lower social strata, with less or more vernacular
education, whose political imaginations and practical preoccupations were very different from the
upper-middle-class politicians due to their circumstances and experiences (Kaviraj, 2010, 72).
They not only changed the course of politics at the regional level but also at the state and national
level. The legacy of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and their pursuit of social justice created a 'Dalit
Public' (Narayan 2011). Dalit women are playing a big role as voters and contestants in elections
(Narayan 2011, 143-44). They can voice their concerns in the parliament and state assemblies. The
life of Mayawati—the four-time chief minister of the largest state of India, Uttar Pradesh—is a
testimony to Dalit women's empowerment. Mayawati's rise to power, her assertions, and social
engineering to gain political representation have to be acknowledged and commended; at the same
time, however, one needs to be aware of mere symbolism and iconography. A few exceptional
cases like Mayawati and some other Dalit women leaders like Krishna Tirath, Shailaja, and Meera
Kumar should not be seen as representative of Dalit women's realities in the Indian society as
women's leadership in general and Dalit women's leadership, in particular, do not get politicocultural acceptance and hence the contentious demand of quota within quota (according to the
caste categories) for women’s reservation (John, 2000) in the Indian Parliament.
In the Panchayati Raj 13 institutions, a certain number of seats are reserved for women.
These reserved seats for women are also allotted to Dalit women. Through this, they find a space
12
Evading consensus, definitions of autoethnography have varied since the 1970s as they have evolved over the
period (Ellingson and Ellis, 2008).
13
Article 40 of the Indian Constitution through Directive Principles of State Policy lays down that the State shall take
steps to organize village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable
them to function as units of self-government. The 73rd Amendment Act, 1992 of the Constitution of India envisages
the Gram Sabha as the foundation of the Panchayat Raj System to perform functions and powers entrusted to it by the
State Legislatures.
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to voice Dalit women's oppressive condition, even as they continue to bear the brunt for voicing
their opinions as rape and sexual violence remains prevalent even for those Dalit women who have
gained some political representation 14.
Conclusion
The limitations and hurdles in the expression of Dalit women's voices in modern
democratic India reveal the tradition of silencing and marginalization. This continuum of
experiences in Dalit women's lives makes it imperative to trace the long-term historical structures
and concerns that surround the issues of Dalit women and their assertions through participation in
historical movements, political mobilization, and literary writings. Finally, it is rightly said that
exploring the plausible counterfactual claims in the form of 'histories from below' lead to the
recovery of past events, persons, and mentalities' (Stanly and Wise, 2008, 217). What Nancy Fraser
said about democracy in the U.S. stands true for India as well: "In the U.S. we hear a great deal of
ballyhoo about the triumph of liberal democracy and even the end of history. Yet there is a great
deal to object to in our own actually existing democracy (Fraser 1990, 56)." Indian democracy too
has to be reminded time and again of its exclusionary practices, policies, and institutions. Without
the inclusion of historically and structurally marginalized lives, democracy can neither be practiced
nor experienced in its true sense and form.
14
A study titled 'The State of Panchayats: 2007-2008' done by the Anand based 'Institute for Rural Management
(IRMA) brings out the point about the condition of Dalit women taking up leadership roles, especially in Gram
Panchayats.
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