Speaking from the Margins: Caste, Gender and Self-Assertion in Select Dalit Autobiographies

Abstract

The Dalit autobiography has become an important literary, historical and political genre in contemporary Indian literature. Different from traditional autobiography which normally dwells on individual personality's development and achievements, Dalit autobiography is one that is linked to the collective experiences of socially marginalised communities. The present paper focuses on the portrayal of caste oppression, gender discrimination, poverty, educational exclusion and resistance in the works of Omprakash Valmiki's Joothan and Sharankumar Limbale's The Outcaste, Bama's Sangati and Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke. Comparatively and analytically, the paper contends that Dalit autobiographical writing operates as testimony and counter-narrative to the dominant versions of Indian society which obscure or naturalize the inequality of caste. The chosen writers turn oppression, being an untouchable, feeling hungry, living in a segregated society, working by birth and feeling humiliated by institutions into resources for critical knowledge. Gender is a special focus in Sangati and The Prisons We Broke, as Dalit women are at the centre of the exploitation and struggle with respect to caste, poverty and patriarchy, as well as becoming workers, storytellers, and subjects of resistance. The paper also examines how education and Ambedkarite consciousness helps to empower the marginalized to reframe humiliation as injustice and silence as a state to be challenged. It argues that the chosen autobiographies transcend the personal anguish and establish a collective voice that is based on dignity, memory, self-respect and social change.