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Introduction

Nowadays English is no more the patrimony of the Anglo Saxons, in fact it has

emerged as a universal public property. Apart from being only means of communication

between people, it has been deliberately taken up by writers as a medium of creative

writing. Indian English writers have also gained mastery in using this language to

articulate the deviations of an individual’s consciousness. Works of Indian English writers

are extremely Indian in both theme and spirit which have given a new shape and vision to

English Literature. And not to forget that feminism too has added a notable trade in

modern-day Indian-English writings.

Among many genres of Indian writing, one is Dalit literature. This genre of literature

was ignored for a long time and not considered seriously in the mainstream literary

[Link] now Dalit literature has been well acknowledged and can be seen as the

nationalist movement in creating castes, tribes and the voiceless crushed by the voiced. It

focuses on the lives, experiences, and struggles of the Dalit community. Out of many

literary trends that emerged, Dalit literature is one of the most significant one as it states

the impoverished untouchables of post-independence India.‘Dalit’ is actually a Sanskrit

word which means downtrodden, broken or oppressedbutin India, with the change in

people’s perspective, the actual meaning lost its significance and got to be understood as

to be ‘outside the varna system’, and thus these ‘Dalits’ are considered as‘untouchables’.In

simple terms it can be understood as the battle of ‘untouchables’ to be accepted by society

as a whole since centuries, has emerged as a term called ‘Dalit identity’. The term was

initially used by Jyotirao Phule and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, two prominent personalities who

played a vital role in the development of Dalit literature. This community has faced caste-

based oppression and discrimination for centuries. With the emergence of Dalit literature,
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a new wave has emerged which is undoubtedly adding a new depth to understanding

everyday life and society.

Women writers are being seen paying attention to women's experiences which is

evident in their fictions and biographies. The situation for the relegation and subordination

of women existence can be discovered from the narratives of women's lifestyles in their

works. Instead of obedient, docile, and inert women, we discover insistent and hostile

women characters in the writings of current Indian-English female writers.

The present proposed research titled “Re-examining Dalit Feminism in the

Writings of Yashica Dutt, Sujatha Gidla and Bama” studies the feminist voices in the

select autobiographies. It would highlight women’s relegation, sufferings and their

struggle for self. Dalit woman’s experiences are different from any other caste women

especially that of upper caste woman in Indian context. If we talk about struggle and caste

discrimination amongst Dalits, it is women who face the worst kind of violence. Thus, no

other genre can help visualise such diverse situation of Dalit women than in the life-

writings of Dalit writers itself.

State of Art

This research aims to contribute to the existing knowledge of feminist flippant

theory in the writings of Bama, Sujatha Gidla and Yashica Dutt from the Dalit feminist

perspective and postmodernist theories. The study will include feminist retellings of these

subordinated and marginalised women characters from the point of view of gender

experience, space assigned to women and the concept of subservient study of particular

characters. It would also analyse the textual features and power relations in the text.

Further, this research aims to establish a comparative study between the writings of above-

mentioned writers contributing to Dalit literature.

Literature Review
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The study will analyse, synthesize and critically evaluate the primary sources as

well as the secondary sources. There are several secondary sources available in the field of

relevant study and various researcher’s work in the field of Dalit autobiography. Books

like J.H. Hutton’s Caste in India (1969), Raj Kumar’s Dalit Literature and Criticism

(2019), Trilok Sharma’s Dalit Women: Issues and Perspectives (2011), deal with several

questions and issues which may not only help in understanding Dalit voices in literature

but also describe place of women in the social, economic and cultural factors.

The research seeks to study the experiences of women and also their social,

cultural and gendered structural similarities and variations.

Problems to be investigated

The aim of the present research is to explore feminist voices in the select Dalit

autobiographies. This research aims to closely study the primary sources with their

secondary and tertiary sources to derive the proposed aims. The primary sources include

selected autobiographies of Dalit women: Sujatha Gidla’sAnts Among Elephants: An

Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, Yashika Dutt’s Coming Out as

Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving India's Caste System and Bama’s Karukku.

Thus, it provides a broad base to work upon, not just by deriving similarities

between the cultures and characters but also their experiences. Keeping in mindthe works

mentioned above, this research proposes to answer the following questions:

 How is it an essential theoretical tool for feminist and postmodernist analysis?

 How is the idea of power structure revised in the select life-writings?

 How has the gender stereotype been prominent in the select life-writings?

 How textual discourse operates within the select life-writings?

 How is the concept of marginalised voices reverted in the select life-writings?

 How Dalit women doubly suffer for being Dalit and women?
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Aims and Objectives of Research

The aims and objectives of proposed research are as follows:

 To provide theoretical as well as contextual background to understand the marginalized

identity of Dalit women.

 To appreciate resistance of Dalit women to the existing institutions and norms of

society.

 To analyse Dalit women’s subjugation, oppression and discrimination.

 To analyse the connection of caste and gender in the life of Dalit women to present-day

society in particular and the world in general.

 To study the similarities and differences between these women characters to gather

evidence on how women divided by culture and caste share a similar set of issues and

to what extent a society controls and restricts them.

 To trace out the cultural shock which goes against the existing moral/cultural values of

the society.

 To explore the issues of sexism, casteism, violence, abuse, and trauma.

 To focus on broadening the concept of feminism and tracing out some features of

postmodernism like inconsistency, contradiction and multifacedness of truth.

 To study the harassment of Dalit women by the caste people.

 To bring out the feministic approach

Research Hypothesis

The present study seeks to hypothesize that Dalit women experience a unique and

intensified form of oppression that is shaped by the intersection of caste, class, and gender.

Despite facing multiple forms of oppression, Dalit women exercise agency and resistance

in various ways, including through collective action, cultural expression, and everyday

acts of defiance. The research work is an attempt to find out that education is a key factor
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in empowering Dalit women, enabling them to challenge dominant narratives, assert their

rights, and build collective power. Dalit women are reclaiming and redefining their

identities, challenging dominant narratives and asserting their own voices, experiences,

and perspectives. The research work will analyse the existing policies and laws that need

to adequately address the unique experiences and challenges faced by Dalit women,

highlighting the necessity for more inclusive interventions.

Research Methodology

The present research is to be done under the school of humanities and is qualitative

in nature. The research is a study of feminist voices in select Dalit life-writings. It uses

textual descriptive method of analysis. This study works to tell the lived experiences of the

narrators, the ever-existing issues that are relatable today. Thus, it will be a kind of

descriptive, exploratory, and interpretative in nature. It will adopt the MLA 9 formatting

of citations and referencing.

Sources of Data and Tools to be used

The proposed study is qualitative in nature. Hence the tools to be used are books,

journals, scholarly articles, excerpts from interviews, and the internet. A close reading and

analysis of the author's works as primary sources along with the secondary sources will be

done to critically analyse in compliance to the topic of the study. The experiences of the

writers in different time period will open and lead a new path for further investigation that

can advance this research.

Plan of the work

It is envisaged to divide the thesis into the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Chapter 3: Feminist Voice in Sujatha Gidla’sAnts Among Elephants: An

Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India,

Chapter 4:Feminist Voice in Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir of

Surviving India's Caste System

Chapter 5: Feminist Voice in Bama’s Karukku

Chapter 6: Analysing Cross-cultural Comparative Study of theCentralCharacters

Chapter 7:Conclusion

Select Bibliography

Chapter 1: Introduction

The introduction of this research will discuss how the authors’ works impact the

society through their experiences. For a brief introduction to the authors of selected

writings, let us start with Sujatha Gidla, an Indian-American author. She is no more an

unfamiliar name who has contributed in this genre of writing. She lives in New York and

works as a conductor on the New York City Subway. Gidla is known for her book Ants

Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India. She was

born in Andhra Pradesh, India and moved to the United States in 1990, when she was 26

years old. Her writing has appeared in The Oxford India Anthology of Telugu Dalit

Writing. Sujatha Gidla was raised in the Christian dalit family, in Kakinada, a small town

in present-day Andhra Pradesh. Her great grandparents accepted Christianity during

Colonial rule after they heard the Gospel propagated by Canadian Baptist missionaries in

the town. Sujatha's grandparents were also educated at one such institution run by the

missionaries in Kakianda, the aim of which was heralding development in

[Link] Rao, Gidla's grandfather, studied in a school set up by the Canadian

[Link]'s parents were also college lecturers.

Ants Among Elephants is Gidla's first book and was published in 2017. It is a

family memoir that accounts the life of her uncle, KG Satyamurty, a Maoist leader who is

also known as the founder of a left-wing militant organization called the People's War

Group (PWG). The book also has the descriptionof the personal history of her mother

Manjula's life, both of which are juxtaposed against the peasant revolt and the formation of

a new state in newly independent India. Gidla classifies the book under the genre of

'literary nonfiction'.

The next author is Yashica Dutt, born in a Valmiki Hindu (Dalit) family in Ajmer,

Rajasthan on 5 February 1986. She completed her graduation in [Link]. from St. Stephen's

College, Delhi in 2007. Yashica completed her Master's degree in Arts and Culture

Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2015.

Yashica Dutt or can say Yashica Dutt Nidaniya is an Indian writer and freelance

journalist who has written on topics including fashion, gender, identity, culture and

caste. Following the response to her 2016 blog post, ‘Today, I’m coming out as Dalit’,

Dutt published "Documents of Dalit Discrimination" on Tumblr and the book Coming Out

as Dalit, which received a Sahitya Akademi award.

Yashica's book Coming Out as Dalit is her memoir about growing up in a Dalit

family. She describes through her book the reasons of pretending to be of another caste

that too an upper caste and also how she felt constrained to hide her caste. She was

throughout terrified of her true identity being found out. The book details her journey of

coming to terms with her true identity. It can be said that the book is woven with her

personal experiences. She received the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for the book in

the English category for the year 2020.

The final author of study is Bama who was born in 1958 as Faustina Mary Fatima

Rani in a Roman Catholic family belonging to the Paraiyar community from Puthupatti in
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the then Madras State. 'Bama' is her pen name which she kept later. Her mother was

namedSebasthiamma and her father Susairaj. Her father was employed in the Indian

Army. Her brother, Raj Gauthaman is a famous Dalit writer. Bama's ancestors were from

the Dalit community and worked as agricultural labourers. It was Bama’s grandfather who

had converted from Hinduism to Christianity. Bama had her early education in her village.

Her early literary influences include Tamil writers like Jayakantan, Akhilan, Mani, and

Parthasarthy. In college, she read and enjoyed Kahlil Gibran and Rabindranath Tagore.

After her graduation, she became a school teacher for very poor girls, following which she

served as a nun for seven years. She chose to take the holy orders to escape caste-based

discrimination.

Karukku is Bama’s autobiographical novel which accounts the joys and sorrows

experienced by Dalit Christian women in Tamil. Karukku is an autobiography that

interprets Bama’s life, from her childhood to her early adult life as a nun, and beyond. The

book was originally written by her in Tamil in 1992 and translated into the English version

by Lakshmi Holmstrom in 2000. Karukku is one of the first autobiographies of a Dalit

woman written in Tamil.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Among Dalits, it is women who face the worst kind of violence. They are

gendered, sexualized and treated as both polluted and sexually available for the men of the

dominant caste under the cloak of religious sanctions. Dalit women face patriarchy at

home and the burden of patriarchy with caste outside. None Dalit movement or the

women’s movement in India has opened up and accepted the issues of Dalit women.

In the 1980s and 1990s Dalit women claimed their issues and their own movement

to fight patriarchy outside and within their households. The movement marked their

separate identity outside the category of women and Dalit. Gradually they showed their
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presence in the political sphere too. Dalit women’s autobiographies are opening up issues

faced by them and bringing in front of the world which remained close to their hearts.

Sharmila Rege calls autobiographies of Dalit women as testimonies. It also emphasizes

their faith in justice and transformation in society in the conditions of Dalits and the caste

system.

There are several secondary sources available in the field of relevant study.

Various researchers work in the field of Dalit autobiography. J.H. Hutton’s Caste in India

(1969) gives critical study and examines the origin of caste system in Indian society.

Raj Kumar’s Dalit Literature and Criticism (2019), is an attempt to write and

develop a critical literary history and theory of Dalit literature. The book deals with

several questions and issues which may help in understanding Dalit voices in literature.

Trilok Sharma’s Dalit Women: Issues and Perspectives (2011), describes place of

women in the social, economic and cultural factors.

Chapter 3:Feminist Voice in Sujatha Gidla’sAnts Among Elephants: An

Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

This chapter will discuss Sujatha Gidla and the interconnected nature of tyranny

that a lower-middle-class Dalit woman faces during growing up in rural India. On the one

hand, it will thoroughly explore the systematic enormity and doggedness prevalent in the

Indian social structure, specifically focusing on the caste system. On the other, it will

discuss about her family members and their stories which will present a comprehensive

study analyse on how personal decisions and environmental constraints determine identity

in the context of extensive societal hierarchy.

Sujatha Gidla’sAnts Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of

Modern India (2017), talks about her family’s struggle to overcome poverty, caste

oppression, social ostracism and territorial stratification in the name of caste. It critiques
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the modernist agenda of political parties and emergence of Maoist activities of those who

are tagged as threat to national security and integrity.

Chapter 4: Feminist Voice in Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir of

Surviving India's Caste System

This chapter will analyse the theme of Yashica Dutt’s memoir andespecially the

situations that she comes [Link] Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt depicts the debilitating

burden of living with the secret of hiding her identity and also how terrified she had been

of being found out. She not only talks about the reason behind hiding her identity but also

talks about the tremendous feeling of empowerment she experienced when she finally

stood up for herself and her community.

Though the book is a personal memoir, it is also a narrative of the Dalits. While

writing about her journey of coming to terms with the fake identity, she takes us through

the history of the Dalit movement. The book gives an account of the consequences of her

community’s lack of access to education and culture, the need for reservation,lack of Dalit

voices in mainstream media, Dalit women’s movements and their ongoing contributions.

This study will analyse how readers may use such books to find an answer for

crucial questions about caste and privilege. Woven from personal experiences as well as

that of other Dalits, this book forces us to confront the injustices of caste and also serves

as a call to action.

Chapter 5: Feminist Voice in Bama’s Karukku

Bama’s autobiography, Karukku, gives an account of her detailed life story andalso

her community. Through the book Bama exposes the hidden casteism in South Indian

village and Church. It is a critique of Indian society, its educational system, the

bureaucracy and the church space that claims to believe in egalitarian values of
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Christianity but practice inequalities in the name of caste. It also exposes the caste and

class complicity in post-independence India.

This study proposes a female’s quest for identity and social acceptance but also

would be an example to the resilience and resistance of Dalit women in India. It will

analyse how readers may use such books to find an answer for crucial questions about

challenging oppressive structures and promoting social justice and equality.

Chapter 6: Analysing Cross-cultural Comparative Study of the Central Characters

This chapter will explore the theoretical cross-cultural study in detail. This chapter

will discuss the social identification of the protagonists that Yashica Dutt, Sujatha Gidla

and Bama have constructed in their works. It will also discuss the idea of social and

cultural alienation explored in the books. These areas will be discussed within the counter-

hagemony, subaltern, feminist and postmodernist theories.

Chapter 7: Conclusion

The last chapter will summarise the research and conclude the point of view

from the researcher. This study will emphasise different perspectives of Dalit female

writers Sujatha Gidla, Yashica Dutt and Bama. In the selected writings of these writers the

economical, political, religious and cultural status of the depicted society will be studied

and explored. These writings explore the characters’ interpersonal relationships and also

how this change or development help them survive the social distortion. Through these

selected writings, personal experiences based on time and place, would also be explored.

This study will analyse how readers may use such write-ups as toolsforunderstanding the

feelings as well as the traumatic condition of Dalit people especially Dalit females in

society which further can be useful while reacting and behaving with them.

Relevance to the Present-Day Problem and Contribution to the Present Knowledge

The problem of Dalits persists in society. This study analyses how condition of

Dalits is portrayed in autobiographical works and how these portrayals reflect cultural

attitude, beliefs, and fears.

Scope for Research in Future

The present world has brought such issues which are new and different from the

ancient ones, nevertheless the underlying problems remain more or less the same. Issue of

Dalit women is still an area to understand and resolve. Hence, this research is quite

relevant to the present times and tiles the way for future scholarship where the researchers

can build on the current study by taking feministic issues and capsizing the traditional

social order to examine contemporary societal problems.

Bibliography
A. Primary Sources:

Gidla, Sujatha. Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the

Dutt, Yashica. Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving India's Caste

Bama. Karukku, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Macmillan India Limited,

B. Secondary Sources:

Broughton, Trevlyn. Autobiography: Critical concept in Literary Cultural

Studies. Routledge, 2007.

Ghadially, Rehana. Women in Indian Society. Sage Publication, 1988.

Green, Graham. Waysof Life: An Autobiography.: Vintage Books, 1999.

Kumar, Raj. Dalit Personal Narratives: Reading Caste, Nation and Identity.

Orient BlackSwan, 2011.

Limbale, Sharan Kumar. Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature: History,

Controversies and Considerations, translated by Alok Mukharjee.

Orient Longman,2007.

Ojha, Rekha. Dalit Women in India. Akansha Publishing House,2012

Omvedt, Gali. Dalit Vision. Orient Longman,2008.

Singh, Rosy. Autobiography: Fact and Fiction. Aryan Books International,

2009.

Rege, Sharmila. Writing Caste/ Writing Gender: Reading Dalit Women’s

[Link], 2006.