Celebrating Dalit Women

/ historicallywoman

Dalit, from the Sanskrit दलित, meaning ‘broken’ or ‘scattered’ is the lowest stratum of the Indian caste system. Otherwise referred to as ‘untouchables’, its people exist outside the traditional hierarchy.

Dalit women are said to be one of the world’s most oppressed groups.

Dalit communities exist across India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal. Their women are said to be discriminated against on three counts: class, caste, and gender.

They are often locked out of education and politics – a 2000 study showed that around 75% of Dalit girls drop out of primary school. Girls as young as 12 are recruited as prostitutes, and Dalit women are frequently subject to violence, rape, forced labour, and they face dismissal – at the very least – by the authorities.

Still, Dalit women speak out. Recently, a new wave of literature from Dalit women has sprung into existence, so let’s explore some of the women behind it!

Shantabai Dhanaji Dani – 1919-2001

A photo of Shantabai Dhanaji Dani imposed on a blue background. She looks seriously into the camera.
Shantabai Dhanaji Dani

Born into an impoverished family living in the outskirts of Nashik, India, Shantabai was supposedly named for her father’s disappointment in her being a girl – he was said to have commented that his hopes have quietened (Shanta). The family were frequently subject to caste discrimination, with Shantabai narrating one such event in her memoir, Ratradin Amha (For Us, These Nights and Days). While Shantabai was in fifth standard (middle school/early secondary school), she and her father were invited to eat with a family belonging to an upper caste – the pair were served in the cow shed.

She faced similar discrimination at the Women’s Training College and her mother, herself uneducated, frequently intervened with a sympathetic teacher to ensure her daughter got the education she needed. Shantabai credits her mother as her only source of inspiration.

In 1942, Shantabai heard B. R. Ambedkar’s inaugural speech, and from then on she devoted herself to Ambedkarism, a political ideology which focuses on the ‘untouchable’ castes and has close ties to the Dalit movement. She enthusiastically joined in with political activities, including becoming President of the Scheduled Castes Federation and leading protests against the Poona Pact, the latter of which led to her imprisonment in Yerwada Jail, one of the largest high-security prisons in South Asia.

She joined Ambedkar’s newly-established Independent Labour Party and worked towards creating a movement for landless labourers and widening access to education. Later in life, she served as secretary of several educational institutions for Dalit children in Nashik.

Her memoir, published in 1990, documents the struggles of Dalit people, and it is considered highly significant in Dalit literature.

Shantabai Kamble – 1923-2023

A photo of Shantabai Kamble, laughing into the camera.
Shantabai Kamble

Shantabai Kamble was already retired when she began writing the first autobiography by a Dalit woman, Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha (The Kaleidoscope Story of My Life). This book, which is now part of the Marathi literature syllabus at the University of Mumbai, started life as a series of articles in the magazine Purva before coming out in book form in 1986. It was subsequently translated into Hindi, English, and French.

In her autobiography, Shantabai details how her class, caste, and gender impacted every aspect of her life, including education; when she was a girl, she was forced to learn from outside the classroom (literally – she wasn’t allowed inside), and as a teacher she was routinely threatened with beating. She and her husband were even driven away from one village due to an envious leader of a dominant caste. 

Shantabai had grown up in poverty, her parents working under the system known as taralki, where members of the lower castes performed village responsibilities such as sweeping and patrolling the streets in exchange for food from the upper castes. They wanted their daughter to have better opportunities, and so made sure she went to school – despite the discrimination she faced there, both as a child and an adult, Shantabai celebrates education in her book, which she dedicated to her parents: “To my Aaye-Appa [mother and father] who worked the entire day in the hot glaring sun, hungry and without water, and through the drudgery of labor, with hunger pinching their stomach, educated me and brought me from darkness into light.”

Kaushalya Baisantri – 1926-2011

A photo of Kaushalya Baisantri in front of a blue background. She is wearing traditional Indian dress and smiling.
Kaushalya Baisantri

Kaushalya was born in Nagpur, India, on 8th September 1926. She was the daughter of hard-working parents who strove to allow their seven children (six girls and a boy) an education, and she studied at Jai Bai Chaudhary’s school for a time – Chaudhary was a leader in the Dalit and feminist movements who made a significant impression on Kaushalya’s mother. As such, Kaushalya grew up with his beliefs and she harboured a love of education, which led to her late (for her community) marriage at the age of 21. She met her husband at a students’ Ambedkarite movement, but her marriage was not a happy one – in Kaushalya’s own words: “Devendra Kumar needed a wife only for satisfying his physical needs and making his food.”

After forty years, Kaushalya filed a police complaint against him for domestic abuse and ill-treatment, assisted by her daughter and younger son.

Despite her struggles at home, however, Kaushalya was an emerging star in the Dalit movement. She believed it was her duty to spread awareness of the cause among her people, and so took it upon herself to translate essays and other literature from Marathi to India’s most commonly spoken language, Hindi. When she published her autobiography, Dohra Abhishaap (Twice Cursed), it became the first Dalit woman’s autobiography to be written in Hindi, despite the fact that Kaushalya had originally been educated in Marathi. She knew it was important for Hindi-speakers to be able to read her work and works like it, as caste divides are deeply-rooted in these communities.

Kaushalya gave all her efforts towards gender equality and the rights of Dalit women and she took up the task of organising them into an official movement, Mahila Samta Samaj. She became the first representative of Dalit women in Delhi and brought their case before the President at the time, Giani Zail Singh. 

“Other women too must have had experiences like mine but fearing society and their families they are scared of making their stories public and live their whole lives in suffocation. It is important for these stories to come forward in order to open society’s eyes.”

Kaushalya Baisantri

Dr. Kumud Pawde – 1938-present

A photo of Kumud Pawde sitting in her home, her chin resting on her fist as she looks into the camera.
Kumud Pawde (Image: Aalochana)

If you’ve made it this far, you’ll probably be familiar with the stories I’m telling – a girl born into poverty gets an education and rises up to fight for her rights and the rights of other Dalit women like her, then publishes a book about it. But I beg your patience and your attention for a bit longer, because each of these stories deserve to be told.

Kumud Pawde walked through hell to get her education, beaten up every day by classmates and teachers alike. She could have decided it wasn’t worth the pain, but she stubbornly went back, not missing a single day, excelling despite her struggles. She particularly shone in Sanskrit studies, eventually earning an MA with Distinction in the discipline, despite it being heavily frowned upon for a girl of her caste to pursue Sanskrit. 

During her studies, she was contacted by a young Brahmin (upper caste) man named Motiram Pawde who was running a night school for underprivileged children. He was looking for like-minded teachers and Kumud agreed to join him. The pair fell in love and married despite fierce opposition from family and society – inter-caste marriage was (and remains) taboo. Kumud’s husband supported her every step of the way and fought alongside her for greater rights for Dalit people.

He helped her in other ways too; by gaining a non-Dalit surname, Kumud found new employment opportunities opening up to her, and she became Head of Department of Sanskrit at Government College, Amravati. Her students remember her fondly. She was among the first Dalits to become a Sanskrit Pandit (scholar) and she wrote about her experiences in her autobiography, Antahsphot (Outburst). Kumud also helped facilitate over 300 inter-caste marriages and she was a founding member of the National Federation of Dalit Women. 

Bama – 1958-present

A photograph of Bama sitting outside in a park. She looks seriously into the camera and is wearing traditional Indian dress.
Bama

Bama (a pen name; she was born Faustina Mary Fatima Rani) was born into a Roman Catholic family. She was educated to college level and, upon graduation, worked as a teacher for poor girls. Hoping to escape caste-based discrimination, she took holy orders and served as a nun for seven years, during which she worked to advance Dalit girls in society. Discrimination, however, was pervasive, and Bama discovered a separate training centre for Dalit Catholics where conditions were incredibly poor, prompting her to leave the nunnery. She began teaching at a Catholic Christian school, where, similarly, the nuns oppressed Dalit children and teachers. Angered, Bama began to write.

Her first novel, Karruku, published in 1992, tells of the struggles of Christian Dalit women in the state of Tamil Nadu. What makes this book unique is that she chose to write it in the Tamil dialect specific to her community. When faced with criticism for this choice from the upper castes, Bama doubled down and decided to write all of her subsequent novels in this same dialect.

She did not only face opposition from the upper castes, however. Upon Karruku’s publication, Bama was exiled from her village for seven months due to depicting it in a poor light. Outside the village, Karruku, as well as her other works, Sangati and Kusumbukkaran, were acclaimed and have collectively been translated into English, Telugu, and French. 

Bama never married and never had children. This was a purposeful choice, for which she faced constant harassment and discrimination, and she deeply struggled to find housing. Eventually, she decided to build her own house, which she resides in to this day.

Yashica Dutt – 1986-present

A photo of Yashica Dutt standing in front of a window overlooking a high-rise building.
Yashica Dutt (Image: Calvin Tso Admerasia)

TW mention of suicide

On 17th January 2016, 26-year-old Rohith Vemula, a PhD student at the University of Hyderabad, took his own life. He had been facing caste-based discrimination for months and, though his status as a Dalit has been questioned, evidence suggests both he and his mother identified as such.

His death sparked a wave of protests across India and Indian communities across the world. One such person touched by it was Yashica Dutt, a then-29-year-old journalist living in the US. Five days after Rohith’s suicide, she posted a blog article entitled ‘Today, I’m Coming Out As Dalit’.

Yashica was born in Ajmer, India, on 5th February 1986. Her non-Dalit sounding surname (her grandfather had dropped the Nidaniya surname for the purposes of passing), her education, and her lighter skin tone allowed her to pass as Brahmin, a pretence she kept up for most of her life. She grew up terrified that people would find out her true identity; most of those who did, she wrote, didn’t care, but some friends stopped being in touch once they discovered she was Dalit.

Since 2016, Yashica has come to terms with her identity and now lives openly as Dalit. Her book, Coming Out as Dalit, expands on her journey of acceptance, and she also started a Tumblr blog called ‘Documents of Dalit Discrimination’. There, she posted the stories of Dalit women who had contacted her to talk about their experiences living as Dalit. The blog hasn’t been updated since 2016, but I would encourage reading through some of the posts.

I could go on all day – my original list was about fifteen women long and that was after some serious picking and choosing. Unfortunately, this article has to end somewhere, so I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these six mini-bios. If you’re interested in further research, please see the sources below!

Sources:

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