Subverting Hegemony

Dalit Women’s Resistance and Identity in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke

Abstract

Dalit women confront a series of challenges in the form of gender, caste, and class discrimination in the course of their subjugation and are frequently exploited by several agencies during various periods of their lives. Consequently, they are stereotyped as victims or subalterns in society. Over the last few decades, sociopolitical movements and progressive strategies have helped many Dalit women to break the shackles of enslavement
and reclaim their distinctive identities. The self-narrative of a Dalit woman reflects her existence, hardships, struggles, resistance, and survival stories. In this form of protest, a woman acts as the voice of the silenced, standing up for herself and her community by challenging pervasive forces to establish identity and agency. Baby Kamble makes her protest against hegemonic forces through her writing and activism. Her self-narrative The Prisons We Broke is a testimony to the emancipatory struggle against inhumane oppression. This article examines how Baby Kamble and her fellow women in the Mahar community resist brutal exploitation at multiple levels and eventually develop a Dalit consciousness to create their existential selves.