DALIT POETRY AND FEMINISM

Abstract

Dalit poetry since birth, like other excerpts of subaltern writings, entails issues related to gender and self-representation. Not surprisingly, dalit women are subject to exploitation just like their upper caste counterparts. They are even more marginalised within their own caste as patriarchy has always been ruling the roost. Simultaneously with the main current of progressive writings, though very few, but a considerable number of women poets voice not only dalit struggles, but dalit feminism also. These women poets claim for a distinct, recognisable place, not altogether separate from dalit writings. Their poems necessarily sketch the usual suffering of the low caste people in India’s caste-stained social machinery. They speak of, as befitting the canon, the discrimination meted out to the untouchables. Naturally anger, despair, agony, images of captivity and intolerable deprivation form the ground of their poetic outburst. But these poems have another characteristic feature alongside the conventionality stated above - it’s the woman’s voice which always sees deeper and has at its disposal something more to tell than the male poets who dominate the dalit literary cult. Dalit women’s poems venture further - from society to the household, from revolution to the saga of common feminine anguish.

          This paper addresses and analyses the essential components of dalit women’s poems with special reference to the works two women poets – Hira Bansonde and Jyoti Lanjewar. Along with studies of their major poems, this dissertation will attempt to measure both the commonness and the individuality of dalit feminism as hypothesised in the poems.