Touching the “untouchable”

Abstract

The purity-pollution system of the hierarchically casteist Hindu society in India lends a particular complexity to the conception of the pure Hindu body, especially when the female body is epitomised as an embodiment of purity, chastity, and sanctity, while Dalit people are treated as impure. Dalit women, particularly, bear the brunt of the dreaded practices of untouchability against their own bodies not only by the upper caste but also by their own community, thus being thrice oppressed and victimised. This chapter will visit the concept of body and sexuality from select Dalit women’s autobiographies namely The Prisons We Broke (2008) by Baby Kamble, Karukku (2000) by Bama Faustina Soosairaj, and the semi-autobiographical novel The Grip of Change (2006) by Palani Sivakami. These three autobiographies depict extreme forms of “graded patriarchy” where violence and torments are mostly perpetrated on female bodies. These auto-narratives reject the illiteracy that is supposedly attached with female bodies and subvert the concept of purity-pollution by depicting “impure” and “untouchable” female bodies and sexuality. Moreover, these narratives encapsulate a unique and resistant ideology for “sub-subaltern” women since Dalit women are victims to three-fold oppression and subjugation (for being women, Dalit, and finally, Dalit women), they form another subjugated category within the subaltern and are thus termed “sub-subaltern.”