Abstract:
The rise of Dalit feminist viewpoint has unsettled the monolithic interpretation of gender issues and identity politics in India and has questioned the foundational basis of the mainstream Indian feminism which claims to represent the voices of all Indian women. The proponents of mainstream feminism in India have been accused of deliberately ignoring the caste-based oppressive dynamics of gender subordination to sustain the caste-based privileges, thus preventing women of the most oppressed groups from acquiring agency, subjectivity and a dignified identity outside the caste-segmented Hindu society. The Dalit feminist writers reject the homogeneous or essentialist interpretation of feminist analysis and doing gender politics, which consciously suppress the radical voice of the marginalised women suffering from the multitudes of oppression, violence and deprivation in their quotidian existence. The paper traces and examines the origin of Dalit feminist viewpoints and foregrounds the intersectional feminism which laid out the intersectionality of caste, class and gender locations to theorize and understand the semantics of gender articulation and caste-based violence on the suppressed women. The Brahminical and patriarchal nature of society has also been decoded in this paper to understand the very specificities of gender experiences of women’s subordination and how they are connected to the social prejudices and regressive mentalities, emanating from the caste locations of the victims of gender violence and oppression.
Key Words: Caste, Dalit, Feminist, Intersectional feminism, Violence, Marginalised.
Introduction:
The feminist movement in India has never been an organised social movement from its inception. It has remained subsumed under the anticolonial struggle. In the beginning of colonial rule, the British maintained “the policy of non-intervention” pertaining to Indian society. The arrival of Gandhi has integrated the invisible issue of women’s empowerment in the broader spectrum of the anti-colonial struggle. But, his theorization of women’s question has been embedded in the masculinist understanding of society and freedom. Women have been given freedom within the domestic limits which reinforced the gender based inequalities and gender-based division of labour and the spatiality marking the public/the private realms.
The rise of feminist thoughts in 1980s and 1990s marked a “paradigmatic shift” in the history of gender politics, as the Black and third world feminist have made increasing visibility in the world feminist politics. The theoretical and ideological challenges posed by the Black and third world feminists to the white feminist leaderships has created a disruption in the overall gender justice movement and provincialized the feminist thoughts. Black women consider that their specific oppression and marginalisation in the white-dominated society based on racial segregation and their subsequent freedom from such gender unequal society could not be considered to be their sole responsibility as it needs to be fought at the collective level. The reluctance on the part of white feminists in addressing the issue of race-linked oppression showcased their racial bias and their intention not to be associated with the anti-race ideology. This prompted Black feminists to raise their independent voice of “difference” and how their subjective experiences constitute a different socio-political reality which is separate from that of the white feminists’ lived experiences.
In the Indian context, there has been no uniformed response to the issue of women’s empowerment. Till the rise of caste based political parties in 19980s, the feminist movement in general has been piloted by the savarna women and they hardly paid any attention to the contribution of non-Brahmin women in feminist theoretical developments. The caste-bind nature of women’s organisation forced women from the marginalised social backgrounds to initiate autonomous organisation for women’s development. Their standpoints somehow pluralize or provincialize the feminist discourse in the country which has been so far moulded by the upper caste women. They shifted their approach from mere “difference’ to a “Dalit difference” to highlight the epistemological significance of their lived experiences and the elaborate social mechanisms that torture them in their everyday living. As India is fragmented along caste and ethnic lines, there has been no unified response to gender injustice and therefore it led to the plurality of gender experiences based on women’s socio-political locations. The protest movement for gender oppression of Dalit women have hardly been launched by savarna women as they differ in theory and social positions, thus preventing such protest from assuming a broader show of solidarity that transcends caste and ethnic lines in India. This is an obvious failure of feminist movement in India, as it has never included the powerless and the marginalised women within its theoretical spectrum.
The Dalit female scholars refute the “subjective experiences of knowledge” of the upper caste female activists as “the universal experiences of womanhood”. The subjective experiences of Dalit women has become the base for personal politics aimed at the collective liberation of women belonging to the suppressed communities. As the upper caste feminists restrict their analytic tool of understanding gender politics within the mere axis of gender location, Dalit feminists are shown expressing their reservation about the authenticity of such gender theorization, which hardly pays any attention to understanding the interlinkage of caste, class and gender dimension of such gender oppression. This pushed them to go back to the non-brahmanical renderings of Brahmanical society and its patriarchal structures and how they sustain the underlying structures of social hierarchies and gender oppression. Instead of The “west-inspired” social reformist agenda of feminist articulations, Dalit female scholars find a greater synergy in the collective experiences of the Black Women in the west, who suffer under the combined forces of class, gender and race, thus constituting a radical analysis of women’s subordination in the western societies.
Non-Brahmin renderings of Feminism
The feminist articulation forwarded by Dalit women scholars has its root in the anti-caste polemic of Jyotirao Phule and his Satyashodhak tradition, and Ambedkar. Both figures are associated with the radical construction of Indian society and are remembered for their crusade against social inequalities and gender oppression. They for the first time made the project of women and lower castes’ emancipation a national project, thus giving them a wider visibility. In Slavery (written in 1873), Phule has discussed in detail the myriad ways in which the lower castes and women were subjugated under the “Aryan Institution” and how He expressed dismay at the tragic conditions of Brahmin widows and how they has been deprived of the right to re-marriage. While the Brahmin widowers enjoy the privilege of entering into polygamous relations, the unfortunate Brahmin women are deprived of re-marriage. Phule seemed to be very critical of “the selfish and wicked law-givers” who added “unjust and nonsensical clauses into their shastras with malice towards female sex” (Phule 196).He put Hindu Dharmashastras such as the Vedas and Mamusmriti responsible for such degraded state of Shudras, ati-shudras and women, as such law-books legitimise the persistence of caste hegemony and male dominance in society. He reimagined an egalitarian society based on the emancipation of vision of the King Bali who ensured justice and equality and self-respect for all during his rule. He eulogized the western education system introduced by the “American and Christian missionaries” for flowing the vision of the Baliraja which helped the suppressed groups in pulling out “the rope of slavery from their necks and threw it on the oppressors’’ face” (Phule, 75). His conceptualisation of the ideal realm of King Bali is basically an utopian vision in which all are treated equally and with dignity. It stands opposed to the articulation of Rama Rajya which protects caste-based social segregation and legitimises the oppression of lower caste and women. He emphasized on educating women as the possible route to gender emancipation and therefore, he opened up many schools exclusively for girls from the low caste backgrounds to impart scientific knowledge among them and to uplift them from the den of ignorance which made them victims of caste and gender based subordination. In a Memorial addressed to the Election Commission, on 19 October in 1882, Phule requested the colonial authority “to sanction measures for the spread of female primary education on a liberal scale”( Phule 112), thus allowing the girls belonging to the low caste backgrounds spaces for education as education plays a very formative role in developing society and improving the collective statue of women in the country.
Ambedkar has observed the interconnection between caste hierarchies and gender oppression, and called for an end to the practice of untouchability, as it is equally responsible for much of the degradation of women in Indian society. He found a link between patriarchal structures and social segregation based on caste identities, as the practice of endogamy is a blatant act of subordinating the freedom of women in determining their sexual partners as it never allowed women agency in transcending caste locations to choose a man of her choice. It is in other words, can be called the normalisation of social inequalities and gender subjugation in the name of tradition and customs. In 1936, he went to Kamatipura to address the sex workers. He called for renunciation of such caste-linked oppression and requested women to leave such stigmatised occupations in order to lead a dignified society. He condemned the Mahar women as “shame to the community” that were involved in such stigmatised occupations and reminded them of lack of “dignity” in such works in the eyes of society. His entire anti-caste polemic premised on the fact that he considered annihilation the caste hierarchy is the only way to ensure the collective emaciation of women, thus making him a feminist in theorization and political assertions. He also called upon the practice of purity and pollution ideology as a hurdle to realising gender justice as it doesn’t allow women from the marginalised social backgrounds any dignified space and entity to engage in any act of social reconstruction.
Intersectionality and Subordination of Dalit women
Dalit women’s experience of oppression and subjugation in Indian society goes beyond the single axis of gender and to understand the complexities of Dalit women’s subjugation, the need for an intersectional feminist theory has been felt by Dalit women scholars. While the Black women have been subjected to the myriad forms of oppression and violence due to their location in the intersectional point of class, gender and racial location, Dalit women also face the same kind of oppression in Indian society sue to their location at the intersectionality of caste, class and gender location. Dalit women experience the caste inequalities in everyday living as they have to bear the prejudices of society which depicts Dalit women as the carrier of polluted bodies. In the ritual ordering of Hindu society, Dalit women have been given the most discredited ritual positioning which strengthens the social prejudices against Dalit women. As Dalit women are relegated to the position of bonded labourer, their physical labour becomes easily exploitable for the upper caste men who deny women greater aces to financial resources, the landowning rights and gender parity in wage distributions. As Dalit women face class-linked inequalities, they are forced to ender menial labour for the upper castes at the exchange of cheap labour. In case of Dalit women trying to assert their rights in the material relations, the upper caste groups use the brutal force of violence to degrade the human dignity and equalitarian aspect of Dalit women’s living. At the same time, Dalit women face the brutal forms of patriarchal oppression in their everyday living due to their gender identity. Her vulnerability gets worsened due to their identity as women and as Dalit in Indian society. Her sexual freedom has been taken away by the patriarchal forces, thus forcing them to continue the reproduction of sexual violence in society. Her obligation and compliance to the male dominance has been forcefully imposed by the patriarchal forces as their rights over body and sexuality is denied by the upper caste society. Thus Dalit women, continues to face oppression and subjugation due to their intersectional location at the junction of caste, class and gender which effectively denied them equality, subjectivity and agency to women, thus keeping them under the consistence control of male dominance and the custodians of caste hegemony.
Violence against Dalit women
Violence against Dalit women and their sexuality is a normalised phenomenon in Indian society. As majority of Dalit women act as agricultural labourers, they have to work on the farmlands of the upper caste land-owners to ensure their subsistence living. The material deprivation and vulnerability in an economically unequal society forces them to face the wrath of the upper caste men as they sue the material vulnerability of Dalit women as an opportunity to perpetuate sexual violence against them. Guru (1995) in his article, “Dalit Women Talk Differently” has underlined on the need for foregrounding and delineating “both the internal and external factors” that have close connection with the complex reality of Dalit women and the sense of unfreedom that they face in their collective living. He argued that the question of atrocities being committed on Dalit women “cannot be grasped merely in terms of class, criminality, or as a psychological aberration or an illustration of male violence” and added that the “caste factor also has to be taken into account which makes sexual violence against dalit or tribal women much more severe in terms of intensity and magnitude” (Guru 2548).
Dalit women are never treated as human being or worthy of being respected by the upper castes due to their depiction as the polluted bodies in the Hindu shastras. Since Dalit women occupy the most stigmatising location in the caste-ordained society, they are exploited by the brahminical cultural system at will. The custom of keeping Dalit girls in Hindu temples as devdasis/servants of gods has dated back to history and this testifies the ritualised exploitation of sexuality of Dalit women what we can call as “ commoditisation and sexual exploitation” of Dalit women as legitimatised in the Hindu society. Dalit scholars regard such cultural practice of dedicating lower caste women to the temple as a manifestation of “sexual slavery” or “sacred prostitution” and a gross violation of Dalit women’s human rights. They criticise such heinous social practices in the name of tradition in which girls of low castes dedicated to the temple act as prostitutes for both the priests as well as the entire community of dominant caste groups. The caste-ascriptive identity of Dalit women condemns to the state of perpetual slavery and permanent subservience to the whims of the upper caste men who consider themselves as the custodians of Hindu society. Dalit feminist scholars have found such cultural practices of sacrificing girls to temples as a normalised custom of prostitution under the guise of divine obligation. As Dalit women seemed to be uneducated and powerless in the past due to a number of vulnerabilities, they couldn’t chart out their emancipatory routes on their own. At the same time, Dalit women were forced to dance in semi-naked dressed in cultural festivals such as Lavani Dance which is interpreted as a kind of erotic performance performed to gratify the phallic desires of upper caste male patrons. Ramesh (2020) said: “Lavani performances and songs, which are written by men, legitimise upper-caste men’s sexual access to lower-caste women by depicting and construing it as desired by the women” (Ramesh 34), thus denying the marginalised women a sense of autonomy and freedom in sexual preferences. Such culture of legitimising sexual exploitation of Dalit women through depicting them as “sexually submissive subjects” has been in practice for long, thus testifying the depth of upper –caste men’s hold in normalising the cultural norms that defy sense of civility and loots the modesty of Dalit women in the name of tradition.
Graded Patriarchies
The notion of patriarchal dominance is well-entrenched in the caste ideology, which prevents women from accessing avenues of self-development and financial stability. The graded forms of patriarchal notions guide Hindus in society and are seen operational in myriad forms (Chakravarti 2018:79). The extent of upper caste and Dalit patriarchy has been acknowledged by feminists as they oppress women in their quotidian existence. Since Dalit women face gender-based vulnerability in Hindu society, they face the rampant cycles of oppression and humiliation in the hands of patriarchal forces. Caste system feeds on the patriarchal structures that work in tandem with the notion of purity and pollution to torment and marginalise women in Hindu society. The vilification of women in Hindu shastras as unworthy of social respectability and a dignified identity has exacerbated the social prejudices that strengthen gender biases against women in general. The vulnerability of Dalit women exacerbates due to her caste location and her portrayals of carrier of ritual impurity in society and therefore the upper caste must practice untouchability to remain ritually pure. The shastric restriction turns into a socio-spatial restriction for Dalit women as they can’t make on their own based on their will in society. The grip of male dominance is so intense that they hardly allowed using autonomy in decision-making, being it marriage or choosing sexual partners. Upper caste men used to keep lower caste women for sexual pleasure and their access to female sexuality has been normalised under the prevalent norms of Hind society as governed by the caste ideology. As Dalit women occupy the most vulnerable position due to their ritual impurity and material impoverishment, they remain as mute spectators to such cycles of sexual exploitation by the upper caste men. Though the upper caste men enjoy sexual pleasure from Dalit women who bears polluted bodies, they never get polluted as shastras prescribe for their purification after perpetuating such violent acts against female sexuality, thus showing the clear-cut patriarchal and caste bias of shastras that divide society along caste lines a according to the ideology of purity and pollution.
Though Dalit families are seen less oppressive and exploitative by some social scientists such as Kancha Ilaiha, yet the oppressive structures of patriarchy have penetrated into its inner sanctums of Dalit men’s mentality, thus effectively oppressing Dalit women. Husbands and parents of Dalit women have assumed the role of oppressors instead of nurturing the dream of Dalit women. They reproduce the same cycle of patriarchal domination and violence of all sorts to gratify the patriarchal arrogance. This is why Dalit women’s lives are compared to that of a hellish experience, thus denying them a sense of empathy and equal treatment. The oppressive structures of families are seen as “violent” institutions which normalise violence against Dalit women and ensure the patriarchal superiority over Dalit women. The cases of domestic violence against Dalit women are rising and this indicates the rampant practice of physical abuse and sexual exploitation against Dalit women. As majority of the Indian families follow the patrilineal mentality in managing its domestic affairs, they hardly allow women any autonomy and freedom in choosing sexual partners of their choice as it could lead to defilement of caste purity as ascribed to Dalit women. While motherhood has been eulogized and idealised, female sexuality has been curbed to a great extent to ensure the male domination. As Manu ascribed permanent impurity to women, they are portrayed as dependent on men for their survival. Hence, autonomy and freedom has been taken away from women while deciding their marriages to men.
The practice of endogamy has been normalized in Indian society and any deviation has been seen as transcending the normative cultural norms, thus losing sanctity or sanction of society. Such socially deviant acts have been prohibited in caste society and elaborate mechanisms have been put in place to prevent such occurrences. Various notions have been invented to normalise the caste –linked oppression of women in society. The notion of “strisvabhava”, “izzat” and “stri dharma” has been foregrounded to ensure the compatibility of gender norms of women (Chakravarti 65). This is another way of taming women’s sexuality so that she could adhere to caste-ascribed roles of women in Hindu society. Dalit women scholars reinterpret the Ramayana and the Mahabharata interpret the mutilation of Suparnakha by Laxmana as the manifestation of caste norms in which women of one caste can’t engage in sexual romances with men of other caste, as such acts lack social sanction. The role of endogamy is seen as crucial in maintaining the caste hierarchies/purities and reproducing the gender norms, thus restricting women severely in their quest for autonomy and freedom. Chakravarti considers endogamy as “a tool for the manifestation and perpetuation of caste and gender subordination” (Chakravarti 27), thus showing the male control over the female sexuality and her reproductive capacities.
Selective outrage of Savarna feminists over violence against women
The phenomenon of rape culture is a recurrent event in Indian society, with hardly any day passed off without any reporting of violence against women, especially women belonging to the marginalised Dalit groups who are seen kidnapped and raped in a heinous manner by the male members of dominant castes. The accused transcend all the limits of civility and humanity while killing such women in the most brutal ways. The ferocity and extent of impunity of such acts shows the direct patronage of the society that the culprits of such social crimes enjoy in society. The most unfortunate part of such tragedies is that, instead of punishing the accused, the victims are vilified in the public for bearing immodesty, with objectionable stories are manufactured to describe their immoral behaviours. This underlines the wider hold of patriarchy in social thinking and everyday living. This forces feminists to say: “Stop blaming the victim.”
But, the intensity and scale of responses to gender violence varies from case-to-case basis. When violence against an upper caste woman is committed she is promptly branded as “ Nirbhaya”, with the nation-wide candle-marched being organised to show solidarity with the family of the victims, whereas the victims belonging to the suppressed groups hardly receive any public support or the assurance from the government, thus showing a clear-cut caste bias of our society. The dominant civil society and women’s organisations which are dominated by the savarnas fail to act promptly “when it comes to caste, which arguably lies at the root of all the above evils, they conveniently leave it to the dalits to deal with” (Teltumbde 177). Here, the artificially-constructed mask of progressivism collapses, thus exposing the casteist attitude of civil society and women’s organisations. The sheer “tokenism” displayed by the upper caste individuals or groups hardly makes any fundamental differences in the lives of marginalised women, thus leaving them to fend for themselves.
The double standards of upper caste women seem to be discernible when they try to disassociate with such incidents involving men of their castes, which signifies their complicity in the sustenance of such social crimes against women and their dignity. The latest case of “#Metoo movement” started in 2018 in India can be cited to showcase the divide existing between upper caste feminists and marginalised women’s groups. While the stories of sexual abuse and exploitation of the upper caste women by the sexually predatory upper caste professors in the higher educational institutes come to the fore. But the cases involving the sexual exploitation of lower caste women by the upper caste academicians have been pushed under the carpet in a very deliberate way to protect the professors belonging to the upper caste backgrounds. This prioritisation of sexual violence against women in favour of upper caste women not only creates a divide in feminist movement, but also raises certain potent questions about the casteist nature of the Indian feminism for their deliberate exclusion of cases of sexual violence against Dalit women. It creates a deep suspect among women belonging to the marginalised social backgrounds and forces them to leave the dream of universal sisterhood in favour of autonomous feminist movement which can provide justice and equality and human dignity to women belonging to the historically deprived communities in India.
The Hathras case (2020) involving the brutal gangrape and killing of a Dalit girl is a prime example of deliberate act of omission in the mainstream feminist movement, and how the upper caste feminists failed to include the caste angle to theorise the gender oppression and ensure freedom of women in society. While in case of the Delhi rape case victim, the victims becomes the symbol of India’s daughter, inviting a nationwide outrage and condemnation from all quarters, with numerous candle march being arranged across many cities to mourn the departed soul of the upper caste victim, but in Hatras case, the victim received nothing except the collective apathy and disaffection from society and upper caste-dominated police and administration, thus keeping the dream of justice elusive to the day. Instead of ensuring the prompt medical treatment of the victim, she was not admitted to the better medical institutes for speedy recovery. This gross negligence led to her untimely death. The differential treatment of the state also can be seen in the ways it handled the case. Whereas the victim of Delhi rape case has been airlifted to Singapore, the hatras victims struggled to get a bed in AIIMS. Such provincialisation of gender justice in India points out the extent of caste-based separation and the general apathy of the dominant social groups to the issues of gender oppression of Dalit women in society. Dalit female scholars reject the symbolic gestures and “behalfism” of the upper caste feminists and call for an autonomous assertion of a critique of gender oppression and show how such violent mentalities emanated from the ideology of purity and pollution which guides the caste system in the country. The absence of “me” in #Metoo movement needs to be understood in the wider context of intersectional feminism which calls for diversifying the female voices of oppression transcending the caste, class and gender locations to assume the universal shape. Unless the narratives of Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim women are not included, such movements would prove futile in the end in soliciting a collective consciousness of oppression, otherisation and marginalization in a society fragmented along caste and gender lines.
Education and Dalit women’s emancipation
Role of education in remedying the humiliation and oppression of Dalits has been recognised by the anti-caste intellectuals in the very beginning. They stressed on the need for the epistemologies of liberation in order to counter the social prejudices and overcome the material dependence on the oppressive communities for their survival. Ambedkar called for “Educate, Organise, Agitate” in order to fight the caste system and the curse of untouchability plaguing Dalit communities collectively. Ambedkar and Phule have emphasised much on the importance of western education and pushed the colonial authority in setting up the schools for the deprived communities so that they can overcome social stigma and the darkness of ignorance. It was seen as an effective tool for self-recognition and a gateway to discovering the glorious past of the community which is demonised in Indian society for their caste-ascriptive status.
Dalit feminists looked upon education as a necessary vehicle of achieving social mobility and material stability, thus allowing the subjugated groups an opportunity in furthering the process of community development. It allowed Dalit women a critical insight into the working of caste society and the role of Hindu ritual books in legitimising caste-based exploitation of Dalits in the name of purity. Rege (2006) emphasized on the need for educating Dalit women, as it would allow them access to the “Ambedkarite Counterpublics”, which is crucial to dismantling the overarching edifice of Brahminism and untouchability. In addition, it would help Dalit women in building “oppositional dalit feminist pedagogies”, which would effectively contribute to confronting and subverting the caste ideology and the patriarchal notions that reproduce gender subordination in Hindu society. The newly –educated Dalit women not only boosted up their self-confidence through education, but also gathered a moral courage to fight against social injustice and gender oppression. They have become more vocal and more assertive about their rights and pose serious challenges to the custodians of caste hegemony and male dominance. It allows them to attain a better position in battling against caste-linked gender oppression which denies Dalit women agency, subjectivity and justice in a democratic society due to the pressures of the orthodox segment of Indian society.
Conclusion
The precarity of Dalit women and their possible collective emancipation need to be seen in the broader context of socio-political scenarios which shape and affect the intersectional relations of caste, class, gender, education, law, state, labour and capitalism and how they effectively contribute to perpetuating the subordination and humiliation of Dalit women in the normative Hindu society. To understand the internal dynamics of marginalisation and oppression, as Dalit feminist argue, the foregrounding of “Dalit difference” is considered to be the essential criteria to theorize and analyse the emancipatory practices of women belonging to the suppressed communities. The invocation to the graded from of patriarchies and how they torment Dalit women and deny them equality, subjectivity and agency constitute the central thrust area of Dalit feminist viewpoint. The role of Brahminism and patriarchy has also been underlined to showcase how caste hierarchies reproduce social differentiation and create gender discrimination in the normative social universe. Dalit female scholars hint at resisting the savarna women-led feminism and seek to expand the contours of gender politics not to mere accommodate, but to integrate the caste-specific dynamics of women’s oppression in Indian society. The narratives of survival and resistance of the Black women inspire Dalit female activists to theorize and understand the divides existing between the gender politics spearheaded by the privileged women and the suppressed women to fight the multifaceted nature of gender oppression. In the end, it may be said that the privileged women need to transcend the exclusive and narrow epistemological contours of their lived realities to include, not tokenised, the anticaste and antipatraichal renderings of dalit feminism within its broader spectrum so that a solidarity is achieved and grater mobilisation around gender disparity ensured to further the emciaptory agenda of all women.
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