The Representation of the Polluted Body—A Study of Resistance in the Selected Poems of Sukirtharani

Abstract

The Historically neglected and suppressed voces of the Dalit community find their expressions in the subjective genres of the Dalit Literature. The Subjugation done one them in terms of the Caste has been predominant throughout ages. But while deciphering the long-past narratives of oppressions on the Dalit people, scholars often forget the gender and eventually sidelining or marginalizing the Dalit women’s narratives. This exclusion of the Dalit women from the elitist Neo-colonial upper-caste Historians as well as Indian feministic tradition lead the Dalit women poets such as Sukirtharani to take up with the gender issues and bodily sufferings of the Dalit women in her poems. This research paper would show how Dalit women are oppressed in terms of their ‘polluted body’ along with the caste identity. The Intra-patriarchy within the Dalit community makes the Dalit women dominated by ‘double patriarchy’ which eventually leads them to lose their voices. This unique subalternity of the Dalit women find expressions in some of the poems of Sukirtharani who evokes that dehumanized body of the Dalit women as a weapon to write the narratives of resistance.