Dalit Feminism and

Black Feminism

Contents
1. Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………3
2. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..4-5
3. Rise of Dalit Feminism and Black
Feminism…………………………………………………………………………..……5-6
4. Feminism and
Literature………………………………………………………………………………..6-7
5. Feminism and
Media……………………………………………………………………………………8-9
6. Similarities between Dalit Feminism and Black
Feminism……………………………………................................................................9-10
7. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………10-11
8. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..11

1
2
Abstract

Feminism continues to be revolutionizing agent in the society. The recent development is the in
presence of minority community’s women in the realm. Through this research paper, I have tried
to trace the emergence of Dalit feminism in India and Black feminism in West. Dalit women are
the victims of patriarchal control and dalit patriarchy. I looked at the intra-caste violence that
Dalit women are the victims of physical violence, torture within the families and society.
Political and literary marginalization of Dalit women, social stigma that prevents Dalit women
from education or subjects them of humiliation are various forms of symbolic violence that I
have discussed in my paper. I have also discussed feminist movement in India and various
important ramifications that developed which is an important study for Dalit feminism to
undertake. I looked at the debates on feminism, debates on caste and gender and Dalit feminism
critiques of mainstream feminism. Through this paper I want to show that when Dalit community
as a whole suffers untouchability, Dalit women are more prone to victimized by the same evil
custom. I have shown how Dalit women have been misrepresented in Indian literature and Indian
English literature and discussed the writing of Bama.

Black feminism is the process of self conscious struggle that empowers women and men to
realize a humanistic vision of community. Through this study I want to show that Black
feminism remains important because United States Black women participate in a dialectical
relationship linking African-American women’s oppression that has encouraged three
interdependent dimensions. First, the exploitation of Black women’s labor essential to United
States capitalism. Second, the political dimension of oppression that has denied African-
American women the rights and privilege. Finally, the controlling images applied to Black
women that originated during slave era. Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s made a difference in
the life of women in the United States. Many black feminist responded to the women’s liberation
movement and the crisis of “sisterhood” with writings. So I have discussed some of the writings
of Alice Walker (1983).

Through this research paper I want to show how women are becoming frequent victims of
violence and oppression; they are often treated as property or as source of pleasure for men by
studying Dalit Feminism and Black Feminism. To understand Dalit Feminism and Black
Feminism, it is necessary to understand the feminist movement. So I have tried to draw parallel
lines between these two movements and how media chooses to represent them. I have also tried
to analyze Dalit Feminism and Black feminism on grounds of the history, literature and on the
grounds of oppression and movement. The aim is to draw a comparative analysis between the
movements. I have studied the impact of racism, casteism, sexism and how media chooses to
represent them followed by their response of specific community feminists. I have also discussed
about the similarities of both the feminism through the writings of Bama and Alice Walker.

3
Introduction

Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies,
largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women, especially in terms of their social,
political, and economic situation. As a social movement, feminism largely focuses on limiting or
eradicating gender inequality and promoting women's rights, interests, and issues in society. 1
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a
common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality
of sexes.2 This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for
women that are equal to such opportunities for men. Women’s oppression is the most widespread
and the deepest form of oppression in society. Patriarchy has assumed that women are naturally
inferior to men, lacking rational thought. As she is biologically endowed with the supreme task
of reproduction to carry the human race forward, it is considered to be imperative to subsume her
individuality to serve the needs of her husband. The male principle in the Indian Sankhya
philosophy has placed more values on the “seed” than the “land”. In the Hebraic tradition, every
woman is said to enter history with a piece missing. Aristotelian tradition too defines a woman
by what she lacks. They are cut off from the mainstream of power and privilege. Though they
cry out in angry, anguished voices, they remain unheard. The dominant discourse does not
provide the needed space for them to speak.
Dalit feminism has been described as a "discourse of discontent," "a politics of difference" from
mainstream Indian feminism, which has been critiqued for marginalising Dalit women. Dalit
feminist discourse not only questions Indian feminism's hegemony in claiming to speak for all
women, but also the hegemony of Dalit men to speak on behalf of Dalit women. It analyses
Dalits women's oppression as a triple jeopardy of oppression by double patriarchies - "discreet"
patriarchy of their own caste and an "overlapping" patriarchy of the upper caste - as well as
poverty. "Discreet" patriarchy dictates that power rests with men in the community and in the
institutions led by them - the caste courts, the Church, the panchayats. The text traces an account
of the aggressive exploitation of Dalit women in terms of double day labour, domestic violence,
priests in the Church, upper caste landlords and their own ignorance and suggests remedies.
Exploitation, threat of rape by the upper castes is analysed in terms of values of "overlapping"
patriarchy which maintains a strong sense of gendered spaces and sees the habitual visibility of
Dalit women which they inhabit as sites of work as a sign of their availability and inscribes them
as lustful women who sexuality cannot be controlled by the Dalit men.3 Dalit feminism
redefines women from the socio –political perspective of a dalit, taking into account the
caste and gender oppression. This paper focuses on the sufferings of Dalit women in two
aspects: first, being a woman second, belongs to the lowest community. Therefore they are
double oppressed.4

1
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Feminism/Introduction
2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#cite_note-Hawkesworth-1
3
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20038243
4
https://zenodo.org/record/345673#.Wdfzv2iCzIU

4
Black feminism is a school of thought stating that sexism, class oppression, gender identity
and racism are inextricably bound together.5 The way these concepts relate to each other is
called intersectionality. Black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term
“intersectionality” in her insightful 1989 essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and
Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics.”6 The concept of intersectionality is not an abstract notion but a description of the way
multiple oppressions are experienced. Crenshaw argues that Black women are discriminated
against in ways that often do not fit neatly within the legal categories of either
“racism” or “sexism”—but as a combination of both racism and sexism. Yet the legal system
has generally defined sexism as based upon an unspoken reference to the injustices confronted
by all (including white) women, while defining racism to refer to those faced by all (including
male) Blacks and other people of color. This framework frequently renders Black women legally
“invisible” and without legal recourse. Crenshaw describes several employment discrimination-
based lawsuits to illustrate how Black women’s complaints often fall between the cracks
precisely because they are discriminated against both as women and as Blacks.

Rise of Dalit Feminism and Black Feminism

Dalit Feminism: For the upper caste woman, her family is her world and argues for self-
modification centered on individual liberalism. On the other hand, for the Dalit woman, her
community is her family an aimed towards the upliftment of the community. It is a widely held
perception that Dalit woman considered as ‘Other’ and it is the impact of the centuries-long
alienation and loneliness created by patriarchal and Brahmanical values at all levels in society,
which in turn causes the high level of exclusion, structured and domestic violence which every
Dalit woman experiences throughout her life. Thus, even among women, she is perceived as
‘Other’. She belongs to the ‘lowest’ category manifested in her condition of social, physical,
economic, and political vulnerability. This is clearly evident in her struggle for basic needs such
as food or water and in her submission to sexual and domestic violence. R.S. Khare clearly
argued that Dalit woman gear not only the personal and social dishonor but as well as the
physical safety. Within the ‘home’, Dalit woman often suffered from verbal and physical abuse
at the hands of their fathers and brothers, raped by their father-in-law, or brother-in-law,
forcefully subjugated to fulfill the pleasures of their husbands, domestic and sexual violence.
They simultaneously dishonored outside in public realm forced, unpaid in the economic sphere
and often compounded by sexual harassment and a real risk to physical life. Dalit women
constitute and comprised about 16 % of India’s total female population and 8% of the total
population and most of them feel disillusioned and alienated. Professor Gopal Guru in
“Theoretical Brahmin and Empirical Shudra” said: “This exclusion of Dalit women from the
mainstream women’s movement is not such a bad thing after all: it has caused them to start
building their own praxis, identity, and agency”. 7 What was clearly needed is an articulation

5
http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/modern/Defining-Black-Feminist-Thought.html
6
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of
Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989,
139–67
7
Bama, Faustina. Sangati Events. Trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

5
based on the consciousness of the Dalit women themselves, their experiences of humiliation,
deprivation, isolation by virtue of gender, caste, and class. An attempt should be made to break
down the fixed polarities between the upper caste/lower caste and men/women especially in
Dalit context. In the Indian context, caste, class, and patriarchy are of course the three hierarchal
axes of social structure which are very essential for the understanding of caste Hindu, Shudra and
Dalit women. It is caste which shapes the integral part of the gender status and identity of Dalit
women. Therefore, it was required to have a development of Dalit feminist theory and to define
this state of being through Dalit female language. Thus, a new word was coined, “Dalit
womanism” to understand Dalit woman’s life in a better manner and try to transform them. The
term “Womanism” was coined by Alice Walker in 1893. Womanism defined as a consciousness,
incorporates ‘racial, cultural, sexual, national, economic and political considerations’ whereas
Feminism places priority on women. The Womanism of the Dalits will be entirely based on the
lives, experiences, and consciousness of Dalit women. Thus, Dalit women are slowly attempting
to speak out their traumatic experiences as well as theorizing their pain, their anger in their
autobiographical writings. Dalit women have written their autobiographies, their narratives of
pain. The contribution of Dalit women writers to Dalit Literature is significant. From the onset,
the writings of Dalit women represented their own experiences and burning indignation.

Black Feminism: For, in the history of human race, no one has suffered more than the Black
woman in a civilized country like America. A close and critical exposition of the history of the
Black woman’s life and condition since her arrival in a strange land will unfold very well the
long story of her agony and sorrow associated with her mutilated soul. Since her arrival on the
alien shore, the Black woman has been subjected to the worst kind of exploitation and
oppression. In addition, besides suffering the common fate of all oppressed and exploited people,
the Afro- American women continues to experience the age-old oppression of woman by men. In
the home she becomes “the slave of a slave”. Even the end of slavery did not give the Black
woman any greater right to sexual integrity. They were still at the mercy of the carnal desires of
white men and the Black man could not protect her unless he was prepared to lose his life in her
defense. White men were able to use the economic deprivation of black women to their sexual
advantage. This being the dark portrait of the Black woman, there appeared a ray of hope with
the rise of feminism. But feminism that first started in England has altogether a different
meaning and context by such writers like Virginia Woolf and others. Most people in the United
States think of feminism or the more commonly used term “Women’s Lib” as a movement that
aims to make women the social equal of men. In fact feminism as a movement has its root in the
social structure and social circumstances. It is true that the growth in feminist consciousness was
a consequence of the educational efforts of the women's movement as well as the continued
integration of women into a nontraditional lifestyle. Feminist leaders incorporated their
sentiment a coherent ideology, which defined sex discrimination as women’s problem, held the
government responsible for ending this unfair treatment, and offered a plan of action to ease
women’s burden. In short, the women’s experience changed radically, resulting in the beginning
of a new lifestyle centered on work rather than the home.8

Feminism and Literature

6
portrayed as the victims of the lust of the higher caste men and never as rebels to fight against
the injustices perpetuated upon them. Even in the writings of the progressive writers such as
Mulk Raj Anand, Premchand and so on- Dalit women are either molested or raped by the upper
caste men. By depicting such pictures, writers gained sympathy for the victims but such routinely
kind of treatment is not enough. They have completely ignored the fact that Dalit women can
also resist and fight back like any other victim of social oppression to guard their dignity. The
female characters in Dalit Literature are dynamic and not static. Dalit writers do not look upon
widows, prostitutes, depraved women, as Dalit, the exploited, with compassion alone; but they
make them towards radiance. Unlike Dalit men, only a few Dalit women have written their
autobiographies, their narratives of pain. Muktabai, an Untouchable girl considered her essay
regarding the problems and sufferings of Untouchables in the school established by the great
reformer Phule, in 1852, was the first example of the emancipation of Dalit women through their
autobiographical writings. To Bama, Dalit literature is not merely literature on Dalits but a
critique of the Hindu social order. Bama’s Sangati, her novel explores the idea of transformation
of rejection into resistance. The novel talks about the Parajya community who are doubly
oppressed. Women are presented as wage earners and it is upon them to bear the burden of the
family and on the other side men can spend their money slavishly. In addition to this, women are
vulnerable to sexual exploitation and harassment. Therefore, the novel creates a Dalit feminist
perspective and explores the impact of discrimination – compounded above all, by poverty –
suffered by Dalit women.9

Black Feminism: black women novelists provide a much neglected perspective and chorus of
voices on the human experience. The absence, silence, or misrepresentation of black women in
literary and nonliterary texts or contexts, by black men as well as white men and women, is now
commonplace knowledge. “Except for Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks, and perhaps Margaret
Walker,” Calvin Hernton states with some exaggeration in an extremely rare, sympathetic black
feminist essay by a black male in The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers, “the name of
not one black woman writer and not one female protagonist was accorded a worthy status in the
black literary world prior to the 1970s.” Black feminist critics, such as Mary Helen Washington
in her introduction to Black Eyed Susans and Barbara Christian in Black Women Novelists,
applaud the realistic images by black women writers such as Morrison, Walker, Meriwether,
Marshall, and Bambara. As illustrated in their fiction, interviews in Black Women Writers at
Work, and the pioneer essays on black feminist criticism by Barbara Smith and Deborah E.
McDowell, many black women novelists deploy to a greater or lesser degree the following signs
and structures: (1) motifs of interlocking racist, sexist, and classist oppression; (2) black female
protagonists; (3) spiritual journey from victimization to the realization of personal autonomy or
creativity; (4) centrality of female bonding or networking; (5) shared focus on personal
relationships in the family and community; (6) deeper, more detailed exploration and validation
of the epistemological power of the emotions; (7) iconography of women’s clothing; and (8)
black female language. Many black women writers, however, including some feminists and
women who acknowledge the influence of male as well as female literary for parents, underscore
the problems of a separate black female literary tradition.10

9
Bama, Faustina. Sangati Events. Trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.
10
https://blog.oup.com/2006/09/women_and_liter-5/

7
Feminism and Media
Dalit Feminism: When we talk about gender-based violence, we sometimes seem to forget that
violence doesn’t happen in isolation. There are a lot of factors or rather intersections that
contribute to it. Even gender-based violence has many facets, it happens to women with
disabilities, lesbian and bisexual women, gay men, trans people among others. In India, there is
another intersection that is of caste.

Mathura, a young tribal girl, was raped by two policemen on the compound of Desai Ganj Police
Station in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra on 26 March 1972. The judgment returned found
the defendants not guilty. It was stated that because Mathura was “habituated to sexual
intercourse,’ her consent was voluntary; under the circumstances only sexual intercourse could
be proved and not rape“. On appeal the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court set aside the
judgment of the Sessions Court, and sentenced the accused to one and five years imprisonment
respectively.However, in September 1979 the Supreme Court of India justices Jaswant Singh,
Kailasam and Koshal in their judgement on Tukaram vs. State of Maharashtra reversed the High
Court ruling and again acquitted the accused policemen. The Supreme Court held that Mathura
had raised no alarm; and that there were no visible marks of injury on her thereby suggesting no
struggle and hence no rape.

Bhanwari Devi is a dalit social-worker from Bhateri, Rajasthan, who was gang raped in 1992 by
higher-caste men angered by her efforts to prevent an early marriage in their family. She was ill-
treated by the police and the court acquitted the accused. A state MLA organised a victory rally
in the state capital Jaipur for the five accused who were now declared not guilty, and the
women’s wing of his political party attended the rally to call Bhanwari a liar.

Black Feminism: The 2010s have seen a revitalization of Black Feminism as a result of "black
feminist thought spreading via big and small screens." As more and more influential figures
began to identify themselves as feminist, social media saw a rise in young black feminists willing
to "push the conversation forward" and bring racist and sexist situations to light.11 Assistant
professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, Brittney
Cooper, states "I think Black feminism is in one of the strongest moments it has seen in a while;

11
"Has Social Media Sparked A New Black Feminist Movement?". HelloBeautiful. 2014-03-05. Retrieved 2017-04-
13.

8
From Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, to Laverne Cox on Orange Is the New
Black to Beyoncé … we have prominent Black women identifying publicly with the term."12
Social media proves to be an effective medium for young black feminists to express praise or
discontent with organizations' representations of black women. For example, the 2015 and
2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows were commended for letting four black models wear their
natural hair on the runway. Black feminists on social media celebrated the embrace of
the Natural hair movement using the hashtags #melanin and #blackgirlmagic.13 On the other side
of the spectrum, social media has been a useful tool to police companies that are found being
racist or sexist. Issues such as appropriation of black culture are quickly brought to light on
social media as labeled problematic. For example, a 2015 Vogue Italia photo shoot involving
model Gigi Hadid wearing an afro sparked backlash on twitter, instagram, and facebook for the
appropriation of black hair. Many users vocalized it was problematic and racist to have a white
model wear an afro and a fake tan to give the appearance of blackness when the fashion
magazine could have hired a black model instead.14 Black feminists have also voiced the
importance of increasing representation of black women in television and movies. According to a
2014 study by the University of Southern California, of the 100 top films of that year "nearly
three-quarters of all characters were white," NPR reports, and only 17 of those 100 top movies
featured non-white lead or co-lead actors.

Similarities between Dalit Feminism and Black Feminism

Bama (1958- ) is a widely acclaimed Indian Tamil Dalit woman writer. She has been using her
pen as a powerful weapon to fight for the rights of her people—the Dalits. Bama is the pen name
of Faustina Mary. She is regarded as one of India’s newest and most challenging voices. Alice
Walker (1944- ) is a highly regarded African American woman writer. She is not only a writer
but also a publisher, social activist, womanist, globe-trotter and spiritual explorer. Bama’s stories
and the stories of Alice Walker demonstrate how the material reality of different groups of
women can lead to very different perceptions of the nature of political struggle. Bama’s pen is
like a sharpedged weapon to cut the weeds of untouchability and patriarchy which have thickly
grown over the centuries in the ancient land of India. Alice Walker, the champion of Black

12
"Black Feminism Goes Viral [EXCERPT] - EBONY". www.ebony.com. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
13
"#BlackGirlMagic in Victoria Secret's Paris Fashion Show". www.ebony.com. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
14
Teen.com (2015-11-11). "The Jenners' Racist Tendencies Are Apparently Rubbing Off on their BFF". Teen.com.
Retrieved 2017-04-13.

9
women, has come out with her own Black feminist theory of “Womanism” in African-American
feminist parlance. Most of the women in the works of Bama and Alice Walker emerge victorious
breaking domestic, social, religious, political and sexual shackles which so far have been like
millstones weighing on them. They have transformed themselves from passive, battered,
voiceless females into selfconfident, assertive, modern women who compete with men in all
spheres. They have marched ahead from erasure to assertion and from being victims to victors.
This victory is the ultimate goal of Dalit feminism and African-American womanism. The
characters of Bama and Alice Walker are marginalized women lurking on the fringes of an
oppressive casteist or White society who see life as a perpetual cycle of hope and despair. The
horrors of dehumanizing experiences are seen by women in the course of their marriages as well.
Women love their men but, but they are neither loved nor understood in return. Both the writers
bring out the painful fact that Dalit and Black men seek to have everything that White and upper
caste men have including dominance over women. They believe that for their own empowerment
and control of their own destiny, women must commit themselves to each other and to creating
their own identity. Most of these women try desperately to face their situations and deal with
them even when their resistance makes them out to be insane, ignorant or irrational.15

Conclusion

This study shows two kinds of feminism: Dalit Feminism and Black Feminism. It shows that
Dalit women are discriminated against not only by the people of higher castes, but also within
their own communities. . In a male dominated society, Dalit women are suffered unimaginable
oppression, not only through caste but gender too. Even today, in modern times, we see severe
oppression and exploitation of Dalit women. Today Dalit women have the stronghold of the
Dalit movements in thousands of Indian villages. They are continued to play a critical role in the
movements for land rights. However they are unable to put an end to the structural
discrimination and exclusion. Violence and impunity are used to keep them their place. .A
country like India which has a strong constitutional framework and a vibrant democracy but
Dalit feminist standpoint is seen as emancipator since the subject of its knowledge is embodied
and visible (i e, the thought begins from the lives of Dalit women and these lives are present and
visible in the results of the thought).Indian women have been subjected to cultural biases and

15
INDIAN SUBALTERN FEMINISM AND AMERICAN BLACK WOMANISM, Leema Rose, 13 April
2014, 9th International Academic Conference, Istanbul

10
atrocities since time-memorial. The study also shows that black women are discriminated
against both as women and as Blacks. Both Dalit and Black women have been suffering.
Mobilization of women will not bring about social change conductive to a betterment of the lives
of the majority of people. However, the answer here is to not merely create reservations for
women, but equip them with enough knowledge, support and resources to stand up for
themselves.

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Rose, L. (2014). INDIAN SUBALTERN FEMINISM AND AMERICAN BLACK. 9th

Smith, S. (Ed.). (n.d.). Black Feminism and Intersectionality.

Tomar, R. (Ed.). (n.d.). The Criterion: An Internaional Journal in English .

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