Voicing the Dalit Woman: Gender, Caste, and Rebellion in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke
Manavee Singh & Dr
Prachi Priyanka,
Sharda University,
Greater Noida, Uttar
Pradesh, India.
Baby Kamble’s The
Prisons We Broke (2008), originally published as Jina Amucha in Marathi, is widely recognized as the first Dalit
woman's autobiography in Indian literature. Kamble’s portrayal offers a radical
approach to the autobiographical form, focusing on the shared past of the
downtrodden Mahar group while highlighting the linked experiences about caste,
gender, and class. Kamble while telling her life story through this text also
offers a harsh critique of the old Brahmanical and Patriarchal systems that
oppresses the Dalit community. This chapter explores the interwoven themes of
identity and agency in Baby Kamble’s The
Prisons We Broke, a seminal Dalit feminist autobiography originally written
in Marathi as Jina Amucha. The study
situates Kamble’s narrative within the socio-political and historical
frameworks of caste, gender, and class oppression, foregrounding how Dalit
women’s autobiographical writing becomes a tool for both resistance and
self-representation. Drawing from critical scholarship and intersectional
theory, the chapter examines how Kamble reconstructs a collective Dalit
identity through memory, challenges Brahmanical patriarchy, and asserts the
transformative potential of Ambedkarite political consciousness. By analyzing
the text’s engagement with cultural rituals, caste-based violence, and the gendered
subjugation within and outside Dalit communities, the chapter demonstrates how The Prisons We Broke emerges as a
revolutionary narrative of empowerment. It further explores the performative
role of language and translation in articulating subaltern agency. Ultimately,
this research underscores Kamble’s contribution to Dalit literature and
feminist discourse, positioning her work as a vital text in reimagining the
contours of marginalized identities in India.
The socio-political philosophy given by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
inspired the Dalit literary movement and new forms of expression arose from the
movement, among which autobiographies were the most powerful. Dalit
autobiographies act as a political tool, giving
voice to suppressed histories as well as identities which is different from
upper-caste autobiographies that have an individual orientation (Samson &
Vinayakaselvi, 2018). Through Kamble’s gendered perspective the ‘triple burden’
that Dalit women face that is oppression due to their caste, gender, and class
is thoroughly discussed in this text (Vishwakarma, 2022).
This paper analyses how identity and agency are discussed
in The Prisons we broke by Baby
Kamble. It explores Kamble's use of collective memory and education to rebuild
a Dalit identity, her depiction of intersectional oppression, acceptance of
Ambedkarite activism, and her criticism of Brahmanical dominance. It depicts
how Kamble views Dalit women as change makers thus contributing to the Dalit
feminist viewpoint. Kamble’s narrative structure opposes Western autobiography
standards through prioritizing communal experience over self-contemplation.
Kamble melds memory, culture, with history into a political instrument for
resistance, enabling this transformation of an autobiography to a ‘socio-biography’
and her consistent use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ situates her life story inside
the Mahar community's broader historical trajectory. She starts by depicting
the wretched living circumstances of Mahars in Maharwadas. They had to live in
makeshift shacks, surviving on foraged food, and were ensnared by myths and
superstitions. Her vivid imagery represents ingrained dehumanization of Dalits:
“people covered in thick layers of dust and dirt…wearing tattered clothes”
(Begum, 2018). These depictions help reconstruct the Dalit identity as impacted
by caste violence and also shed light on the manner this violence became
ingrained and normalised through rituals and customs.
The text represents pre-Ambedkarite identity as something
defined by superstitions. Such convictions included sacrificing children to
divinities or embracing karma's inevitability. Kamble critiques such
convictions and terms them as tools used by Brahmanism to sustain the caste
hierarchy. Her rejection of such ideologies shows an emerging self-consciousness
and awareness intending to redefine Dalit-ness not as a cursed identity, but as
a force of resistance and self-respect. Her story retrieves identity through
her political cognizance. Kamble calls herself “a product of the Ambedkarite
movement,” and by stating that she presents herself to have evolved beyond
passively experiencing caste and instead becoming an active agent of change
(Begum, 2018).
Nationalist historiography and mainstream feminist
discourse have historically ignored or have silenced the narratives of Dalit
women. Anandita Pan (2015) argues that Dalit women are the ‘Dalits among Dalits’, located at the lowest rung in India’s
socio-cultural hierarchy. Structural violence intersects with intimate forms of
oppression, so Kamble’s autobiography emerges from that intersection,
highlighting Dalit womanhood’s lived reality in a world where survival resists.
To be dominated is to be a woman in Kamble’s world; also, to be dehumanized is
to be a Dalit; and to be nearly erased is to be both of them. Yet through the
course of her voice and also her pen, she rewrites this erasure into an
assertion, and she uses education as a tool that is of awakening and literature
as a space that is of transformation.
The social structures dominating Baby Kamble’s world
constitute represented realities as opposed
to abstract systems manifested via labor, dress, diet, language, the body, and
accessible spaces for the Dalit woman. In The Prisons We Broke, the author depicts a firm portrayal of
existence in Maharashtra's Maharwada Dalit settlement where Dalit women resided
in intense destitution as well as inhumane circumstances, bounded by cultural
decadence and caste- implemented prohibitions. The autobiography reveals how
structural exclusion commences from birth and is present throughout every
sphere as Kamble recounts with large clarity, ignominy and inadequacy were
internalized even during childhood. She articulates, “We, the daughters of the
activists in the movement, were enrolled in school no. 5 for girls. It was
basically a school for Brahmin girls, with a few girls from other high castes.
There were some ten or twelve Mahar girls spread over in various classes. So
each class had only a sprinkling of the polluting Mahars. All the girls in the
class had benches to sit except us Mahar girls. We had to sit on the floor in
one corner of the classroom like diseased puppies... We were like fiery
godflies burning for vengeance” (Kamble, 2008, p. 62). This strong metaphor
depicts caste- based segregation and imposes psychological abasement via the
school room's spatial and concrete layouts. The classroom, theoretically a
place for liberation, turns into a mechanism of trauma and control for Dalit
girls.
Kamble shows Dalit women are trapped within a complicated
network of subjugation. These women are in no way represented as being passive
victims. Caste-based exclusion is intimately linked to gendered dehumanization
since Dalit women are untouchable to upper-castes, and men in their own
communities may treat them as subhuman. Kamble’s account represents the dual
marginalization as well as depicts precisely how it engenders trauma that is
not sufficiently addressed in feminist or Dalit movements. They articulate that
caste thoroughly marginalizes Dalit women initially, and gender also does so
subsequently, with such oppression rendering their bodies as sites for systemic
violence (Komal & Pareek, 2024).
Kamble’s particular narrative constitutes violence
towards Dalit women. Beyond physical violence, structural violence is also
clear. Being denied basic rights to freedom, autonomy, or education, young
girls were expected to serve, clean, cook, and bear children upon being married
off at the ages of nine or eight, Kamble recollects that an individual would
merit a thrashing from family patriarchs by not successfully preparing bhakris
(Kamble, 2008). Patriarchy inside of Dalit families mirrors normalization along
with weaponization so as to oppress any form of individuality amongst females. Kamble
offers a critique of upper-caste oppression that is observed throughout the
entirety of the text, and of domestic patriarchy within the boundaries of her
community. Her vocalization attains individuality and potency via this twofold
analysis. As Dr. Amit Kumar (2015) elucidates, “The two factors of ‘caste and
patriarchy’ are quite dominant in the lives of Dalit women all over India…
Dalit women have to face both Brahmanic also Dalit patriarchy” (p. 174),
Kamble's autobiography consequently does not simply indict the upper-caste
system it thoroughly interrogates the internal power structures of the Dalit
community that subjugate their women.
Kamble existed within an ideological framework that
indoctrinated her into inferiority from her life's beginning. Customary
beliefs, along with rituals and also caste taboos, that were designed in order
to maintain social stratification and perpetuate Brahmanical hegemony, were
deeply ingrained. ‘A system designed to internalize the wretched life condition
among the untouchables through making them believe that everything throughout
life is predetermined via deities’ was written concerning such observances by
Dr. Shameemunnisa Begum (2018). Kamble associates this sense of fatalism
alongside the Brahmanical manipulation regarding religion so as to indicate
caste oppression, critiques concerning which happen to be discussed (272). Her
narrative dissolves this illusion while it exposes caste as a human-made
injustice instead of divine order.
Her assessment elucidates a further central motif: the
function of ingrained casteism. The text elucidates that hierarchies in the
community that Dalits formed were dependent upon the count of gods worshipped,
deity platform dimension, and women's attire. The oppressed people assimilated
into the dominant caste culture, and this internal ranking mirrored that
assimilation. It constituted a method by which they could forge untrue superiority.
Kamble uncovers these tendencies and comprehensively reconsiders identity
grounded in dignity and equality.
The social reality for Dalit women is further complicated
by the economic system reinforcing their immobility. The Watan system frequently
tied many Dalit families, which forced various entire communities into
hereditary servitude and institutionalized caste-based occupations. Begum
(2018) notes, “Due to the fact the Watan system existed, the Mahar community
depended entirely on the mercy of Hindus” (p.273). This kind of economic
dependency meant that for accessing education it was not just difficult people
saw it as irrelevant, or as even threatening to the social order.
However, Kamble breaks through this narrative by showing
education ignited a larger resistance fire despite these constraints. Her
father, just one of the few men in the community, had valued schooling for
girls. The neighbours ridiculed this decision, and they thought that education
would corrupt the women. They also believed education would challenge the
common male authority. Putting a girl in school, exactly this act, was what
created patriarchy's caste walls initial rupture. Kamble transforms her own life
into more of a political statement through narrating these experiences. She
witnesses structural oppression, and through her writing, she exposes and
critiques it. The personal is in no way merely personal inside of The Prisons We Broke. It acts as a channel
in order to unveil Indian society's patriarchal as well as casteist
foundations.
Education in Baby Kamble’s life is not represented as
merely a privilege, nor just as a means to employment or to social mobility,
but it does act as revolutionary resistance. Dalit women had been expected to
remain fully illiterate as well as voiceless within their own world, but she
insisted upon both reading and writing. Her documenting of her experience
ultimately rebelled against centuries of caste-based subjugation. Kamble
experienced some amount of education and this became a certain motif of
liberation. It shows up in all of her writing.
The caste hierarchy was disrupted through the very act of
just being present in any classroom, although the formal schooling was often
quite hostile and discriminatory. Humiliation marked her early days inside
school, as Kamble recounts, where the Mahar girls were quite demeaned as well as upper-caste students
were openly favoured by Brahmin teachers. “Each of the girls in that class had
benches for sitting except for us Mahar girls, and we were to sit on the floor
in a corner of the classroom, like diseased puppies; we truly were like fiery
godflies burning for vengeance” (Kamble, 2008, p. 62).As shown by the vivid
metaphor, these girls cultivated resistance and righteous anger even after
dehumanization. It reflects the way education ignited a fresh consciousness
inside them upon realization of their ability to defy social norms.
Kamble became politically aware as well as made her
schooling more than simply an academic exercise because her classmates were
conditioned to treat her with some contempt. Ambedkarite movements in
Maharashtra advocated for the annihilation of caste through education as well
as social reform coinciding with her attendance at school. Listening to
Ambedkar’s speeches or reading his publications made Kamble feel a certain
inspiration and excitement, she describes. Education became to be viewed, using
Ambedkar’s phrase, as “a sword in the fight for equality” by both her and also
other young Dalits. Kamble acknowledges herself as “a product of the
Ambedkarite movement” (Begum, 2018, p. 273). A collective political awakening
had been tied inextricably to that of her personal success. Learning as well as
emancipation do indeed connect. Education for Kamble and her community heals
and resists, especially as it allows them to challenge internalized
inferiority. Kamble’s text increases, contextualizes, and politicizes with the
voice of a Dalit woman refusing silence (Pareek & Pareek, 2024).
This ideology awareness was transforming Kamble
personally and also powerfully manifested when Kamble decided to write. Her
writing functions as an act beyond political defiance and assertion. It is a
challenge to centuries of forced silence. Kamble stated to Maya Pandit her
translator, “I wrote about what my community experienced”. She added, “The suffering
of my people became my own suffering” (Samson & Vinayakaselvi, 2018,). This
statement shows the ethics of solidarity along with representation that support
her autobiography. Kamble's life narrative turns into a vessel for her own
story and a voice for countless Dalit women because their suffering was made
invisible under Brahmanical patriarchy. Kamble documents just how women of her
Mahar community labored without stopping to support their own families, even
often when they were extremely deprived. They bore the emotional and physical
weight from care giving while working in homes, fields, and factories. In daily
life, these women made conscious decisions so as to send their children to
school, resist humiliation, and assert their dignity, despite being denied
education and confined within domestic roles. Kamble recalls how some women
continued toward attending Ambedkarite meetings and educating themselves in
social matters, despite being taunted or even physically abused for attempting
to cross caste boundaries or express political views (Pareek & Komal,
2024).
Kamble subverts those elitist conventions of the
autobiographical genre by the act of writing. In India, autobiographies
customarily were written by upper-caste men, often to present spiritual,
political, or moral authority. In contrast, Kamble reclaims the genre for the
marginalized because she turns it into a space for trauma, resistance, and
collective memory articulation. Her narrative is one that does not focus on how
an individual triumphs or introspects but instead dissolves the boundary
between that which is personal and that which is political since it foregrounds
shared experiences of oppression and a collective will that resists. As Shah
(2024) does argue, Dalit women’s autobiographies such as Kamble’s function not
just as testimonies for survival but as ‘blueprints for social change’ because
they carve out a space within a literary discourse for the subaltern woman, and
they demand that her lived experiences be recognized as legitimate knowledge.
Furthermore, the use of autobiography by Kamble is
prominent as it challenges the very knowledge production hierarchy. She asserts
that Dalit women's oral traditions, memories, and lived experiences are just as
important if not more important than historical accounts and canonical texts
written by elites. Her work speaks to the reader directly with unembellished
honesty because it invites engagement with raw truths that official histories
often omit. Kamble resists caste oppression also dominant literary cultural
institutions perpetrating epistemic erasure doing so.
Kamble’s life story turns into a declaration and
represents Ambedkarite thought in action. Her pen is just as much of a tool for
resistance as any political slogan or any street protest is. Kamble narrates
the injustices her community faces along with educational discrimination and
patriarchal violence and therefore upsets social structures dependent on
silence and submission. Her text is a call for solidarity because it urges both
Dalits and non-Dalits alike to confront all of the embedded inequalities of
Indian society as well as to participate within the active battle for justice,
dignity, and equality. Kamble asserts agency through her writing and expands
that potential to future generations of Dalit women after her.
Kamble does not view suffering romantically and instead
honestly acknowledges that these acts of survival are what form the
resistance's foundation. She represents these women as defiant, morally
courageous and socially aware often more than their male counterparts who were
complicit within the perpetuation of patriarchal norms. Such defiance is
significant within settings when women had been often silenced and treated as
sub humans. Kamble asserts that resistance is not limited to grand gestures or
even organized protest it can be embedded in acts of care, choice and
self-preservation.
Kamble's own life powerfully symbolizes such resistance.
She went from being abused by her husband to being a writer, social reformer
and founder of an orphanage and she considers her success a part of a larger
trajectory of Dalit women’s awakening. She insists that her story isn’t
inseparable from that of the community's. Her openly voiced pride regarding her
Mahar identity comes not from essentialism but from recognition of the moral,
spiritual, and cultural power her community obtains from unity and years of
survival. Kamble reframes caste identity and moves through humiliation toward
collective resilience to get her with political agency (Narula, 2023).
Dalit feminist thought centers itself on this
redefinition of radical agency. Dalit feminism is theorized by activists and
scholars as an understanding of caste, gender and class which hold be viewed as
connected structures of domination. Kamble shows that Dalit women cannot be
subsumed within generalized categories such as ‘woman’ or ‘subaltern’ without
erasing specific histories of their exploitation (Kumar & Yogisha, 2017).
Kamble's depiction complicates victimhood and heroism's dichotomy. Her women
are not super human figures of
resistance but flawed, vulnerable and real. Their agency is forged through that
suffering but also through relationships and deep desire for a change.
The Prisons We
Broke functions more as a collective biography of
Dalit womanhood than just an autobiographical account. It chronicles all of the
chains of both caste and patriarchy along with all of the moments those chains
fracture under a collective will and feminist consciousness. Ultimately,
Kamble’s narrative serves both as a tribute for Dalit women’s enduring strength
and a blueprint towards their emancipation.
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