129. C.G. Shyamala

Abstract 129. C.G. Shyamala

Bama’s Karukku and Sangati: Dalit Testimonials as Voices of Resistance

Among the subcontinental women writers, Bama, a Tamil dalit is one of the most prominent regional voices of dalit feminist literature. Bama’s Karukku and Sangati relate the bitter personal experiences of dalit Christian women who suffer double marginalization due to caste and gender discriminations.  In spite of being doubly pushed to the periphery, Bama, the suffering protagonist in her autobiography Karukku asserts her space, thereby repositioning her cause to the center to voice the silenced other. Karukku vehemently opposes the Church that misuses religion and education. Being open-ended and raising unanswered questions, Karukku openly flouts the conventions of an autobiography.  In Sangati the suffering is carried to the community, as a series of anecdotes that describe the unjust patriarchal and upper-class practices, fervidly ridiculed and defied by dalit women of different generations. Devoid of a plot in the normal sense, Sangati works against the notions of the traditional novel. The variegated experiences of dalit women are stringed together, thus breaking the normative literary narrative of a single plot or story. Bama calls for resistance, action and transformation within the society while she represents the non-represented in the postcolonial literary discourse.  She has adopted the narrative pattern of ethnographic or anthropological studies wherein testimonials of the concerned peoples form the manner and method of constructing experiences and personal narratives which actually serve to build their history as a community or ethnic group.