Abstract

It is Remarkable to note that Untouchability is one of the greatest evils our country has been facing from the time Immemorial. The Pathetic picture of the Untouchables who are deprived of gaining Knowledge, has no right to go to the temple, no liberty to listen to the Incantations of the Vedas or great Scriptures, deprived of the right of reading and studying the language Sanskrit, which is supposed to be the richest language of the world. So one of the causes of the degeneration of Sanskrit language is Untouchability and perhaps this is why many great personalities, have given a scathing attack on the Casteist mentality of India. But in spite of their best efforts and many Constitutional Provisions, Untouchability is still seen somewhere in direct form and elsewhere in a subdued way. Dalit women are one of the most marginalized segments in the society. The condition of dalit women is more vulnerable than non-dalit women. Dalit women are suffering from multi-disadvantages this paper deals with Dalit issues like daily threats of rape, sexual assaults, physical violence at the workplace, in public arena as well as violence at home. In this paper we shall explore Bama's varied representations of Dalit women in Karukku, Sangati and Vanmam with a view to underline the interface between gender and caste significations in Dalit fiction. Bama's intervention in Dalit literary discourse in the early 1990s made a significant contribution in the arena of gender-caste intersections in the lives of Dalits. Her works foreground the twice cursed lives of Dalit women, oppressed on account of their caste as well as gender, at home and outside, by upper caste men and Dalit men, by the state machinery as well as the family. Bama's writing celebrates Dalit women's subversive strategies to overcome their oppression is depicted in this paper.