WOMEN AS MARGINALIZED SILENCED FACES IN THE OUTCASTE AND OTHER DALIT AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Abstract: Baburao Bagul mentioned that ‘Dalit Literature is but Human Literature’. He says, ‘Women became the subject of literature after centuries. They began appearing in literature in various forms: as achild widow, a child bride, a married girl and many such forms of the woman who was being crushed by the Hindu joint families.’(Arjun Dangle ) The Outcaste by Sharankumar Limbale though is an autobiography by a Dalit outcaste but at the same time it raises strong questions on giving voice to women portrayal as described in men dalit autobiographies. Women and especially Dalit women resisted to speak their trauma always. Their trauma has been looked at as description of how women go through the traumatic experiences just by being dalits and their trauma multiplies because they are women. This concern has been touched upon by Dalit women writer Bama in her autobiography Karukku. In Limbale’s autobiography, he has described how dalit women become victims in the hand of upper caste men and fall prey to their sexual desires. Most of these women are not even allowed to move out of that vicious circle of getting sexually abused and how they have to continuously give birth to these unwanted children who are born as a result of these sexual relations. Here the trauma is transferred to the child whose father is not known.